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2001-06-08 - j nelson wrote: You should be able to find a great amount of Mr. Bice's work in the vIRTUAL gALLERY site beginning at http://www.virtualgalleries.com (Clicking that address should take you there on the internet.) There are various painting, mural, animation, music and auditory, writing and technological categories available, plus a biographical monogram and combat photos from W.W.II in Europe, if you follow the "Quick Tour" button. The site is extensive and covers works from age fifteen (1939) to the present. - j nelson, WorldBrowse WorldBrowse has forwarded your request to Mr. Bice. He sends this note: _______________________ Claire - I am happy to reply, although I'm not sure what assistance I can be. Much of my work is represented on the Internet - not the same as real life, real time seeing and hearing, but a cursory view. However, I shall add some comments: One might think that a large body of works produced over a lifetime could somehow summarize an artist's life; but it cannot, because any life is more complex than ever can be recounted or archived. Outside the creative act, life evolves in myriad other dimensions. Making art is just a part of life, with each bit of exotic, expressive formulation, as it come into being, existing in time, idea, feeling and action - vaporous and vanishing. Each fleeting faction might be recorded in the art product, but finally it is.all witnessed superficially, indirectly, incompletely by others. So, art making is private, the art a curiosity. And the art is not the artist's life. With all of this convoluted philosophy, perhaps you will understand something of my habits: I become intrigued with an idea or perhaps an action, tool or material. I intuitively and spontaneously, without planned purpose, move things into relationships. This might be doodling with pencil on a scrap of paper, turning over a few notes or chords on a keyboard, pointing a video camera on its own monitor or attacking a large canvas with a full palette; but the results always become developed as expressive statements - aesthetic/expressive order from chaos - and usually surprising and gratifying. I think of this private act as a strange exploration of life from within myself which is inscrutable and otherwise inaccessible. I hope this helps your project. Let me know what develops. Sincerely, Jack Bice
2001-05-23 - gordon wackett wrote: I was a close friend of your father in the 66th Recon Troop. He will recognize my name immediately. My home address is 24 Devon Blvd., Binghamton, NY 13903. Would love to communicate with him. Please send him my email (actually my daughter's), or send me his address. I hope he's OK and in good health. I read your message about "Bijou" (his name in French) and thoroughly enjoyed it. Hope to hear from you or him. Regards, Gordon Wackett
2001-04-10 - Claire Shanahan wrote: Hi, Im a student in Dublin City University and am doing a group project on the "Life and Works of Jack Bice" and would appreciate if somebody could possibly send me on some information on his life. Mr Bice, I would be extremely grateful if you could give me any information on yourself or you works. Cheers
2001-03-29 - Byron wrote: Hello. I am a student from Canyon High School in Southern California. I am doing a group project for my history class on WWII in Europe. We need to research information on veterans that fought in the war. I was surfing the web and came upon this site. I think that this will be very valuable information for our group. I would be very appreciative if you could tell me a little bit about what your father went through during the war. What position did he hold? What job did he have? What is the most vivid memory that he had during the war? Any other information would be useful as well. Thank you for your time, and I look forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks again.
