Date Of Birth
Entry by: rodgriff
29th October 2015
April 12 1945
The town of Weimar was eerily quiet when the American troops arrived. The residents were cowering in their bombed out homes. A few strange people roamed the streets. They were escaped prisoners from Buchenwald who had overpowered the few remaining guards and set off to try to kill anyone from the SS that they could find. The troops entered the concentration camp in numbers on 12 April.
What they found was almost beyond human understanding; certainly far outside the imagination of the young American soldiers.
"There were lamshades in the commandant's office made from human skin, they used ashes of dead prisoners to fertilize the fields – the ashes of dead people. It became just too much. I was stunned, just stunned. We don't even treat dogs like this." said 23 year old Harry Snodgrass from Tennessee.
In Okinawa, half across the world American troops faced a different enemy. Dispatches at the end of the day showed a little ground gained and one destroyer sunk, but 111 enemy planes were shot down. The Japanese attacks were described as suicidal.
In Warm Springs, Georgia, at his country retreat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait. Whether he had his mind on that or on his mistress who was in the room while his wife was in washington DC no one knows. Late in the afternoon he complained of a severe headache and took to his bed.
In Berlin Albert Speer had organised a one of a series of concerts by the Philharmonic Orchestra to maintain morale and promote German culture. This one was special however because Speer had said to his friends
"When they play Bruckner's Romantic Symphony (Number 4 in E Flat Major) you will know that the end is near."
He later said in his memoirs that it would be a long time before he would hear music again.
Back in the USA Roosevelt fell unconcious and never woke again. Harry Truman was sworn in as President. There is a famous letter that he had dictated before he heard the news, but signed after he became President. He added a handwritten footnote
"This was dictated before the world fell in on me. But I've talked to you since and you know what a blow it was. But – I must meet it." It was another two weeks before anyone told him about the secret development of the atom bomb.
In a small hospital in Bristol, England a baby was born a few minutes before midnight on April 12. Five minutes more and I would have been born on Friday the Thirteenth, but my luck held; just as it did a few days later when what was left of the German forces managed to shoot down the sterling bomber that my dad was piloting. Dad survived and managed to escape from POW camp and was back in England by VE day.
When my mother got her breath back they told her that Roosevelt had died.
"I don't care about that," she said, though she probably did, at least a little; 'What about my baby?'
And so I came into the world, dwarfed by momentous events around the globe but lucky already, and born on a Thursday with far to go.
The town of Weimar was eerily quiet when the American troops arrived. The residents were cowering in their bombed out homes. A few strange people roamed the streets. They were escaped prisoners from Buchenwald who had overpowered the few remaining guards and set off to try to kill anyone from the SS that they could find. The troops entered the concentration camp in numbers on 12 April.
What they found was almost beyond human understanding; certainly far outside the imagination of the young American soldiers.
"There were lamshades in the commandant's office made from human skin, they used ashes of dead prisoners to fertilize the fields – the ashes of dead people. It became just too much. I was stunned, just stunned. We don't even treat dogs like this." said 23 year old Harry Snodgrass from Tennessee.
In Okinawa, half across the world American troops faced a different enemy. Dispatches at the end of the day showed a little ground gained and one destroyer sunk, but 111 enemy planes were shot down. The Japanese attacks were described as suicidal.
In Warm Springs, Georgia, at his country retreat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sitting for a portrait. Whether he had his mind on that or on his mistress who was in the room while his wife was in washington DC no one knows. Late in the afternoon he complained of a severe headache and took to his bed.
In Berlin Albert Speer had organised a one of a series of concerts by the Philharmonic Orchestra to maintain morale and promote German culture. This one was special however because Speer had said to his friends
"When they play Bruckner's Romantic Symphony (Number 4 in E Flat Major) you will know that the end is near."
He later said in his memoirs that it would be a long time before he would hear music again.
Back in the USA Roosevelt fell unconcious and never woke again. Harry Truman was sworn in as President. There is a famous letter that he had dictated before he heard the news, but signed after he became President. He added a handwritten footnote
"This was dictated before the world fell in on me. But I've talked to you since and you know what a blow it was. But – I must meet it." It was another two weeks before anyone told him about the secret development of the atom bomb.
In a small hospital in Bristol, England a baby was born a few minutes before midnight on April 12. Five minutes more and I would have been born on Friday the Thirteenth, but my luck held; just as it did a few days later when what was left of the German forces managed to shoot down the sterling bomber that my dad was piloting. Dad survived and managed to escape from POW camp and was back in England by VE day.
When my mother got her breath back they told her that Roosevelt had died.
"I don't care about that," she said, though she probably did, at least a little; 'What about my baby?'
And so I came into the world, dwarfed by momentous events around the globe but lucky already, and born on a Thursday with far to go.
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