On Easter
Sunday, 62 years ago, Pahrump resident Matthew Bates was
liberated from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.
So it was
only fitting it was the day before Easter that a crowd gathered
at Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 10054 in Pahrump to watch
Gov. Jim Gibbons, Denise Pilkington, of Homeland Heroes and VFW
Commander Tom Vick unveil his shadow box with all his medals.
"I never got
recognition like this when I came out of the service in 1945. I
drove a truck for 25 cents an hour," Bates, 89, said after the
service. "In 1975 they mailed me my combat medals."
U.S. Navy
veteran Bob Pilkington, managing director of Homeland Heroes, a
veterans support group, said his organization spent three and a
half months researching what medals Bates was entitled to.
In his
remarks to Bates, Pilkington said, "The service and
accomplishments of a tremendous number of our World War II
veterans is being forgotten, and as they get older, many of
those veterans will never receive the recognition and
acknowledgment they truly deserve. Homeland Heroes hopes to put
an end to that.
Matthew, on
the first Saturday of April, henceforth, Homeland Heroes will
select a World War II veteran and honor them."
It was
probably one of the best days of his life, except for perhaps
the day he was liberated from Stalag XB, described by Gibbons as
"one of the most notoriously dangerous places to be a prisoner
of war."
Liberation
came on a day Bates still remembers vividly.
"Oh, God, it
was beautiful," he said. "That Saturday I was looking out the
window of the prison camp, and over the hills I see tracer
bullets. So I was looking at them and thought the Americans must
be getting near," Bates recalled after the ceremony. "They took
me on a stretcher, that's how bad I was. They took me to Le
Havre (France) and they strapped me on a plane. I was strapped
on a plane and I could feel the bombs overhead."
"My whole
body was covered with lice. I couldn't walk. I was 154 (pounds),
I went down to 97," he said.
An imprisoned
band member at the camp organized a musical, to try to keep the
POWs fit, Bates said. When they were allowed to go outside he
led them in singing "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," from the
Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, "Oklahoma."
"We got out
there in the morning and we would sing, 'Oh what a beautiful
morning, oh what a beautiful day,' and I'm sitting there seeing
the lice coming out of this guy's neck and back, and 'oh what a
beautiful morning' and I said, 'What, is this guy nuts?'"
Bates had
clues the Allies were approaching a few days before the camp was
liberated, when he heard the wheels of the tanks as the Germans
prepared to flee. Then he noticed that a guard in the watchtower
-- "his buddy," Bates called him -- who was ready to shoot
anyone trying to flee was no longer there.
"I slept on
the floor for two months and we had the
106th Division
and these guys, we called them the hungry and sick. They broke
into the kitchen and the prison guard was in and caught them and
they hit him in the head with a pipe, split the guy's head. That
morning they wouldn't open the barracks, then finally the
captain came in, said someone broke into the kitchen and they
assaulted a guard. They said, you know, if they don't find the
person who comes forward you will be harassed and be cut down.
So we sat there. Eventually they turned themselves in, the
106th Division, two men. I never knew what
happened to them."
"They had us
lined up. I was sitting in a ditch with the machine-guns all
around," he said. "I'm sitting there thinking, I'm going to make
a bee line if they opened up."
Bates was
drafted Aug. 26, 1941, and assigned to the 1st Army's
28th Infantry Division, known after its shoulder patch
as "The Bloody Bucket." He took part in the Normandy invasion in
1944. En route to the prisoner-of-war camp after his capture
late that year during the Battle of the Bulge, transported by
rail, the British bombed the freight train, which Bates said
didn't carry the Red Cross symbol on top of the freight cars.
Gibbons told
Bates in his remarks, "Your courage and distinguished service
has touched so many lives. You made it possible for us all to be
here today, you're an inspiration to us all. I feel privileged
to tell your story and the first-hand accounts of the time we
all remember."
Gibbons read
a statement from Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who was unable to
attend. Ensign lauded Bates, saying he exemplified the long
tradition of sacrifice to the country.
"It is
because of gallant soldiers like yourself that America continues
to be the land of the free," Ensign said in a prepared
statement.
Bates stood
up repeatedly and saluted in his Army uniform as the plaques
were presented, including certificates of appreciation from the
Veterans of Foreign Wars, Ladies Auxiliary to the VFW, American
Legion, American Legion Auxiliary, Disabled American Veterans,
Nye County Veterans Services, Homeland Heroes and the Kiwanis
Club of Pahrump Valley.
Las Vegas
artist John Zambrotta unveiled a painting of Bates as he looked
in 1945.
The shadow
box included the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, Army Commendation
Medal, Prisoner of War Medal, Army Good Conduct Medal, American
Defense Services Medal, American Campaign Medal,
Europe-Africa-Mideast campaign medal, World War II Victory Medal
and the French Croix de Guerre. MARK WAITE,
Pahrump Valley
Times - Pahrump,NV,USA
April 1, 2007 -
DRACUT -- Eugene L. Lecomte , a retired insurance
president, died of cancer March 10 at his home. He was 77.
Mr. Lecomte was born and raised in Medford. He
graduated from Medford High School in 1947 and received a degree
with honors from Northeastern University in 1959 . An Army
veteran of the Korean War, he served as a sergeant in the First
Armored Division and the 28th Infantry Division
from 1951 until 1953.
From 1947 to 1972, Mr. Lecomte worked for
Kemper Insurance Co. as New England fire claim manager and
general adjuster. In 1972 , he joined the Massachusetts Property
Insurance Underwriting Association and the Rhode Island Joint
Reinsurance Association as their general manager . In 1978 , Mr.
Lecomte joined the Massachusetts Automobile Rating and Accident
Prevention Bureau and the Massachusetts Workers Compensation
Rating Bureaus as president and CEO.
In 1980 , he became president and CEO of the
National Committee on Property Insurance and Property Insurance
Plans Service Office . Mr. Lecomte founded and was president and
CEO of the Insurance Institute for Property Loss Reduction ,
which later became the Insurance Institute for Business and Home
Safety.
Mr. Lecomte was chairman of the Friends of
Billerica Council on Aging fund-raising committee. Billerica has
established the Eugene L. Lecomte Senior Citizen of the Year
Award , which will be given on an annual basis. Mr.
Lecomte was awarded the FEMA Directors Outstanding Public
Service Award in 1996 . He was
married to Patricia J. (Welenc) for 46 years.
Boston Globe -
Boston,MA,USA
General
Train was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia. Orphaned
when he was 17, he enlisted in the Army as a private in
1926 and retired 41 years later as a three-star general.
In
1927, then Private Train placed first among Army
enlisted men competing for admission to the United
States Military Academy at West Point. He graduated from
West Point in 1931 and was commissioned as a Second
Lieutenant.
Shortly
after
Pearl Harbor, then
Captain Train was summoned to the War Department General
Staff to serve in the newly-built
Pentagon helping to
organize the war effort.
Later
during
World War II, General
Train served in the Italian campaign in
1943 for several months
and then, in October
1944, he joined the
28th Infantry Division fighting on the Siegfried
Line. The Siegfried Line was the defensive barrier at
the German border to which the German army had retreated
in the summer and fall of 1944 after the American and
British invasion at Normandy on
June 6, 1944.
In
trying to break through the Siegfried Line in November
1944, General Train�s division was stopped by fierce
German resistance during the
Battle of Huertgen Forest,
the bloodiest battle of the war in Europe on the
American side. After suffering devasting losses, the
28th Division was moved to a quiet sector of the front
line in northern Luxemburg and southern Belgium.
This
put them directly in the path of the massive German
surprise attack called the
Battle of the Bulge,
launched on
December 16,
1944. Gen. Train, then
a Lieutenant Colonel, was Assistant Regimental
Commander of the 112th Infantry Regiment of the 28th
Division. His regiment held its position for the
first two days of the attack against overwhelming odds
and then participated in the defense of St. Vith in
southern Belgium, a key road junction. These defensive
actions seriously disrupted the northern sector of the
German attack, which ground to a halt on December 26.
Two days earlier, on December 24, Gen. Train�s regiment
� which had become surrounded by the German forces � was
able to safely withdraw to the new American lines with
the rest of the St. Vith defenders. General Train was
awarded a
Silver Star medal for
his leadership and bravery during the battle.
General
Train also served in Korea in 1950 and 1951 during the
intense fighting of the first year of that war. He was
responsible for planning for the American Army during
five campaigns, beginning with the breakout from the
Pusan Perimeter.
Later
in his career, General Train commanded the Fourth
Infantry Division (1960-1962) and the Army War College
(1962-1964). In his final assignment, he commanded the
First U.S. Army (1964-1967), where he was responsible
for all Army forces and facilities in the northeast of
the United States.
General
Train�s son, Lt. William F. Train III (born 6/26/1937),
was the 6th American �adviser� killed in South Vietnam,
6/16/1962.
Next week the
family of General William F. Train II travels to West Point to inter
his ashes at the grave site of his son Lt. William F. Train III (KIA
1962). Father and son will then be reconnected in a place that meant
much to each man.
General Train had
the good fortune to live a long life, nearing his 99th birthday when
he passed away last November. He was blessed with a marriage that
lasted through 70 anniversaries, bringing him three children.
His first son lived
so much shorter a time, just 25 years, before he lost his life as
the sixth American Advisor killed in the growing conflict in
Vietnam. johnib,
Peace and FreedomPolicy and World Ideas
December 28, 2006 -
The
Battle of the Bulge lives on - Veteran Ernest
Hill shares memories of famous World War II battle
The battle
began on Dec. 16, 1944, one of the coldest, snowiest days
"in memory" in the Ardennes Forest, occupying about 80 miles
of the German/Belgian border. Casualties from exposure to
extreme cold grew as large as the losses from fighting.
At the end
of the battle the forces included over a million men, about
560,000 Germans, 640,000 Americans (more than fought at
Gettysburg) and 55,800 British.
Most of the
American casualties occurred within the first three days of
battle, when two of the 106th
division's three regiments were forced to surrender.
In its
entirety, the "Battle of the Bulge" was the most bloody of
the comparatively few European battles American Forces
experienced in WWII, the 19,000 American dead unsurpassed by
any other engagement. For the U.S. Army, the Battle of the
Ardennes was a battle incorporating more American troops and
engaging more enemy troops than any American conflict prior
to World War II.
Although
the German objective was ultimately unrealized, the Allies'
own offensive timetable was set back by months. In the wake
of the defeat many experienced German units were left
severely depleted of men and equipment as German survivors
retreated.
Alamogordo
native Ernest Hill was there
Dec. 15,
1944
We, two or
three of us of the 447 AAAW Battalion,
went to eat ice cream and cake with a friendly family in
Diekirch, Luxembourg. Our parent division, the
28th Infantry Division, had
been assigned an area relatively quiet to rest and re-equip
themselves.
Our group
had chosen the second floor of an electrical power plant as
living quarters. The men running the generators worked on
the first floor.
About four
or five o'clock in the early morning of Dec. 16 the building
came under heavy bombardment from German positions. We
retreated to the first floor where the workers, very
fearful, were hiding behind the generators. Eventually, we
moved to an abandoned house across the street.
From the
abandoned house that we now occupied, we could see a house
down the street that was three or four stories high. In one
of the windows we could see a light. Why a light would be
there with all the bombardment, was our concern. Our
sergeant ordered a private to go find out if the owner of
that house was signaling the Germans. The private started to
cry because the sergeant would not assign someone else to go
with him. Since I was a corporal at the time, I told the
sergeant that I would go with him.
When we
arrived at the house, we found the owner was a woman who
spoke French. We told her that if she continued with the
light, we would blow out not only the light, but the entire
house.
The Germans
had encircled us with only one road of escape. Jose "Chema"
Najera from Alamogordo volunteered to drive a truck to take
us out. He told me later that the only reason he volunteered
to drive that truck, he was not a truck driver, was because
he knew I was about to be captured or killed and he did not
want that to happen.
Three
times, the Germans almost caught up with us. It seems that
we were the last unit to withdraw because each time there
was an American tank covering our retreat, they would leave
right behind us.
In one of
our withdrawals, we stopped at the small two story house
which was in Belgium. We had retreated that much. Anyway, I
had been saving one or two eggs that I had found ... being
careful not to break them since we were running short of
food.
A young
girl, maybe 17 or 18 was coming down the stairs with a new
born baby. She seemed very weak and just kept looking at my
food as I prepared my scrambled eggs for a meal. She looked
so hungry and so helpless with that baby. I decided she
could better use the food than I and gave it to her, a very
grateful, tearful young lady. I ate bouillon instead,
something I always carried in my pockets. No other G.I.
liked bouillon and so I always had all that I wanted.
The Seventh
German Army hit the southern regiment of the
28th Infantry Division to which
I was attached. On Dec. 17, 1944, the Germans poured through
our division with troops of the 58 and 47 Corps with three
armored and two infantry divisions.
A futile
but valiant struggle was put up by some of the
28th Division troops and a few
tanks from the ninth Armored Division. Most of the defenders
were killed or captured, but it gave the prospective
defenders of Bastogne precious time to place themselves and
organize for the long struggle ahead. This took place at
Wiltz where a few days before we had been given some days to
rest and enjoy doughnuts, coffee, etc. Two Divisions, the
28th and 106th were nearly annihilated.
It was
during the "Ardennes Offensive," known as The Battle of the
Bulge, that Jose Maria (Chema) Najera received his Bronze
Star for bravery and Romon Guerra his Purple heart for
wounds.
Jose Maria
Najera and Romon Guerra were drafted with me on the same
date, Aug. 12, 1942, and they were both from Alamogordo. We
were all born in Alamogordo.
It was at
the time of the split of the First Army under General
Bradley and the Third Army under General Patton that I met
General Patton.
Since there
was much snow during this battle, I had taken a white
overcoat from a dead German and was wearing it to blend with
the snow. At this time I was assigned to direct traffic on a
road that went from one to two directions.
General
Patton drove up in a staff car with a driver and escorts and
stopped, even though I waved them on. He kept staring at me
with the white coat and I kept waving him on. He was holding
up traffic. (We were instructed not to salute officers to
prevent Germans from killing them.)
General
Patton, strict on uniform policy, must have thought that I
was not in the proper brown coat that we wore in winter.
Perhaps he also thought that I was German, since Germans
were doing this to confuse American convoys. He must have
thought this fellow cannot be German because of his (Hill's)
dark skin, and motioned to the driver to move ahead. No
words were spoken and we just stared at each other. What a
memorable meeting this was, with the man who was considered
the most colorful general in World War II.
I was
also fortunate to have listened to General Bradley speak to
us from a distance of about 12 feet, when we were in
England, just prior to the invasion of Normandy, France.
Ernest Hill,
Alamogordo Daily News - Alamogordo,NM,USA
December 12, 2006 -
Robley Rex: 'a model of duty and honor'
I recently
read an interesting story in The Washington Post about
the remaining few World War I veterans who are still with us.
The story named a few of those heroes, but neglected to mention
Kentucky's own World War I veteran, Robley Rex. I wrote the
Post about Rex, and thought I would share his story with
Courier-Journal readers as well.
Rex, 105, is
the only World War I veteran in Kentucky. Born in 1901 in
Christian County, he enlisted in the 28th Infantry Division and
was stationed in Germany. After leaving the Army in 1922, he
returned home to Louisville and became a postal worker and an
ordained Methodist minister.
Although
more than 80 years have passed since Rex saw active duty, he
still serves his fellow soldiers by volunteering at the
Louisville Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He delivers mail and
medical records and visits with other veterans -- every one of
them younger than he is.
The Veterans
of Foreign Wars have honored him for over 13,600 hours of
service in 20 years. Along with his friends and fellow veterans,
I'm grateful for Robley Rex's continued service. He inspires all
Kentuckians as a model of duty and honor.
MITCH
McCONNELL
U.S. Senator
Washington
20210
Sen.
McConnell, a Louisville Republican, will become the Senate
Minority Leader in January. -- Editor.
November 11, 2006 - French to come to Decatur to
give medal to local veteran, former prisoner of war
Photo by Emily Saunders
George Mills of Decatur was captured by Germans at the
Battle of the Bulge in World War II.
Don't try to
convince World War II veteran and former prisoner of war George
F. Mills of Decatur that the French aren't grateful � and kind.
Thursday at
3 p.m. at American Legion Post 15, the Consulate General of
France will present the 85-year-old Mills with the Chevalier of
the Legion of Honor, an award created by Napoleon in 1802.
"In
particular, it is a sign of France's true and unforgettable
gratitude and appreciation for your personal, precious
contribution to the United States' decisive role in the
liberation of our country during World War II," wrote Jean-David
Levitte, the French ambassador to the United States.
Mills said
French officials wanted him to come to Atlanta in September and
bring 15 guests with him for the presentation.
"I told them
that only my wife and I could come," Mills said. "They said, 'No
problem. We'll come to Decatur.' "
Mills said
he was surprised to learn that he was the only veteran in the
area receiving the award.
"What does
it mean? It means that the French are proud of what we did for
them," he said. "They're expressing it through those medals."
Mills' mind
returned to Paris, when, on Aug. 29, 1944, he was among
thousands of American GIs marching 24 abreast down the Champs-Elysees
past a reviewing stand that included future French President
Charles de Gaulle and Gen. Omar Bradley.
"The parade
celebrated the liberation of the city," Mills said. "I didn't
quite understand. We had arrived the day before, and we knew the
war wasn't over. We knew we had a lot more to do. The next
morning, we went back into combat."
Mills would
not have wanted to know just how much of a sacrifice on his part
remained before guns stopped firing. He already had given his
all. He had waded ashore with Company E,
109th Infantry, 28th Infantry Division on Omaha Beach in
July 1944. He fought through the hedgerows of Normandy, through
the countryside of France and into Paris.
He fought
through the "Dragon's Teeth" of the Siegfried Line on Germany's
western border and into the Hurtgen Forest. Throughout weeks of
fighting, 5,700 of Sgt. Mills' comrades died. Finally, the Army
sent the 28th to Fuhren in Luxembourg, where another tremendous
battle awaited. Historians call it the Battle of the Bulge. It
began on the cold overcast morning of Dec. 16, 1944.
Mills'
company of 200 men had set up headquarters in the Betzen House,
an ancient manor. Soon, Germany's 5th Panzer Division attacked
their left flank while its 373rd Vanguard Division hit their
right.
Surrendered
to Germans
"The fight
continued throughout the night with no letup, and the Germans
hammered away at us throughout the next two days," Mills said.
"Finally, on the night of Dec. 18, we were down to six rounds of
ammunition. Our captain said that we had no choice but to
surrender."
Mills began
walking that freezing night and would stay on the move for the
next five months. At the time of his capture, he weighed 190
pounds. His weight plummeted to 120 as he and the other
prisoners of war foraged for food along their journey.
"Once, as we
slept in a brickyard building, I traced the smell of cigarette
smoke to a medic," Mills said. "He refused to either sell me a
cigarette or give me one. I told him that I'd take it from him.
He reconsidered, and I paid him $41 for it and shared it with my
friend, Andy McLaughlin of Oxford, Ohio. We had made a pact that
we would divide whatever food we could get or steal."
Mills said
he once traded his sweater to a German woman for a bucket of
potatoes.
"When I held
it up to the sunlight, it appeared to be alive with the movement
of lice. I watched as the woman unraveled it, forcing thousands
of lice to scatter everywhere, so she could use the yarn to knit
socks," he said.
Mills said
many soldiers "died as they walked, and we could not stop to
bury them." But he recalls one tender moment from the enemy.
"One of the
guys died one night just as we set up camp," he said. "Our
captors finally let us take his body out of camp and bury him.
To our surprise, a German bugler began to play 'Taps.' Other
Germans fired a volley in his honor."
Mills became
a free man again April 13, 1945. After a short stay in LaHavre,
France, he went by transport ship to Camp Miles Standish, Mass.
He was halfway across the ocean May 8 when he received word
Germany had surrendered.
He arrived
in Decatur by bus one morning at 5 o'clock. There was no one to
meet him because the family had no idea when to expect him.
"I walked
from the bus station to our home on Sherman Street and opened
the door," he said. "My parents and sister all screamed in
surprise as I walked in."
