Soldiers of ’44

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The following letter is classified Item 61-A in the Solvis Collection of Diaries and Letters donated to the College of Pennsylvania at Ardmore, Pennsylvania, by Edward G. Solvis.

The letter is part of an open collection which includes material dating from 1942 until the present.

This letter from David Hamlin is reprinted with the permission of Dr. Gerald Flood, Curator of Archives.

December 11, 1944. Eastern Belgium. Monday, 1530 hours.

In an open jeep and two heavy trucks, the soldiers of D (Dog) Battery’s Gun Section Eight followed a steep and twisting road to the crest of a hill layered with drifting fogs above a silent valley in the forests of the Ardennes.

Gusting winds shook the canvas sides of the laboring trucks and swept in erratic spirals around the sergeant driving the support jeep and the corporal scanning the white ravines below them through binoculars.

They had been out of contact with Battery headquarters for two days and nights, but knew that somewhere ahead of them in the mountains were divisions of German soldiers pulling back toward the Siegfried Line and the Rhine, the last barriers between the Allied forces and the heartland of Nazi Germany.

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