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Another weird crazy story.


Ronnie
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Pictured is a phrase book taken off a German Soldier in Normandy. It is a tiny book about the size of a small box of matches. The weird thing is It was signed by the soldier who brought it back with his signature, outfit and area where he got it. This was written either on the inside of the front cover or the second page. I dont remember.......I say that because it isnt there anymore. I have had the book at least 25 years and most of that time it has been put away. However when Mike DeTrez wrote his first Airborne Book, American Warriors I was a big airborne collector so I bought the book. While reading the book I came across a name.....Raymond Smith. I thought the name sounded familiar so I went and got the little book and the name was indeed Raymond Smith. As it turns out Raymond Smith was a paratrooper in the 502nd and in fact was a Pathfinder. The area or town written in the book was Hiesville. While reading The DeTrez book I found out that the 502nd jumped, incorrectly, into the Hiesville area. And the number or outfit number written in the book was 502. All this was written with a pencil and was a bit faint but was clearly legible. Until I opened the book last night. All the writing is gone! The book would not have been very valuable but is certainly now worthless. I can offer it to any would be buyer saying...yeah a pathfinder in the 502nd picked this up. And that buyer is gonna say yeah sure.....buy the item not the story. Well the story is real but you cant prove by looking at the book.

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So am I. Because I have no clue. It was written with a pencil and I guess it just rubbed away. I had it stored in a small Tupperware ware type container. Thanks for your post.

Ronnie

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Maybe try to view it under blacklight? Or take a photo of the pages, and invert the colors to a negative view (most phones can do this via normal phone settings or via an App).

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  • 3 weeks later...

My father carried a small Govt issue green "Memoranda" pocket note pad when he was a Army pilot in Vietnam. He had different pathfinders, FSBs, bases, call signs, and freqs written in it, some in pen and some in pencil. Even after just passing the 50 year hump recently, many of the pencil marked stuff has also seemed to vanish over time. It was all clearly there in the early 90s when I first saw it and every time since that Ive looked at it, they slowly seemed to get lighter and lighter.

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