It may be April 7th, 2018, but this blog really started several years ago. My wife and I have four boys and as they’ve gotten older it’s become important to us to share the meaning behind certain things in society, whether it be traditions or holidays. My wife thought it was important to teach them the meaning behind Memorial Day, as she put it “so they don’t think it’s just a three day weekend full of barbecues.” As a family we take an annual drive to the National Cemetery just outside Ft. Leavenworth to visit my Grandpa Dan’s grave.

This last time we went I started telling the boys about grandpa’s service in WW2 using his headstone. I told them “TEC 5” meant he was a medic and had earned the Silver Star for bravery. I launched into the story I heard of grandpa braving artillery fire to pull some wounded soldiers out of a foxhole and patch them up. I thought they were French since he also earned the French “Croix de Guerre” from that action. I told them about the time Grandpa asked me to come upstairs because he wanted to show me something: a nondescript box that he opened up to show me some medals, a bunch of ribbons and three “Iron Crosses”. I was really fascinated by the German medals and grandpa told me how his unit came across an abandoned truck that was just full of boxes of them. Evidently the Nazi high command was trying to boost morale with field decorations for their men. Grandpa explained our forces were moving so fast the Germans were leaving stuff, like this truck, if it broke down. He and his buddies grabbed the medals for souvenirs.

As I was telling my sons these stories (which I’m sure I’ve told them many times before) I really started to wonder if I had my facts straight. I started to wonder where he was when he saved those men. I wondered where that truck was. I wondered how many more stories he had that I could share with my boys. The only problem is that he’s not around to ask and he never really shared a lot with his immediate family.

These nagging wonders started to turn into motivation to do some research. My first thought was to reach out to my college friend Jed Dunham. Jed is a modern day Renaissance man. I’m still not sure what his major was at K-State but he was the heart and “motivational speaker” for the lacrosse team. After college he bicycled across the country and wrote a book about it. More interesting to me was his research into our lacrosse coach (KIA in Desert Storm) and the KSU alumni who served in WWI and were memorialized at the old “Memorial Stadium” on campus. I sent him an email and he sent me back a PDF scan of the 71st regimental history book from the Bangor, Maine library. A few pages into that book was this little nugget:

I was over the moon with this information. Here it was, confirmation of the family lore. What was even more fascinating to me was grandpa’s actions happened just three days after his Regiment entered combat. Beginning October 23rd, 1944, the 71st was in combat for 203 straight days until V-E day (May 5th, 1945). Attached to the 44th Infantry Division and part of General Patch’s Seventh Army, grandpa’s unit blitzed through the south of Germany and ended the war in the Austrian Alps. I started to realize that I didn’t just want to learn about that one day when grandpa earned his Silver Star; I want to learn about every one of his Regiment’s 203 days.

One of my main purposes for this blog is to share with my family what I’m uncovering. The story of the 71st is the story of our family. While I’d love to sit and tell every one of them what I’m learning I couldn’t do it justice. I also want to make sure my mom, aunt and uncle can go on this journey with me. He’s my grandpa but he’s also their dad and since he didn’t share much about the war with them I’ll do it for him. I’m confident there will be a book that comes out of this but I don’t want them to have to wait until I have it completed.

I’ve named this blog “Pro Aris et Pro Focis”, the motto of the 71st Infantry Regiment. It can be translated as “For our freedom and our home” or “For our country and our families”. I don’t know if any of these might make a good book title but I’ll be giving it some thought. In the meantime, I like it as the title of this little endeavor for my family.

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