Saturday, December 24, 2011

W.O. Jackson notes in Europe during WWII

I'm going through my maternal grandfather's papers and in a tiny, deteriorating 1943-1944 calendar/address book, he wrote where he was and when after shipping out to Europe. Gives the name of the ship that transported him to England and the name of the boat that transported his unit to France. It's only a few lines but because the letters he wrote to my grandmother were censored, he could never say exactly where he was (only "France", "Luxembourg", "Germany", etc.) or what he was doing. He couldn't even say where he was wounded (St. Malo, France on 12 August 1944 a bit after the great breakout from the Normandy area). This info fills in some of the gaps in what I've been able to piece together from their letters. It wasn't until a month or two after VE day that censorship was discontinued the first time. It appears he was writing this stuff down some time after that in order to remember as many details as he could.

More info to come as I transcribe the info and organize it. Even more will follow after I transcribe the letters, which will take quite a while. Right now, all I have done is to scan this material and save as image files.

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