Mills said
although he was thin and ragged, his pit bull recognized his
voice and almost tore the screen door apart trying to get to
him.
Veterans Day
parade starts at 9 a.m.
Those who
fought for freedom will be honored at Decatur's Veterans Day
parade starting today at 9 a.m.
The parade
route is along Second Avenue Southeast to the Morgan County
Courthouse.
Michael
Durant, a prisoner of war in Somalia after his Black Hawk
helicopter was shot down, will be guest speaker. Ronnie Thomas ,
The Decatur
Daily - Decatur,AL,USA
November 10, 2006 - Abraham Lincoln
High School graduate a decorated veteran
Staff photo/Tim Johnson - Retired Col.
Eldeen Kauffman meets with other veterans
during a recent visit to Council Bluffs.
A
former Council Bluffs resident went on to become a highly
decorated, career military man.
Retired
Col. Eldeen Kauffman of Lincoln, Neb., served in three wars
and earned almost every medal available during his 27 years
in the U.S. Army.
After
graduating from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1940,
Kauffman worked for a short time for the C.B. & Q Railroad.
"My
daddy was a railroad man," he said. "My dad wanted me to be
a railroader."
But
Kauffman's dream to be a military man won out. On Sept. 30,
1942, he entered the U.S. Army as an infantryman.
"In high
school, I was the Cadet Colonel of the ROTC my senior year,"
he said. "I wanted to be in the military."
After
participating in a four-week Citizens Military Training Camp
at Fort Crook (now Offutt Air Force Base), he was offered a
scholarship to Wentworth Military Academy. From Wentworth,
he went to officers training at Fort Benning, Ga., and was
commissioned as a second lieutenant.
"I
thought about going into the Army Air Corps," he said. "I
took the physical exam and all that. In the meantime, I
joined the 28th Infantry Division.
Before I heard back from the Army Air Corps, we were
deployed over to Europe to prepare for the invasion."
Kauffman's unit was part of a later wave of troops that
landed at Normandy, he said. Once ashore, they fought their
way across France and Germany.
"When
the war ended there, we went back to the States and were
preparing to go for the invasion of Japan," he said, "but,
when they dropped the atomic bomb, we didn't have to go."
After
the war, Kauffman was sent to St. Joseph, Mo., where he
oversaw ROTC programs at four high schools as a professor of
military science and tactics. In 1948, he was sent back to
Germany to be part of the occupational force. By the end of
his three-year tour of duty, he had been promoted to
captain.
Kauffman
was deployed again during the Korean War and served as a
negotiator in talks with North Korean and Chinese military
leaders. After working for one year, he was less than
satisfied with the cease-fire.
"I felt
that all we did was re-establish what South Korea had
before," he said.
After a
tour in the States, Kauffman was sent to Japan to help with
the occupation there.
Kauffman
was one of the early personnel in Vietnam.
"I went
over to Vietnam before we got involved just on a weapons
development program," he said.
A tour
at the Pentagon preceded his deployment to Vietnam as a
colonel.
"I had a
brigade in the 9th Infantry Division," he said.
The
soldiers engaged Viet Cong forces in the Mekong Delta area.
Kauffman
found the Vietnam War, like the Korean, to be disappointing.
"It
wasn't like World War II where we captured the enemy and
won," he said. "We didn't achieve victory like we did in
World War II, but we at least stopped the Communist takeover
of Vietnam and Korea."
Kauffman
was highly decorated when he retired in 1970.
"I got
every combat decoration, with the exception of the Medal of
Honor, which was the top one," he said. "I was recommended
for it, but the board knocked me down to the second highest,
the Distinguished Service Cross."
Kauffman
enjoyed his career in the military but now marvels at some
of the risks he faced.
"I
look back on some of those things, and I wonder, 'How the
hell did I do that?'" he said. "Today, I wouldn't begin to
take those risks, at my age." TIM JOHNSON,
Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil - Council Bluffs,IA,USA
November 10, 2006 -
Soldiers paid a terrible price
to win the Bulge -
Edwin J. Reavey experienced the horror of Hitler�s 1944 land
attack
WORCESTER� At 98, Edwin J. Reavey still lives on his own in
the tidy house on Bishop Avenue that he shared with Helen,
his wife of 51 years. He still drives, still shops and he
still remembers � though he�d rather not � that terrible
month in the winter of 1944-45 when American soldiers, many
of them raw and untested, took the brunt of the German
Army�s last desperate move � a massive counter-offensive in
the Ardennes that came to be known as the Battle of the
Bulge.
Mr. Reavey, who received the Purple Heart and a Bronze Star for his
soldiering during the Bulge, will be among the oldest
veterans in the city to mark Veterans Day. He is proud of
his service and the role the 28th
Infantry Division played in preventing the Germans
from breaking through to the North Sea, trapping American
forces and prolonging the war.
�We just kept pushing the enemy all the time,� he said.
�Winston Churchill called what we did the greatest battle
ever fought by an American army.�
But it came at a woeful cost. When he wanted to be precise
as to how high, Mr. Reavey rose from the couch in his living
room and went to a framed picture on the wall. From behind
the picture he pulled out a piece of paper and began reading
from it: �1 million men, 600,000 Americans � that�s more
than the Union and Confederate armies combined at Gettysburg
� 3 American armies, 3 German armies, 81,000 American
casualties, 19,000 Americans killed.�
Mr. Reavey stopped reading and slipped the paper back into
its archival slot. He returned to the couch and his memories
of the battle that forced the German armies into a retreat
that ended with the fall of Berlin.
�Remembering these things will keep me awake the next few
nights,� he said. �When it was happening, I�d say to myself,
�Jesus, God, I went through that? Am I still living?� �
A tire retailer for many years in his native Spencer and in
Worcester, Mr. Reavey was in his mid-30s when he was
drafted, not all that unusual. �My brother was 40.� The day
of his induction, his son, Edwin Jr., was born. �They put
off my leaving for a few weeks, so I could be with my wife
and son.�
After basic training, he shipped out for England and from
there joined his unit in France, among the badly needed
replacement troops after the Normandy landing and the
fighting through France.
The surprise German counter-offensive in the Ardennes region
of eastern Belgium and Luxembourg pushed back the American
line at its weakest link. Reinforcements were rushed to the
area, including Mr. Reavey�s unit, somewhere to the south.
He had seen combat by then, including being in a schoolhouse
while it was being shelled.
�The roof was coming down all around us,� he said.
But the general feeling among the troops was that the German
army had been spent.
�We were sitting around a lot,� he said. �Were we going
further? Was the war over?�
Then came rumors that the Germans had broken through
American lines, and soon enough he was on the move.
�We were loaded into trucks and drove all night long,� Mr.
Reavey recalled. �We didn�t know where we were going or
where the Germans were or where the lines were drawn. All we
knew was that it was wet and cold. Then the rain turned to
snow. Boy, did it snow.�
The fighting was fierce and close enough for some of it to
be hand-to-hand, Mr. Reavey said. Even worse was the German
shelling. Soldiers were killed or wounded all around him.
�The shelling scares the hell out of you,� he said. �Buzz
bombs are going off over your head. You wait and say, �It
didn�t hit me, did it?� It�s unimaginable hell. You�re never
prepared for anything like that.�
Just before Christmas, his unit was withdrawn from the front
and taken to a hospital for medical attention.
�A lot of the men had trench foot or one thing or another,�
he said.
The battle also had taken its toll on the soldier�s psyche.
�Today we would call it post-traumatic stress syndrome,� he
said. �We didn�t have a long name for it then, but it was
just as bad.� He remembers baring his soul to a sympathetic
nurse. �She said to me, �Don�t lose your courage, soldier.
This will all be over soon.� �
Returned to combat, Mr. Reavey�s unit passed by the field
near Malmedy, where earlier Waffen SS troops had gunned down
86 captive Americans. �We couldn�t tell anything had
happened,� he said. �The snow covered the bodies.�
Soon after, he was on foot moving in the open when a shell
exploded near him, sending him sprawling, shrapnel ripping
into his body.
�You feel red-hot steel is in your guts and the pain is
unbelievable,� he said. �You think about losing all your
blood in the cold snow. You have to be quiet but you want to
scream. Somehow the medic made it to me.�
At the field hospital, Mr. Reavey was given last rites by a
Catholic priest who nonetheless told him, �You�re going to
be all right.�
His hip was shattered. He spent the rest of the war
recovering in hospitals in Paris and England and finally in
Camp Edwards hospital on Cape Cod.
�That was a grand place,� he said. �My mother and father
visited me along with my wife and son � who didn�t know who
I was from a hole in the ground.�
Mr. Reavey returned to selling tires, retiring in the early
1980s. He has been active in the local chapter of the
Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge, serving as sergeant at
arms. A daughter, Eileen M. Mittelholzer, and two grandsons
live in New Hampshire. His son died of colon cancer in the
spring of 1993, and his wife, Helen, a librarian-teacher,
died in February 1994.
While he believes the men who served should be honored on
Veterans Day, Mr. Reavey has no illusions about war.
�I don�t like war,� he said. �None of them. It�s all about
killing and hatred. We were brought up to believe in God. He
didn�t mean for us to be killing each other.�
Mark Melady,
Worcester Telegram -
Worcester,MA,USA
November 9, 2006 - Veteran's Day: A
Father's View. WWII veteran takes step back to recall
service, tough discipline
After
spending his first 21 years immersed in the wheat and corn
of southern Illinois, Hillard Morris was sent far from his
home. It only took one day to change his life forever.
It was on the early morning of Dec. 7, 1941 when the
Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and when the United States
entered World War II. When he was drafted about a year
later, Hillard quickly went from chasing chickens to chasing
fleeing Germans in Normandy.
On Veterans Day, Hillard remembers how his military
experience gave him the skills necessary to make him a
valuable citizen who understands the importance of teamwork
and community service.
A member of the 109th regiment of the
28th Infantry Division in Europe at that time,
Hillard was in the mortar platoon, which supported the
riflemen with smoke shells and gunfire.
"We were always trying to move and capture and kill Germans,
and they were trying to kill us," recalled the 85-year-old
veteran who still resides on his Mason farm. "We had a lot
of power, weapons and men - and the Germans were running for
their lives."
While the Germans lost their position in France at this
battle, it did not come without hardship for the offensive
forces, especially Hillard.
Living in foxholes, traveling endless miles across Europe
and constantly being surrounded by dead bodies, Hillard
calls his three years of service brutal.
"It wasn't fun. It wasn't glorious - the best thing to call
it was hell," he said.
In other battles, the Americans were not as fortunate. When
trying to take over the Ruhr dams that supplied German
industry with electricity, half of the 28th Infantry was
killed, and more than 50,000 Americans died.
"It was just a blunder," Hillard said, as no one had
expected the German defensive to be so strong.
He saw his fellow Americans continue to fall to the ground
in front of him, and there was nothing he could do but move
on or fall back.
"You never got hardened to the idea of someone getting
killed," he said, "but you just hoped it wasn't going to be
you."
It
took years before Hillard could communicate about the
war.
His wife, Betty, helped him through the many tiring
nights when memories of those days haunted him. For 10
years after his service ended, he continued to fight the
Germans in his sleep.
"I shot them down in my pasture (on the farm)," he said.
Attending meetings with his comrades where they rehashed
the events and talked about their experiences helped
Hillard move on.
He went on to write a book about his experience called
"A View from the High Point Hell," referring to the
places, often blown-off church steeples in villages,
that the mortar platoon used to protect their riflemen.
Despite the difficulties and years of mental recovery,
Hillard would not give up his experience for anything.
"The army was best thing that ever happened to me," he
said.
Hillard said that his World War II experiences made him
a better person who understands and executes the meaning
of teamwork that the army instilled into every soldier.
"It taught me leadership, to be involved, look ahead -
to get out and do (something) and not sit around and let
someone else do it," he said.
Upon his return from three years in the service, he made
himself successful. He purchased the farmland he had grown up on and founded
his company, HB Farms.
Then Hillard became an active and influential community
member in Altamont, Illinois.
He is a Lions Club member and was involved in the
Association of Illinois Soil & Water Conservation
Districts for 40 years, where he served as president.
"He was so grateful that he could come home without
serious injury that he wanted to do something for his
community," Betty, his wife of 60 years, said.
Both independently and through these organizations, he
established a church group in a Lutheran care nursing
home, helped start a child nursery, and built a new
municipal library for downtown Altamont.
He also solicited donations to found the Ballard Nature
Center, which he calls "the most fantastic nature area
that you'll see in Illinois."
"He made a great impact and he's a natural leader. It's
just the way he is," Betty said.
Hillard cherishes his identity as a veteran because he
believes it contributed to his later success.
"It teaches you how to work with other people and get
people to work as a unit," he said. "Most people don't
do that anymore. They (have) their own computers and
cell phones and (want to) do it their own way," he
scoffed.
He advises people to re-examine this mentality during
Veterans Day by remembering the efforts and teamwork of
the military. "Try to find out a little bit of what veterans really
did for you to allow the freedom we have to say anything
and do anything and go any place," Hillard said. "Your
country may not always be united, but it's still my
country, and the best country in the world."
Erica Magda,
Daily Illini - Champaign,IL,USA
September 7, 2006 - Artist Sven O.
Carlson, at 95, Was described as Renaissance man
ROCKPORT (MD) --When Sven Ohrvel Carlson was just 12
years old, he sketched a drawing of Thomas Edison, a man
his father knew. Mr. Edison signed the boy's drawing
that day, but it was Mr. Carlson's signature that would
grace the artwork he created the rest of his life.
Mr.
Carlson, an acclaimed artist and former art teacher,
died Aug. 22 at Addison Gilbert Hospital in Gloucester.
He was 95. "Many people called him a Renaissance
man because of what he did with his art and music," said
his wife, Carol H. Carlson.
Mr.
Carlson was born in Orange, N.J. After graduating from
West Orange High School, he attended the Newark School
of Fine and Industrial Art and the Arts Students League
of New York.
During World War II, Mr. Carlson served in the Army with
the 28th Infantry Division
from 1942 until 1945. The war ended for him in the
Monchau Forest in Germany after he was shot in the leg.
During his time as a soldier, Mr. Carlson filled
numerous sketchbooks with pen and ink drawings of his
experiences during the war.
Recently he compiled these historical sketches into a
book, and the Library of Congress has requested the
original book to be kept in the National Archive.
Mrs.
Carlson said he self-published the book, filled with
more than 200 sketches and titled ``World War II --
Soldier Artist Sketchbook."
Mr.
Carlson taught art -- usually landscape painting -- at
various schools, including Rutgers University (Newark,
N.J., campus), Seton Hall University in South Orange,
N.J., and Old Mill Art School in Elizabethtown, N.Y.
He
also returned to Newark School of Fine and Industrial
Art to teach.
He
founded the Lake Placid Art School in Lake Placid, N.Y.,
and taught at the Jackson Heights (N.Y.) Art
Association, the Fitchburg Art Museum, and the Montclair
(N.J.) Art Museum.
One
student who took private lessons from Mr. Carlson would
later become his wife.
His
artwork earned him more than 200 awards, including a
gold medal at the National Exhibition in Chicago, the
top award of the New Jersey Watercolor Society, and a
lifetime art achievement award from the Rockport Art
Association.
Mr.
Carlson most recently was the recipient of the Gorton
Award from the North Shore Arts Association for a work
he created featuring a Gothic cathedral.
He
was commissioned to create several pieces, including a
life-sized oil portrait of Pope John XXIII, and a
sculpture for the Thomas A. Edison Museum.
He
made oil pictorial designs for the
American Bank
Note stock certificate engravings and painted murals
that hang in the Rahway and West Orange, N.J., public
libraries as well as in New Jersey public schools.
Mr.
Carlson has abstract paintings in the Vatican
Contemporary Collection in Rome and in many private
collections throughout the world.
His
wife said he most enjoyed painting Gothic cathedrals he
saw while traveling around the world in his earlier
years.
Mrs.
Carlson, his wife of 50 years, is also a painter. She
and Mr. Carlson ran an art gallery out of their
Victorian home, which she continues.
``Once we settled in Rockport, it was so beautiful. It's
such a beautiful place to paint," she said.
Mr.
Carlson was a member of numerous artisan associations,
including the American Watercolor Society, the New
Jersey Watercolor Society, the International Society of
Marine Painters, the Salmagundi Club, the North Shore
Arts Association, and the Rockport Art Association.
Mr.
Carlson further stretched his artistic talents by
writing poetry and composing music.
A
classical and jazz violinist, he played with the Cape
Ann Symphony, several string ensembles, and many jazz
groups.
He
also composed a choral work for the Rockport Community
Chorus.
"He
left a beautiful legacy of his paintings and music," his
wife said.
In
addition to his wife, Mr. Carlson leaves a daughter,
Laurie Carlson of Rockport, a son, Scott Carlson of
Sedona, Ariz., and two grandchildren.
A
funeral was held Aug. 25 in St. Mary Episcopal Church,
Rockport.
Burial was in Beech Grove Cemetery, Rockport.
Sarah M. Taylor,
Boston Globe - United States
September 4, 2006 - Tragedy on the
rails: Crash in 1950 killed 33, injured 50
WEST
LAFAYETTE � In the darkness of a foggy Coshocton County morning
in 1950, a troop train sat on the westbound tracks of the
Pennsylvania Railroad a half mile east of West Lafayette,
stalled by mechanical problems.
It would be
a deadly delay.
The men of
the 109th Field Artillery, Pennsylvania National Guard, were on
their way from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to Camp
Atterbury, Ind., after being mobilized for service in the
Korean War.
Their train
had been plagued with repeated mechanical problems. The train
left Pittsburgh at 1:40 a.m. on Sept. 11. It broke down about 2
1/2 miles east of Dennison when the steam line on the last car
of the train became disconnected and was dragging on the tracks.
The steam line was repaired, and the train continued on its
journey.
Near West
Lafayette, the steam line dropped to the tracks again, causing
an emergency brake to stop the train.
Farther back
on the Panhandle line, William Eller, 65, engineer of the
Pennsylvania Railroad passenger train �Spirit of St. Louis,� was
running behind schedule. His train left Pittsburgh at 2:08 a.m.,
29 minutes late. At Dennison, it was stopped because of the
troop train�s mechanical problems. By the time Eller reached
Newcomerstown at 4:35 a.m., he was 40 minutes late.
At that
time, according to Malcolm Young of Gnadenhutten, who spent 42
years maintaining signals for the Pennsylvania Railroad, the
Panhandle line had the most modern signal system in the world.
As the
�Spirit of St. Louis� neared the stalled troop train, it passed
Signal No. 1129, which sent a radio signal to the engineer in
his cab. The signal was �approach,� meaning he should proceed
but be prepared to stop at the next signal. But the �Spirit�
didn�t stop at the next signal, located 185 feet east of the
stalled troop train. Going 48 mph, it smashed into the rear of
the troop train at 4:42 a.m.
Lt. Col.
Frank Townsend of Wilkes-Barre, the troop train commander, was
standing near the rear of the train with several men, checking
to see if any of his soldiers had gotten off.
�We saw the
�Spirit� coming almost a mile down the road,� Townsend later
told reporters. �The flagman on our train must have been at
least 100 yards down the track. We saw him signaling the
�Spirit.�
�It kept
coming on and when we saw it wasn�t going to stop, we started to
run.�
The �Spirit�
hit the last car on the troop train, splitting it wide open,
according to Young, who later worked at the scene of the crash.
The impact drove a second car on top of a third one.
The engine
of the �Spirit� went down over an embankment, but Eller and his
fireman walked away from the crash. Young said that if the
engine had been run by steam instead of diesel, the two men
likely would have been scalded to death.
Thirty-three
GIs died in the crash and another 50 were injured. The seriously
injured soldiers were rushed to City Hospital at Coshocton. Some
of the injured were taken to Union Hospital at Dover.
Among those
injured was 18-year-old Albert H. Williams Jr. of Wilkes-Barre.
Only three men in his car survived. Williams never remembered
any details of the accident. The first thing he remembered was
waking up in the hospital at Coshocton. Both of his arms were
broken, his ribs were broken and his back was crushed. Luckily
he suffered no head injuries.
