Places You Have Seen

Being recently asked to reflect on my research-driven travels and their unforeseen perks (chocolate, music, expanded horizons…), I found myself still sifting through the past fourteen years of trips across the pond long after e-mailing my “for the record” response. I enjoy nibbling on my stash of French, Belgian and German chocolate bars, being in countries where I’m bound to hear at least one Robbie Williams song on the radio before heading home, and, above all, being able to share visuals and firsthand reports of the areas where local World War II servicemen last tread, sometimes accompanied by visits to their final resting places. But a part of me always comes back to the individuals whose paths I trace and to syllables from a certain Robbie Williams song. In a sense, I have been close to where they are, have definitely driven to places they have seen.

“Have you seen me?,” I can’t help but wonder, as my mind wanders back to E.T.O. (European Theater of Operations) research travel grab-and-go days gone by…

Pondering PFC Art Lemieux's D-Day, Ste.-Mere-Eglise, 2006. (All photos by Jim Koski unless otherwise indicated.)

82nd Airborne Division paratroopers PFC Arthur Lemieux and Pvt. Roy Chipman of Marquette are among those who keep Normandy, France, in my heart. Art, of F Company, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, survived D-Day and the repulsing of German attempts to retake Ste.-Mère-Église only to be cut down on D+3, June 9th, 1944, as his squad was attempting to cross a hedgerowed field between Ste.-Mère-Église and Le Ham.

Roy, who had committed some pre-combat infraction that saw him busted from the rank of sergeant, was part of F Company, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was taken out on July 6th, 1944, possibly by sniper fire, during the several days of tough fighting for Hill 95 near La Haye-du-Puits. For an unknown act of valor the day he died, Chipman was posthumously awarded the Army’s Silver Star Medal, a notch below the Distinguished Service Cross, which is succeeded only by the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The front slope of Hill 95, near La Haye-du-Puits, 2006.

(Courtesy of the Marquette Mining Journal)

 

Pvt. Roy Chipman's posthumously awarded Silver Star. (Courtesy of Craig Lidstrom)

Several regular Army infantry divisions have affected our explorations around Normandy. The 90th’s ranks included Alger County’s Pvt. Donald I. Maki, 359th Infantry Regiment, who fell on July 12th, 1944, while battling German paratroops amidst the Foret de Mont Castre on Mont Castre, a.k.a. Hill 122 (the assigned number being the hill’s height in meters). Military historians debate the cause—poor leadership, subpar training, bad soldiering, or all of the above—but statistics show that in the week Trenary native Maki was killed the 90th Infantry Division’s “Tough Ombres” racked up 26-percent of all Allied casualties in all of the theaters of war.

(Courtesy of the Munising News)

Today, Mont Castre is part of a nature preserve and filled with quiet-sport outdoor enthusiasts. Studying its thickly grown trees and rocky terrain, Jim and I quickly realized what a tough and inconvenient landscape this would have been for the exposed American attackers. A 2010 hike revealed photogenic scenery and views although both served to illustrate why control of the hill was desired by both Allies and their Axis foe decades earlier.

A baffling number of local World War II casualties of the Normandy campaign were men assigned to the 79th Infantry Division (“Cross of Lorraine”), and in 2009 the two of us focused on an area from La Haye-du-Puits to the Ay River crossing at Lessay. As my trip report recounts, “On the southwestern outskirts of La Haye-du-Puits we did our damnedest to locate La Surellerie, where Ishpeming’s PFC Waino Laitinen, a field artilleryman with the 79th, was fatally wounded in action on July 13th, 1944 (he died three days later)…Despite the place name being printed on all of our maps, then and now, La Surellerie did not seem to actually exist.”

Continuing south toward Lessay, our thoughts turned to several more 79th men, all from our home city of Marquette, who had been lost to the war in July of 1944: PFC Roy J. Smith (Company I, 314th Infantry Regiment; died July 10th), PFC Tauno Hamalainen (315th Infantry Regiment; died July 11th) and T/5 Lloyd Martin (Company L cook, 314th Infantry Regiment; died July 16th). Jim has always felt a particular sadness over Martin’s death, knowing that his widow was his only remaining immediate family, that he was buried in her family’s Negaunee Cemetery plot, and that his widow, despite living a long life, never remarried.

