All I Want for Christmas!

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If you have 13 minutes this is a neat vid.

HOW SHIPPING SAVED CHRISTMAS | HOLIDAYS ON A SHIP | AWAY FROM FAMILY​

Joe Franta. Ship
Dec 20, 2022


13:00
 
It's sort of a tradition in home that I sit down and create Christmas decorations in various sizes. I have been a part time woodcarver as along as the wife unit and I have been married. One year I carved a knee high Santa for my son. When his girl-friend's daughter comes to visit, she immediately puts this santa to face a corner. It looks like he's urinating. Bad Santa. Every person that I care about gets a carved santa. I don't think that I have duplicated a santa yet, but it's getting harder and harder to come up with an original santa.

One year my sister's children asked me if I was cheap because I don't give a store bought gift for a birthday or Christmas. They never got a hand made gift again. On other occasions I give an ASE, the first time an ASE is presented I attach a note about the history of the Silver Eagle and tell them never to sell them and to keep them close. Sometimes my son lectures me about how he is losing money when Silver fluctuates. I ask him home he can lose money on silver coins when they are given to him as a gift and he has no basis cost. Kids sometimes just don't understand. Everyone I care for gets a silver dollar for graduations or at Christmas.

I just want my family to either visit or call at Christmas and I wish the same for all here.
 
Shadow is watching White Christmas after dinner. Santa is almost here!20221223_173154.jpg20221223_174847.jpg20221223_174829.jpg
 
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Christmas Eve, 1944​


Techno Fog

December 16 – Battle of the Bulge - Museum of The American G.I.

The Ardennes Forest is located in Belgium and Luxembourg and extends into France and Germany. It’s a sparsely populated region of rolling hills and thickly wooded forests, known for picturesque valleys and charming cities, whose shops and cafes and bike paths have slowly grown around ancient citadels and castles and 13th century churches.

In December of 1944, it was an area of intense fighting, as the Allies fought back against a German offensive – the Ardennes Offensive – that would come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge. The German plan of desperation in the face of Western advances was to split the Allies where they were purportedly weak. As said by Adolf Hitler himself: “A blow here [at the Ardennes] would strike the seam between the British and Americans and lead to political as well as military disharmony between the Allies.”

The German assault began with guns and artillery and bombing on the early morning of December 16, sending projectiles from railway guns to V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets at the unsuspecting Allies. One witness described the eastern horizon “as though a volcano had suddenly erupted or someone had turned on a light switch.”1 Another said there were “ear-slitting explosions” lit up the sky as if it were day.2 What followed was a German attack across a 75-mile front that initially involved 200,000 men and over 600 tanks, only to grow in size from there.

The brutal fighting took place in the brutal cold. Some American positions were overrun. Early strategic mistakes left American regiments isolated and taking terribly heavy losses. In others areas, young German conscripts, many of whom were still boys, “openly cried with fear before this, their first and last battle” before being cut down.3 The fighting, combined from both sides, would come to easily exceed 1 million troops. And when it was all over, tens of thousands would be killed in action.

As bodies fell and as the shells came down to earth, a small cabin stood alone in the snow. A few months prior to the Battle of the Bulge, the German father of 12 year-old Fritz Vincken moved his family into the cabin deep inside the safety of the Ardennes Forest to avoid the worst of the fighting and wait for the front to pass. It was believed the Allies would make quick work of the German forces and the war would be over that autumn. They were wrong. As the weeks dragged on, and as autumn turned to winter, Fritz and his mother became isolated in the deep snow of the forest, cut off from the outside world – and from help from Fritz’s father, who was stationed at a German bakery some 20 miles away. Fritz and his mother were alone and they were running out of supplies. And as the Battle of the Bulge started, they could hear the sound of artillery and fighting.

On the night of Christmas Eve 1944, eight days into the Battle of the Bulge, Fritz’s mother was preparing soup (the main ingredient being a rooster they had found in an abandoned farmhouse) under candlelight. They then heard voices outside the cabin. The candle was put out. There were a couple knocks at the door. Mother opened the door and saw two men standing there. Another man was injured and sitting nearby in the snow. According to Fritz, they spoke a strange language. They were Americans.


the rest of the story:
technofog.substack.com

Christmas Eve, 1944

The Ardennes Forest is located in Belgium and Luxembourg and extends into France and Germany. It’s a sparsely populated region of rolling hills and thickly wooded forests, known for picturesque valleys and charming cities, whose shops and cafes and bike paths have slowly grown around ancient...
technofog.substack.com technofog.substack.com

 
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