Category: We Remember

Boris Stern got a package from Jean Paul Mandier of France recently – it contained a dogtag that he had lost in the opening hours of the Battle of the Bulge in December, 1944 according to Fox13;

A collector of relics, Mandier bought the dog tag from a friend. Searching for Stern online, he discovered he lived in the United States.

Mandier contacted another friend in Cincinnati to help him locate Stern. She came across a newspaper article, found out he lived in Tampa, and was able to track down a phone number.

“I was a very lucky guy to get this,” said a humble Stern. “I’m even more lucky because everybody seems to think it’s a big deal. I’m just happy I got it. It just brings back a lot of memories.”

Last Year, Mr Stern told the Tampa Bay Times;

“I was right on the line when the [Battle of the Bulge] attack first happened,” Stern said, talking over the noise of the annual Veterans Day parade at the James A. Haley Veterans’ Hospital.

Two days after the attack, he was sent to a town called Winterspelt, where he was assigned to take charge of the regimental food and ammo dumps.

“I did that during a war game in Indiana before I went overseas and got an award for it, so they sent me to Winterspelt,” he said with a laugh.

That’s where he was on the morning of Dec. 16 when more than 200,000 German troops and nearly 1,000 tanks launched Adolf Hitler’s last-ditch effort to win the war. Stern was in the Ardennes, a 75-mile stretch of the front marked by dense woods and few roads, held by four inexperienced and battle-worn American divisions stationed there for rest and seasoning.

Stern was sleeping in the basement of a “dump hotel with my clothes on, obviously” when there were “tremendous explosions.

“We didn’t have any idea of what was happening. I went up to the second floor with field glasses, looked around and saw Germans setting up mortars.”

Stern said he called down to a lieutenant on the first floor and told him about the Germans.

“He called in an artillery strike and wiped them out,” said Stern, who later wound up in the town of St. Vith, a key target of German forces.

Thanks to HMC Ret for the tip.

Devtun sends us the sad news that iconic sportscaster, Keith Jackson has passed at the age of 89. He was known for his colorful expressions, “Whoa, Nellie!” was probably his most famous proclamation.

He began calling college football games for ABC Sports when it acquired the broadcast rights for NCAA football in 1966.

He also worked NFL and NBA games, World Series, Winter and Summer Olympics and auto racing. For the job, he traveled to 31 countries for ABC’s Wide World of Sports.

Jackson announced he would retire from college football play-by-play after the 1998 season but ended up continuing with ABC Sports, in 1999. He retired for good in May 2006.

According to Wikipedia, he was also a veteran, enlisting in the Marine Corp and working as a mechanic. He used his GI Bill to attend Washington State University where he began his broadcasting career in 1952.

Hondo told us that the earthly remains of Private First Class Lonnie Eichelberger were identified in May and the Washington Post reports that he was returned to his family yesterday and laid to his eternal rest in the Houston National Cemetery.

PFC Eichelberger, assigned to I Company, 371st Infantry Regiment, 92nd Infantry Division, was killed in the closing days of the Second World War on 10 February 1945 in Italy.

“It has brought closure that he has been identified,” said his great-nephew, Cheyenne Eichelberger, who explained that family members knew only that his uncle was killed in action somewhere in Europe.

Army officials notified the family in 2016 that Defense Department scientists had identified the remains using dental and anthropological analysis and circumstantial evidence.

Pfc. Eichelberger enlisted at a time the Army was segregated and he was assigned to the 92nd Infantry Division, which in 1944 and 1945 fought at the westernmost portion of the Allied line in northern Italy, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, an arm of the Defense Department.

“That’s the forgotten piece,” Cheyenne Eichelberger said Wednesday. “Minorities have served in every war and conflict that America has been involved in.”

His uncle was declared missing after a battle near Strettoia, Italy. Remains recovered near there after the war in Europe ended could not be identified and eventually were buried in 1949 at the American cemetery in Florence, Italy, designated as remains X-193.

Stars & Stripes reports that Sergeant Major Thomas Ellis, one of the few remaining members of the Tuskegee Airmen has passed at the age of 97. Sergeant Major Ellis, originally a draftee, was an administrative clerk during his time with the legendary aviation unit;

Ordered to Tuskegee Army Airfield, Ellis was the only enlisted member in the newly activated in the 301st Fighter Squadron, rising to staff sergeant and becoming an integral member of the 332nd Fighter Group, serving under then-Col. Benjamin O. Davis, who eventually became an Air Force general.

They deployed to Italy, where Ellis earned seven battle stars and left the Army as a sergeant major.

Back home, he initially worked as a porter for Frost Brothers but landed a job with the U.S. Postal Service, where he remained until 1984… The post office was Ellis’s day job, but there was a second one as well, with Ellis leading a jazz quintet. Sinkfield, who also heads the Tuskegee Airmen’s San Antonio chapter, said the Tom Ellis Jazz Quintet played around the San Antonio and was well known to people throughout the city. Ellis played the piano, and very well.

“He had a jazz quintet that played around San Antonio … and he could play that piano like it was just his baby. He was just a natural,” Sinkfield said. “He was quite the musician.”

The sergeant major will be buried at 9 AM Friday, January 12th in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery.

Today we get the sad news that Anna Mae Hays, the first female General of the US Army, has passed at the age of 97. She was promoted to the rank in 1970 when she became the chief of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps after service in the Second World War, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Her service in the World War was spent treating soldiers in India. From Wiki;

In May 1942 she joined the Army Nurse Corps, and was sent to India in January 1943, to the town of Ledo in Assam. The living and working conditions were somewhat primitive; the buildings were made of bamboo, and dysentery, leeches and snakes were common, particularly during monsoon seasons. Just over two years later, in April 1945, she was promoted to the rank of First Lieutenant.

After serving two and a half years in India, Hays was on leave in the United States when the war ended

She stayed in the Nurse Corps, stationed at Fort Dix, NJ, until the Korean War broke out and she was sent to Inchon in 1950. After the war, she was appointed to be one of President Eisenhower’s private nurses. She was also assigned as the head nurse of Walter Reed’s emergency room. Hays made several trips to the Vietnam War to help with the combat nurse program there based on her experience in the previous wars.

From Stars & Stripes;

Gen. Hays resisted a close association with feminism – “Let’s not talk about this,” she told the New York Times in 1970, when asked about the burgeoning women’s liberation movement. But she nonetheless became a symbol of unprecedented female advancement on June 11, 1970, when she was promoted to the one-star rank of brigadier general.

Her husband passed in 1962 and she leaves no surviving immediate family.

The News Sentinel reports that Sergeant First Class Mark Boner, an automated logistical specialist, of the Indiana National Guard’s 38th Sustainment Brigade based in Kokomo, Indiana has died while training at Fort Hood, Texas;

A battalion supply sergeant, Boner graduated from Elmhurst High School in 1993 and is the father of two daughters, Gabi and Cassandra. He joined the U.S. Army after graduating before joining the Indiana National Guard’s 38th Sustainment Brigade based in Kokomo. He served tours in Iraq and Kuwait in 2005, Iraq in 2009 and Kuwait in 2013…He received a Combat Action Badge, Iraq Campaign Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, and two Army Commendation Medals.

The Guard didn’t release the circumstances of his death, but they claim it’s being investigated.