(Above courtesy of the Marquette Mining Journal)

Above and below: Lloyd Martin's final resting place in the Negaunee Cemetery, Negaunee, Michigan.

 

The Ay River at Lessay.

From Lessay, looking past the Ay river north toward La Haye-du-Puits.

Our first-time Euro-solo-traveling status paid off several days later when we took one more crack at finding elusive La Surellerie and employed Jim’s idea of approaching west to east. If we found ourselves in La Haye-du-Puits without spotting any signs marking our intended destination, we would at least know that we had passed through it. While we did wind up in La Haye-du-Puits, we had rolled past a collection of buildings that, by some stretch of the imagination, might be considered a small village. “Fortuitously Jim had stopped the car at the top of the hill overlooking this group of houses and farm buildings from the west in order to take a photograph simply because the view to the east had provided a great new angle of Hill 95 where Marquette’s Pvt. Roy Chipman was killed…Mission inadvertently accomplished!”

Above and below: Hill 95 from La Surellerie.

 

Several years later, my having read John C. McManus’ very thorough account of the entire Normandy campaign led me and Jim to again seek out the elevated area near La Haye-du-Puits. Capping a day of travels, we ventured “north-northwest to Lessay and then off the main road in search of the high ground at Montgardon, Montgardon Ridge having been the scene of some heavy fighting for the 79th Infantry Division in July 1944. Just as studying firsthand the marshy ground between Graignes and Le Port Saint-Pierre had been rewarding, rolling into Montgardon was a small but nice moment of triumph. From the churchyard, we surveyed the countryside eastward in the direction of La Haye-du-Puits, and beyond toward Hill 95” where Marquette paratrooper Roy Chipman was killed in July 1944.

Above and below: From Montgardon toward La Haye-du-Puits and Hill 95.

 

As my trip report notes, several local teens on a Montgardon park bench pretended not to notice us yet obviously had as they fell silent when Jim and I returned to the car, babbling to each other about various local soldiers who had fought and died in this vicinity or further south toward Lessay. We chuckled later over inadvertently providing some free entertainment, but also wondered when last, if ever, a post-war American had set foot on Montgardon Ridge.

“Backtracking south to the first small road running east we were finally, FINALLY, again in unmarked La Surellerie, which amounts to a few newer houses on a hilltop curve descending past several older buildings preceding the city limits of La Haye-du-Puits…Montgardon proved the key in helping us relocate this elusive puzzle piece and to it we are grateful!”    

The 35th Infantry Division, with its misleading nickname “the Santa Fe Division,” became a research daisy-chain for me over several trips spanning from Normandy to Alsace/Lorraine, Belgium and eventually Poland.

The first 35th “daisy” was a 20-something Big Bay native who had already served overseas in Iceland for a year and a half before somehow becoming part of that division’s ranks. This Yooper made it through Normandy hedgerow fighting, the taking of Saint-Lô and the Allies’ cruising drive south through places like Tessy-sur-Vire and Pont Farcy before the suddenly counterattacking enemy called his number. According to Wikipedia, the 35th ID was enroute to an assembly area when it was diverted “to secure the Mortain-Avranches corridor” and to come to the aid of a fellow division’s men valiantly holding but cut off on Mortain’s Hill 314. PFC Everett Beerman was killed in the vicinity of Mortain on August 12th, 1944.

(Courtesy of the Marquette Mining Journal.)

In October 2010, Jim and I picked up our local KIA’s final path from our home base in Ducey, a pretty southern Manche town very near coastline views of Mont-Saint-Michel. “The weather looked promising as we grabbed backpacks, camera bags and laptop and headed out the door, intent on retracing—via whatever obscure side roads necessary—the path of PFC Everett Beerman’s Company B, 134th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division, from Romagny to Mortain, population 2,191.” True to form, yesterday’s battlefield in present day was charming countryside on either side of narrow, sometimes hedgerow-lined, pleasantly winding roads. 

