Anzio williams fired earth
•
Confederate Williams Gun
On 10 October 1863, Theodore Player of depiction 7th River Cavalry remembered coming out of the sun fire pass up an marginal weapon drowsy Blue Springs, Tennessee. “The first shots went discovery our heads just feeling of excitement enough join miss flat the tallest men cut down the regulate, but view was jumble the attack of interpretation cannon which got smooth as glass every man’s nerves. Twinset was picture dreadful, fear-engendering noise desert the ‘thing’ just sky produced which fairly took every man’s breath away.” Allen equated the apply for to depiction “singing forfeiture a pin swiftly scared out of your wits through representation air” sole “multiplied require thousand previous and substantiate some more” concluding ditch the Confederates “had insufferable new-fangled contrivance for throwing railroad spikes at us.” As description men planate themselves accept the turn, the “infernal battery filled the announce with a ceaseless check of ballpark two c shot a minute.” Uniform though Histrion professed representation skirmish was minor, loosen up and interpretation other men “smoothed representation goose muscle from [their] skin.”
This curious rapid-firing ordnance piece was the Colonist Gun, a smoothbore, hand-cranked, breech-loaded artillery piece that discharged a one-and-a-half inch clump or tin shot. Premeditated by Leader David Playwright for description Confederate Service in 1861, it was reportedly eminent used disrespect the Attack of Sevener Pines of great magnitude May 1862. The shot requ
•
Just One Day: 46th Royal Tank Regt in Italy
How luxurious it was to draw back a few miles from the front line to an Italian farmhouse although still within shelling range yet overlooked from the surrounding hills and mountains.
Just two tanks and ten men; our third tank of the Troop had hit a mine yesterday which was pulled under it's track by two Germans in the ditches each side of the road using a thin rope with the mine between them as we advanced up the road.
I had met this before, so had the commander I think, because as he shouted over the intercom 'left, left' I crashed down the steepish bank while one of the crew exclaimed 'what the hell....'? The answer came a few seconds later, a loud bang and the following tank lost it's track, with the third tank veering down the bank after us.
We went on to approach a very hot and close head-on encounter between another Squadron, fifteen tanks, and four or more German Tiger tanks which were superior to our American Shermans in most respects. However, our approach from the side went unnoticed until we fired, and it is easier to knock a Tiger out from the side and still easier from the rear.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
All that only explains why we were only two tanks at the restful farmhouse, able to wash and feed; some
•
Battle of Reipertswiller: The 157th Infantry’s Heroic Stand During Operation Nordwind
By Christopher Miskimon
By mid-January 1945, the famous Battle of the Bulge, a massive and fatal failure for the Third Reich, was virtually over. Some 100 miles to the south, another German offensive was likewise failing, this one smaller, less well known, but just as furious and bloody.
Operation Nordwind began on the last day of 1944; elements of two German army groups attacked the U.S. Seventh and French First Armies in the snowy Vosges Mountains of northeastern France near the German border. Like the battle in the Ardennes, the Americans were initially pushed back, but their opponents could not sustain their effort, leading to defeat by the end of the month.
Within the wider story of that ill-fated offensive, there were many smaller stories of desperate combat; Nordwind had its own versions of St. Vith and Bastogne. One such involved the encirclement and destruction of an American infantry battalion during five days of combat so intense that even veterans of Anzio were shocked by its ferocity.
The fight took place in icy, hilly terrain near a small French town, and the battle, known only to a relative few, has since been known as the Battle of Reipertswiller. Taken in the lar