After the
wreck, the people of West Lafayette and surrounded towns rallied
to help out. Harry Schurtz, who owned a farm near the crash
site, allowed soldiers to use his telephone to call relatives to
let them know they were safe. His wife served eggs, bacon, toast
and coffee to the GIs.
Homes in the
area were opened to relatives of the victims who traveled here
after word of the wreck reached Pennsylvania.
At a hearing
of the Interstate Commerce Commission, held at Pittsburgh on
Sept. 13, Eller admitted he ran the �Spirit� through a �stop�
signal shortly before the accident. Eller, described by media
reports as �a spare and graying man,� had worked for the
Pennsylvania Railroad for 48 years and had never been in a major
wreck before. He was a native of Tuscarawas.
Asked if he
slowed down at the �approach� signal, Eller replied, �Yes, but
not enough,� as he held his face in his hands. Asked what he did
at the �stop� signal, he answered, �Everybody knows.�
The
commission ruled that the accident was caused �by failure to
operate the following train in accordance with signal
indications.�
For soldiers
injured in the crash like Albert Williams, it was a long road to
recovery. Williams was hospitalized for 17 months. He spent time
in a hospital at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, and
then he was transferred to a hospital at Wilkes-Barre in time
for Christmas. Doctors put a steel bar in his back during this
time.
Recovering
from the emotional toll of the crash was even harder. Of the
three men who survived in Williams� car, one committed suicide
and another went insane, according to area historian Dan Markley
of West Lafayette, who became friends with Williams.
Williams was
troubled by nightmares about the crash. �His psychiatrist told
him the best thing to do would be to go back to West Lafayette,�
Markley said.
So, about 18
years ago, Williams returned to the scene of the crash. Williams
and his wife, Delores, continued coming to West Lafayette,
making about three or four trips each year, Markley said. �He
was a wonderful fellow.�
Williams was
on hand when a monument to those killed in the wreck was
dedicated on Nov. 10, 1990. He contributed money for the upkeep
of the marker, to buy flowers and keep the grass mowed.
Williams
died last April 5 at age 73.
Markley said Williams� Army cap soon will go on display in the
museum at West Lafayette as part of its exhibit on the wreck.
The museum is located in Dale Gress� real estate office on Main
St. and is open when the real estate office is open.
JON BAKER,
New Philadelphia Times Reporter
- New Philadelphia,OH,USA
May 29, 2006 -
Fitting tribute to a member of the
Greatest Generation
My father's experiences in Word War II
have been a constant source of pride and interest for my family.
To say my life and that of my younger brother, John, literally
depended on his survival through some of the bloodiest and
deadliest battles in Europe is the absolute truth. In one battle,
only he and another member of his company were left standing. Had
he fallen, we would not be here today.
So it's no surprise that all my brothers -- Bill, David, Rick and
John -- became World War II history buffs and actively sought
information on the Battle of the Bulge and the Huertgen Forest,
both battles that Dad took part in as a member of the
28th Infantry Division, sometimes
called "The Bloody Bucket," a reference to the Red Keystone patch
of the outfit.
John particularly -- who happens to be Dad's namesake and whose
son is also -- has made finding out as much as he can about those
battles and Dad's involvement in the war a mission. He reads
everything he can find on the subject and has even made friends
with a 80-plus-year-old veteran who served in the same battles and
now lives in New Orleans. The two talk for hours on the phone.
Another friend at work whose father was also in World War II
shares John's passion for the subject and has visited the areas in
Germany and Belgium where much of the fighting took place.
Recently that friend received an e-mail from a man he met in
Germany who told that a GI's body had just been found in the
Huertgen Forest. More than half a century later, he was still
wearing his helmet, his rifle was nearby. Both John and his friend
were visibly moved by the news.
Considering all that and with the Memorial Day holiday upon us, I
asked John to write down his thoughts for me. I expected a column
but what I received was much more personal and more touching, a
fitting tribute to a member of the Greatest Generation who was not
only a father and husband but a hero and a patriot as well.
Dear Dad,
I don't know where the 25 years since
we lost you have gone. It seems like just yesterday we were
sitting in front of the TV together, laughing at "MASH." So much
has happened in our family I really don't know where to begin.
We've lost so many people that we thought would be around forever
-- Aunt Jessie, Uncle Charles, Rick, Bill, Rita, Aunt Kate and
Mom. So many good people, who much like you, died long before what
we thought was "their time."
When you passed away, we all missed you so much but we also knew
how much you had suffered without a word of complaint or an outcry
for sympathy. It was much the same for Mom. You two were always
strong for us even when your bodies were weak and hurting. Your
spirits and faith in the Lord were always strong.
Dad, I'm so sorry I didn't take the time to listen to you when you
finally felt at ease talking about the war. I was always in too
big a hurry to get out and run with my friends instead of taking
the time to listen about a war that ended before I was even born.
I know there's no way to get that time back so I have tried to
make up for it the only way I know how. Everything I can find to
read on the Allied breakout from Normandy and the hedgerow
fighting, the race across France and the liberation of Paris, the
Huertgen Forest campaign and the Battle of the Bulge is not enough
to make up for those lost years but this is how I try.
When you went into the hedgerow fighting, you quickly got your
"baptism of fire." When the Allied forces broke out of Normandy,
it literally was a race to the German border. Everyone thought the
war in Europe would be over soon and you would be home for
Christmas.
Then came the Huertgen Forest. I've
heard it referred to by so many names -- the Death Factory, the
Meat Grinder and the Green Hell. Division after division of Allied
troops were thrown into the battle only to be decimated. How as
many GIs made it out as did is beyond me. Everything I've read on
the Huertgen only talks about how many good young men died in a
battle with no clear-cut strategic objective. This is probably one
of the most overlooked and otherwise forgotten major battles of
the European Campaign.
After the 28th was pulled off the line in the Huertgen you were
sent to a quiet sector to refit. This was, of course, the Ardennes
Forest where your division along with a few others were stretched
over a 75-mile front line area where there was supposedly very
little or no enemy activity. No one knew the German Army was
building strength in this area for a winter attack. Your division
was dead center for the Dec. 16, 1944 attack which became well
known as the Battle of the Bulge.
Most historical accounts of the Bulge only deal with the fact that
the 101st AB was surrounded and besieged in Bastogne. Nothing is
ever mentioned of the delaying action fought by the 28th ID and
how several of its troops were part of the siege.
The winter of 1944-45 was the coldest in Europe in 50 years, yet
you had no hope of being warm. Soldiers huddled in mud and
water-filled foxholes. Hot meals and dry socks were unheard of but
you made do with what you had. You couldn't build a fire and risk
giving out your position, yet you persevered.
Books and movies only tell part of a story and I am so very sorry
I didn't take advantage of receiving a first-hand account from
someone who went through those terrible ordeals.
Your medals, the Bronze Star, Purple Heart, and the one of which
you were most proud, your Combat Infantryman's Badge, speak
volumes to me of how you faced your chosen duty. Going to a
foreign country to fight for what you believed in while leaving a
pregnant wife and two sons still in diapers at home says more to
me than any author or Hollywood producer could ever give justice.
Dad, I wish I had said this 25 years ago when you could still hear
it. I love you, I miss you and you will always be my hero. As long
as I have breath in my body, your story will not go untold.
With love and respect,
Johnny
Ledger Independent
- Maysville,KY,USA
May 21, 2006 - Honoring our Fallen Warriors
By Col. John L. Gronski 2/28
BCT Commander
Photo: 2/28 BCT
To date, the 2/28 BCT has had
79 Fallen Warriors Killed In Action (KIA). On Easter Sunday,
April 16, 2006 we honored our Fallen Warriors by dedicating to
them The Fallen Warriors Memorial. The memorial was designed by
2nd Lt. Colleen McGarry and Spc. Raul Gomez, C (Med), 228th
Forward Support Battalion in Camp Ramadi. Many other dedicated
individuals were instrumental in the creation and construction
of the memorial.
Chaplain Lt. Col. Charles
Purinton TF 1-172 Armor described it best when he wrote
"Nature's reverential silence inspired the hearts of comrades
gathered for the dedication of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team
(2BCT) Fallen Warriors Memorial on April 16th at Camp Ramadi."
He added "The memorial is a creation of their hearts, built from
the heart to be used by the heart."
On that memorable day, 2nd
Lt. McGarry asked us to "Use the memorial to remember, to
grieve, and to heal...Allow it to change your heart when you
visit." The memorial is built of steel blasted by weapons, stone
and shattered glass, each element and shape representing part of
our remembrance. 2nd Lt. McGarry continued, "It stands tall as a
testament to the unique battle the living fight and the fallen
have left."
As one stands before it,
this open structure allows the Spirit within us to mingle with
the Spirit around us, uniting memories and hopes among comrades,
friends, and families.
We have made plans to take
this sacred memorial back to Pennsylvania and re-dedicate it at
its new site - the 28th Infantry Division (M) Headquarters in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Photo: 2/28 BCT
Our Iron Soldiers display
tremendous resolve and are even more determined than ever to put
forth great effort in order to honor those who gave the ultimate
sacrifice.
The
general mood and attitude of the Soldiers is very good. Their
morale is high. They believe in what they are doing and they see
improvement. The BCT realizes that our work in Iraq helps to
make this region safer and our nation safer from the threat of
terrorism. We would much rather fight terrorists over here than
fight them in the United States. We realize that our families
and loved ones are safer because of our work here.
Please visit our website at
http://ironsoldiers.army.mil and select our Fallen Warriors
Link to view our Fallen Warriors.
NewsBlaze -
Folsom,CA,USA
December 8, 2005 - Pahrump's Bates
remembers Dec. 7; life as POW -
88-YEAR-OLD VETERAN JOINED ARMY THREE MONTHS BEFORE JAPANESE
ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR
DOUG McMURDO / PVT
Matthew Bates was captured and held as a prisoner of war
during one of the bloodiest fights of World War II, the Battle
of the Bulge in the Ardennes forest on the German and Belgium
border. He also participated in the D-Day invasion and several
other significant wartime events.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on this day in 1941 marked the
beginning of America's involvement in World War II. And history
textbooks instruct that the dropping of the atom bomb on Japan in
the summer of 1945 concluded the war by bringing about the
surrender of the last remaining Axis power.
Practically forgotten in our public memory is the largest battle
ever fought by the U.S. Army and the one that ended World War II
in the European Theater.
During the winter of 1944-45 in Northern Europe more than 600,000
GIs (more than fought at Gettysburg) and 55,000 British soldiers
held the line. They prevented the Germans in a last-ditch
counteroffensive from breaking through to the sea, dividing the
allied armies and forcing a negotiated peace on the Western front.
In desperate month-long fighting, in the coldest, snowiest whether
in memory along the Belgium-German border, the beginning of the
end of the war in Europe was at hand. It was the worst battle of the entire war in terms of American
losses - some 81,000 casualties, including 23,554 captured and
19,000 killed. The military action was called by journalists of
the time the "Battle of the Bulge" for the German penetration of
the American line into Luxemburg and Belgium. The name may sound
silly, yet there in the snowy and misty Ardennes forest, American
forces seriously put an end to Hitler's drive for world
domination.
"That was his last stand," says Matthew Bates, 88, a small, wiry
man who participated in the greatest battle of our time.
Bates was 21 then. Drafted into the Army in August 1941, before
Pearl Harbor, he had seen the war through. On May 30, 1944 he left
England to cross the 20 miles of the Channel for the D-Day
invasion of Hitler's conquered continent.
It was at the sixth hour in the morning of the sixth day, on the
sixth month of 1944. Bates remembers that it took 11 hours.
Landing on bloody Omaha Beach, he was in the second wave coming
in, breaking through the hedgerows to Normandy.
In Paris a victory parade awaited him and his comrades in the
28th Infantry, Eisenhower's division.
French girls threw food, flowers and kisses at them as they
marched through the Arc de Triomphe. "They honored us," he
recalls.
But the lull in the fighting was deceptive as Hitler had not yet
surrendered. The war, it turned out, was far from over.
On the outskirts of Paris, Bates remembers encountering a German
division. "We fought them there," he says. "What a memory!" he
exclaims. He fought across northern France to the Siegfried line,
the German defensive fortifications on the German border that he
remembers as a line of heavy concrete pyramids.
The 28th was out front and center facing the German Panzers.
Before the fighting was over, Bates' 110th
Infantry Regiment would lose 2,750 men, virtually its
entire strength.
Days before, Bates and his division had broken through the German
Seventh Army to take the Belgium town of Bastogne. "We got a rest
there," he says.
But the Germans had already thrust 30 miles in a spearhead around
Bastogne, trapping Bates and his division inside. Bastogne would
become a celebrated battle of the war a few days later when the
American commander refused the German demand for surrender, saying
simply, "Nuts!"
The Battle of the Bulge began on Dec. 16, 1944. "Everything was
quiet," says Bates. "It was a holding front. Hitler was holding
his army on the German border with Belgium. No one was shooting.
We could see them there. In the nighttime you could hear them
building up their tanks and artillery."
In Bates' experience, the more fateful combat action began
unexceptionally. "I found an abandoned farmhouse. It was the first
time I slept in a bed in a long time. I plopped in the bed. I was
so tired and exhausted. "At 4 a.m. shellfire came in. I jumped out of bed and ran across
the street to a coffee wagon parked in front of a town hall. A
division captain yelled, 'Everyone take cover.' He was trying to
get in touch with the outpost headquarters," Bates remembers.
Instead of sending scouts, as Bates believed he should have, the
pipe-smoking major sent in the troops. The bloodshed that resulted
could have been avoided, he says.
He told the captain, "'Listen, I got orders to take that town.'"
The town was Liege, north of Bastogne. Two companies, Bates'
Company K, mortar division, and N
Company, were ordered to it flush out.
"It was a snowy morning with fog," says Bates. There was no air
support. Bates was out front in a Jeep, manning a .50-caliber
machine gun. Suddenly on the left side of the road a German
wearing a soft campaign hat rose out of the brush with a "burp
gun" to shoot at the convoy as it passed.
The Battle of the Bulge had begun, for Bates with an ambush.
Bates' Jeep went into the ditch on the roadside, with him
underneath. Fighting became general and Bates noticed the enemy
were Hitler Youth, blond-haired teenagers who seemed very scared -
replacements for a German army that had been stretched too thin.
"I was scared, too," he said. "The firing was going on and I'm
trying to see in the dark. I'm all alone." With daybreak, he
looked out from under the Jeep and could see nothing but German
black boots walking around.
A German officer was yelling for Bates to come out from under the
Jeep, but he refused. "I'm laying there thinking; I bless myself
and am praying."
"'Raus!'" said the officer.
Bates had a bullet wound in his left wrist and felt weak. "I was
the only one that survived in that ditch," he says. "I thought, 'I
ain't moving.'" But the Germans fired at his Jeep, dripping
antifreeze all over him.
"I was a real religious person at that moment," he says. Then he
saw the Germans preparing a rifle grenade to shoot at the Jeep.
They fired the explosive, hitting the Jeep's side. Bates says,
"I'm telling you I had a good God that day."
Thinking it better to save his brains than his legs, he says, he
managed to kick the grenade back before it exploded.
"Now they knew I was in there," he says. The game was up, so Bates
came out with his arms up.
The Germans took his Army-issue jacket and helmet to use for
impersonating a GI and spying on the Americans. A corporal jammed
a pistol in his stomach repeatedly, demanding his sidearm, which
Bates didn't have. He was the only "walking case," he says of the
American survivors in his sector.
"This is a good story," he says as he warmed to the telling. "They
put me into this farmhouse. They had no medical supplies. All they
wanted to do was get that push to put us back in the ocean."
Finally, Bates was able to get admitted to a hospital where he
lingered for three weeks. "They liked me and wanted me to stay,"
he says. But when he became well enough, he was ordered to a
prison camp, escorted by an old man with the German civil patrol.
There was no transportation, so they walked. They tried to get a
lift on one of the many German tanks going by, but could not. Some
800 German tanks were lost in the Battle of the Bulge.
At last they succeeded in getting a ride on a beer truck. Arriving
at a rail station, Bates saw a large number of American soldiers
and officers from a variety of divisions, identified by their
uniform insignia. "I thought America had lost the war," he
recalls. "I thought, I'm going to be a German citizen now."
He had had no water and no food for three days. A blond German
waitress offered him some water, but an equally blond German
officer knocked it out of her hands, disciplining the girl with
harsh words for her kindness.
On Dec. 22 Bates was locked into a boxcar with 60 other prisoners.
They were fed hardtack, and somehow he picked up a helmet from a
dead soldier to keep his head warm. The train came to a little
town and was sidetracked.
Locked in the freight car so tightly they couldn't sit down, Bates
and the other POWs heard bombs falling all around. The cars had no
Red Cross or other markings identifying them holding prisoners of
war. British bombers were dropping their loads on the village,
Bates says.
"Sirens are going off and people are running. I'm standing in the
corner of the car against the wall, thinking that if a bomb hits
us, it will hit in the middle. We're praying and I'm holding the
hand of another prisoner. We started singing Christmas carols."
"'The Lord is come to save us!'" Bates remembers a man shouting
when an exploding bomb broke open the door of the rail car in
front of his.
"Halt! Halt!" came shouts in German. Then, shots were fired.
The bombing finally ended, but not Bates' fateful tale.
"This is a good story here," he continues excitedly. "Now, we're
on our way to the prison camp," he says. The train stopped briefly
for the prisoners to stretch, but as they did so another air raid
occurred. This time it was American flyers. They strafed the
ground.
According to a report Bates heard later, other prisoners on the
train had decided they had had enough. Using the only thing they
still owned - their bodies - they lined up and formed the initials
"P-O-W." The strafing stopped, he says.
When they arrived at the prison camp, the prisoners were lined up
and fed. But all Bates had to hold the food in was his helmet,
where the gruel was unceremoniously dumped. He ate the mess
hungrily with his fingers. His quarters were on a cold wood-plank
floor. Later, he got a bunk bed.
"Everyone was separated," he says, officers from the men,
nationalities from one another - especially the Jewish prisoners.
"They got them all out and took them to a concentration camp,"
Bates says. When the Germans couldn't tell if a man was Jewish or
not, a medical examination was in order to determine if he had
been circumcised.
"That was a shame," he says. "The Germans didn't respect the
Geneva Convention."
Three times a week they got hot soup and on the other two days, a
slice of German bread and a small piece of cheese.
"That's what I nibbled on all night," he says. Entering the Army
weighing 155 pounds, when liberated by the 44th Cavalry Division,
Bates weighed only 102 pounds and had to be taken out on a
stretcher. "I couldn't walk," he says.
"They deloused us. I had slept in that uniform and a Red Cross
sweater for the six months (of captivity). That was a real lice
catcher. They loved that. We got a shower once a week, but had to
put the same clothes back on."
The Germans called his regiment "the bloody
bucket" because of the emblem we wore in the shape of a
pail. Three German armies, or some 29 divisions, fought in the
Battle of the Bulge against the equivalent of 31 American
divisions. The 28th Infantry Division that
Bates was assigned to was formed from the Pennsylvania National
Guard.
Bates came to Las Vegas 20 years ago from the East Coast for a
Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. He liked the weather and
decided to move here permanently. Recently he and his wife moved
to Pahrump. They currently live in a trailer waiting for their
home to be built.
Pahrump Valley
Times - Pahrump,NV,USA
September 13, 2005 - Marking the
somber significance of Patriot Day and recognizing their own
service and sacrifice, the Washington, Pa. based 2nd Brigade
Combat Team, Headquarters Company awarded its Soldiers the
Shoulder Sleeve Insignia for Former Wartime Service referred to as
the �Combat Patch,� on September 11, 2005
RAMADI, Iraq; Marking the somber significance of Patriot Day
and recognizing their own service and sacrifice, the Washington,
Pa. based 2nd Brigade Combat Team, Headquarters Company awarded
its Soldiers the Shoulder Sleeve Insignia for Former Wartime
Service referred to as the �Combat Patch,� on September 11, 2005.
