New Year's Eve reflections on two American heroes

As 2013 comes to a close I reflect on two men who died in the service of our country on New Year's Eve -- Bill Dail of Knoxville, Tennessee, who died in Vietnam; and Woodrow Hoffer of Monroe, Michigan, killed in action in World War II.

PFC Dail

Marine PFC Willie Fred Dail, Jr. was killed by small arms fire in Vietnam on Dec. 31, 1967. He was barely 19. I didn't know PFC Dail, but we both attended Fulton High School. He was in the Class of '66, two years ahead of me. Looking back I find it unsettling to realize how oblivious I was at that time to the war in Vietnam. On that New Year's Eve I was probably looking forward to a date that night and eagerly awaiting the resumption of basketball season after the holidays. It would never have crossed my mind that a boy who walked the halls with me less than two years earlier had lost his life half a world away.

A year later my attention was focused on Vietnam when my big brother, Joe, went there as an artillery officer. Fortunately he came home safe and sound.

PFC Woodrow Hoffer was killed in action in the Pacific on New Year’s Eve 1944. Eight weeks later on Feb. 27, 1945 his younger brother, Staff Sergeant Marion E. Hoffer, was killed in action in Europe.

I discovered the story of the Hoffer brothers through a postcard Woodrow wrote to a relative during the war. A chapter about them and their family is included in my book, Postcard Memories from World War II: Finding Lost Keepsakes 70 Years Later.

Becky and I had the honor of visiting with relatives of Woodrow and Marion last year. We were struck by how their family, and the entire Monroe community, still honors the memory of these brothers, and all others from Monroe who died in the service of our country.

Woodrow and Marion are buried overseas in cemeteries maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission.  Woodrow’s final resting place is at the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines, and Marion’s grave is in the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands.

Back home, their names are inscribed on granite benches placed by the family at a local cemetery, and they are also listed on a World War II memorial in a Monroe park.

As I learned about the Hoffer brothers, I couldn’t help but think about their mother, Mary Derickson Hoffer. When she observed Christmas in 1944 she had three sons in the service – Woodrow, Marion, and Bill.  A fourth son, Melvin, was safe at home. In the next several weeks both Woodrow and Marion were killed in action, and Melvin enlisted after learning of his brothers’ deaths.

Ed Hoffer, nephew of Woodrow and Marion, speaks fondly of his grandmother and her strength: “She had two gold stars and two blue stars on her door.  I can’t fathom her sitting in that house, wondering every   It didn’t hit home for me until I saw ‘Saving Private Ryan.’ How did she live day to day with that pressure?”  (A blue star on the door denoted a son in the service, while a gold star meant a son had been killed in action.)time a car turned around in the driveway if it was Western Union.

Ed’s sister, Norma Stahl, remembers their grandmother’s strength despite having lost two sons and a nephew in the war, and a third son, Norma’s father, in a traffic accident.  Norma wrote: “Grandma lived to be 100 and passed in 1992.  Her beauty, strength, sense of humor, and kindness to others, after suffering so much loss, has always been such an inspiration to me.”

When you toast the New Year, pause to reflect on the Dails and the Hoffers, and all the other families who gave so much to preserve our freedoms.

Honoring William J. Camp

William J. Camp

As we approach Christmas it's a fitting time to honor a soldier who lost his life on the day after Christmas 1944, and the family who still keeps his memory alive.

I recently wrote about Norbert Kuchman, a WWII veteran whose postcards I found on e-Bay. I alerted his son, Dave Kuchman, to the cards and he was able to acquire them. The cards were written by Norbert to an old girlfriend during the war and ended up on e-Bay after being sold in an estate sale after she died.

William and Marian Camp

Dave contacted me recently with a fascinating follow-up to his dad’s story that involves yet another set of postcards in his family. Norbert had a brother-in-law, William J. Camp, who was killed in action December 26, 1944 during the Battle of the Bulge. Dave had borrowed some of his postcards from a relative, and he shared images of the postcards and the story of “Uncle Bill.” It's quite a story.

Private Camp was born in 1910. His birth name was William John Czarnowsky, but he later changed it to Camp. Like many in his hometown of Rochester, New York, he worked for Eastman Kodak Company. William married Norbert Kuchman’s sister, Marian, on October 30, 1934. He enlisted in the Army on May 22, 1944, and just seven months later while serving with the 121^st Infantry Regiment, 8^th Infantry Division, he was killed when a German shell hit near his foxhole. He left a widow and three sons, all now deceased. He is buried at the American cemetery at Margraten, Netherlands. Marian did not remarry and passed away in 1990.

The postcards Dave showed me (via email) were written between June and August 1944 while Private Camp was in training at Camp Croft near Spartanburg, SC. They were addressed to Private Camp’s middle son, James, who turned four in June 1944, six months before his father died. In one card Private Camp wished James a happy birthday. James died in 1997.

Private Camp wished his son a happy fourth birthday in this card

Dave also sent me a photo of a plaque that hung in Eastman Kodak offices for many years honoring Private Camp and two other employees who were killed in the war.

Private Camp’s postcards are interesting, but another photo Dave shared with me is positively gripping. It’s a photo of his dad, Norbert Kuchman, kneeling at William Camp’s grave in the Netherlands in 1947. Those of us who didn’t live through World War II can never imagine the upheaval it brought to so many families. I can’t fathom the emotions Norbert must have felt as he visited his brother-in-law’s grave. The two of them served in combat in Europe. One came home, one didn't.

In the photo the graves are marked with what appear to be wooden crosses. Today each grave is marked with a marble cross inscribed with the soldier's name. The American Battle Monuments Commission has an excellent web site where you can search for American soldiers who are buried overseas. http://www.abmc.gov/home.php 

Plaque honoring three Eastman Kodak employees who died in World War II

Norbert Kuchman at William Camp's grave in the Netherlands, 1947.

