Canoerebel
Posts: 21100
Joined: 12/14/2002 From: Northwestern Georgia, USA Status: offline
|
A brief tangent to illustrate one of the things an editor does (an editor at a small publication, any how). The story I'm working on about a Holocaust survivor who met and married an American GI includes this paragraph: The group remained in a Salzburg, Austria, camp five months at the invitation of the camp director, who asked them to welcome new refugees and assist in operations. In the evenings, they sang, danced, and played games. One evening, an American soldier in uniform entered the camp. He was from Chicago and part of the 66th (Black Panther) Infantry Division of the Sixth Army Group. He wanted to practice his Hebrew. His own survival had been a miracle. On Christmas Eve 1944, his division left Southampton, England, to cross the English Channel and replace troops at the Battle of the Bulge. The other ship, the SS Leopoldville, was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Cherbourg. Harold’s ship diverted to rescue survivors, but the 66th had lost about one-third of their men and weren’t up to fighting strength and didn’t join the Battle of the Bulge after all. As I was working with the first few sentences of the paragraph, I cross-checked to make sure the unit designation, affiliation and nickname were correct. The 66th Div. was known as the Black Panther Division. Check. But as best I can tell, the 66th Div. wasn't ever part of the 6th Army Group, but rather was (at the applicable time) part of the 15th A.G. What to do? It's possible the 66th was briefly or informally attached to the 6th, but who knows. That may be a complicated command issue that isn't really pertinent to the story at all. Solution: suggest to the author that we omit mention of Sixth Army Group. The second part of the paragraph includes the sinking of the Leopoldville. I haven't looked into that yet to make sure the ship name is right, the date of the sinking is right, and that the 66th Div. was aboard. Details.
|