The
Combat Patch, worn on the right shoulder of the uniform top just
below the U.S. flag, marks the military division that a particular
Soldier served with during combat. The tradition of the Combat
Patch first began in WWII. This presentation marks the first time
since the Second World War and only the second time in the Iron
Division�s history the �Keystone Bloody Bucket� patch of the
28th Infantry Division has been
awarded.
U.S. Soldiers always wear their current unit patch on their
left shoulder during peace time and war time. Soldiers wear
nothing on their right shoulder if they have never deployed to a
hostile area of operation, however, today�s ceremony authorizes
the Iron Soldiers to wear the combat patch on the right shoulder
of their uniform for the rest of their military careers. The
Combat Patch ceremony held at Camp Ramadi, has historical
significance; The 2BCT Soldiers now join the many National Guard
Soldiers called to wartime duty.
Headquarters Company was originally organized on July 1, 1872 as
the �Washington Guards� in its present home town of Washington,
PA. In 1898, the unit served in the Philippines during the
Spanish American War as Co H, 10th Infantry Regiment. The unit
again served on active duty along the Mexican Border in 1916. In
WWI, the company deployed for service in France where H Company
served under the flag of the 110th Infantry Regiment. During the
Second World War, Company H, 110th Infantry Regiment fought once
again in Europe against the Germans, in Normandy, Belgium,
Luxembourg, the Huertgen Forest, and the Battle of the Bulge. The
company activated and deployed to Europe as a deterrent to
communist totalitarianism during the Korean War.
Col. John Gronski, Commander of the 2nd Brigade Combat Team,
presented the Iron Soldiers their coveted combat patches and spoke
to his troops. �We remember the heroism of 9/11 today as we
recognize our own sacrifices as we fight terrorism here in Iraq.
I remember exactly where I was on 9/11, I thought what could I do
to fight our Nation's enemies. Today, we the Soldiers, Sailors,
Airmen, and Marines of 2nd Brigade Combat Team all are fighting
terrorists here every day so we will not have to fight them on our
own soil,� said Col Gronski.
2nd Lt. Tiffany Harwick spoke proudly of her new Combat Patch
stating, �I am truly proud because I am one of the first female
Officers to receive the Keystone Combat Patch in the history of
the United States Army.�
Since September 11,, 2001, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
has sent thousands of Soldiers world wide to fight the Global War
on Terrorism. The 175 Soldiers of the 2nd Brigade Headquarters
Company that received combat patches are part of 2,500 Soldiers
that deployed this past June from Camp Shelby, Miss., to Iraq, in
support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The Brigade Headquarters Company provides support to many diverse
staff sections of the 2nd Brigade Command including:
administration, planning, intelligence, logistics, communications,
maintenance, and medical support.
The company assumed control of the Al Anbar Province from the 2nd
Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division during the Transfer of Authority
ceremony on July 28, 2005, at Camp Ramadi, Iraq. I-Newswire.com (press release) -
USA
September 02, 2005 -
On war's 60th anniversary,
misery still lingers
BLAIRSVILLE--Today, Sept. 2, marks the 60th anniversary of the
official end of World War II, the greatest calamity in history.
On this day in 1945, representatives of the Japanese
government--Germany had surrendered four months earlier--boarded
the USS Missouri battleship and signed surrender documents under
the gaze of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
With World
War II veterans dying by the hundreds daily, their stories often
die with them, and the 60th anniversary of the battles they
fought was in truth the last chance for those veterans, who
deserve, in their twilight days, all the honor society can
muster, to tell their story first-hand.
However,
efforts to record those stories continue, including those in a
recently published book, They Say There Was A War, compiled by
the Center for Northern Appalachian Studies at Latrobe's St.
Vincent College.
These are
tales told by local men, almost all of them native to
Westmoreland County. Knowing that they went to local schools and
dated local girls makes their words more compelling. Almost all
of them have stories of personal anguish that put to rest the
misguided idea that any glory accompanies war, even for the
winners.
For two
local men, the Battle of the Bulge brought more suffering than
they could have imagined in the happy days before the war. Leroy
"Whitey" Schaller, who lives near Bolivar, and the late Joseph
"Sam" Seanor of New Alexandria were among the thousands of GIs
taken prisoner in the calamitous first days of the German attack
in December 1944.
Schaller
remembers being frustrated to be part of the replacement pool of
soldiers destined to take the place of casualties on the front
lines. Frustrated because he wanted in on the fighting, not
sitting in the rear echelons. It's a classic reminder of being
careful what you wish for.
He was
placed in the 28th Division,
Pennsylvania's own Keystone Division, on Nov. 10, 1944, just as
the Battle of Hurtgen Forest was battering the American forces.
"In my particular company, B Company, when we came out of
Hurtgen, there were no originals left, only replacements." The
fighting was so intense, and so novel to the new troops, that
Schaller's memory blanked out much of his first week on the
front lines.
"It seemed
like two days, but we were in (the Hurtgen Forest) for almost a
week," Schaller noted. About the only thing he does remember
about that baptism by fire was hearing the incoming mortar
rounds, diving for cover and "smashing my nose on my own rifle."
For that, Schaller received his Purple Heart.
But the
worst was yet to come.
Seanor was
drafted in February 1943, and bounced around various training
programs until he was assigned to the
106th Infantry Division, which would prove to be
ill-fated in the Battle of the Bulge. Sailing to Britain on the
Queen Elizabeth, Seanor had a less impressive vessel--a fishing
boat that held 35 men--to cross the English Channel to France.
Once ashore,
Seanor said they "just started to walk inland. And we walked the
whole way into Belgium and the Ardennes Forest area.
"At dusk
we'd go out on patrol and return at daylight. We holed up in a
little cement block creamery. From there we looked into a valley
at the bunkers and tank traps of the Siegfried Line. We could
see the Krauts coming around for chow. They were about a
thousand yards away, and too far for any of us to take a shot at
them.
"A lot of
guys from the front needed a rest area, a quiet zone. The 2nd
Division had taken a lot, so they pulled them back for rest and
put the 106th up front on the second line. Everyone figured the
Krauts didn't have much fight left in them, anyway. Ours was a
green bunch, and never suspected otherwise. We didn't know what
was in store for us."
Schaller
remembers seeing suspicious civilians in the area of Luxembourg
right before the Battle of the Bulge, but when German shells
started landing at 5 a.m. Dec. 16, 1944, he knew his suspicions
were real. "They were sending over incendiary shells to light
fires," he remembers. "For a split second, I saw one of those
shells coming right at me. It looked like a ball of
Mercurochrome, with different colors swirling around in it." He
was ready to jump out of his farmhouse hiding place, "but the
damn thing landed outside and burned harmlessly in the snow."
Five
Americans became trapped in the farmhouse as the Germans moved
through, and the five had almost no ammunition. They stayed
there all night, until a German discovered them the next
morning. Schaller remembers his words, "Good morning, gentlemen.
For you the war is over." Later he learned the officer had been
educated at the University of Pennsylvania.
Seanor was
trapped in the German attack for two days, until they ran out of
ammunition. For those two days, "I was too busy to be scared,"
he remembered. "I got scared later. I still get scared today
when I talk about it." They were taken prisoner by "a kid, like
me. He was a blond, blue eyed, nice looking kid. He could speak
a little English. "Do what I way, and you will be alright."
Placed
temporarily in a prison camp, Seanor was bombed accidentally by
British planes that killed a number of Allied prisoners,
including two of his officers. Then they were shipped by train
all the way across Germany and into Poland during the worst
winter in Europe in years.
When he
reached the next prison camp, "my feet were frostbitten; I
couldn't eat. I also had hepatitis; I was all yellow. I was down
to 120 pounds from 185." He credited a British doctor, a fellow
prisoner, with saving his life. "The doctor had to use bandages
that looked like crepe paper. He had no sedatives, nothing."
Schaller
began marching on the night of Dec. 18, and was not fed again by
his captors until Christmas night. The Germans stole anything
useful from the prisoners, including shoes.
Finally
after a brutal train trip they arrived in prison camp, where
"our regular diet consisted mainly of a kind of watery soup and
ersatz tea in the morning. Really it was just warm water."
Schaller
recalls, "Everybody had diarrhea. With nothing to wash with,
everybody had lice, fleas and bed bugs. We slept on floors
covered with straw. Even the straw quickly disappeared, because
we used it as toilet paper."
As time
passed, "We got weaker and weaker, and more and more
communicable diseases developed." One man died of spinal
meningitis, but the Germans did nothing to treat the sick.
Schaller's
story is even more dramatic than those of the other veterans,
because he makes no bones about the reality that he suffered
from what would now be called post-traumatic shock syndrome.
When he
finally arrived home after the war, "I didn't know how to face
(his parents) because of what I had been through. When I got to
the railroad station at home, I saw something in my mother's
face. Later she told me, 'You didn't look at us, you looked
through us.'
"And I was
aware of it. I had the 'Thousand Yard Stare.' "
Schaller was
so weak he could barely stand up. "And I couldn't write my name
anymore. I would print it one letter at a time, but I didn't
have the coordination to write. I didn't get it back for at
least a month, and sometimes I still don't have it."
He went back
to college to finish his forestry degree, then stayed on to get
a degree in horticulture and genetics, becoming one of the first
forestry genetecists in the state.
But he
became restless after about six years from separation from the
Army. Living on his farm, he could hear gunfire during hunting
season, and spent many sleepless nights.
"I didn't
put it all together until 40 years after I got out of the
service." The VA gave him an exam for ex-prisoners of war and
made him aware that he suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress.
There are
other moving, funny, wrenching stories, as well--more than 50
veterans are profiled, even a Royal Air Force Spitfire pilot,
John Slaney, who participated in air combat over England and
ground support operations in Normandy until he was show down by
ground fire.
American GI
Clarence Kindl from the Latrobe area recounts what it was like
at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. That was the start of the war.
Near the finish, sailor James Takitch was on lookout duty when
he spotted a Kamikaze bearing in on his destroyer. Takitch was
severely wounded by the plane's gunfire seconds before the
Kamikaze exploded into the ship's hull.
After
fighting with the 99th Infantry Division across Europe into
Germany, Army Medic Harry McCracken accompanied tanks which
broke through the gates of Stalag VII-A at Moosburg, Germany.
Once inside, McCracken found his older brother Milton, still
alive after a year of captivity.
The stories
range from the harrowing--two accounts of men who were victims
of the Bataan Death March--to the unbelievable. Wading ashore
during the invasion of Tarawa, Marine Corps rifleman Lewis Steck
saw and heard bullets all around him, and wondered aloud, "Which
one is gonna hit me?"
They Say
There Was A War is available through St. Vincent College's book
store, 724-537-4557, or at Barnes and Noble or Penelope's, both
in Greensburg. John Jennings, Pittsburgh
Tribune-Review - Pittsburgh,PA,USA
August 6, 2005 -
55 years ago, Aug. 10, 1950 - K Company leaves Sept. 7; World War
I anniversary
K
Company, 110th Pennsylvania regiment, 28th Infantry Division
will leave Thursday, Sept. 7, to go to training at
Camp Atterbury, Ind., Capt. Fred
Phillips announced Tuesday. This is the same date upon which the
World War company left for training at Camp Hancock, Augusta, Ga.
under Capt. Walter C. Montgomery.
Capt. Montgomery, William W.
Garrison, Alfred Strosnider, Lou Bell and County Commissioner
Frank F. Bryan have been named a committee by Waynesburg Chamber
of Commerce to arrange a suitable send off for the company.
New recruits are being
accepted into the company, age 17 to 36 years. Recruits over 36
must have one year's active service for each year over the age
limit.
Washington Observer Reporter -
Washington,PA,USA
July 13, 2005 - Military museum
reopens - Redesigned facility welcomes special guests to
tour revamped exhibits.
BOALSBURG -- As the color guard
stood at attention and saluted, three flags rose: the stars and
stripes, the colors of Pennsylvania and the somber POW-MIA banner.
The last notes of "To the Colors" sounded from a trumpet.
With that, the Pennsylvania
Military Museum returned.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the
museum is finally open," William Leech, the museum's director, said
from the entrance. "Please come inside."
About 50 veterans, military
personnel, museum volunteers and others entered the museum Tuesday,
the first people to tour the exhibits since it closed almost three
years ago for a $4 million renovation.
For months, passers-by beheld
the most visible change: huge reproductions of bright campaign and
service ribbons covering the museum's facade. They replaced a
nondescript brown front.
But the project went beyond a
mere face-lift.
In the revamped galleries, new
panels concisely explain displays of Army vehicles, weapons,
artillery and other items. In place of the popular World War I
trench exhibit, visitors now walk through a trench re-creation,
across springy floorboards, past walls made of tree limbs, wood, tin
roofs and sandbags.
The redesign also features
improved lighting and more space for offices and archives. Air
conditioning and climate-controlled storage rooms should help
preserve artifacts and better honor the state's military
contributions.
According to the museum,
Pennsylvanians made up one out of every seven men serving in World
War II. About 340,000 went to Vietnam.
"The Pennsylvania Military
Museum is a tribute to the commonwealth's sons and daughters in
peace and war," said an invited speaker, Barbara Franco, executive
director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
Opened in 1968 next to the
Pennsylvania 28th Infantry Division Shrine,
the museum is now on the commission's Trail of History, a statewide
string of historical sites and museums.
"It is really a shame we had to
close the museum, but the renovations were so extensive that we
literally re-did every square foot of the existing building," Leech
said.
"We're really so delighted to be
open to the public again."
Work remains, though. By
December, museum officials hope to finish galleries showcasing the
Air Force, Coast Guard, Marines and Navy. Until the project is
complete, admission will be free, Leech said.
There's still plenty to see.
Anchoring the collection is a
U.S. 6-Ton Special Tractor Model 1917 tank from the end of World War
I, one of a handful left.
Production quickly switched from
its Marlin machine gun to a 37-mm howitzer, said Mike Siggins, a
researcher with the Friends of the Military Museum volunteer group.
"As far as we know, this is the
only one in the U.S. designed specifically for the Marlin gun,"
Siggins said.
In his camouflage uniform, Maj.
Bill Lloyd, the recruiting operations officer for the Penn State
Army ROTC and a 22-year Army National Guard veteran, studied the
compact vehicle. He could appreciate the discomfort of its two-man
crew better than most, having once been a tank commander.
The rest of the exhibits,
including a WWI horse-drawn field kitchen, left him equally
impressed.
"It's an excellent museum," he
said. "They did a great job."
Sgt. 1st Class Shawn Evans, also
with the Penn State ROTC and a 101st Airborne Division veteran from
the first Persian Gulf War, agreed. The museum had seemed dated, he
said.
"I think when they're done it's
going to be spectacular," he said.
Thomas Reynolds last visited the
museum in 1983, but he drove from Mechanicsburg for Tuesday's
reopening. A Navy veteran from the late 1950s, he remembered the
staff car of Gen. John "Black Jack" Pershing, with whom his
grandfather served during World War I.
It wasn't on display Tuesday.
But otherwise, Reynolds had no complaints.
"It was worth the trip,"
he said. Chris Rosenblum, Centre Daily Times -
Centre County,PA,USA
Michelle Klein/CDT Major Bill Lloyd of State College
with Army ROTC (left) and SFC Shawn Evans of Milesburg an Army
National Guard Recruiter, watch the military ceremony at the
re-opening of the Pennsylvania Military Museum.
Michelle Klein/CDT
Jackie Melander(left) and
Angela Breeden, both of the Centre County Historical
Society/ Centre Furnace Mansion, tour the newly re-opened
Pennsylvania Military Museum.
Michelle Klein/CDT
Mike Siggins of State
College, with Friends of the Pennsylvania Military Museum
looks at the information placards he helped do research for
in front of a United States 6 Ton Special Tractor Model 1917
at the newly re-opened Pennsylvania Military Museum.
Michelle Klein/CDT
Matt Houle, of Downingtown,
with the Pennsylvania State University Navy ROTC looks at a
1940 Bantam Reconnaissance Car at the newly re-opened
Pennsylvania Military Museum.
May 15, 2005 - John H. Wilberding,
82, of Shepherd, Michigan, saw the start of the war in the Pacific
and the end of World War II as a platoon leader in the European
conflict. The then 18-year-old with the Army Air Corps, attended
mass at Wheeler Field, Honolulu on Dec. 7, 1941.
"When we came out at 10 minutes
to eight, we heard firing," he said. "We thought it was the Navy,
suddenly it turned out it was an attack. You could see the red flag
when they were strafing you. You could see the gunners grinning."
Wilberding transferred to
the infantry and attended officer candidate school. He served with
the 28th Infantry Division at the
Battle of the Bulge. He stayed in the service until retiring as a
lieutenant colonel in 1972. (Pentagram -
Fort McNair,DC,USA)
May 10, 2005 - Little-Known Story
of G.I.'s Trapped in the Holocaust
Sixty years later, we're still
sifting through the triumphs and the horrors of World War II, the
heroes and the villains, the myths and the awful truths, the big
stories and the small ones, trying to understand the many layers
of a time the British military historian John Keegan has called
the greatest single event in the history of mankind.
Fred R. Conrad/The New
York Times
Roger
Cohen
SOLDIERS AND SLAVES
American POW's Trapped by the Nazis' Final Gamble.
By Roger Cohen.
Illustrated. 303 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.95.
While all of the big pieces
have been assembled on history's table for some time now, it is
the discovery of the little-known episodes that constantly expands
our appreciation, fascination and revulsion for the brutal clash
of civilizations in the heart of the 20th century.
Roger Cohen's meticulously
reported and passionately felt book "Soldiers and Slaves" is just
such a discovery. It is the story of American G.I.'s who were
captured by the Germans in late 1944 and sent to a notorious slave
labor camp where they entered the dark world of the Holocaust.
Many of the roughly 350
soldiers, but not all, were Jewish, singled out by the Nazis for
assignment to a camp that was so brutally dehumanizing that the
American soldiers later qualified as Holocaust survivors.
Mr. Cohen, the international
writer at large and a former foreign editor for The New York Times
who writes the Globalist column for The International Herald
Tribune, dedicates the book to the memory of Charles Guggenheim, a
soft-spoken and elegant man who was an award-winning documentary
filmmaker. Guggenheim spent the last years of his life researching
and recording the fate that might have been his had he shipped out
with his outfit, the 106th infantry regiment, to Europe. Instead,
a foot infection kept him home.
Those who did go found
themselves in the winter of 1944 in the Battle of the Bulge, the
desperate counterattack by Nazi forces against American positions
in the deep snow of a Belgian winter. It was a ferocious battle
and the American lines were stretched thin, so the Germans were
able take thousands of G.I.'s prisoner.
William J. Shapiro, a medic
with the 28th Infantry Division, was
typical. He was a 19-year-old son of Jewish-Russian immigrants who
had grown up in the Bronx, where his parents worried more about
assimilation into American culture and economic survival than they
did about their Jewish identity.
"I wasn't a Jew when I went to
war," Mr. Shapiro said, "I was an American soldier." Nonetheless,
like other Jewish G.I.'s, his dog tags had an H on them, for
Hebrew. As the Germans closed in on his position in mid-December
1944, Mr. Shapiro ditched his dog tags but he couldn't hide his
name, so his German captors reserved for him and other Jewish
Americans taken prisoner a place in a little-known hell called
Berga.
Berga was one of the smaller
Nazi slave labor camps, in the eastern part of Germany. In the
closing months of the war, Hitler's planners selected it as the
site of a frantic effort to develop synthetic fuel to keep the
Third Reich in the fight. They shipped Jewish prisoners from other
concentration camps, including Buchenwald, to Berga and forced
them, along with the American P.O.W.'s, to begin hollowing out a
mountain for an underground production center.
The bestial conditions of the
work, the absence of medical care and nourishment, and the cruelty
of the Nazi guards, particularly a German with a long, prewar
criminal record, quickly led to a primordial struggle for survival
for Americans with names like Goldin and Lubinsky. Others -
Goldman, Schultz, Rosen, Cantor - died as a result of illness,
beatings, malnutrition. So did non-Jews with names like Young,
Johnson and Osborn.
