WRITES FROM GERMANY
Pfc. Donald Smith of this city writes the Freeman-Journal from somewhere in Germany where his unit, the “Old Hickory” division, is fighting on muddy battlegrounds. The division played a big part in the Normandy breakthrough at St. Lo, in driving the nazis back across France, and in pounding 180 miles in 72 hours to be the first division in Belgium. Smith is a member of an artillery unit which pushed on through Belgium, into Holland and on into Germany, where the Siegfried line was cracked around Aachen. Although he has had many close calls, Smith said, one of the closest came when “Bed Check Charlie,” a nuisance nazi air raider, came over and dropped “everything but the motors.” One of two men in one foxhole, Smith declared, “It was a struggle to see which one could be on the bottom.”
Source: Daily Freeman Journal, Webster City, IA - Dec. 11, 1944
Donald James Smith was born Sept. 30, 1914 to Peter C. and Nellie O’Neal Smith. He died Feb. 20, 1994.
Private Smith served with the U.S. Army in World War II.
Source: ancestry.com