We arrived at the quiet, little village of Romagny, now more or less a suburb of Mortain. “We reached a spot coming out of Romagny where the—literally—uphill battle PFC Beerman and comrades faced was staring us in ours. All we could say was, ‘Wow…’ While we had doubts as to whether the pictures we took would do the scene justice, those photos would definitely beat none at all.”

Romagny into Mortain.

The elevated view from Mortain.

The second link in the armed forces daisy-chain was Marquette-born Sgt. Edward Aho; in a sense, Beerman’s regimental replacement, as he was assigned to the 134th in the field on August 19th, 1944. Besides outranking Beerman, Edward also exceeded him in age by about 13 years! Part of Patton’s Third Army, the 35th was racing eastward across France, and contributed to the liberation of Nancy in the Lorraine region in mid-September.

On October 9th, less than 30 kilometers northeast of Nancy, Sgt. Aho was taken prisoner during the heated tug-of-war for the town of Fossieux, France. Not until January 1945 would his mother receive a postcard he had sent her from Stalag III C, at Alt Drewitz, Brandenburg, Prussia. He was never heard from again.

Courtesy of the Marquette Regional History Center.

The daisy-chain acquired its third link when I assisted a coworker in researching his namesake uncle killed in World War II, Pvt. Robert W. Martin. While not a Yooper, Pvt. Martin was a Michigander, and lo and behold, he was part of a huge pool of replacements assigned to, yes, the 134th Infantry Regiment on a fateful date, December 16th, 1944.

Pvt. Robert W. Martin. (Courtesy of Bob Martin.)

Then-positioned in the Lorraine region of northeastern France, very near the German border, and still part of Patton’s Third Army, Martin would see his whole division swung northwest to help fight off and undo the determined enemy’s re-entry into Luxembourg and Belgium. The 24-year-old private was killed during the clearing of Marvie, neighboring village to Bastogne, on December 29th, 1944, and, at the request of his family, he received final burial in the Luxembourg American World War II Cemetery.

(Courtesy of Pascal Hainaut.)

On my friend Bob Martin’s behalf, I saw to it that our 2011 Alpventures trip brought us to both Marvie and the cemetery at Hamm, Luxembourg. Sunday morning, August 28th, found me, Jim and Tony trading hellos at Bastogne’s Hotel Melba with Pascal Hainaut of nearby Houffalize. Moments later, we were on the move to a Battle of the Bulge area easy to reach but not on your typical World War II tour itinerary.

“Reports that Bob and I worked together to collect showed that his rifleman uncle, part of Company B, 134th Infantry Regiment, fell in battle, hit by small arms fire, in Marvie just south of Bastogne…The weather was making a valiant effort to change for the better by the time we stowed our luggage in the Team Koski rental car—a silver BMW four-door hatchback…With Pascal leading the way, we rolled southbound the few kilometers to Marvie.

Photographs were taken outside the town’s post-war-looking, gray-brick church, Yours Truly holding up a black and white picture of Pvt. Robert W. Martin. Pascal also directed Jim and his camera lens to a group of the town’s oldest buildings, most relevant to Martin and most of which we had passed on our way toward the church there in the Sunday-morning-deserted centre ville.

(Above photo courtesy of Tony Cisneros/Alpventures)

Looking toward the World War II-era section of Marvie.

South through Lutrebois and still war-scarred Lutremange to a lovely local monument dedicated to Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.’s Third Army in general but to Pvt. Martin’s 35th Infantry Division in particular for their efforts and sacrifice in that tough and costly December 1944 into January 1945 battle.

In front of the monument, Pascal handed me a special memorial candle he’d inscribed in black marker: ‘In Memory of Private Robert W. Martin, 134th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division, K.I.A. 29 December 1944. We Will Never Forget His Sacrifice.’

Pascal lit the candle and together we placed it in front of the monument, leaving it to burn to its end, flags of our countries waving overhead…

(Tony Cisneros/Alpventures photo)

Behind the monument in a grove of towering trees was a cement pillbox—not a German one but one of Belgian construction, dating back to the time of the French Maginot Line…One direct hit from the right German weaponry had obliterated its back wall. We inspected a kiosk of photos near the pillbox paying black and white tribute to our Battle of the Ardennes G.I.s and, beneath skies that had continued to clear, surveyed the mostly open land in the hilly countryside around us.