They died not just in the camp
at Berga but also on a little-documented death march in April
1945, when the Germans began a frantic retreat to the west as the
Russians closed in from the east, a forced trek that claimed the
lives of 50 American soldiers in less than two weeks. Two dozen
more had died in camp, so 20 percent of the Americans shipped to
Berga in February 1945 were dead by mid-April 1945, as a result of
the unspeakably cruel conditions.
Mr. Cohen, relying on
Guggenheim's original research, tracked down the survivors for
firsthand accounts of their lives then and now, and their
continuing struggle 60 years later to live with the memories of
that ghastly experience. He recounts the singular role of Johann
(Hans) Kasten, a German-American who was a model of soldierly
dignity and, ultimately, rage as he pursued a Nazi tormentor at
the war's end.
In the midst of the American
ordeal, Mr. Cohen also documents the remarkable odyssey of
Mordecai Hauer, a young Hungarian Jew who survived Auschwitz,
Buchenwald and Berga while losing almost all the members of his
immediate family. Mr. Hauer's only connection to the Americans is
that they were at Berga at the same time, but his story is so
compelling and is included so skillfully that it enhances rather
than distracts from the main narrative.
Who can blame a reporter for
wanting to write all he has discovered about inhumanity, cruelty,
injustice, courage and survival in an underworld governed by a
slavish devotion to "Befehl ist Befehl" - an order is an order?
As "Soldiers and Slaves"
reminds us, in haunting fashion, World War II was an epic military
and political struggle that six decades later continues to give up
from its scarred landscape the grotesque and yet inspirational
remains of a time when the world went mad.
(TOM BROKAW , New York Times -
New York,NY,USA)
May 9, 2005
- Robert F. Kirk, 85, 5/3/2005
Robert F. Kirk
Robert F. Kirk, 85, of
Baldwinsville died Tuesday at his home. He was born in Corning and
lived in Rochester before moving to Baldwinsville in 1953. He
retired in 1982 after 33 years with the NYS Department of Taxation
and Finance.
Following his retirement, Bob
spent many hours as a photographer for the Baldwinsville
Messenger, Community TV 98, his church, and the many organizations
to which he belonged.
Robert was a communicant of
St. Mary's Church and a 4th Degree Member of Knights Of Columbus
Council #5082.
An Army veteran of WW II, he
served with the 28th Infantry Division
and fought in all five major campaigns including Normandy,
northern France, Ardennes, Rhineland and central Europe. He
received many medals, including the Combat Infantry Badge, Bronze
Star, Croix DeGuerre and Conspicuous Service Cross.
Active in his community, Bob
was selected as Baldwinsville Chamber of Commerce Man of the Year
in 1998. He was a member of the VFW Post #153, American Legion
Post #113, and Battle of the Bulge Group Society of the 28th
Infantry Division. He was also a member of the Canton Woods Senior
Center.
He was predeceased by his wife
Doris Fien Kirk in 2002.
Survivors: a daughter, Susan
M. Baxter of Jupiter, FL; two sons, Philip R. of Baldwinsville and
Lawrence P. of Gilbert, AZ; a sister, Marie E. Mintz of Rochester;
a brother, Arthur R. of Rochester; two grandchildren; several
nieces and nephews.
Services: 9:30 a.m. Wednesday
at Falardeau Funeral Home, Inc., Baldwinsville and 10 a.m. in St.
Mary's Church. Burial at 2:30pm in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery,
Rochester. Calling hours are 5-9 p.m. Tuesday at the funeral home,
93 Downer Street.
(bvilledailynews.com - NY,USA)
April 17, 2005 -
Ex-POWs mark
Bataan Death March - Aging WWII veterans recall mass surrender of
U.S. troops to Japanese on April 9, 1942.
The stories of former prisoners of war are heroic and sad and
shouldn't be forgotten.
(Portions not
pertaining to the 28th and 106th Division have been deleted)
"The only good part
about the Battle of the Bulge is that I was only 20 years old and
could take it," member Manuel "Mel" Raimundo said of his experience
as a U.S. soldier in Germany during World War II.
Raimundo, 81, of
Sacramento was an ambulance driver in the Army's
106th Infantry Division. He was
traveling in Bastogne in southeast Belgium when he was captured Dec.
16, 1944, in the infamous Battle of the Bulge.
Though Nazi forces
ultimately lost the famous battle, more than 76,000 American
soldiers were killed, wounded or missing in action, according to the
U.S. Department of Defense Web site,
www.defenselink.mil/home/Specials/bulge.
Raimundo said he
was forced to march for six days to a railroad yard and was squeezed
into an overcrowded boxcar with about 85 other POWs. He spent
several more days traveling without food or water until he arrived
at a prison camp in Muhlberg, Germany.
Raimundo said he
spent five months in captivity until he was freed by the Russian
military on May 1, 1945.
Eldon Koob, 80, of
Sacramento was a soldier in the 28th Infantry
Division, Pennsylvania National Guard, during the war. He was
carrying ammunition through a forest in Schmidt, Germany, when he
was surrounded by German military forces and eventually captured
Oct. 1, 1944. Koob said he was held in a prison camp for six months
before making a daring escape.
Many former POWs
say it helps to talk about their experiences. Waldron, for example,
kept a secret diary during his captivity as a form of therapy. His
personal notes later became an award-winning book, "Corregidor: From
Paradise to Hell," self-published in 1989.
Waldron said the
book has gained popularity since the United States launched its
military campaign in Iraq. He recently discussed his work and his
experiences at a Fair Oaks Chamber of Commerce luncheon.
"I just figured
someone must have been looking after me, because I didn't go mad,"
Waldron said of his POW years.
(Lakiesha McGhee, Sacramento Bee -
Sacramento,CA,USA)
April 13, 2005
- Guardsman risked it
all to save others
Sheila Boots didn't have to ask
who pulled her trapped son to safety from a burning Humvee last
Thursday in Iraq.
The Connellsville woman
already knew.
"I've known Scotty Sage for 15
years, and I knew that he saved my boy's life," Boots said Tuesday
night from the bedside of her wounded son, Pennsylvania Army
National Guardsman Spc. Timothy "Timmy" Boots, at Walter Reed Army
Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
"Nobody had to tell me he
would put his own life in peril for my boy," Sheila Boots said. "I
knew he would."
Sgt. Scot Sage and other soldiers
with a Connellsville-based Pennsylvania Army National Guard unit
braved intense heat and flames to free Timothy Boots and three
other men trapped in the burning Humvee, emptying eight fire
extinguishers and 300 bottles of water on the fire.
"It all happened very
quickly," said Amy Sage, wife of the South Connellsville volunteer
firefighter and guardsman who is in Iraq with
Company B, 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor.
"Scot took off his flak jacket
and covered up Tim (Boots) to try to keep the flames off him," Amy
Sage said. "And he used a pen knife to get him out."
Amy Sage spoke with her
husband Monday by phone, five days after an Iraqi insurgent drove
a bomb-laden vehicle into a convoy of five armored Humvees
carrying soldiers from the 103rd into their base camp near Ash
Sharqat, Iraq.
One of the Humvees was
destroyed and set ablaze, trapping Timothy Boots, of
Connellsville, Spc. Kevin Claycomb, of Scottdale, Sgt. Mark
Bowman, of Friedens, Somerset County, and Staff Sgt. Jason Leisey,
of Lancaster, Lancaster County.
All but Leisey are members of
the National Guard unit in Connellsville, said Maj. Christopher
McDevitt, executive officer with the 876th Engineering Battalion
in Johnstown. Leisey is a member of 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry,
a Philadelphia-area guard unit, McDevitt said.
Scot Sage and the four injured
soldiers have been in Iraq since December with the
28th Infantry Division's 750-member Task
Force Dragoon. In addition to Connellsville, the task force
consists of guardsmen from units based in Johnstown, Ford City,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Carlisle.
According to the Army, the
five Humvees were returning to base from a nighttime patrol when
one was targeted by the car bomber. Amy Sage said her husband
described the attack as occurring "very quick," giving the
soldiers no time to evade the enemy vehicle.
"It was a suicide bomber in a
car that, at a high rate of speed, drove directly into them," Amy
Sage said.
Timothy Boots was at the wheel
of the Humvee that was hit by the car bomb, Sheila Boots said.
Unidentified soldiers from the
other Humvees risked their own lives to pull the wounded crewmen
from the burning vehicle, according to a memo prepared by the
unit's commanding officer, Lt. Col. Philip J. Logan.
Scot Sage, who holds the
position of combat life saver with his platoon, is among those
credited with stabilizing the injured soldiers prior to their
evacuation to an Army support hospital in Mosul. A 1991 Gulf War
naval veteran and former chief of the South Connellsville fire
department,Sage was so near to flames from the burning Humvee that
his hair was singed and he suffered minor cuts and smoke
inhalation, his wife said.
Soldiers who freed the men
from the Humvee stand to be recognized later by the Army.
"It took some courage to go in
there," said Capt. Cory P. Angell, a public affairs specialist
with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard at Fort Indiantown Gap.
"The vehicle was on fire and they went in there to get these guys
out. It was a pretty significant event."
Amy Sage said the Army may
award medals to the rescuers, but she said Scot Sage would rather
see Boots' family recognized.
"He said they were talking
about commending him somehow for his efforts, but he said whatever
they do for him, he'd rather it be given to the Boots family," Amy
Sage said.
Angell said Timothy Boots, 23,
was the most seriously injured of the four. According to Sheila
Boots, a portion of Timothy Boots' right leg below the knee was
amputated. He also suffered multiple fractures of his left foot,
fractured ribs, a hairline jaw fracture and a small liver
laceration.
Sheila Boots and Timothy's
father, Wesley Boots, of Uniontown, saw their son for the first
time since the attack on Sunday night, when the soldier was
admitted to Walter Reed after his transfer from Landstuhl Regional
Medical Center in Germany.
Timothy Boots has been
unconscious since his arrival and is intubated, Sheila Boots said,
adding that an earlier report her son had asked about the
well-being of his fellow soldiers was untrue.
Despite the serious nature of
her son's injuries and prognosis for a long-term recovery, Sheila
Boots said she is grateful Timothy's life was spared.
"We are thankful he is alive,"
Sheila Boots said. "He has his vision, and I'm hoping he has his
hearing."
Kevin Claycomb suffered a
broken pelvis, Angell said. Claycomb's aunt, Sue Harvey, of
Connellsville, said Claycomb also has a fractured jaw and hip.
Harvey said Claycomb was
expected to arrive at Walter Reed late yesterday. His wife, Anita,
his mother, Debbie Wiltrout, and stepfather Ron Wiltrout, both of
Connellsville, are on their way to the hospital.
Harvey said doctors at first
were uncertain Claycomb would walk again, but later said he likely
will be on his feet in six months.
Claycomb called his wife and
mother from Landstuhl, where he also was hospitalized after being
transported out of Iraq.
"He said he wants to get
better and go back to his group (in Iraq), but they told him that
wasn't going to happen," Harvey said. "He was a little bit
disgusted about that."
Angell said Bowman is being
treated in Mosul, Iraq, for shrapnel wounds and is not expected to
return stateside at this time. Leisey is at Brooke Army Medical
Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, where he is being treated for
burns.
Timothy Boots and Claycomb
both attended Connellsville schools, with Claycomb graduating in
1987 and Boots in 2000. Boots also has ties to Southmoreland
School District, where his father is a retired teacher and his
mother currently teaches at Scottdale Elementary School.
Students and teachers in both
districts are rallying to the families' aid.
John Halfhill, Southmoreland
superintendent, said Sheila Boots' fellow teachers visited with
her immediately after learning of Timothy Boots' injuries.
Robert McLuckey, Connellsville
Area High School principal, said students who belong to CAHS
Patriots are preparing letters of gratitude and support to be sent
to the wounded soldiers and their families.
After high school, Timothy
Boots went on to attend California University of Pennsylvania,
majoring in political science and history. He became a member of
the university's chapter of the Delta Chi fraternity in 2001, then
put his studies on hold, Sheila Boots said, when called to active
duty with the National Guard.
The attack on the 103rd is the
second such incident in Iraq involving Pennsylvania Army National
Guardsmen in recent weeks.
Angell said several soldiers
from Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 112th Infantry were hurt in
Tikrit, Iraq, when a roadside bomb detonated near them.
The soldiers, who are based in
Ford City, Armstrong County, were securing an area where another
roadside bomb had detonated when the second device went off.
Angell said Spc. Paul Statzer,
of Zelienople, Butler County, was the most seriously wounded.
Statzer, who lost an eye and suffered a head injury, is also being
treated at Walter Reed.
The Connellsville unit is
expected to serve a one-year tour tentatively slated to end in
December. (Liz
Zemba, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review -
Pittsburgh,PA,USA)
April 10, 2005 - Decatur, Alabama war veteran
gets French medal 61 years late
World War II veteran George F.
Mills of Decatur served in the 109th Infantry
Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, known as the "Keystone" Division.
The French government awarded
his regiment the Croix de Guerre medal for valorous actions during
the liberation of France in 1944. The 109th was the only regiment in
the division that received the honor. A recent check of Army records
revealed that Mills never received the award. Sixty-one years later,
at the February meeting of Redstone Chapter No. 353, National
Sojourners Inc., past president and retired Air Force Maj. Henry B.
Tyra, himself a World War II veteran, presented the medal to Mills.
(The Decatur Daily -
Decatur,AL,USA)
March 25, 2005 - Pirates Salute 'The Pride Of
Pittsburgh' At Home Opener On April 4
The Pittsburgh Pirates today
announced the schedule of events for the regular season home opener on
Monday, April 4. The Bucs are scheduled to play the Milwaukee Brewers
at 1:35 p.m., with gates opening to the public at 11:30 a.m. The
Pirates 2005 Home Opener is presented by PNC Bank.
Pregame ceremonies are scheduled
to begin at approximately 1:00 p.m. and will include a salute to some
of "Pittsburgh's Proudest." Highlights include:
� Presentation of the annual
"Pride of the Pirates" award. The award was created in 1990 to
recognize members of the Pirates family who have demonstrated the
qualities of sportsmanship, dedication and outstanding character
during a lifetime of service. Last year's winner was Pirates front
office member June Schaut.
� Video tribute and moment of
silence honoring former Pirates pitcher and Vice President Nellie
Briles, who passed away earlier this year.
� Pirates General Manager Dave
Littlefield will recognize the following Pirates for their 2004
on-the-field achievements and present them with their awards. Mike
Gonzalez (Topps Rookie All-Star Team), Jose Mesa (Pirates Rolaids
Relief Man-of-the-Year Award), Jack Wilson (Silver Slugger Award) and
Jason Bay (National League Rookie-of-the Year Award).
� Jason Bay will present the
Ronald McDonald House of Oakland a check for $20,000 to benefit the
Jason Bay Family Charity Fund he established this year. The $20,000 is
the amount of money awarded to Bay upon being named N.L.
Rookie-of-the-Year.
� To honor the servicemen and
women who are serving our nation around the world, members of the
107th Field Artillery Army National Guard Unit
and their families will grace the outfield with American Flags.
The unit just returned from active service in Iraq. Leading them onto
the field will be Commanding General of the 28th
Infantry Division Major General Wesley E. Craig and Adjutant
General and Commander of the PA National Guard Major General Jessica
Wright. They will also be joined by PNC Chairman and CEO Jim Rohr.
� God Bless America and the
National Anthem will be performed by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's
2004 "Performer of the Year", Billy Porter.
� World War II Veteran and
lifelong Pirates fan, Blue Marucci, will toss out the game time first
pitch. Marucci, 84, and originally from Brownsville, will be attending
his 60th straight Pirates Home Opener.
The following is a schedule of
events for the afternoon festivities:
Monday, April 4 - 1:35 gametime
� The Boilermaker Jazz Band will
be featured on Federal Street and the Dixie Land Band will be playing
outside the Home Plate Gate prior to the game.
� Pirates annual "Scouting For
Food Drive" will be on Federal Street. All fans making a donation on
Opening Day will receive a coupon good for a � priced ticket to the
April 6 Pirates vs. Brewers game at 12:35 p.m.
� All fans in attendance will
receive a 2005 Pirates magnetic schedule, compliments of PNC Bank and
a Pirates "Come Hungry" wristband.
� Introduction of the 2005
Pittsburgh Pirates
� Tribute and moment of silence
for Nellie Briles
� Presentation of the 2005 "Pride
of the Pirates" Award
� Recognition of on-the-field
achievements of 2004 Pirates players
� Colors presented by
representatives from all five branches of the military
� God Bless America and National
Anthem by Billy Porter
� Local soldiers and families on
field to honor all servicemen and women overseas
� Military Flyover by the 911th
Air Wing
� Game time First Pitch by Blue
Marucci
(Pirates Press Release)
January 21, 2005 -
Alpha Battery makes its
mark. It's Middle East service nearly over, the area's
National Guard spares no effort to go out in style.
CAMP DOHA, KUWAIT - Even before it was done, a passing soldier
recognized the design taking shape on one of the two cargo containers
the 109th Field Artillery would send home to Wilkes-Barre.
The soldier from
Pittsburgh asked Spcs. Matthew Noll and James Albright of the 109th's
Alpha Battery where they were from.
The 109th's
members wear a keystone patch on their uniforms. The patch signifies
the unit's connection to the 28th Infantry
Division (Mechanized) Artillery of the Pennsylvania National Guard.
The keystone patch
attracts the attention of other National Guard soldiers from the
state, said Noll, 28, of Plains Township. When soldiers see the patch
they come up and say, "Hey, you're from Pennsylvania."
Noll and Albright
were assigned the detail of painting two big keystones on the
containers Thursday afternoon.
In Kuwait, the
patch worn on the left shoulder is brown to coordinate with the desert
camouflage uniforms of the soldiers. In the states, it's red and that
was the color they spray painted the keystones for the homebound
containers.
The pair traced
the outline of a wood cutout on the door of one container and on the
side of another. Next they stretched packing tape along the outline to
create a border. Each one then took turns painting in the outline.
"That's what you
get when you send specialists to do the work," said Noll after he
stepped back and looked at Albright's work.
Another coat and
the shape will stand out against the background colors of the
padlocked containers. An added touch will be a yellow border around
the keystone.
The painters have
plenty of time to complete the job.
The containers
have to be loaded and inspected. "They're not ready to go home yet.
They're just shut up," said Albright, 20, of Horsham.
During the next
few weeks, the members of Alpha Battery will stuff the containers with
duffel bags, foot lockers, paperwork, equipment and whatever the unit
is not leaving behind for their replacements in Kuwait.
Customs will
inspect the contents for contraband items. After that the containers
will be washed clean of residue and dirt for the voyage home by ship.
The troops will
arrive home before the containers. The unit is preparing to leave
Kuwait sometime early next month after a yearlong mission in Operation
Iraqi Freedom.
"Are we going to
sign it?" Albright asked Noll.
Units that have
gone have left their mark on the concrete barriers lining the roads
throughout the camp, said Noll. "Everybody else signs the Jersey
barriers."
The soldiers will
likely have some reminder of their work. Although the larger container
will be emptied and reused either commercially or by the Army, the
smaller one should become property of the unit.
"We'll probably
keep this one at the armory," Albright said.
(By JERRY LYNOTT,
Wilkes Barre Times-Leader - Wilkes
Barre,PA,USA)
January 8, 2005 -
Soldiers depart local armory in familiar scene
By: Patty Yauger, Herald-Standard
Sage Jenkins
cries while saying good-bye to her father, Capt. James
Jenkins, a native of Uniontown, as he readies for departure
with his colleagues from the Pennsylvania Army National Guard
armory in Mount Pleasant. Paul Ruhter/Herald-Standard
MOUNT PEASANT (PA) - In an all too
familiar scene, family members again gathered at a local military
headquarters to bid farewell.
The words "I love you" and "I'll miss
you" were uttered multiple times during the early Friday morning hours
as wives and children left their soldier husbands and fathers at the
local National Guard armory.
"It's tough," said Sgt. Charles Steban as he returned from walking his
six-month pregnant wife to her car. "I'm leaving her with a lot of
responsibilities."
Steban and approximately 50 soldiers attached to the 110th Infantry
Headquarters unit departed hours before daybreak for Camp Shelby in
Mississippi where they will undergo six months of intense training
before being deployed to Iraq.