William Camp's grave marker at Margraten

More about William Camp can be found at http://www.adoptiegraven-database.nl/index.php/margraten/american-war-cemetery-margraten-c/19534-camp-william-j

To Norbert Kuchman and William Camp – thank you for serving our country. And kudos to Dave Kuchman for keeping their memory alive, lest we forget.

Remembering General Al Ungerleider

On Halloween Day 1945, just months after World War II ended, a young U.S. Army captain stationed in Denmark wrote a postcard to his sister Annette back home in Carbondale, Pennsylvania. Sixty-eight years later I found the postcard on e-Bay, and it led me to a remarkable American hero.

That Army captain was Al Ungerleider. Sixteen months before writing the postcard he was a 22-year-old lieutenant leading a platoon of men through deadly German fire at Omaha Beach on D-Day.  Despite being wounded twice he continued to lead soldiers of the 29th Infantry Division as they fought their way across Europe.

He went on to a distinguished 36-year Army career, serving in Korea and Vietnam and attaining the rank of Brigadier General. In 1994 he was chosen to accompany President Clinton in laying a wreath at Normandy on the 50^th anniversary of D-day.

In the closing days of World War II he helped liberate the horrendous Dora-Mittelbau slave labor camp, part of the Nordhausen concentration camp. In a Congressional tribute to General Ungerleider after his death at age 89 in 2011, Virginia Representative Gerald Connolly described the Nordhausen experience:

In April, 1945, after taking heavy fire from the Nazi soldiers guarding the prison, Lt. Ungerleider and his men liberated the camp. Years later, General Ungerleider said that although he had become battle hardened, nothing had prepared him for what he encountered at Nordhausen. To quote General Ungerleider, ‘‘We thought we had entered the gates of hell.’’

At Nordhausen, he and his men freed approximately 300 prisoners, most of whom he described as ‘‘living skeletons.’’ He and his men shared the small amount of food that they had with the prisoners. Lt. Ungerleider then led them in reciting Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead. Only then did the prisoners accept that the horror of the Nazi death camp had ended.

After retiring from the Army Gen. Ungerleider served as a synagogue administrator in Virginia and was active in Jewish causes. His hometown of Carbondale, Pennsylvania, will place a bust of him in a local park in a ceremony to be held next summer.

Now about the postcard. I found it on e-Bay in early 2013. Given General Ungerleider’s prominence it was easy to track down his family. I contacted his widow, Ruth, who confirmed that the card was written by her husband. Gen. Ungerleider’s daughter, Ilene, told me Annette was a postcard collector herself and wondered how this particular card got out of the family. I asked the e-Bay seller, located in Syracuse, New York, and here’s his reply:

That postcard and most all the others I have been selling this past year came out of a very large lot of 10,000 postcards I purchased in March 2012. The seller was in Peoria, Illinois and they belonged to an old friend of his who had died and he was selling them to donate the proceeds to cancer research.

That’s a typical story for the WWII postcards I research. It’s often impossible to figure out how they got from one place to another.

Annette now lives in Israel, and I sent the postcard to Ruth to forward to her. As it turned out, Gen. Ungerleider’s son Dan was about to visit Annette in Israel and he delivered the postcard in person.

What a long journey this postcard took -- from Captain Ungerleider in Denmark in 1945 to his sister Annette in Pennsylvania; to who-knows-where for nearly 70 years; to a postcard dealer in Peoria; to an e-Bay seller in Syracuse in 2012; to me in 2013; to Ruth in Virginia; and finally back to Annette in Israel.

But the story doesn’t end there. Annette’s grandson, Noam Martin, recently contacted me with an invitation to a Facebook tribute page he set up for General Ungerleider. Following that, Annette and I became Facebook friends. I stay in touch via email with Ruth Ungerleider and hope to meet her someday, perhaps next summer in Carbondale when her husband’s bust is unveiled.

I feel honored to be associated in a small way with this wonderful family.

If you want to know more about General Ungerleider, there are many articles and remembrances about him on the internet. One of the more comprehensive ones is this obituary from the Washington Post. (You might have to endure an ad for a few moments before the article opens.)

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-03-12/local/35260065_1_death-camp-german-guard-soldiers

 

General (Ret.) Al Ungerleider (left), President Bill Clinton, and Medal of Honor recipient Walter Ehlers lay a wreath at the American Cemetery in Normandy on the 50th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 1994.

Staff Sergeant George R. Schnitman -- A Man With A Sense of Humor

In August 1945, after Germany had surrendered but many American soldiers were still in Europe, Staff Sergeant George R. Schnitman sent a postcard to his girlfriend, Rose Silver, in Hartford, Connecticut. The card had a picture of the “Porta Nigra” (black gate), built by the Romans around 200 A.D. in the town of Trier, Germany.

The message said:

“Honey, You can quickly realize my love for you and my solicitude for your welfare when I highly advise you not to see Laurel and Hardy in ‘The Bullfighters.’ Love, George”

The writing struck me as very clever, and my suspicion that George was an educated man was confirmed when I checked his enlistment record and saw his educational level was “post graduate.”

The movie he mentioned, “The Bullfighters” featuring the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy, was released in 1945. Apparently George didn’t think much of it.

My research on Ancestry.com showed that George and Rose got married. They are listed as husband and wife in the 1946 city directory for New Haven, Connecticut. His occupation is shown as probation officer. Sadly, Rose died in 1952 at the age of 35. George appears to have remarried and died in 1991 at age 79.

The postcard has been listed on e-Bay for many months. I didn’t buy it because I found no record of George having children with Rose or his second wife, so there was no one to return the card to.

Here is an image of the postcard and a movie poster from “The Bullfighters.”