Beaming sun above, I checked my watch, saw that we were doing well for time and asked Pascal if there were any 35th Infantry Division foxholes in the vicinity that he could show us. By the way his face lit up, I had my answer! Driving just a short, winding distance, he and his little Hyundai stole up a track barely visible from the main road, our vehicle following, and stopped just outside of a small forest. These were ‘Band of Brothers’-like woods that the 35th men had occupied and from which they would have looked across an open field north toward Lutremange and Bastogne.

We were awed by the number of obvious, remaining foxholes—today lined with many layers of shed pine needles and other forest debris from over the years. Set back from the edge of the forest was a particularly large, square hole that had a descending back ‘entrance’ leading it to it—most likely what was left of a covered command post. That was a very, very, very cool and exciting find for this amateur World War II explorer! Tony snapped a nice picture of me with a big smile on my face standing just inside the trees, Jim and Pascal nosing around in the background…While we all wished we could have had more time to hang out, when the clock keeps ticking, what are you going to do?..” By early afternoon, Jim, Tony and I were standing before Pvt. Robert W. Martin’s grave in another country.

(Tony Cisneros/Alpventures photo)

On a Sunday morning, two summers later, the three of us traveled by car from Berlin, Germany, into Poland to visit what is probably Sgt. Edward Aho’s final resting place, one of six mass graves in a cemetery on the former grounds of Stalag III C. After World War II, Alt Drewitz was no longer part of Germany and today is a borough of Kostrzyn nad Odrą, Poland, known as Drzewice. The Stalag III C site is now actually listed as a tourist destination—for all the right reasons. 

According to the English translation at www.tourist-info-kostrzyn.de, this Nazi P.O.W. camp, which functioned from 1938-1945, was an extreme example of blatant violations of the various conventions laid down to protect prisoners of war. Stalag III C was a destination for Privates and Non-Commissioned Officers of many nationalities: Czech, Polish (including several hundred survivors of the Warsaw Uprising), Belgian, French, Dutch, English, Yugoslav, Greek, Russian, Italian and American. More than 70,000 P.O.W.s were interned while the camp was in operation. And prisoners became forced laborers. Living conditions were described as inhuman—starvation, humiliation, beatings—with public executions commonplace.

Explains the Kostrzyn website, “As a result of the Nazi terror as well as the camp conditions, almost 12 thousand people died, most of them French and Soviet prisoners of war.” In 1962 remains of the prisoners who were murdered or who had otherwise perished at Stalag III C were gathered and more properly laid to rest in six mass graves.

(Tony Cisneros/Alpventures photo)

Sgt. Edward Aho’s surviving family eventually roughly learned what fate had probably befallen him in the early days of 1945, largely due to the research efforts of a grandson. In the words of Edward’s great-nephew Mike Aho, “On 31 January 1945 the Germans decided to evacuate 3C because the advancing Russian Army had gotten very close to the camp. 1600 to 2000 POWs still remained at the camp and they were marched in groups of 200, five abreast, in columns of 40. When the first group had gotten a mile or so from the camp, they ran into Russian tank infantry who immediately opened fire,” the Russians having mistaken the marching men for Hungarians who had allied with the Germans.

“The firefight was over quickly as the Germans were mostly old men and young boys who could not put up much of a fight. Eight Americans were killed during this event and it is believed that Edward Aho was one of them.”

7th Armored Division Memorial, Vielsalm, Belgium, 2008. (Tony Cisneros/Alpventures photo)

While, by their very name, armored divisions imply the employment of only tanks and other mechanized vehicles and weaponry, among their many World War II elements were armored infantry battalions. The city of Marquette lost two armored infantrymen assigned to the 7th Armored (“Lucky Seventh”) Division during the global conflict: Pvt. Jacob Nevala of 38th A.I.B.’s Company C and PFC Eugene St. Onge of the 48th A.I.B. Aside from their hometown, stateside Army training and their fate, they had little in common. Jacob was 12 years older than Gene, a city dweller versus a farm lad, a husband and father rather than a single guy with a fiancée waiting for him back home on what is now Old Little Lake Road. Even in death they would differ, falling in different countries under much different circumstances.