Similar scenes will take place throughout the month as nearly 75
percent of the unit's force has been activated, said Sgt. Maj. James
Stewart.
"Morale is high," he said. "We're ready to go."
Nearly 2,200 soldiers of the 28th Infantry Division of the
Pennsylvania Army National Guard, 2nd Brigade combat team has been
activated said Capt. Cory P. Angell, Guard spokesman.
"The majority of communities across the state will have somebody from
that area that's going to be under this mobilization," he said. "The
grassroots-level hometown farewells will be occurring across the
state."
Geibel High School graduate, 2nd Lt. Sean Bufano, meanwhile, conversed
with his mother and good friend Bob Cessna as the soldiers awaited the
arrival of buses that would transport them to their southern
destination.
"I'm ready to go," said Bufano.
The father of a 14-year-old daughter, Bufano said while he is prepared
for his first tour of duty, it has been a difficult time for the
teenager.
"They know what's going on and it's tough for them," he said of the
youngsters being separated from their fathers.
Friends Spec. David Spano of Farmington and Sgt. William J. Colvin of
Connellsville said that they, too, were ready to undertake the
mission.
"Let's go get it done," said Spano.
The deployment is the second tour of duty for both men.
Spano spent several months in Germany in 2003 providing security at
the Germershiem Army Depot, a U.S. military installation, while Colvin
took part in the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, also in 2003.
Sgt. 1st Class Chris Jeske of Connellsville said his goodbyes to his
wife, Erica, and children Sarah and Christian, before arriving at the
Mount Pleasant armory. While he will be concerned for his family's
well being, Jeske said he will also be responsible for those within
the unit.
"A lot of the guys are worried, but it is the younger guys I worry
about," he said. "I have to make sure everyone gets back home safe and
that weighs on my mind tremendously."
Jeske said Camp Shelby will offer a replica of an Iraqi city with
role-playing soldiers representing civilians and terrorists to
acclimate the unit as to what can be expected when they do arrive
overseas.
Just as important as the training, said Jeske, is the soldiers'
ability to bond with his fellow-soldiers.
"They are going to have to protect one another," he said.
Spec. Eric Hughes, a 2003 Uniontown Area High School graduate, said he
will be maintaining the vehicles that will be used in the desert to
transport manpower and equipment.
"I'll be one of the maintenance people that will keep the Army rolling
while we're over there," he said.
One of the youngest members of the unit, Hughes enlisted with the
National Guard while a high school junior. He completed his basic
training before his senior year and later attended Advanced Individual
Training. Since, he has been a full-time mechanic for the unit.
To pass the time, Hughes tried to master a new hand-held game that he
had received from a friend prior to his arrival at the Mount Pleasant
armory.
He said that with many local soldiers already in Iraq, he anticipates
encountering some that he went to school with or completed training.
"I'm looking forward to it," he said.
Patty Schomer of Everson said that she has tried to keep busy in order
to keep from dwelling on the fact that her husband, Sgt. William
Schomer, will be away from home for a lengthy period of time.
"You really can't totally prepare for their leaving," she said.
William Schomer, who served in the Air Force and Army before joining
the guard unit, said he will rely on his faith while away from his
home and family.
"I'm very strong in my faith," he said. "I'm sure everything is going
to be taken care of. As long as no one stops me from praying, I'll be
fine."
Spc. Chad Olson and his wife, Katie, said that they have jointly
worked to prepare their two sons, John and Dominic, for the coming
months when their father will be far from home.
"We're especially worried about our 8-year-old," said Katie Olson.
"Daddy is his best buddy; they do everything together.
"It's going to be tough."
An Army veteran, Chad Olson enlisted with the National Guard following
Sept. 11, 2001.
He believes his past service during the first Gulf war, is an
advantage.
"I'm used to the culture and the climate," he said. "I know what to
expect when we get over there."
Chad Olson said that he is supportive of the action being undertaken
in Iraq and is ready to do his part.
"My sergeant major and my president are telling me we have a job to do
and that's all I need to know," he said. "I'm perfectly happy to do
that."
Anna Marie Stewart, who heads the unit Family Support Group, said that
past deployments and regular training along with various
family-oriented activities has brought the many families together to
form a strong bond that will help in the months to come.
"We'll keep everybody busy and take one day at a time," she said.
"We'll get through this together."
December 19, 2004 -
Vets Recall Epic Battle;
109th Played Pivotal Role in Battle of Bulge
Retired Brig. Gen. John
E. McDonald glances back across six decades and recalls a prominent
point in the history of Scranton's 109th Infantry Regiment.
"I was in
the Bulge," said Gen. McDonald, a Green Ridge resident who had 40 years
of active and reserve military service before he retired in 1978.
The 109th
Infantry, part of the 28th Infantry Division of the Pennsylvania
National Guard,
played a pivotal role for the U.S. Army 60 years ago in the Battle of
the Bulge.
The battle, which was waged between Dec. 16, 1944, and Jan 28, 1945, was
Hitler's final military offensive of World War II. The surprise attack
included 30 German divisions and was a desperate effort to reverse Nazi
Germany's situation on the Western Front.
The conflict was staged in the Ardennes forest region of Luxembourg and
eastern Belgium and involved 500,000 German troops, 600,000 Americans
and 55,000 British. Hitler's objective was to capture Antwerp in Belgium
and force a negotiated peace on the Western Front.
Gen. McDonald was a lieutenant during World War II attached to the
headquarters of the
28th Division.
Prior to the start of the battle, the 28th Division occupied territory
near the confluence of the Our and Sure rivers along western
Luxembourg's border with Germany.
Sunday Times files indicate the
28th's
front stretched some 25 miles -- five times as much territory as an Army
division was expected to cover.
"They were spread really thin," said Patrick "Doc" Dougherty, a retired
master sergeant who does maintenance work at Scranton's Watres Armory.
According to histories of the
109th,
the regiment was stationed near Vianden when the Germans launched their
thrust across the Our River on Dec. 16, 1944.
"Initially, it was a big surprise," Gen. McDonald recalled.
"Headquarters would not listen to the
28th Division,"
said Mr. Dougherty, who helps preserve the region's historical military
records. "They said, 'No, it's only a skirmish.' People didn't realize
what the Ardennes was all about."
The German drive forced the
109th
to retreat about six miles southwest to Ettelbruck in central
Luxembourg.
Morley Cassidy, a reporter for the former North American Newspaper
Alliance during World War II, described the tactics the unit pursued:
"Battling two full German divisions -- six times their numbers -- men of
the 109th
had been rolling with the punch; fighting all day; giving little ground
each night."
Gen. McDonald's memory last week echoed Mr. Cassidy's account: "We
retreated slightly, initially. Then we got ourselves together and we
went right at them."
The German advance's target was the city of Luxembourg and the
109th's
position blocked the objective. By capturing Luxembourg city, Gen.
McDonald recalled, the Germans would open a major artery toward Antwerp,
a port city near the North Sea that was a major supply point for the
Allies. On Dec. 21, Col. James E. Rudder, the
109th's regimental
commander, changed
the unit's fight-and-fall-back tactics.
Gen. McDonald's personal history of the battle said Col. Rudder ruled
out another withdrawal to higher ground and stationed two battalions
along a two-lane road linking
Ettelbruck and Grosbous.
The Germans, confident that they could advance easily, moved southward
toward Ettelbruck in a two-mile column of tanks, trucks, artillery and
troops, Mr. Cassidy wrote.
The two battalions of the
109th waited until
the column was lined up 200 yards ahead of them and launched an ambush
with rifles, machine guns, light artillery and anti-tank weapons,
regimental histories state.
"In three minutes the convoy was a long, flaming pyre, black smoke from
the blazing gasoline filling the length of the little valley," Mr.
Cassidy wrote.
Gen. McDonald's history said, "It is estimated that at least two
battalions of (German) infantry and a battalion of artillery was
destroyed at this time."
The 109th
was reinforced quickly after the clash, Mr. Cassidy reported. Col.
Rudder was promoted to major general after the battle.
The engagement at the Ettelbruck-Grosbous road halted the German drive
toward Luxembourg city, Gen. McDonald recalled.
"That was where we stood up against them and they were unable to make
their goal," he said. "I think we were an important turning point for
the effort because the Germans were really coming on and we were able to
stop them."
Mr. Dougherty said the ambush likely represented the first setback for
the Germans in the six-week battle.
"At the Battle of the Bulge, they held their ground," he said of the
109th.
After the battle, an Army general attached to the 12th Division reported
on the gallantry of the 109th.
Gen. Jacob Devers credited the 109th
with "taking the full impact of the German assault of its division front
and delaying the advance of nine German divisions for four days, thereby
allowing reinforcements to assemble at Bastogne, Belgium, and to stop
the German advance."
The 109th'sheroism
is memorialized in Luxembourg. A monument to the unit stands in Hoesdorf,
a village about 3 miles south of Vianden on the Our River.
According to the Luxembourg National Museum of History, "This specific
memorial is dedicated to the
109th Regiment, 28th
Division, to pay
tribute to the sacrifices of the valiant soldiers who on December 16-18,
1944, slowed down the German advance in this sector. The memorial that
was erected by grateful citizens of the community of Reisdorf-Hoesdorf,
was inaugurated on September 25, 1984, in the presence of a strong
delegation of U.S. veterans of the
109th Regiment
and some German survivors of the battle."(JAMES HAGGERTY THE SUNDAY
TIMES )December 15,
2004 - Almost captured at
the Bulge - Gorman Cornwell was a medic in the European
Theater
Gorman Cornwell of New
Lexington narrowly avoided becoming a prisoner of war in Word War II.
The
42nd Field Hospital normally moved in support of Gen. George S. Patton's
Third Army, but on Dec. 16, 1944, one platoon, including Sgt. Gorman
Cornwell, was at Wiltz, Belgium, in support of the
28th Infantry Division, VIII Corps, First Army.
(The VIII Corps was
transferred to operational control of the Third Army during the
subsequent Battle of the Bulge.)
When the Germans
launched their Ardennes Offensive that day, Wiltz was in the path of one
of the German armies, but the platoon didn't get word to evacuate until
Dec. 18. Cornwell recalled they could not evacuate all the wounded, so
some staff was to stay behind with their patients, knowing they would be
captured.
"I was supposed to
stay behind," Cornwell said, "but at the last minute they decided to
keep another sergeant instead."
Cornwell and most of
the personnel wound up back in France, effectively out of the Battle of
the Bulge, but much of the medical equipment wound up at Bastogne, where
it was put to good use by the 101st Airborne Division.
According to Alain S.
Batens, author of "The 42nd Field Hospital in the Battle of the Bulge,"
a major and 16 men were left with the hospital and captured. Cornwell
said by the time American forces recovered the hospital, the medical
personnel and patients had been sent into captivity.
Cornwell's story
"I've had two strokes,
I don't remember a lot of things," Cornwell said, but his memory proved
better than he gave himself credit for.
He grew up near
Huntington, W.Va., but was working for Ohio Box Board in Rittman, Ohio,
in northern Wayne County when he was drafted in 1943 at age 18.
He first went to Fort
Thomas, Ky., then to Camp Grant, Ill., for basic training. With the end
of basic, he was assigned to the Medical Corps and went to Colorado
Springs for his initial training, then to Billings General Hospital in
Illinois for more training as a medical technician.
Cornwell doesn't know
why he was assigned to the Medical Corps.
"They just gave me the
Medical Corps, they didn't ask," he said with a smile.
A medical technician,
he explained, was almost the same as a nurse. He took blood, took care
of the wounded and gave medications.
Cornwell's unit, the
42nd Field Hospital, shipped out for Europe in March 1944, boarding the
Susan B. Anthony, a former luxury liner converted to troop transport.
They stopped first at Belfast in Northern Ireland, but quickly moved on
to Glasgow, Scotland, where they boarded a train for training camp in
England.
"We stayed there two
or three months," he said, then they boarded ship to go to France. He
thinks they boarded in Wales, but remembers they stayed at sea for a day
and a night before finally transferring to barges and landing on Utah
Beach on June 9, 1944, three days after the D-Day invasion.
(A compelling account
of life in a field hospital was written in 1994 by a former member of
the 42nd for the Providence. Rhode Island, Journal can be found on the
Web by searching for Beachhead Hospital or 42nd Field Hospital and
calling up the entry for Beachhead Hospital.)
The unit marched
inland and set up its first hospital in a field with two other hospital
units. There, they began the Army's new practice of bringing surgical
care as close to the front as possible. Wounds to the head, chest,
abdomen or large bone of the leg would be treated at the field hospital.
All other casualties would be sent back to the evacuation hospitals. The
Army had found in World War I that wounds of this type were usually
fatal without immediate attention.
A field hospital
consisted of three platoons, each with about 60 enlisted men, six
officers (surgeons) and six nurses. One platoon would typically support
a division. In the Korean War, field hospitals became known as MASH
units.
At its initial
location, the 42nd treated many wounded from the 82nd and 101st Airborne
divisions, but also wounded Germans. Cornwell chose not to dwell on the
suffering of the wounded who came through the hospital.
During its first
couple of months in France, the 42nd was attached to First Army, but
when Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army was activated in mid-July, the
42nd became one of its support units.
The 42nd had moved
frequently during its month in France, but, under Patton, it found out
what fast movement was.
"We just went like a
house afire from St. Lo across Europe," Cornwell said. They watched the
Maquis (French resistance) drive into Paris, and their path across
France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany reads like a travelogue: St. Lo,
Rennes, Paris, Wildz, Aachen, Trier, Nuremburg, Schweinfurt, Munich and
many other places.
St. Lo left an
impression. Cornwell described how the B-25 medium bombers and the heavy
B-17 and B-24 bombers would strike targets in St. Lo. "There were 35 to
40 bombers at a time," he said. "When we went through there wasn't a
building you couldn't step over. The town was leveled."
In those early weeks
in France, he also had the opportunity to see Gen. Dwight Eisenhower,
who gave a speech to some of the troops in France.
Other than the
Ardennes breakthrough, Cornwell said the biggest danger was usually
German planes raiding at night.
"The Germans didn't
fly much during the day, but they would raid at night. You'd get in a
hole to get some rest, even in a ditch beside the road."
As the Third Army
approached the Rhine River and prepared to cross, Cornwell recalled,
there were no bridges. The Germans had destroyed them.
"Patton told the
troops, 'We'll swim across.' Somebody spoke up and said, 'We can't swim
that,'" Cornwell said.
"'By God, I can,'
Patton replied."
Cornwell doesn't
recall seeing much of the prisoner of war camps or concentration camps
Third Army liberated near Munich, but while they were camped near
Nuremburg, there was a large camp of German prisoners nearby.
"They dug a big
swimming pool for us," he recalled.
When the war in Europe
ended in May of 1945, Cornwell said, they were told they were going to
Japan. "But before we could go, the war in Japan ended and we went
home."
After the war
Cornwell was finally
discharged on Dec. 31 and returned to the Huntington area, where he soon
went to work for Minter Homes, building windows and cabinets.
He also met Mamie Cole
and they were married that April.
Cornwell worked for
Minter for "about 14 years," then they moved to Ohio in 1959 at the
urging of a friend from Mount Perry. They settled in Perry County, but
Cornwell went to work for George Case in Granville, building homes in
the Licking County village.
He did that until
1970, when he went to work for the Perry County Engineer's Office.
"I built bridges, ran
a bulldozer, whatever needed to be done," Cornwell said.
He retired
from the county job in 1988. (By
Chuck Martin, Times Recorder. PA)
December 15, 2004
- The
American St. Nick
This is the
story of Dick Brookins, the American St. Nick.
Sixty years ago, Brookins, from Rochester, did something that changed a
lot of lives. To him, at the time, it seemed a small kindness, but the
people of Wiltz, Luxembourg have never forgotten him and they keep
welcoming him back.
In December of 1944, the people of
Wiltz had suffered greatly. After four and a half years of German
occupation and atrocities; they needed St. Nicholas.
So the men of the Army's
28th infantry division, 28th signal company
message center section, gathered what little they had to give
away, including candy from home, and they found one among them who could
play the saint.
Dick Brookins was 22. Now 82,
he still can't believe how much that day meant to those children.
"[I] never had a thought in my head
that this was so significant to those people, that they would use that
little party as a symbol of their liberation,� Brookins said.
�When I came home from the service,
I forgot about that event. It was just an interlude in our lousy life at
the time. We were so happy because we were able to make some kids happy.
And it's gone on and on. My 15 minutes of fame has lasted 60 years so
far."
In those 60 years, Dick Brookins has
been back to Wiltz four times. And not just to visit. The people, some
who were there in 1944, some who are their grandchildren, insist that
when he comes, he plays the part again, as he did just this month.
�The emotion is high. The adrenaline
is running. And the adulation is� I'm not worthy of all that. It's just
amazing,� he said.
When Brookins returns, the children
draw pictures for him. And there are receptions and dinners in his
honor. And on this last trip, the officials of the town gave him a medal
for helping to liberate that small country.
There is even a book about all this.
But Dick Brookins worries that he is
too much the focus of the story. He wants credit to go to all who threw
that big party 60 years ago, and even more, to those who died fighting
to get the Nazi army out.
Still, there's no denying that Dick
Brookins is a hero to the people of Wiltz. In a time when Americans
aren't liked in a lot of places, this town loves their American St.
Nick.
�It's sincere, and tears flow, and
the last thing I hear is, 'You will please come back.' What can I tell
you?� Brookins said.
When Brookins visits Luxembourg, he
always brings family members. In fact, his oldest son, David, has
promised to carry on his father's tradition of playing St. Nicholas for
the children of Wiltz.
(Doug
Emblidge (Rochester, NY))
December 12, 2004 - 28th
Infantry Division visited Luxembourg for Thanksgiving
Leaders of the Pennsylvania Army National
Guard and members of the 28th Infantry Division Band traveled to the
towns of Diekirch and Wiltz in Luxembourg over Thanksgiving weekend to
mark the 60th anniversary celebration of its liberation from the Nazis
in World War II.
Thousands lost their lives fighting to save
the small European country, bordered by France, Germany and Belgium.
The soldiers were rebuilding their forces along a 24-mile stretch
overlooking the River Ourthe after a bitter battle in the Hurtgen Forest
that left 6,000 of their buddies dead.
Early in the morning on Dec. 16, 1944, "the calm was shattered when the
Germans launched their surprise Ardennes Offensive now known as the
Battle of the Bulge," relates Maj. Gen. Wesley E. Craig, commanding
general of the 28th Infantry Division (M).
"The Germans thought to overrun our division easily and make it all the
way to Antwerp, but our troops did not cooperate," he says. "Every
crossroads became a strong point and most units fought until they were
out of ammunition. They inflicted heavy damage on the Germans. "By the time the Germans fought through the determined defenses of the
28th Infantry Division and reached the
outskirts of Bastogne, they found it garrisoned already by the 101st
Airborne Division and two combat commands from the 10th and 9th Armor
Divisions and the 110th Infantry Regiment. Bastogne held and the Third
U.S. Army counterattacked from the south and broke the siege and the
Germans never went on the offensive again."
Luxembourg remains devoted to its liberator, Gen. George Patton, who is
buried with his Third Army soldiers in the Luxembourg American Cemetery.
In a glade surrounded by spruce, beech and
oak trees, the cemetery is the final resting place of 5,076 American
soldiers. They are still heroes to today's Luxembourgers.
He said many Luxembourgers come over to thank the visiting World War II
veterans and call them heroes. But these veterans often say the real
heroes were the ones who didn't make it and died on these battlefields.
Dioramas popular
The 28th Infantry Division members also
visited the National Museum of Military History in the city of Diekirch,
which depicts the Battle of the Bulge from the aspects of the civilians,
Germans and Americans.
Located in a former brewery, it contains a large collection of weaponry,
uniforms and armored vehicles. But its key attraction is the selection
of dioramas representing aspects of life during the battle, including a
scene depicting troops of the 3rd Army about to cross the icebound Sauer
River on Jan 18, 1945, to liberate Diekirch.
