40 & 8 box cars.

[nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org]

Thank you Mr. Smith for a wonderful story! My Dad served in Belgium and got
to do a little firing in Antwerp when not attending his med corp duties.
Charlie Long

-----Original Message-----
From: nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org
[mailto:nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org]On Behalf Of
nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2005 9:25 PM
To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Subject: Re: 40 & 8 box cars.

I made a journey coming home from the ETO in the WW II version of the 40&8.
This was from Heidelberg Germany to Le Harve France in March 1946. Don't
remember for sure how many was in each car but really crowded, if you were
in the end of the car very tricky getting to the door in the dark to empty
bladder, lots of groaning and bad language from prone bodies being steeped
on. Talk about a ragged looking train this was in March and still chilly
each car had a portable stove about the size of a metal beer keg with about
four feet of stove pipe then an elbow and two feet out the door, They gave
us a sack of some king of compressed peat and coal that was short on BTU's
but big on smoke So picture this twenty car train rattling along at about 20
MPH with smoke poring out of these stove pipes. Miserable trip took four
days and nights.    But   We Were Headed Home!!!
R F Smith
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/nw-mailing-list/attachments/20050922/55ad5777/attachment.html