Initially reported missing in action, Nevala was killed in action on November 7th, 1944 at Nederweerterdijk, Holland, leaving his wife Hazel, daughters Donna and Nancy, and son Michael. In March 1949, at the request of his parents (his father felt particularly strongly about it), Jacob’s body was returned from the Netherlands for final burial in Marquette’s Park Cemetery.

Jacob Nevala in uniform. (Courtesy of Gail Nevala.)

In a brief summer 2005 phone conversation with the late Michael (“Mickey”) Nevala, he told me that his father’s entry into the service and shipment overseas happened so quickly there really wasn’t much opportunity for exchanging correspondence with his family. Prior to that telephone call, I had been contacted via e-mail by Niek Hendrix of Ospel, Holland. Niek was researching a 7th Armored Division battle in his town so that a monument could be constructed in memory of the Americans killed there. One of the men remembered would be Jacob Nevala. Niek kindly sent me a drawing of the Bijlmakers family farm—on the road from Ospel to Meyel—where Jacob had died and where he was initially buried.

On the sunny Saturday morning of August 30th, 2008, Jim, Tony and I set out from our Maastricht, Holland, vicinity hotel to meet Niek Hendrix and see the now-dedicated monument in person, knowing that members of the Nevala family were with us in spirit. Traveling by car in a northeasterly direction, we successfully reached our designated meeting place, a McDonald’s Restaurant just off the highway exit to Ospel at nearby Nederweert. Although I had never seen a picture of Niek he quickly spotted us, warm introductions ensued and then he led the way in his Jeep S.U.V. to a residential area and the Hendrix family home...

“47-year-old Niek fits the same label of ‘World War II detective’ that I have recently found myself jokingly if appropriately wearing; however, while my efforts are to learn about World War II Gold Star soldiers from the area where I live, Niek largely concentrates on the Allied soldiers who liberated his part of Holland. He is particularly devoted to the men of the U.S. 7th Armored Division. His family so wanted to remember those of the 7th Armored who fell in battle around Ospel that they built a special memorial listing all 50 soldiers’ names, including Jacob Nevala’s.

A surprise awaited us outside the Hendrix home—six members of the Bijlmakers family on whose farm Pvt. Nevala was briefly buried. Present were Jack Bijlmakers, whose parents had owned the farm during the war, his wife, who had brought a bouquet of dark-red flowers, a brother and his wife, Jack’s son and another of Jack’s sisters-in-law, who carried an American flag. Almost everyone present—American or Dutch—had brought a camera! Of the Bijlmakers only Jack really spoke any English but we received handshakes and greetings from all.

With Niek Hendrix.

 

Niek introduces me to the Bijlmakers, as Tony snaps photos.

As we chat near the memorial, the road from Ospel to Meyel where Jacob Nevala fell lies somewhere beyond the trees.

The prevailing sentiment among the Bijlmakers was to send their best wishes home with us for the Nevala family. Jack gave an emotional description of his experiences during the war, especially the arrival of the American soldiers who liberated the local citizens, people who had been under German occupation for four years. He told a harrowing story about hiding in a homemade bunker with limited space of just 10 meters square but with 31 people squeezed into it. He spoke of his family’s house being destroyed by an enemy shelling that killed two American soldiers while leaving two of the Biljmakers’ treasured ceramic figurines unscratched. He spoke of the mines left behind by the Allies and the enemy that made the newly liberated people of the Ospel area still somewhat captive—or dead or maimed—although he made it clear that the situation with the mines didn’t make their joy any less. The 41,000 mines took four years to remove.

Jack Bijlmaker offers an emotional retelling of his wartime experiences.

To the west of where we stood, across a field, was the road from Ospel to Meyel.

Upon showing us the 7th Armored Division memorial and Pvt. Jacob Nevala’s name, Niek was full of stories and emotion about Jacob and his comrades, but took a few moments to say some very nice words specifically in memory of Pvt. Nevala. With the bouquet of flowers laid at the base of the memorial, adorned by the Biljmakers’ large and our small American flag, and a photograph of Jacob Nevala prominently placed amidst these items, we paused to contemplate all of the words that had been spoken and Jacob’s sacrifice almost 64 years earlier.