"My favorite part of the museum is all of these dioramas built on oral
history accounts of 109th veterans and other American units and German
veterans," says Roland Gaul, museum curator. "We would like to preserve
a chapter of history here, especially as many of the older veterans are
unfortunately dying out. We want to make sure these memories and values
are passed on to the younger generation and that is why museum exhibits
like this are very important."
Gaul says the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge is a great
event for which all of Luxembourg has prepared and the country is ready
to welcome many World War II veterans.
Overwhelming welcome
In Diekirch, the 28th Division band held a
parade in the main square, then played a special Liberation of Diekirch
commemorative concert at the local high school. The John Philip Sousa
marches and Glenn Miller tunes brought tears to the eyes of local
residents and visiting World War II veterans.
"The response from the people was overwhelming and we could have played
for them all evening long," says band master Jeffrey A. Jaworowski. "I
focused on American composers and songs the veterans would enjoy."
The mayor of Diekirch, Claude Hagen, hosted a Thanksgiving dinner in the
town hall for veterans, members of the 28th
Division and re-enactors from the Netherlands.
He notes that 60 years ago, Thanksgiving Day was hardly known to the
Luxembourgers who had just been liberated by U.S. forces in September
1944. The American GIs were all in high spirits because the Army made it
possible for turkeys to arrive fresh from the U.S. for a traditional
Thanksgiving meal. Even those troops on duty along the defensive line on
the Ourthe and Sauer River received hot turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy
and cranberries. Many of the soldiers gave their meals to the
starving townspeople of Diekirch.
Among last to leave
"The people are just so warm and friendly and appreciative" in
Luxembourg, says Sgt. First Class Robert Varanik of the
28th Division band. "The amount of history
that is here is just phenomenal and so much of it ties back to
Pennsylvania troops.
"The band was stationed in this area even after the war was over and was
one of the last troops to leave this area and make personal connections
with many of the residents here. This region has a very rich musical
culture and they certainly remember the red Keystone and our band."
Members of the 28th Division band were
called to lay their instruments aside and fight to help protect
Luxembourg 60 years ago, so the trip proved to be a very significant
trip for the 62 members of this unit.
The 73 attending members of the 28th Infantry
Division paraded through the town along the main street, then
ended their march at the 28th ID memorial
in the City of Wiltz town square. Craig and the town's mayor, Romain
Schneider, laid a wreath at the memorial.
"We owe, even younger generations, a debt of gratitude to those American
soldiers who gave up their lives so we could live in freedom and peace,"
says Schneider. "I give you my word that in the City of Wiltz, we have
not forgotten and you will always be welcomed very heartily."
The official U.S. Army history describes this fighting by the
28th Infantry Division at Wiltz as "one of
the most costly division actions in the whole of World War II" and
credits members of the division for delaying the Germans long enough for
the Third Army counterattack.
Editor's Note: Sentinel Correspondent Rich Blandy joined the
Pennsylvanians who went to Luxembourg in his role as a Public Affairs
NCO for the 28th Infantry Division and filed this report.(Richard Blandy, the Sentinel,
PA)
December 03. 2004 -
Valley-based Guard units
called up
Call-up will bring the number of Pa.
National Guard troops in Iraq to 4,250.
Friday, December 03, 2004
Two Lehigh Valley National Guard
units will be deployed to Iraq next June, joining the largest deployment
of Pennsylvania-based troops since World War II.
Called into service Wednesday was
the 228th Forward Support Battalion, based in Sellersville, with
companies in Allentown, Bethlehem and Scranton, according to sources
with the Pennsylvania National Guard.
A total 2,400 troops are being
called from Pennsylvania to join the fourth rotation in Iraq, called
Iraqi Freedom 4. (GREGG W. BORTZ, The Express-Times, NJ)
November 17, 2004 - 28th Division Band to tour
Europe in memory of WWII members.
A Mifflinburg music teacher will be part
of a band that is traveling to Europe this month to honor members who
died in battle during World War II.
Nathan Sanders of Mifflinburg is a
member of the 28th Infantry Division, U.S. Army
Band, based in Altoona. The band was invited to play during
the special programs throughout Germany and Luxembourg.
Members of the band were called to
lay their instruments aside and fight to protect Luxembourg 60 years
ago. "Almost all of the band members lost their lives in that
battle, so it is a very significant trip for us as a unit," Sanders
said.
The band leaves Thanksgiving Day for
Germany and Luxembourg and returns on Nov. 30. Sanders, a
specialist with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, plays French horn
in the band, which has about 62 members. He said he is the only
one from the area in the band. Other members are from the Altoona area,
Virginia, Maryland and New York.
Musicians try out in order to become
members. Sanders has been in the band two years. The band members
will play during a number of ceremonies to commemorate battles. They
will be traveling in Germany and Luxembourg. Sanders said the
ceremonies and services will remember soldiers of the
28th Infantry Division who died 60 years
ago while liberating Luxembourg from Axis powers.
"It is a great honor and we�re very
proud to be able to go. It�s very special because this commemorates
something our very same unit had done. To my knowledge, we are the only
National Guard Band who had suffered that many casualties in that
battle," he said.
Sanders said he expects the
ceremonies to be "very emotional for us and our unit and for those who
are over there. It�s not very often a band gets involved in direct
combat." "They ran out of reserves and members of the band dropped
their instruments, picked up rifles and went to work," he said.
The Millmont resident and Purple
Heart recipient expects to receive a prosthesis soon at Walter Reed
Hospital in Washington, D.C. (By Karen Blackledge, The Daily Item)
November 13, 2004 - A real-life St. Nick in
the midst of war � and now
Dick Brookins was 22 when he
played the role of St. Nicholas for the children of Wiltz,
Luxembourg, on Dec. 5, 1944. Now 82, he visited this week with a
BOCES 1 class at Fairport High School.
To read more The American St. Nick ($18.95) , by Peter Lion, was published
in 2003 by WindRiver Publishing Inc. It tells the story of the
celebration of St. Nicholas Day in Luxembourg in December 1944.
To the students, Dick Brookins was a
celebrity before he spoke. After all, they had read The
American St. Nick by Peter Lion, the story of a magical thing
Brookins did during World War II.
They knew that by playing St.
Nicholas for the children of Wiltz in Luxembourg in 1944, Brookins had
brought a glorious relief from the horrors of war. They also knew
he had gone back to Luxembourg several times to play St. Nick and that
he will do it again for this year's celebration next month.
He's 82 years old now and a resident of Pittsford, NY. His hair is a
little whiter than it was 60 years ago when he became St. Nick at age
22.
He had enlisted in the U.S. Army in
December 1942 and was sent to England in 1943. From there he went to
mainland Europe. He and his fellow soldiers in the
28th Infantry Division liberated the town of Wiltz in September
1944.
Harry Stutz, one of the soldiers,
knew that the children of Wiltz hadn't celebrated St. Nicholas Day � a
December day when St. Nicholas brings presents � since the German
occupation more than four years earlier. St. Nicholas Day is Dec.
6 on the calendar of saints. Community celebrations in Luxembourg are
usually held in advance.
Stutz persuaded Brookins to play St. Nick, complete with robe, staff and
beard. Brookins knew little about the tradition; but he was clearly in
character on Dec. 5, 1944, when he donned his outfit, hopped into a Jeep
and rode to the Wiltz castle in the company of two young girls playing
angels.
He and the other soldiers gave out
candy they had collected from their C-Rations. "It was so good for
us," he said. "We were many miles from home, and we weren't going to be
home. And we had all these little kids who were so happy. Their faces
were shining."
Eleven days later, the U.S. soldiers
were pushing back a German offensive in the Battle of the Bulge, the
largest land battle of World War II in which U.S. troops participated.
At the end of the long fight, 19,000 U.S. troops had lost their lives.
After the war, Brookins came home,
went to work for Rochester Telephone Co., married and raised a family
with his wife, Virginia.
In 1977, he was asked to go back to Luxembourg and be St. Nick again. He
went, at his own expense, and has returned several times since. He
leaves later this month for this year's 60th anniversary celebration,
which will be Dec. 5.
Brookins' previous appearances have
made national television in the United States. He showed the students
tapes of those broadcasts, as well as a black-and-white film of the
first time he was St.Nick.
After his presentations, Brookins
gave every student a piece of candy. Then they took a break for
refreshments and to sing "Happy Birthday" to Kathleen Holleran, one of
the students, who turned 19. Then students asked questions, wondering,
among other things, what it was like in Luxembourg during the war.
"It was not very happy," Brookins said. "The best time they had in four
years was that (St. Nicholas) day in Wiltz." He added that the
people of Luxembourg are grateful to this day to Americans. "When I go
there, I feel like a special person," he said.
The students suggested that he is a special person here, too, and they
gave him their thanks. They also gave him copies of their reviews of
The American St. Nick."It (the book) will help you understand
that good things really can happen during sad times," wrote Jeffrey
Ahern, Kenneth Nelson and Michael Ritzenthaler, neatly condensing the
moral of the day. Dick Brookins was lucky enough and kind enough to be a
saint. (Jim
Memmott,Democrat and Chronicle columnist)
October
25, 2004 - Gap writes
history
FORT
INDIANTOWN GAP -- With some of its units formed during the Revolutionary
War, the Pennsylvania Army National Guard's 56th
Brigade, 28th Infantry Division yesterday officially became part of
the nation's military future.
During ceremonies that formally
recognized formation of a new unit, the 56th Brigade became the 56th
Stryker Brigade Combat Team. "We unveil today's future for the
Army," said Maj. Gen. Jessica L. Wright, adjutant general of the
Pennsylvania National Guard. "Charles Darwin, the naturalist, said
it's not the strongest who survive, not the most intelligent, but those
that are the most adaptive to change," U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown,
said during ceremonies at Muir Airfield.
Pennsylvania has the only National
Guard unit to be designated as a Stryker Brigade.
In the 1990s, the Army was still operating as it had for years during the
Cold War, said Murtha, a member of the House Defense Appropriations
Committee. Peacekeeping and urban-warfare missions were increasing,
and the Army had to respond to lengthy operations that were short of a
large-scale war, he said.
The Army was "too heavy" for rapid
insertion in places like Kosovo, Murtha said. However, officials
began discussing how to change the U.S. military, and by 1999, military
officials began to push for a lighter, high-tech fighting force, Murtha
said. The result was the creation of the Stryker brigades, the
congressman said.
In 2001, the Pennsylvania Army
National Guard was selected as one of six brigades for conversion to
Stryker Brigade Combat Team status. The other five brigades are active
Army units. Fort Indiantown Gap was chosen in July 2003 as the home base
for the Stryker Brigade. The Stryker Brigades are designed for rapid
deployment anywhere in the world within days. The brigades are best known
for their Stryker vehicles, a 19-ton armored vehicle that carries a
nine-man squad and is armed with a grenade launcher and a .50-caliber
machine gun. Two Stryker Brigades have already seen combat in Iraq,
Lt. Gen. Benjamin S. Griffin, Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, said at
yesterday's ceremony.
The 3,500-soldier brigade is comprised
of units from throughout Pennsylvania. One of those units, the 1st
Battalion, 111th Infantry of Plymouth Meeting, dates to the Revolutionary
War, according to the Pennsylvania National Guard. "We can give you
the best technology in the world -- which the Stryker Brigade Combat Team
represents -- but you are the warriors," Griffin said to the assembled
soldiers who make up the new Stryker Brigade.
The Stryker Brigade is the largest
program undertaken by the Pennsylvania National Guard in modern history,
Wright said. The Stryker Brigade includes 85 construction projects,
including 10 new readiness centers, eight new maintenance shops and
improvements to 14 facilities and new ranges at Fort Indiantown Gap, she
said.
The commander of the 56th Stryker
Brigade is Col. Joel M. Wierenga. The command sergeant major of the
brigade is Command Sgt. Maj. John E. Jones.
(By LES STEWART,
Lebanon Daily News, Lebanon, PA)
September 30, 2004
World War II Prisoner of War recalls war
experiences
Joseph Estanich
World War II Prisoner of War veteran
Joseph Estanich says he can still hear the sounds of mortars slamming into
German pillboxes 60 years later.
The 88-year-old Estanich was invited
to speak to members and guests of the American Society of Military
Comptrollers' Western Maryland Chapter Sept. 15 by his son, John Estanich,
a program analyst with the U.S. Army Garrison Resource Management. He was
joined by his wife, Julia Ann, John's three siblings and grandchildren who
came as far as Florida to hear him talk about his World War II wartime
experiences at the Community Activities Center. Col. Denise McCollum,
deputy of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command Resource
Management and president of ASMC welcomed the veteran.
Never forget POWs/MIAs
September commemorates the prisoners
of war and those still Missing in Action. More than 600 people are
constantly at work within the Joint Task Force Full Accounting in Hawaii,
identifying and repatriating service members who remain unaccounted for
from previous wars. In Iraq, 75 warriors have been recovered alive during
the conflict there. Past conflicts remain a challenge. While the remains
of 730 service members who fought in Vietnam have been identified and
returned to America since that war ended, more than 1,800 remain
unaccounted for.
Drafted
The elder Estanich was 25 years old
when he was drafted into the Army in 1941 and trained as a light machine
gunner. He fought in four major campaigns with the 28th Infantry Division
and was taken prisoner by the Germans during the Battle of the Bulge in
1944.
The slender, soft-spoken veteran spoke
in sometimes-graphic detail about his nine months at the European front,
fighting through bramble hedgerows and forests, to being captured by the
Germans and declared a Prisoner of War.
He landed in France in July 1944,
after a nine-day trip on a ship from Boston. "I was seasick for days," he
said, noting that mustard was placed on the tables for every meal,
supposedly to help cure queasy stomachs. "We couldn't figure that out."
Estanich joined the 28th Division and the
fight eastward towards Germany. He described the steady stream of
ambulances bearing the dead and wounded from the heavy fighting towards
Paris. A commander wearing a brand-new leather jacket was shot in the
head because he stood out from the bedraggled Soldiers' uniforms. "That
jacket was a dead giveaway," he said.
One day during a lull in the fighting,
Estanich had the chance to meet up with one of his brothers who was in a
nearby unit. Another brother was also in Europe; a fourth was in the
Pacific. "All four made it home okay," said Estanich's son John.
Estanich was with the first American
troops to parade through the streets of Paris celebrating the liberation.
"The girls would run out and kiss the GIs," he said. The audience chuckled
when he said he had to be careful what he said in the presence of his wife
of 61 years. "I'm not saying that I kissed any, and I'm not saying I
didn't either."
Push towards Germany
By September 1944, the 28th Division
was pushing on towards Germany under "constant artillery battles and heavy
casualties." Pillboxes, or heavy concrete bunkers housing German soldiers
and artillery were barriers along the French and German border they
attacked with ferocious consequences.
The freezing cold, ice and sleet were
another enemy and foxholes were the Soldiers' only homes.
The struggle to stay warm sometimes
led to desperate measures. Estanich approached a Soldier sitting straight
up in his foxhole. "When I saw that he was dead, I took his blanket. We
covered ourselves with branches, everything we could find. We couldn't
take our shoes off because you couldn't put them back on due to the
swelling."
Captured
One day, Estanich and a small platoon
of Soldiers got separated from the main division and wandered through the
thick forest trying to find their way back.
"We had no food, rifles or overcoats,
and there was a foot of snow on the ground. We had to make a decision," he
said. The Soldiers walked out of the woods and saw some troops ahead that
they thought were Americans. "It was a deception--they were Signal Corps
Germans," he said.
He spent the next four months as a POW
in various Stalags, or prison camps, eating bread and horsemeat and
sleeping on floors. He was liberated by the British Army in April 1945--30
pounds lighter--then sent home and discharged. He went on to pursue a
government career, retiring from the Treasury Department in 1974.
His son John said this was the first
time he heard some of the details of his father's experiences. "He would
tell us if we asked, but I never heard some of the things he talked about
today," he said. (by Ann
Duble, Standard Editor dcmilitary.com)
September 24, 2004
- HARRISBURG, Pa., PRNewswire/ -- Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff today
invited the public to join state Department of Agriculture
employees for the Department's Agricultural Education Brown Bag Luncheon
Series on Monday, Sept. 27, 2004. Bureau of Farm Show employee Derek
Ruhl, who recently returned from a one-year term in Kosovo, will discuss
his service with the Pennsylvania Army National Guard's
28th Infantry Division. He was
stationed at Camp Bondsteel, Multi-National Brigade East, 30 minutes
southwest of Prishtina.
August 22, 2004 - A day to remember - Knox
man witnessed liberation of Paris
On Aug. 25, 1944,
the day Paris was liberated, Sam Benton was about 15 rows back, marching
in a grand military parade with the U.S. 28th
Infantry Division, 110th Regiment. His outfit was leading the
spectacle of might and was recorded in a famous photograph of U.S.
soldiers in rank and file procession along the joyous Champs-Elysees with
the Arc de Triomphe rising proudly in the background.
"It was quite a day," says Benton,
remembering World War II 60 years ago when he was a 20-year-old combat
medic. He had already seen quite a few bloody days with the
famed 28th, the nation's oldest division, which can trace elements
of its history to 1747, being organized by Benjamin Franklin.
Benton joined the Army in 1943 and
trained as a surgical technician after graduating from Central High School
in Chattanooga. He shipped out in June 1944 and arrived in England in
early July with the 28th Infantry Division's 110th
Regiment.
He began treating the wounded after
the division landed in Normandy and began fighting its way across the
deadly hedgerow country of the Calvados region of France. The 28th battled
its way across western France, at times in street-to-street combat in such
places as Percy, Montbray, Montguoray, Gathemo and St. Sever de Calvados.
After those savage engagements, the infantry moved north toward the Seine
River in late August, and then was among the first American troops to
enter Paris.
The battle parade, he says, down the
Champs-Elysees was something to remember. "The French people were
just very gracious," says Benton, 80, who became a ceramics engineer after
the war, spending 40 years with Union Carbide and Martin Marietta in Oak
Ridge. He retired in 1989 and lives in Knoxville. "There were lots
of flowers, lots of wine, lots of girls, lots of kisses," he says. "They
all wanted to shake your hand."
As he and his fellow troops marched
by, they were saluted by Gen. Dwight Eisenhower and French Gen. Charles De
Gaulle. "Just after we passed them, we began double-timing
(running)," Benton says. The fun and hilarity of liberation were
about over for the 28th. The unit got to spend the night in Paris,
but by the next day, it was moving out, heading for even bloodier fighting
than it had experienced. Ahead for the 28th was the Siegfried Line and
Hertgen Forest, two casualty-ridden campaigns not only for the 28th, but
also for many other American forces.
After crossing the Meuse River into
Belgium, the division moved into Luxembourg where they faced the famous
"dragons teeth" of the Siegfried Line, a series of German troop and tank
defenses located between the French and German border. By Sept. 11,
1944, the unit had crossed into Germany, becoming the first American
troops to do so. The 28th suffered heavy casualties at the Siegfried
Line, where they were pinned down for days. It was here that Benton earned
his Bronze Star as a combat medic.
"After we got through the 'dragons
teeth,' there was thick fog. We couldn't see. Then it lifted. And the
Germans were looking down on us. They immediately opened fire with machine
guns and killed six (U.S. soldiers) right away. Two of them were medics.
"This was our first experience fighting with pillboxes. The Germans were
on the slopes in front of us. It was interlocking fire and the pillboxes
were well-defended," he says. He had to treat and rescue wounded
soldiers under blistering fire, and at one point as the infantry tried to
dislodge the pillboxes, he and other medics scurried up the hillside with
a litter to retrieve downed soldiers.
On one evacuation, he and another
medic worked to save a wounded soldier in the midst of battle. "The medic
got shot in the right hip, and I guess the bullet went up through his
chest. He died there," he says softly. "He was a friend."
The really heavy losses came in the
Huertgen Forest in late September 1944. Trees in the forest looked like
rows of soldiers in a line they were so straight and uniform. Rain created
quagmires of mud up and over the boot-line, Benton remembers, even up to
the frames of the jeeps. "The trees were so thick, you couldn't see
10 feet. It was a 50-square-mile forest. You lived one day at a time," he
says quietly. "We would just walk and fight. We got very little
sleep. Sometimes, we had to fight at night, and then dig in during the day
because the Germans were shelling us."
