Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Quiz Sheet Deluxe- June 17, 1945








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5 comments:

  1. Greg, I really enjoyed reading this quiz. What a priceless artifact this is. Very funny too!
    Wow...178 days in a foxhole! What does "nichts
    jerstag" mean? It was in reference to shots. Liz

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  2. Liz, I believe the term is "nicht jerstay" and means "I don't understand". My dad used the term sometimes when he was explaining something to me or my brother when we were kids, such as "don't do that again, jerstay"?

    Regarding the quiz, it is a kick isn't it? More importantly it fills in a lot of gaps in the narrative, particularly during the combat phase when censorship and a desire to minimize his danger kept Bill from telling the "gory details" of his action.

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  3. Correction: the correct term, I believe is "ferstay" I don't know German, but that is the phonetic spelling.

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  4. I'm german, good than I can help. "jerstay" makes no sense. I think "ferstay" ist closer the correct spelling would be "nicht verstehen" and Greg is right, means "don't understand". We would say the other way around "verstehe nicht".
    Greg thanks for the blog, I'm reading it all the way through, and was very excited reading week it by week, and was very surprised where your're father ended up in Germany. Pretty close to my hometown.
    My father was almost 6 years old when the war ended, like my son today, and he told me about air raids over Mannheim. He knew already a a few important english sentences, yelling to the GI's on the Jeeps and Tanks, "Have you chewing gum?".
    My mothers favorite story after the liberation (we never called it defeat, it took me a while to understand that), is the moment when she got her first orange from an black soldier, both things she never saw before and she never forgot, the juicy taste and the kindness of the Americans after the war. Well done guys!

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  5. Famil,

    Welcome to my blog! Thank you for the kind words. Bill crossed the Rhine from Ludwigshaven to Mannheim on March 22, 1945. This was probably just after the air raids your father spoke of. In one of my dad's letters he complains of being constantly bothered by young kids asking him for candy and chewing gum. Maybe one of these kids was your father!

    What a beautiful story from your mother. I feel a little bit of pride knowing that my dad played a small part in the "liberation" of your family.

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