{"id":2215,"date":"2010-02-03T14:23:29","date_gmt":"2010-02-03T18:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=2215"},"modified":"2010-02-03T14:27:14","modified_gmt":"2010-02-03T18:27:14","slug":"frenchman-schnapps-us-soldier-hell-yes-volunteering-at-the-norwich-archive-centre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/02\/frenchman-schnapps-us-soldier-hell-yes-volunteering-at-the-norwich-archive-centre\/","title":{"rendered":"Frenchman: “Schnapps?”, US Soldier: “Hell yes.” – Volunteering at the Norwich Archive Centre"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday (January 28th<\/sup>) I was able to spend an hour and fifteen minutes volunteering at the Norwich Archive Centre.\u00a0 While there, I was able to listen to two audio recordings of two American WWII veterans.\u00a0 The first audio recording was of a former 2nd<\/sup> Lieutenant who served as a pilot in the 44th<\/sup> Bomb Group.\u00a0 The 2nd<\/sup> Lt. joined the U.S. Army Air Forces in September 1942 and was put on active duty March 1943.\u00a0 He flew 35 missions over Nazi occupied Europe.\u00a0 The 2nd<\/sup> Lt. mentioned a few humorous anecdotes, making sure to note that the pubs in Norwich were always crowded with drunken GIs.\u00a0 Fond of associating with Brits, the 2nd<\/sup> Lt. enjoyed London very much and made sure to mention the \u201cwall-to-wall women\u201d there.\u00a0 However, the most interesting and funny anecdote involved a bombing mission of Dresden.\u00a0 Due to enemy fire, the crew was forced to bail out over Alsace-Lorraine, France<\/a>.\u00a0 On board were a Colonel and a Captain, both of whom argued (while the bomber was going down) about who was to be the last out of the aircraft (the Colonel won out).\u00a0 When the 2nd<\/sup> Lt. hit the ground, he was met by two men of the Free French Forces<\/a>.\u00a0 After a few minutes of trying to communicate, one of the Frenchmen asked, \u201cSchnapps?\u201d to which the 2nd<\/sup> Lt. responded \u201cHell yes.\u201d\u00a0 Sadly, the 2nd<\/sup> Lt. was not able to drink up with the Frenchmen as he had to look after an injured comrade.<\/p>\n

The second audio recording was an American veteran who was an engineer\/gunner on a B-24.\u00a0 Much of the recording is about describing his training and various missions, but there are a few funny stories.\u00a0 The first is when this veteran decided to go to Norwich with two buddies for a night of drinking.\u00a0 Of course, in order to get to Norwich they had to ride their bikes from base to there and back.\u00a0 The night of drinking was undoubtedly fun but on the way back the veteran\u2019s chain snapped.\u00a0 In a moment of drunken genius, the men decided to tow the man and his broke bike back to base with their three belts.\u00a0 After landing in a few ditches and acquiring some minor cuts, the men eventually made it back to base.\u00a0 The second anecdote involves the veteran meeting the farther of a girl he was dating while in Britain.\u00a0 The father was a retired British officer (who served 37 years) and quite the serious man.\u00a0 After explaining the medals the veteran had acquired and ending with the Good Conduct Medal, the father burst out, \u201cYou blooming Yanks get a medal for chewing gum, taking out the girls and drinking beer!\u201d\u00a0 He then proceeded to retrieve his old uniform and pointed to his Good Conduct Medal, which he said took 25 years to earn.<\/p>\n

Volunteer Time: 1 hr. 15 min.<\/p>\n

Total Time: 3 hrs. 15 min.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday (January 28th) I was able to spend an hour and fifteen minutes volunteering at the Norwich Archive Centre.\u00a0 While there, I was able to listen to two audio recordings of two American WWII veterans.\u00a0 The first audio recording was of a former 2nd Lieutenant who served as a pilot in the 44th Bomb […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[733],"tags":[2033,2032,2031,1982,2021,936],"class_list":["post-2215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-andrew-f","tag-2nd-air-division","tag-american-veterans","tag-norwich-archieve-centre","tag-oral-history","tag-volunteering","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}