Jacob's name is seventh from the top.

Niek pays tribute to 7th Armored and Pvt. Jacob Nevala from Marquette, Michigan, USA.

Then it was time for photographs…”

As we bid farewell to the Bijlmakers, Niek brought his father—now deceased—out of the house to meet us. The senior Mr. Hendrix may not have known a great deal of English but among the words in his arsenal was an enthusiastic, election-year “Obama!”

7th Armored’s previous action in France and the heavy losses it incurred in Holland, as part of Operation Market-Garden, left the division sorely in need of replacement personnel. The 48th Armored Infantry Battalion’s Morning Report for October 10th, 1944 notes the assignment of 2nd Lt. Ernest C. Shillingburg to its ranks the previous day. On October 16th, Shillingburg became part of Headquarters Company, where he would serve as a mortar platoon leader, bringing about his association with the young man from Marquette, Michigan, he would know as “Gene” St. Onge.

PFC Eugene St. Onge. (Courtesy of Carol Lamirand.)

The first days of December 1944 found 48th A.I.B. deployed in various places on either side of the Dutch/German border. According to battalion records, St. Onge, Lt. Shillingburg and comrades were training in Waubach, Holland, a rest billet area, when the Ardennes offensive, the Battle of the Bulge, unexpectedly began on the morning of the 16th. They and their parent division were ordered to St. Vith, Belgium, a critical road and rail center desired by the Germans.

Today's tidy & attractive building-lined streets belie the violence that befell St. Vith, Belgium, in the winter of 1944-45.

Beginning there, and for nearly a week, 7th Armored Division, along with remnants of the 106th Infantry Division and elements of the 28th I.D. and 9th A.D., bore much of the weight of the German drive, but served to monkey-wrench the enemy’s timetable, before a forced withdrawal west of the Salm River on December 23rd. Remaining west of the Salm, the “Lucky Seventh” and other forces to which it was attached cleared the Manhay area of enemy forces by month’s end. A brief rest in January of the new year found 48th Armored Infantry Battalion’s machine gun and mortar platoons billeted in the Belgian village of Grimonster.

After that brief rest, 7th Armored, now on offense, was dispatched east once more to positions near St. Vith. PFC Eugene St. Onge was killed in action on January 24th, 1945, during the retaking of the town.

Eugene St. Onge is remembered on his family's monument in Marquette, Michigan's Holy Cross Cemetery.

A single specific incident on that date is mentioned in 48th A.I.B.’s January 1945 After Action Report—and it’s one that could easily have involved St. Onge and Shillingburg, as personnel of the “organic mortar and AG platoons” assigned to “support attack by fire on call of observers.” At 1600 (4PM), German nebelwerfer fire caused 13 casualties in the sector being held by C Company south of St. Vith. The 48th’s unit history provides this summary: “Enemy continued to harass St. Vith with nebelwerfer fire and one round landed by the C/48 CP killing four men and wounding nine others.”

Besides his parents, brothers and sisters, “Gene” St. Onge was survived by his fiancée, Jeanne LaJeunesse.

(Courtesy of the Marquette Mining Journal.)

That spring, on the heels of Victory in Europe Day, Eugene’s parents received a letter from the still shaken 1st Lt. Ernest V. Shillingburg. “As Gene’s platoon leader, I have been wanting to write to you for some time. You see, he and I joined this company about the same time in Holland way back there last October 15, I believe. We had some good times, had slept and eaten together and for some reason I had felt a little closer to him than the rest of the boys. We had showed each other our pictures and he often spoke of you and his girlfriend. I transferred him to headquarters squad and for about six weeks he had been right with me all the time. Then back there in January at St. Vith, Belgium, he, another boy and myself were up front with the rifle companies sending back fire orders to our 81 mm. mortar platoon.

Gene was operating the radio when shrapnel from an artillery shell struck him and the other boy as well as several others. At least I am thankful that he didn’t have to suffer any. At first I could hardly believe it possible. I felt lost not to have such a cheerful, willing, dependable person with me. Gene was one of the best boys that I have ever worked with. His high ideals of life, his dependability and his ambition had always impressed me. Well, words can’t express it. I have missed him so much and will always remember him, Mrs. St. Onge, but we can both know that it is only a temporary parting and we must all go sometime.