2001-02-28 - Peter J.Sneden wrote: Do any of your readers remember Joey Sneden 514 Army Car Comp. London England 1943/45 retired to Hollywood Florida. Many thanks
2001-01-15 - Henry Veillette wrote: Like your website-January 4th or 5th, 1945 I crashed flying a P51 at St. Michiel (I don't know if I am spelling it exactly right, maybe you can help). It was not far from Toule. I was transferred to the Hospital in Nancy where they amputated my left leg. I feel I have dual citizenship with having a leg in France-No double my folks must have originated around the Toule area because my name was very familiar with the local barber in Toule. I doubt if there are many people living that would remember the circumstances of the american flyers in the area at that time. Have a wonderful New Year-Happy, healthy and properous. Henry
2000-10-26 - Brian Conway wrote: I am trying to get info and pictures of ALdershot Barracks in 1942 -Longmoor, Liss Training Camp, and info relating to my father's travel from Greenwich port to Durban, Bombay India. He cannot remember the steamship, and is collecting as much detail as possible. His name is John B. Conway -Royal Engineers called up in 1941 went Aldershot/Longmoor, Liss/Greenwich-Durban/Bombay/ Deolali camp - Calcutta working on the railways -'sappers' 1945 Chittagong - personal essistant to a Captain. Became a sergeant. Any help? many thanks Brian Conway , his son
2000-09-05 - Mark Holbrook wrote: Chris, I enjoyed your father's letter very much. It might interest you to know (if you don't already)that the Quiberon peninsula still carries the scars of the German occupation - there are concrete gun emplacements at Penthievre which cannot be destroyed or dismantled. I am told by my French brother-in-law, a journalist, that the French air force use them as target practice. There is also a very poignant reminder of the German oppression at the Fort of Penthievre where there is a memorial to 18 members of the resistance killed by firing squad. I have also read some of the other messages left and I chuckled when I read the one about the Germans preferring to surrender to the Americans. My father, who was in the BEF, evacuated at Dunkirk and was later captured at Crete said that he was never so scared in the war as when he was liberated by the Russians!
2000-08-23 - Connie J. wrote: Dear Chris, I have just quickly browsed your website and appreciate the heart behind it. My father was stationed in Toule, France during WWII (I believe in 1943). He befriended a French family there, by the name of DeCou (Henri DeCou was the head of a family of 5 daughters and 2 sons). Do you know of a source for tracking down addresses or information on families who may have befriended American soldiers during that time? If anyone does, I would greatly appreciate feedback to me at: ladyofthelake@angelfire.com (my name is Connie) I hope to create some kind of connection for my father, who is now 83. Thanks for the inspiration.
2000-08-16 - Andrew Myers wrote: Great site! Hello, I'm a web designer for the state of Florida Division of Historical Resources. We are putting together a WWII memorial here and I and another guy are building the accompanying website. My father was also a WWII vet by the way. We are making a comprehensive tribute to the veterans of WWII who are from or have some ties to Florida. The site will also deal with any aspect of Florida's contribution to WWII. We ask veterans and/or their families to contact us if they have any information they would like us to include. We would really appreciate it. You can contact us through this email address: amyers@mail.dos.state.fl.us Thanks .
2000-07-05 - Jack Bice wrote: I enjoyed your site immensely. I, too, was a twenty-one year old soldier in Europe in 1944-45. (I have been curious about locating any surviving members of my old unit, XIIIth Corps Artillery Headquarters, a part of the U.S. Ninth Army.) We arrived in England in July of 1944 and ended in May, 1945, 60 miles from Berlin, on the Elbe River, the closest U.S. troops to Berlin, where we accepted the surrender of a German division which preferred us to the Rusians. I was a photographer assigned to fly in a Piper Cub over enemy lines at low altitude to photograph enemy gun fire and artillery positions. (Somehow, the operations center never did figure a way to calculate usable information from those photos, and I suspect my efforts were futile.) Nonetheless, it did give me a great freedom to photograph independently, and much of that work is on a website - a link to which I am supplying here: 2000-07-05 - Jack Bice wrote: Apparently your site does not accept links, so I"ll just type out the address for anyone who wants to enter it: www.virtualgalleries.com/page195.html. Will that work? - jack bice 2000-07-01 - George Cipolletti wrote: Hi, Nice web site. I am the webmaster of a site devoted to the memory of the 66th Division with over 250 men's pages. Included are reviews of books written about the 66th, the history of the division, history of the U-Boat fleet, interestingb stories about the men of the 66th written by the men and relatives, History Channel stories, and much more. Also included are downloadable pictures of the original 66th Magazine, boioks of the reagiments and special units, newspaper articles etc. Drop by. I have placed