Telegraph | May 19, 1944 Marine Writes In Poetry to Canteen Here’s to the North Platte Canteen! One of the finest I’ve yet seen, Dispensing Chow and Cheer, In a friendly atmosphere. So thanks to you, One and all. You North Platte folks Are On The Ball!! The above note was received at the Canteen today from Lt. Robert J. Church, United States Marines.
his picture on a card that she had taken from the North Platte Canteen. The sailor said he remembered the day the pic- tures were taken but that he had no idea that they would be made into cards. He wanted to mail a few to his friends. At 5 p.m. Central War Time on June 5 (midnight French time), some 24,000 Allied paratroopers landed behind Nazi lines in the French region of Normandy. The remainder of an invading force of 156,000, transported across the English Channel by thousands of ships great and small, stormed off “Higgins boat” landing craft (invented by Columbus, Nebraska, native Andrew Jackson Higgins) at 11:30 p.m. June 5 (6:30 a.m. French time on June 6) onto five segments of the Normandy beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno and Sword. Volunteers from Stapleton, the first non-North Platte community to join the Canteen effort 29 months earlier, anchored the operation’s serving efforts on D-Day. But the only local reactions to the invasion in either North Platte daily paper were calls to prayer. Telegraph | June 6, 1944 North Platte churches whose pastors are members of the Ministerial Association will hold special prayer services tonight at 8 o’clock, it was an- nounced today. Special prayers will be offered for invasion troops at this time. The public is invited to attend these special services.
There will also be special services at 8 o’clock at Our Redeemer Lutheran Church, Rev. Alfred Saeger, pastor, announced. Even troop movements had to bow to Mother Nature. Massive rains in northeast Nebraska the weekend after D-Day flooded the Elkhorn River, inundating the western Douglas County town of Waterloo — and the Union Pacific tracks there — in five feet of water. With U.P. troop trains disrupted in both directions, the Canteen joined the Red Cross in aiding delayed and stranded service members. Telegraph | June 15, 1944 With the United Air Lines running a shuttle service between North Platte and Omaha, the Lincoln County chapter of the Red Cross has opened a sta- tion at the Union Pacific depot where arrangements were made for passenger services east … Many service men on short furlough time that were stranded here when the east bound trains were stopped here due to the flooded condition of the tracks near Waterloo were given transportation by plane to Omaha. … Number 22 has been held here since 10:00 o’clock Wednesday morning. Others have been delayed for a few hours only. The Canteen has been doing yeoman service the past few days, remaining open almost all night last night providing lunches and otherwise caring for the hundreds of service men stranded here.
Edna Neid shows off a basket of apples in this photo from about 1944.
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