A Wartime Winter's Tale: 52 Ancestor’s Theme -Week 49

It was winter 1944-45 and my father John P. Weston was in Luxembourg.

During the Second World War, Dad  served in the RAF Codes & Ciphers Branch and was indoctrinated into the mysteries of Enigma and the One-Time Pad code, with training at Bletchley Park and Whitehall, London. He then became part of the Special Liaison Unit, in a team of analysts to scan, digest, and file the messages, and   forward key messages to the appropriate field commands. 

Dad   was seconded to General Bradley’s US 12th Army Group HQ. He landed at Omaha beach just after D-Day and advanced via St. Mere Eglise, Avranches, Versailles, Paris, Verdun and Luxembourg through to Wiesbaden in Germany. 

Here is his story of that winter 1944-45, told in his own words that he wrote down for me. 

"We arrived in Luxembourg.  General Bradley's Hotel Alpha was opposite the badly damaged railway station.  We had a good hotel at the back and were able to buy some very good cakes in the town.

I became friendly  with a former member of the government [Mr Battin]  and was invited to his house. He produced champagne from his cellar and served them with lovely cakes with kirsch in them".

 A rare chance to sample some home life in time of war!  Dad on the right with the Mr Battin's daughter. 

 

Dad (left) with Mr Battin and his daughter - 1944 

      A picturesque scene of  Luxembourg, found in Dad's album.

   

Dad maintained contact with the Battin family for a long time after the war, exchanging Christmas cards etc.  In 1961  we moved to York and he named our new house  "Arlon" after  a place  in Luxembourg which obviously held fond memories for him.

 

His story continues..... 

"It was now December 1944 and bitterly cold, with snow and ice. Out of the blue at 4a.m. on December 16^th came a major attack on the American front.  It was pandemonium, as the Germans broke trough the US lines, troops retreating and the population streaming back from the German advance.  The GIs ran out of ammo. and threw their rifles away.  Some 8000 were taken prisoners of war.   

This was the Battle of the Bulge. "

The Battle was the last major offensive by the Germans in the war, fought in the dense forest of the Ardennes, on the border of Belgium, northern France and Luxembourg. Initially the Americans in particular suffered heavy  losses.

Dad's account continues.....

"We carried thermite bombs in a safe in our operations vehicle to be used to destroy our codebooks and machines. We had rifles fully loaded with us at all times.......There was trouble with our supply lines with food, ammunition and petrol not getting through to us, and planes were fog bound, due to the awful weather.  At one point we were given five boiled sweets for one meal." 

This meal of five boiled sweets became an, often repeated,  apocryphal family story.  It was only much later that I came to realize it masked the dreadul  scenes Dad must have witnessed.  We were hearing a sanitized version of what war was really like. 

In the Ardennes, the weather improved, Allied planes launched a major attack and dropped supplies to their troops. The Germans had few troop reserves and fuel and ammunition supplies were at a critical level.  The German advance was halted.

By chancethis week, I saw on television a repeat of the much acclaimed series "A World at War", with narration by Sir Lawrence Olivier.  That particular episode focused on the Battle of the Bulge.  With my personal interest, it made for gripping viewing and gave me a graphic picture of what Dad had experienced. It was a life defining moment for him.

         

Adapted from a post first published in 2014.  

Postcript:  When I first published this post, it sparked off a number of questions from  my American readers - "what are boiled sweets" -  the answer:  hard sweets (candy) made from boiled sugar. with natural flavourings and colours added. Lovely to suck, but not recommended if you value your teeth!

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