a link from my sites to yours and would like to place your dad's info on site also. Sincerely George Cipolletti AT Co. 262 Regt., 66th Inf 2000-06-29 - Scott McCoy wrote: Greetings Chris, My father also was with the 66th Division, 264 th Cannon Company. He is still alive and as your father did, I asked my dad to write an account of his war years....It took me ten years to get the 10 pages, but well worth it. My dad also server as an MP when the cannons were not needed. I will send him a copy of your letter and see if they knew each other. I would encourage all sons and daughters of vets to have their parents tell them of their stories during WWII. So many brave men and women that fighting for freedom that so many today do not realize. There is also a 66th web page. Contact George at : gaffer@bv.net Lots of 66th vet information there....Take Care...Scott 2000-04-20 - Melinda wrote: Hi. I'm a sophomore in college and I'm writing a paper about WWII. My job is to interview WWII veterans and write about them and their experiences. I've always been interested in WWII. It was such a horrendous, yet fascinating time in history. I was intrigued by this letter because it shed light on the story of a young and brave soldier. Thank you for sharing a part of your life with us. My Sincerest Regards- Melinda
2000-03-31 - Marjorie Wann wrote: Hi I live in London, England and I've just came back from a short trip to Paris and whenever I visit France I always think of the war yrs. I am 40 so don't have any real experience, except of my Irish great uncle who died on the last day of World War one. Your father's letter was very interesting to read and I will bookmark it to re-read it again. M 2000-03-12 - Pip Elton wrote: Greetings from Suffolk, UK - not far from the town of Bury St. Edmunds - an area of England that is ringed with former USAAF bases. Today, I walked past a memorial, of which there are many in this part of England, to the memory of US servicemen who help us to defeat the Nazis and to the many of your countrymen who gave their lives in order that Europe could be free. We still have Mildenhall and Lakenheath very much active bases of what is now the USAF. But to Piddlehinton. In February 1945 I turned 18 and enlisted in the British Army. I volunteered for The Parachute Regiment and got my wings in August of that year just as the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. This meant that all our training for either war in Europe or in the Far East was not going to be used for its original intention! After "swanning around" for several weeks in Yorkshire, all the members of my Regiment who were at the same stage of induction as myself were transferred by train from Knaresborough to Dorset, where we were moved into a camp just outside the village of Piddlehinton. It was obviously previously occupied by the US Army as all the latrines were full of American graffiti!! And the standard of accommodation were generally better than that experienced by the British Army! As young soldiers we knew little of what had gone before we moved into the camp other than the Yanks had been there up until just after D-Day (6 June 1944) - we moving in some 10/12 months later. Apart from being a training battalion, we also accommodated many of the surving veterans of the drop on Arnhem in September 1944. We stayed there until sometime until mid-46 when we were moved up the home of the British Army in Aldershot, into old Victorian Barracks. The Parachute Regiment HQ was still there up until a few months ago when it moved up near to where I live now, to another British Military Town of Colchester in Essex. So to that extent, after many years I almost knew your father. I knew nothing of what had happened to the US soldiers who had preceded me into the Piddlehinton Camp until fairly recently when I read on a page on the Internet, the fate of those poor soldiers on their way to France. I have been back there a couple of times since 1945/46 and the last time I was there some 15 years ago the camp was still there. Give my respects to your father from someone who almost knew him and who lived in the same “home” that he and his comrades once occupied. Best wishes, Pip Elton formerly 14942793 - The Parachute Regiment 2000-03-09 - Katy Roberts wrote: Dear Chris If anything, this article made me appreciate my father more. He is still living and has served in the National Defence force most of his life. Thank you. Katy 2000-03-09 - Nicole wrote: Your article was very helpful to me . I used it for a research project in my school, and it provided me with a lot of useful information. nicole
2000-02-24 - Francine wrote: First a thanks to Chris for giving us with this tender, informative tribute to his father. My father also served in WWII, but is reluctant to discuss the experience. It took months for my father to feel okay/safe about seeing Saving Private Ryan (he was at Normandy a few days after the intial stike). I would love to hear his story, but I respect his choice not to talk about the war. I am in search of stories, specifically about rural France during the Nazi occupation. If you have such a story or know an individual, of any gender, age, or ethnicity, I encourage you/them to e-mail me. Chris' dad's story and others should be told, over and over again. Such is my intention.