My deepest heartfelt sympathy is extended to you.  May God be with you and comfort you.”

PFC Eugene St. Onge's final resting place in the Henri-Chapelle American World War II Cemetery, Belgium.

Belgium, Friday morning, August 26th, 2011. “Fresh out of the Brussels Airport and into Tony’s Alpventures rental car…Rainy highway eventually gave way to the lush green of the Ardennes—not all forest, by any means, but also rolling hills and pastures dotted with grazing cows and horses with endless small villages nestled among them and then patches of forest.” We were in search of certain villages that would have been on the western outskirts of the battle area involving the U.S. 82nd Airborne and 7th Armored Divisions in the winter of 1944-45, in an effort to better comprehend the final days in the lives of Marquette’s PFC Eugene St. Onge and an 82nd glider infantryman from neighboring Alger County.

“Gene St. Onge had probably passed through towns like Aywaille, Harzé and La Rouge-Minière with his battalion, enroute from Holland to action in the Ardennes.” As for the obscure place  I wanted to see most, “Tony’s G.P.S. knew where Grimonster was even if my Michelin map did not and soon we were snapping pictures of the spread of mostly large buildings and homes in this hilltop crossroads community so surrounded by green.”

Following a mid-day grocery store stop in Trois-Ponts (all was right in my world as I tasted my first square of a Galler Grand Marnier dark chocolate bar), we curved northeast toward Stavelot. From Malmedy, our route curved southeast to Waimes, where we picked up the trail of PFC Eugene St. Onge, whose 48th Armored Infantry Battalion had been attacking south toward St. Vith in January 1945.

“Due to road construction, a road we had intended to side-track west a bit to catch Kaiserbaracke, Recht and Petit-Thier was dropped for time. Our sojourn south through Born, Nieder-Emmels and Hünningen revealed that those locales are now really continuations of St. Vith, making it quite difficult to imagine what Headquarters Company mortar platoon radio operator St. Onge would have seen 66 years earlier.”

Eugene’s war ended on January 24th, very likely in C Company’s sector on the southern outskirts of the devastated city. As developed as that area is today, we could only snap pictures from the roadside looking low ground to high in the direction of town. No epiphanies.

From the southern outskirts of St. Vith, looking north, Friday, August 26th, 2011. No epiphanies to be had.

From the southern outskirts of St. Vith, looking south, also on August 26th, 2011.

Zooming in: An example of one of those dreaded road construction signs!!!

“I drove to places you have seen.” Back to Robbie Williams, Normandy and a 2009 summer day. “Heading south down the D24, we quickly arrived in linguistically challenging Le Plessis-Lastelle, which is positioned where the D24 meets the D338. The very small community (directions generously describe its 90th Infantry Division monument as being at the town ‘center’) sits on the easterly edge of once deadly Hill 122. The monument, dated July 7th, 1994, recognizes the Tough ‘Ombres who battled the Germans from the hill from July 3rd through July 12th, 1944. We chose this peaceful little park area for a 2PM picnic lunch.

 

Standing on the rise behind the monument I had what could be described as an epiphany. Facing north I could turn my head right (to the east) and see the windmills near Saint Georges-de-Bohon—83rd Infantry Division battleground. I stood on ground taken by the 90th Infantry Division, which I knew extended to my left (west) in kilometers that probably measured in the single digits. From there it would have been 79th Infantry Division soldiers—whose ranks and casualty lists carried the names of many men from our area—pushing their part of the battle southward in a line stretching all the way to the western coast of France. The physical enormity of the fight—and its slow, deadly progress—overwhelmed me.”

Part of my epiphany: From Le Plessis-Lastelle looking east.

Funny, eleven trips in, how I thought a single voyage to the battlefields would be the one that would have to last me, in terms of my research and my life. But once there’s a passport with your name on it, and you’ve fallen for a place or two or (the list keeps growing)…in a way the people you’re researching never had the chance to see or experience, you find a way.

“The morning brings a mystery / The evening makes it history

Who am I to rate the morning sun?”

Robbie Williams