Website www.517prct.org
Mail Call Ben517@aol.com
517TH ST. LOUIS REUNION BEGINS:THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 2008 THRU MONDAY, JUNE 30, 2008THE BANQUET WILL BE ON SUNDAY JUNE 29
In 2005, thanks to Nolan Powell, we were in Savannah.
We have spent a fantastic week with you, unforgettable, moving.
Today, you had invited us to Saint Louis and unfortunately we can’t be with you. All was planned, a beautiful trip trough the USA, meeting friends and surely making new ones. And, in one second our dream taken off. We are very upset and sad not to be with you. But, this is only part surrender.
In October 2007, with our friend Frederic Brega, we had the visit, of Rhonda and Michael Wells, for a day in Sospel
A beautifully emotional moment when Rhonda and Michael saw jeeps and soldiers climbing the Col de Braus wearing the same uniform and armed like you were in 1944.
With these few words, we would like to thank :
- the 517th for its efficient action and for the invitation to this reunion
our friends Nolan Powell, Rhonda and Michael Wells.
Marvin Moles and his family who we are still in contact with.
And then there is the debt of gratitude that beats in all French hearts.
Thanks, for giving us back, our freedom in 1944, for the sacrifice of the years of your youth and those who have been wounded and also those who never returned home.
We believe that you are doing a tremendous job in the USA with the association of the 517th.
We are trying to do, modestly, the same in France.
On behalf of the people of Sospel and its mayor, we have had the pleasure to send you (instead of to have the pleasure to give you) this framed photograph of Sospel taken on the day of liberation together with that photograph of the same place today.
This photograph has been given to us by a Sospel inhabitant, Emile Laveder who is still very proud to have been your young guide through the tracks of his village in 1944.
Next year, if some of you make the trip to Sospel to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the liberation, Emile Laveder will be delighted to meet you.
We thank you all. We hope to be with you at your next reunion in 2009.
I would like to give a special kiss to Nolan.
Nolan, I miss you.
long live the 517th
God Bless America
Vive la France
Saint-Louis (Missouri)June,30th 2008
Payt Seitz and Allan Greer
Dear Ben: Please tell Lory thank you for spotlighting the letter his Dad wrote to his mother on June 22. Lory is right, we cannot begin to appreciate fully what the men were going through, but we are humbled to have a glimpse of their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice for the rest of us. We are so blessed. We look forward to seeing everyone in St. Louis.