As you have heard us say many times before, the Times Herald and other local newspapers are a great resource for genealogists. Recently, former Board President and volunteer Charles Kelly, found a detailed obituary for Lieutenant James W. Slater of Norristown. April 28, 1943, Times Herald, HSMC Microfilm Collection Before entering the US military in… Read More »Lieutenant James W. Slater
A few years ago, I wrote a blog about Major General George W. Smythe, a Norristonian and hero of World War II. That piece was based on a Saturday Evening Post article about his work leading the 47th Infantry during the Invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. This morning, I found a… Read More »George W. Smythe
This had been a day of big news, very big news. When I turned on the radio this morning instead of the usual program, we hear that allied troops had landed in France from 4000 ships and thousands of other small craft protected by 11000 airplanes. This was it, the suspense was over, the invasion… Read More »A day of big news
Adelaide Cottrell was born Adelaide Chain in Norristown in 1894. Her parents were B. Percy and Elizabeth Chain. Around 1918 she married a military man from Lancaster County named Joseph Cottrell. For the next three decades, she traveled with him around the world on his various assignments as an expert in coastal artillery. In 1940,… Read More »“There is a limit of human endurance…”
Those were the words of a German colonel named Rossberger, who was chief operations officer for Field Marshall Gerd Von Rundstedt. He told American journalist Thomas Henry about his experiences at the Battle of the Bulge in 1946. The “Smythe” he’s talking about is George W. Smythe, a son of Montgomery County. Born in Norristown in… Read More »“We could have succeeded if it had not been for an American colonel named Smythe”