What a Day, What a Day; Lobo Tank Busters; A Little History on West River Street
What a Day, What a Day!
By: Stan Jordan
Saturday started at 8AM. I had a pancake and sausage breakfast down at the EMS building. It was a nice, warm morning and we set and talked with friends for over an hour. Then, we went down on Main St. in front of McDougall Firearms building and we put our lawn chairs out by the street and watched the fine parade go by.
I parked in the United Methodist Church parking lot about 11AM and Tabby Leinger-Wolfe came along and gave me and my lawn chair a ride to the park. Cindy Hughes-Kauser carried my lawn chair from the road to the pavilion and helped me get settled down in a good, shady spot where I could watch all of the activities.
Along about 3:00, my vim and vigor vamoosed and Denny Lee, in his golf cart, took me back to my pick-up at the church parking lot and I went home. Along about 6:00PM, Jessie Getrost, my granddaughter, came and picked me up and we went to the alumni banquet.
I was picked as the oldest alumnus, and I represented the class of 1942. There are three more of that class living in the area. Iona Sue Booth-Hand, Juanita Smitley-Carr, and Robert Hemrich.
I visited some old friends and had a wonderful time. Along about 8:00, Jessie took me home. The EMS boys helped me down the stairs, but that will be a story itself in another issue in the WBN. What a day, what a day!
See ya!
The Lobo Tank Busters
By: Stan Jordan
We are here in our barracks at the Tony Air-Base in Anthony, France. We are loaded with fuel and ammo for tomorrow’s dawn patrol. We all went down to the mess hall this evening. There was a movie. John Wayne and, “The Wake of the Red Witch.” There even was popcorn if your wanted some. For a couple of hours, it was just like back home.
Now this is Tuesday, that other was Monday. We are back in the barracks, but we have a different story to tell. We left at daylight on our dawn patrol over east of Paris, a hundred miles or so. We got there on the outskirts of the city that was well-protected by anti-aircraft fire. There was some defense plant there. We went in low and shot up a lot of buildings and we used a few of our rockets. Then, we made a big, sweeping circle and came back over to the area, and that was not a smart thing to do. They were waiting for us.
We caught a lot of small arms fire. You could have walked on it, it was so thick. We finally got to the edge of town and then formed up at about 1,000 feet. We checked each other’s planes out and we all had small arms damage. But Lt. Barnes was complaining about burning in his leg. We all asked him how bad it was. He said, “I must have gotten a piece of shrapnel through the fuselage and into the muscle of my left leg. It burned very bad for a while, but not so much now. So I said, “Well, let’s go down to the deck and head for home.” We didn’t know if Barnes would pass out and crash, so we headed for the Tony Air-Base.
Well, we got home alright, and Lt. Barnes pulled his plane right up to the work shed and killed the engine. He said, “I don’t know how bad my wound is, but I won’t have to walk very far.” He got out of his plane and into our Jeep and we all rode over to the Infirmary. The doc said, “Well, you will get a Purple Heart, but it isn’t all that bad. You had a piece of casing from a German 37mm cannon, but it had lost most of its power by the time it went through the plane and your flying suit and into your muscle. I can mark you ‘duty’ after I dress your leg, or I can let you stay a day or so.” Lt. Barnes said, “Doc, mark me ‘duty’ I love to fly!”
See ya!
A Little History on West River Street
By: Stan Jordan
I have before me an abstract of the lot on Madison Street where Ben Gross lives. It goes way back in history and is very interesting, as most of these abstracts are. Years ago, some people bought that lot from the Presbyterian Church, as it was located on the northwest corner of Madison and West River Street.
In this abstract of this place, it dates way back to 1849 and is pages and pages of legal talk. What I noted on some of these pages was that River Street in Antwerp was referred to as State Road that runs from Defiance to Fort Wayne, and that was dated 1916.
Evidently, some time before 1930, the state changed the above mentioned road to US 24, and changed it from North of the Coffelt Cemetery to where it runs now down past Dana Weatherhead. US 24 runs from Detroit west to Colorado, past Denver, to around Vail or Avon. It also mentions how around Hicksville and Antwerp was a town called, “Clarksville.” I talked to Mike Brown at the Alumni Banquet, and he said he thought Clarksville was in Mark Twp. in Defiance County.
Back in 1875, a Presbyterian Church was built on the northwest corner of Madison and West River Street. They had a Sunday school also starting in October of 1875. The American house, a two-story, 10 room hotel building stood on the corner of West River and Cleveland St. and it was torn down in 1899 to make room for the new Presbyterian Church.
See ya!
