The Lobo Tank Busters
By: Stan Jordan
On today’s raid, we had on extra gas tanks and we flew straight west to the French and German border to a place called Wolfhaggen. This is a big railroad yard that connects to the French National Railway. It was a very big yard and it looked like it was in good shape. It had not been bombed for a while. We went in, in a flight of two planes on the main lines and one plane on each wing. We were unexpected, so we enjoyed a little bit of surprise. We found a number of trains coming from the west with used tanks and trucks and other supply vehicles.
We always want to destroy the engines and then what’s left. We hit a couple engines if they were on the close end. We put a few rockets into the rear end of a couple Tiger Tanks. We started some fires in a few tanks. We had shot up anything in front of us. Then, we came to the other end of these trains. Some had the engines on that end. We hit them very hard and then we were at the end of the yard. We kept on going low and followed the double tracks. We knew we could not make another pass.
We still had a few rockets left, and we all looked for individual targets. We found a good-sized railroad bridge and we made a circle and came in from the side and put a rocket into the support columns. One of the other pilots had two rockets left and he put both of them into the support columns. Those rockets done a fine job. Some of the rails and ties fell into the bottom of the ditch. That piece of the rails will be out of action for a while. There was a control tower and a signal shack down nearby and we got all of that.
We made a big circle over the area and came back to the tracks and headed west towards Paris and our Airbase at Anthony. It was a long grind, but we accomplished a good deal of destruction. What we didn’t completely destroy will take them quite a while to repair, but they will.
See ya!
Credit where Credit is Due
By: Stan Jordan
Over the past 10 years, I have written quite a bit about history in Antwerp. I could do a lot of that from my own memory, but a lot of that data comes from Mr. Ehrhart’s book. So, if you don’t mind, I would like to give credit where credit is due.
Otto Ehrhart, one of the finest people I’ve every known, was a naturalist or a taxidermist. He loved animals, snakes, bugs, birds, insects, and he would say, “Please bring them to me alive.” That in itself, he was keeping a record of old natural history of the Antwerp area.
But, when he wrote his book, “A Century of Progress for Antwerp: 1841-1941,” his son, Dale, was a very big help to him. Dale spent many hours and days going through the minutes of council meetings of that 100 years to bring us the highlights of each mayor’s term in showing the progress of the city for each term. The Ehrharts came to Antwerp from Chemnitz, Germany in 1893, along with some family friends named, Miller. They owned some land up on old US 24 where Cord Ehrhart built his new home, that was the original homestead.
When I was a child, Everett Wann lived there and Harold Wann still owns the acreage and Steve Wetli farms it. Cord Ehrhart and his family live there now. They have three daughters and Cord is a teacher at Antwerp High School. Otto was 9 years old when he came to America. In time, he married Fay Overmeyer and they moved to town over on Poverty Hill. They had three boys and one daughter: Dale, Hazel, Cloide and Wendell.
Otto entered the photography business in 1907 on North Main St. In 1941, the business moved to a ground floor location in the McGuire Block, on South Main St. Later on, his son Cloide, took over the business.
Dale was very active as a bookkeeper in the stone quarry business. He served many years as the Antwerp city clerk. He was the clerk for the Antwerp School Board for many years. He was very proficient in legal terms that was needed in both of these positions. Dale and his wife spent many hours reading the minutes of the council meetings for that 100 years. Otto underlined that fact in his book and that is what I want to stress here. I want to give credit where credit is due.
In bringing us the early years of Antwerp history, Mr. Ehrhart’s book is priceless and he had a lot help from Dale. Mr. Ehrhart passed away in 1963. I knew all these people, and Antwerp is much better off for having them live here. Cheryl Ehrhart-Jailor helped me with some of this data and I am very grateful.
See ya!