The Huertgen Forest was also a killing
ground for medics. They stood out with the bright red crosses glimmering
on their helmets. And, they didn't carry weapons, only their combat
medic's bag. "German snipers had no respect for medics. We lost a
lot of them in the forest. It became so bad, we had to remove the crosses
from our helmets." The 28th spent more than three weeks in the
forest, battling Germans who were making a determined counter-offensive
against advancing American and Allied troops.
By the end of the fighting in the
Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge, the 28th had suffered more than
15,000 casualties. In Benton's unit alone, of the 12 medics who
began the campaigns from July 1944 through February 1945, six were killed.
The 28th Infantry Division was awarded five campaign
streamers for battles in Normandy, Northern France, Ardennes-Alsace,
Rhineland and Central Europe. In addition, it also won Frances' Croix de
Guerre.
Benton's own individual awards include
the Bronze Star and the Combat Medic's Badge with three battle stars, of
which, he says, he is the proudest. "That means you were a medic in
combat," he says. It also means he was a hero to many of the
wounded, and for some, his were the last eyes they saw.
"I have always called him my hero,"
says Bettye Benton, his wife of 59 years.
(FRED BROWN,
Knoxville News-Sentinel Co. )
August 19, 2004 -
Sixty years ago
this December, Dayley D. Collett didn't want to give up to the
Germans or give up on his family.
Years later, he
didn't give up on getting a Bronze Star.
On Wednesday,
before a standing ovation of approximately 50 people at the weekly
Kiwanis meeting, the medal Collett earned in World War II was pinned
onto the same uniform he wore when he was discharged.
"Mr. Collett
served in the Battle of the Bulge and was captured and didn't want
to give up," said U.S. Rep. Dave Hobson, R-Springfield. "That
exemplifies his spirit. He never gives up."
Collett was a
young recruit from West Virginia when World War II broke out.
As a member of the
3rd Army, 28th Infantry Division, 109th
Regiment, Collett was fighting in the Battle of the Bulge
near Luxembourg in December 1944 when the German army surrounded
their dug-in position.
Throughout the
bitterly cold night, Collett and his fellow soldiers fired at enemy
positions as they were pounded by the Germans.
Collett said he
remembered bullets flying and one round hit an eight-round magazine
clip he had set on top his bunker, which exploded next to his face.
But by the morning
of Dec. 18, the unit was out of ammunition and completely
surrounded. They finally surrendered.
"When you are
taken prisoner during a war, the only thing you want to do is
survive," Collett, 83, said following the ceremony.
"I think the
Germans we surrendered to were old Army people who respected us and
how we had fought through the night," Collett said. "They kept us
alive. We had killed 17 of them." Collett was released six
months later at the end of the war. He got out of the service just
happy to be alive.
He wasn't
concerned about medals until later in life. As he got older, he
thought of his service and wounds and tried to see if he was
entitled to any awards. "I want to leave it to my children,"
Collett said. Collett's daughter, Sharon Adkins, 58, of
Marengo, said her father is a humble man.
"He wants this for
his family," Adkins said. "It's a validation of what he went through
and that we have not forgotten his sacrifice."
Betsy Smith, 40,
of Marengo, Collett's granddaughter, said it was astounding he made
it out of the war, did what he did and now 60 years later would
receive the Bronze Star. "He is so glad to be able to pass
this down to his family," Smith said. "But we all appreciate
everyone's help who has tried to get him his medals.
Bill Brandt, of
the Veteran's Service Commission office got involved in the case in
2002. "In checking with the Army Board for Correction of
Military Records, we found out he was entitled to the POW Medal and
the Bronze Star," Brandt said.
Despite news
clippings at the time stating he was shipped back to the United
States following liberation, the Board concluded that the evidence
wasn't enough for a Purple Heart. In March, the board sent Collett
the decision.
"The Purple Heart is
awarded for a wound sustained as a result of hostile action,
substantiating evidence must be provided to verify that the wound
was the result of hostile action, the wound must have required
treatment, and the medical treatment must have been made a matter of
official record," said the letter from the board.
Hobson, in
presenting the Bronze Star on Wednesday, said that he was still
going to work on getting the Purple Heart awarded to him.
"We aren't through
with this yet," Hobson told Collett. "I'm not going to be satisfied
until I can come back here and pin the Purple Heart on you."
(By
CARL BURNETT JR.,
The Eagle-Gazette Staff, Lancaster,
PA)
WWI vet, 103,
still aids fellow veterans
105th VFW Convention
Most of the men attending the national
Veterans of Foreign Wars convention downtown have lived their share of
American history, combat veterans who have fought at places with names
such as Anzio, Khe Sanh and the Chosin Reservoir.
But none has lived as much of the
nation's history as the short, frail man who hobbled down an aisle at the
Sabin Cincinnati Convention Center Tuesday morning during the VFW's
business session, smiling and nodding to the veterans who reached out to
shake his hand and pat his back.
"I
guess I'm one of a kind," said 103-year-old Robley Rex of Okolona, Ky., a
suburb of Louisville and a lifetime member of Okolona VFW Post 8639.
He is one of a kind - the only
surviving World War I veteran in Kentucky, according to the Kentucky
Department of Veterans Affairs.
In 1917 and 1918, 4.7 million American
soldiers - known to history as "the doughboys" - fought the Kaiser's
German legions across France and Belgium and into Germany.
Robley Rex joined them as a young buck
private at the tail end of the war and stayed in Germany with the
28th Infantry Division long after the
armistice was signed, mostly doing administrative work for an intelligence
company.
"I was no big hero," said Rex, who had
to strain to hear the people who came to wish him well. "I did my duty."
While the World War II generation is
rapidly aging and passing away, some 4 million of the 16 million who
served are still alive. But fewer than 200 of the doughboys
are living, according to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates.
The thing that makes Rex so remarkable
is not just his longevity, but what he has done with it. Three
days a week the 103-year-old hitches a ride with a friend to the VA
Hospital in Louisville, where he volunteers. His duties include dropping
off samples at the hospital lab, delivering paperwork and walking from
room to room to talk to veterans of later wars.
He has logged more than 13,000 hours
of volunteer work since 1986, his friends say. "I try to cheer
the boys up," he said, "and I guess I usually do."
Rex left the Army in 1922, came home
to Louisville and made his living as a postal worker and as an ordained
Methodist minister. He and his late wife, Grace, had no children, but he
does have a family - his fellow veterans of Post 8639 and the women of the
post's Ladies Auxiliary. Several of the Ladies' Auxiliary
members drove him to Cincinnati Tuesday morning so he could receive a
Commander-in-Chief's Medallion.
As Rex walked slowly up the aisle
after accepting his medallion, veterans by the dozens jumped out of their
seats to greet him. Rex waved and smiled at them all.
"He's eating this up," said Martha Allen, one of the Okolona women who
brought Rex to Cincinnati. "He's a sweetheart. Nobody deserves it more."
At Okolona Post 8639, Rex is a
fixture, serving as post chaplain and never missing a post meeting.
Joe Schnitterbaum, the post commander, said Rex was cutting the grass at
his home until he was 95. "We told him, 'Robley, you're not going to
do this any more,' " Schnitterbaum said. Ever since, Schnitterbaum
said, the post has paid a neighborhood kid to cut their friend's grass.
What Rex really looks forward to,
Schnitterbaum said, are the dances the VFW post holds. "You ought to
see that old man dance," Schnitterbaum said. "He takes his cane and sticks
it through the belt loop on the back of his pants, grabs the first lady he
sees and off he goes."
Rex joined the VFW in 1924 at the
national convention held that year in Cincinnati. "I remember that
very well; I stayed in the Sinton Hotel," said Rex, referring to a hotel
that was torn down decades ago. Sitting on a folding chair outside
the convention, as conventioneers continued to file by and take his
picture, Rex asked a Cincinnatian if the Sinton was still around.
When told it was long gone, he
laughed. "Oh well," the
veteran said. "I guess I outlasted it."
(By Howard Wilkinson, Cincinnati, OH
Enquirer staff writer)
August 10, 2004 -
World War II vets celebrate, remember- Joseph Galinelli
The sun was warm, but the breeze just
right as veterans gathered in front of the sign that bears the names of
all the Barrington men and women who have served in the armed forces.
Joseph Galinelli is one of the names
on the honor roll, which is located on a large sign on the front lawn of
Barrington Town Hall. Mr. Galinelli was a soldier in the
28th Infantry Division of the United States
Army. He landed on Omaha Beach during the June 1944 beach storming known
as D-Day, and he received two purple hearts and five bronze battle stars
for his service in World War II.
"We lost 10,000 on the beach," he
said. "They [German soldiers] were just shooting us up as we crawled in
from the water." Mr. Galinelli also saw combat in the single
deadliest battle of the war, the Battle of the Bulge. He permanently
injured his left eye in the battle and spent a year and a half recovering
in a military hospital.
"I was so happy to hear the news of
Aug. 12, 1945 � that the war was over. I got to go home." (East
Bay Newspapers )
July 27, 2004 - Assistant district
attorney promoted to Army captain
CHAMBERSBURG -- U.S.
Army Captain Matthew D. Fogal, assistant district attorney for Franklin
County, July 11 was promoted to his current rank.
He
is a trial counsel for the office of the Staff Judge Advocate at
Headquarters Company, 28th Infantry Division
at Harrisburg Military Police, Harrisburg.
A 1990 graduate of
Cumberland Valley Christian School, Chambersburg, he earned his bachelor's
degree in 1996 from Shippensburg University and his juris doctor in 2000
from Dickinson School of Law of the Pennsylvania State University,
Carlisle.
Fogal served from March
2003 to March 2004 in Kosovo as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. There,
he received the meritorious service medal for work as the sole legal
advisor to a forward-deployed location in Gaglione, Kosovo.
He is the son of Robert
Sr. and Barbara Fogal, Chambersburg, PA.
June 29, 2004 - Ted Yaw, whose career
spanned 45 years, dies
A former sales manager for The
Oregonian, the veteran also served as chairman of the Portland School
Board.
Ted Yaw, former general advertising
sales manager for The Oregonian whose 45-year media career spanned radio,
print journalism, advertising sales and promotions, died of cancer on June
27, 2004, at his Beaverton home.
Mr. Yaw was 81. Mr. Yaw served
for six years on the Portland School Board, from 1962 to 1968, and was
chairman twice.
Theodore Yaw was born May 17, 1923, in
Winlock, Wash. The family moved to Portland to join the family at Yaw's
Top Notch restaurant. Mr. Yaw graduated from Grant High School and
attended the University of Oregon.
He was a radio announcer in high
school at KBPS in Portland and in college at KORE in Eugene, and then was
an announcer at KXL in Portland before serving in the U.S. Army's
28th Infantry Division during World War II.
His company landed in Normandy in July 1944. He was wounded and
hospitalized, and became an announcer for the Armed Forces Radio Service
in Paris.
After his 1945 discharge, he returned
to KXL. In 1952, he joined The Oregonian as a copywriter, then moved into
advertising sales. In 1963, he became general advertising sales manager,
in 1972 manager of sales development, and in 1987, director of The
Oregonian Newspaper in Education program. He retired in 1990.
Mr. Yaw was also a member of the
Portland Chamber of Commerce, the Portland Traffic Safety Commission, and
worked with the Community Chest, United Good Neighbors and United Way. He
was a member of the Royal Rosarians, the Masonic Lodge, Scottish Rite,
Shriners, Lions Club and Elks Club. He was active in the SMART reading
program until March.
He married Bonnie Sawyer in 1942. They
had two sons and divorced. In 1966, he married Joan Davidson Green. They
had three daughters; his wife died in 1999. He is survived by sons
Ron and Jeff; daughters Dana Isaak, Debbie Brown, and Deidre Yaw; four
grandchildren; and companion June Moberg. A memorial service will be
at 1 p.m. Thursday, July 1, in Sunset Presbyterian Church, 14986 S.W.
Cornell Road, Portland. Remembrances to St. Vincent Hospice or the
American Cancer Society.
July 1, 2004 - PA
Governor Rendell Sends Off 750 Troops as Part of Operation Iraqi Freedom
FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa., July 1 /PRNewswire/
-- Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell and Adjutant General Jessica
L. Wright today participated in an event to send off almost 750
Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers from the 28th Infantry Division for
Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Comprised of seven different units from
around the state, the soldiers will perform patrol, convoy and other
security operations and take with them more than 150 unit vehicles,
including armored personnel carriers and high- mobility, multi-purpose
wheeled vehicles.
"Midge and I wish a speedy and safe
return for the soldiers of the Pennsylvania National Guard who have
dedicated themselves to bringing democracy to the people of Iraq,"
Governor Rendell said. "We will continue to keep them in our thoughts
and prayers as they work tirelessly to serve as beacons of hope while
restoring order and preserving freedom."
The mobilization will mark the first
time a maneuver battalion from the Pennsylvania National Guard's 28th
Infantry Division will deploy into combat since World War II. The 1st
Battalion, 103rd Armor, dubbed Task Force Dragoon, includes soldiers
from Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 103rd Armor, Johnstown;
Company A, 1st Battalion, 111th Infantry, Philadelphia; Company A, 1st
Battalion, 112th Infantry, Ford City; Company B, 1st Battalion, 103rd
Armor, Connellsville; Company C, 103rd Engineer Battalion, Philadelphia;
the 128th Forward Support Battalion, Pittsburgh and 1st Battalion, 108th
Field Artillery, Carlisle.
"More and more of our citizen
soldiers are responding to the call from our country because of the many
unique skills they bring with them," Maj. Gen. Wright said. "The Task
Force heading to Iraq is just one more example of the tremendous
experience of the Pennsylvania National Guard."
During the ceremony, Maj. Gen.
Wright presented Pennsylvania state flags to each company commander of
Task Force Dragoon. These flags will be flown in Iraq and will return
with the soldiers when the mission is completed.
On July 2, the soldiers will travel
to Fort Bliss, Texas, for additional training before heading to the
Persian Gulf this Fall. Task Force Dragoon will spend up to one year in
Iraq.
Members of Task Force Dragoon will
join almost 1,300 other Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers already in
Iraq.
Note: Select photos of the event
will be available after 4:30 p.m. Thursday at
http://www.dmva.state.pa.us
Click: Public Affairs, news releases.
July 11, 2004 - World War II Weekend
-- An Army field unit and displays will be set up 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday and next Sunday as part of events organized by the 110th
Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum
near Washington, Pa. WWII vets admitted free. Rides on WWII-era trolleys
and caboose rides on a vintage diesel built for the Navy. Toll-free at
1-877-728-7655.
August 6, 2004 - PFC
Charles A. Deacon,
veteran of two years in the South Pacific with the
28th Infantry Division,
has been added to the registry for WWII veterans.
February 7, 2004
By
Regis Behe,
TRIBUNE-REVIEW, Pittsburh, PA
A new local literary magazine has been
launched this week. The Writers Post Journal, the brainchild of local
writer Jackie Druga-Marchetti, showcases short fiction, poetry
and nonfiction. "I'm really shocked by the quality of submissions
we've been getting," says Druga-Marchetti, of Dormont. "It's been
wonderful. There are so many talented writers out there." The Writers
Post Journal also includes "Until He Comes Home," a journal entry
from Stanley Wuchevich, a local Army reservist from Imperial who
is assigned to the 28th Infantry Division. Wuchevich, who will be
deployed in Iraq in March, will post monthly entries in the magazine
until his tour of duty is over.
Military Police undergo special training
at Fort Dix
01/21/2004
FORT DIX - Troops
being trained at Fort Dix for MP support have several obstacles to
overcome. Even before they got to head out for patrols, there was all the
information that had to be processed. The soldiers being trained at Fort
Dix are Army National Guard Soldiers from the
28th Infantry Division.
Hailing from Pennsylvania, they are receiving special training to provide
relief for Military Police stationed in Iraq.
Walter W. Brewster
The Free Lance-Star, Fredricksburg, VA 01/06/2004
Walter Whatley
Brewster, 88, passed away peacefully Monday, Jan. 5, 2004, at Village
Green Rehab and Health Care Center, Fayetteville, N.C. He recently moved
to the Carolina Highlands in Fayetteville, but was a longtime resident of
the Norfolk and Virginia Beach area and of Fredericksburg. He was the
dearly beloved husband for over 52 years of the former Ethel Elizabeth Ann
Wood of Fayetteville. He is survived by
their daughter, Ann Caroline and her husband, Maj. Stuart P. Goldsmith,
and his adoring granddaughters, Faith Caroline and Anna Elizabeth
Goldsmith of Fayetteville. Also surviving is his sister, Alma B.
Scarborough Owen of Sulphur Springs, Texas; and a nephew, Capt. O.D.
Scarborough and his wife, Nancy, of Washington state. He leaves his
sister-in-law, Betty W. Johnson and her husband, J. Archie Johnson Jr.,
and their family of Virginia Beach and the Eastern shore of Virginia. Also
surviving are his first cousins, retired Brig. Gen. Albert E. Brewster and
his wife, Susanne, of Fredericksburg and Barbara B. Owen and her husband,
Wayne, of Pine Bluff, Ark. Mr. Brewster was a
native of Arkansas, the son of Walter Thomas and Ruth Irene Whatley
Brewster. He completed high school in Sulphur Springs, Texas and graduated
from the University of Arkansas at Monticello. Walter volunteered for duty
in World War II, joining the 28th Infantry Division, which
participated in the battles and campaigns of the Rhineland, Central
Europe, Normandy, Northern France and Ardennes. After World War
II, he graduated from the Wharton School of Business, University of
Pennsylvania. He moved to Norfolk, where he served 30 years as an educator
and administrator for the Norfolk City public schools, retiring as
personnel director. He was an avid genealogist and devoted much of his
retirement yeas to helping others trace their roots. He was a member of
many hereditary organizations and served as Virginia State President of
the Sons of the American Revolution. He was a former member of the Norfolk
Chapter, SAR, the Col. Fielding Lewis Chapter in Fredericksburg and the Culpeper Minutemen Chapter. A few years ago, he became a member of the
Marquis de Lafayette Chapter in Fayetteville, N.C., and recently he was
pleased to become a charter member of the Halifax Resolves Chapter of
Halifax, N.C., where some of his ancestors had served in the American
Revolutionary War. Walter was also a
member of First Families of Georgia, the Sons of the Revolution and the
Loyalists and Patriots Society. He was a longtime member of Eastern Shore
Chapel Episcopal Church in Virginia Beach, where he served on the vestry
and taught Sunday School. A gentleman, a scholar and a dedicated family
man would best describe Walter or "Bruce" as many friends knew him. After cremation, a
private burial service will be held in Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery,
Spring Lake, N.C. A memorial service will be held at a later date at St.
John's Episcopal Church, 302 Green St., Fayetteville, N.C. 28301. In lieu of
flowers, memorials may be made to the church or to a favorite charity.
02/04/2003
Lewisberry mayor's dedication remembered.
May name park after Pelton, who died on
Thursday. Richard "Dick" Pelton drove every day
through Lewisberry, up and down each street. A borough councilman
and mayor, he would search for anything out of place, a broken sign,
perhaps, said his colleague Donald Dodson. And then he would make sure it
was repaired. Pelton died at his home Thursday after a lengthy
illness. He was 73. He settled in Lewisberry after returning home from the
Korean War where he served in the U.S. Army's 28th Infantry Division.
(York Dispatch, York, PA)
The
Combat Patch, worn on the right shoulder of the uniform top just
below the U.S. flag, marks the military division that a particular
Soldier served with during combat. The tradition of the Combat
Patch first began in WWII. This presentation marks the first time
since the Second World War and only the second time in the Iron
Division�s history the �Keystone Bloody Bucket� patch of the
28th Infantry Division has been
awarded. 
The
42nd Field Hospital normally moved in support of Gen. George S. Patton's
Third Army, but on Dec. 16, 1944, one platoon, including Sgt. Gorman
Cornwell, was at Wiltz, Belgium, in support of the
28th Infantry Division, VIII Corps, First Army. 
He
is a trial counsel for the office of the Staff Judge Advocate at
Headquarters Company, 28th Infantry Division
at Harrisburg Military Police, Harrisburg. 
Page last revised
01/12/2024