LOOK UP: One of our RTS regulars stopped by Thursday with an
interesting follow-up to our Veterans Day column about World War II
pilot Wildrick Hart and his 35 missions over Germany and
France.

We had described Mr. Hart’s very first mission on July 24, 1944,
over St. Lo, France, just seven weeks since the D-Day invasion. And
coincidentally, Carl Lindahl of Bradford was one of those many
troops on the ground.

Mr. Hart had written “… the land army was ready to break out of
the beach head for the march toward Berlin. The strategy was to
saturate the area just over the front lines with fragmentation
bombs to neutralize — at least demoralize — the enemy in the area
of first resistance before our troops would push off. This meant
that we were bombing close to friendly forces and the drop had to
be visual rather than by radar.”

Mr. Lindahl perspective, needless to say, was from a different
vantage point.

Looking up, as far as he could see to the right and to the left,
were airplanes — one, of course, being piloted by another man from
Bradford. Seeing all that firepower must have been somewhat
reassuring to the troops on the ground who had already been through
a lot but still had a lot to get through.

TOP TREE: A familiar “face” is the tree of the month for
November — the sugar maple.

Our friends at Elk State Forest write us: “The Sugar Maple tree
grows to 60-80 feet tall and is found throughout Pennsylvania on
moist wooded slopes. The leaves are opposite, simple, 4 inches wide
with 5 lobes that are and deeply notched. The fruit is a
horseshoe-shaped with wings. As children, when we saw the fruit
falling from the trees we called them helicopters because of the
way they rotated to the ground.  

“Sugar Maples supply us with sap which is tapped and reduced for
maple syrup, maple cotton candy, maple candy, etc. The wood is made
into furniture, musical instruments, flooring, butcher block table
tops and more. The fruit, twigs and bark are all important to
birds, squirrels, porcupines, and other animals.”