I am going to break a little from the narrative account and share some more “behind-the-scenes” of my research and approach. As I mentioned at the outset, my original goal of finding out about Grandpa Dan’s Silver Star morphed into telling the story of the 71st. I really wanted to ‘walk in his shoes’ and feel connected to what he must have gone through. One of the original visions I had was re-creating the 71st’s path across France, Germany and Austria by using maps. I’m a visual / spatial kind of person so seeing a place on a map makes it more real. What I’ve discovered now is going to take it to a whole different level.

I obtained Operational Reports from the National Archives for the first few weeks of combat. I had hoped these reports would include specific locations for where the Division was. Sure enough, here’s an entry from the Cannon Company (artillery) for where they were located on the first day of actual combat:

What was most intriguing is this string of gobbledygook right after the mention of the town of Marainviller:

I don’t have military experience but I started to wonder if that string of letters and number was a map reference. Spending a little time with Google I started to wade into the system of continental maps that the Allies used in World War II. It was called the “Modified British System” and split the continent into large geographic areas and then further split those into a series of grid maps. More digging and I discovered a website that not only maintains the grids but can actually translate between the grid coordinates (like those in the S-3 above) to real Latitude and Longitude.

So, first step is figuring out which grid. I honestly had no idea so I pulled up Google Earth and did a search for “Marainviller”. Zooming out and turning on country borders I had this to study:

I went back to the map site and figured out that “Nord D’Guerre” in the S-3 report was telling me which big section to use. So, navigate to this page:

More studying and looking back-and-forth between the S-3, Google Earth, and this map and I had a “eureka” moment when I figured out the “Q” in the string of “Q224023” had to be the map “wQ” above.

I fumbled with the coordinate translator for a bit but finally it spit out this:

Holy crap. I’ve got the exact coordinates where the 71st Cannon Company was dug in on October 24th. What’s more fun is plugging those coordinates back into Google Earth:

Just for fun, I did a quick check on where the headquarters company was. They were in the ‘present bivouac area’ near Marainviller which was just south of the town and about 4.5 miles behind the cannon company:

What’s even more amazing is zooming into a street view and seeing what the countryside is like. Here’s a view just outside Marainviller on the road between HQ company and the Cannon Company:

I am absolutely blown away. I never thought I would be able to get this ‘real’ when it came to walking with my granddad. I plan to generously sprinkle these types of photos into the story I’m just starting to tell.

Up next is Dan’s travels from the Cotentin Peninsula to this part of France and the 71st’s entry into combat.

The Monticello may have been a luxury liner in its former life, but for the next ten days it was anything but luxurious for Dan and the 71st. The men were packed like sardines in the bowels of the ship, assigned to bunks stacked three high. An infantryman from the 100th Infantry Division relates this account from traveling on the Monticello to the Pacific theater one year before:

“Once we had climbed the gangway and gotten aboard, each of us simply followed the man in front of us through a maze of hatches and companionways until we reached our assigned area. This consisted of a forest of steel pipes supporting canvas strips stretched tightly with ropes.

Each “hammock” was approximately two feet wide by six feet long, and was strung about two feet from the “hammock” above. These hammocks were tiered three high and the man on the uppermost one stared into a tangle of pipes immediately above his face. The men below had to contend with the indentation made by the bodies of the men above them, and each had to adjust his position to provide adequate clearance.

Aisles between the hammocks were extremely narrow and packed with duffel bags and gear, so we were constantly climbing over something. Our deck was just below the waterline, so we had no portholes and the ventilation was far less than adequate for the number of men in that confined space. ”

The men made the best of their time trying to distract one another with stories, card games, and chow time. As fall was moving over the North Atlantic, a walk in the stiff breeze above deck would have been a welcome respite from the heat, humidity and stink of man and machine below.

 

By the fall of 1944 Germany’s U-boat’s had largely surrendered the superiority they once claimed over North Atlantic shipping. In August of ’44 alone, 29 U-boats had been sunk  (many by aircraft at sea and at harbor) in contrast to 12 British, Allied and neutral ships sunk in UK waters. Even with the loss of tactical superiority, the U-boat threat would have been a real concern for Dan and his men. As they neared the European Continent they would have certainly been uneasy at the thought of running this once-formidable gauntlet.

After 10 days at sea, on September 15th, the Monticello and the General W. H. Gordon arrived at the thoroughly wrecked port of Cherbourg, France. Dan’s unit represented the first allied reinforcements to land directly on the Euorpean mainland from the US. The appearance of the port where he debarked would have quickly introduced Dan to the destruction that had taken place in the months before he arrived.

Soon after D-Day, securing a major deep-water port on the Normandy coast became an immediate goal for the Allies. Until a port was secured, men, equipment, and supplies would have to be shipped to the UK, waterproofed, transferred to amphibious craft, and then ferried to the French coast. This potential bottleneck had to be removed and, after establishing a continuous front along the landing zones, the Allies began moving west to cut off the Cotentin Peninsula and isolate the cities of Volognes and the port of Cherbourg.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the image above, Utah beach is identified, along with the city of Carentan to the south-west. Allied airborne troops furiously fought house-to-house to liberate the town of Carentan and secure the southern front for the allied beachhead in conjunction with the D-day landings. From June 18 – 26th, the Allies pushed west and north, gradually tightening the noose on the German garrison in and around Cherbourg, and on the 26th, General Karl-Wilhelm von Schlieben surrendered his troops. During this same time, Rear Admiral Walter Hennecke had the Kriegsmarine busy destroying everything in the port. So thorough was the destruction that Hitler awarded Hennecke with the Knight’s Cross for “a feat unprecedented in the annals of coastal defense.”  One American engineer described the German efforts as ‘a masterful job, beyond a doubt the most complete, intensive, and best planned demolition in history’. The outer breakwater had been cratered, the quay walls damaged, essential cranes destroyed, the harbor blocked with sunken ships and hundreds of mines scattered across the harbor.

It took a solid month before any deep-draft ships could enter the outer harbor waters and the 44th Infantry was the first allied troop reinforcement to land at the port. After debarking, the Division traveled inland to the vicinity of Montebourg where they set up a camp among the orchards and farms.

Over the next three weeks, Dan and the 71st Regiment received trucks, equipment, ammunition, and supplies. Most importantly, they engaged in intensive conditioning and training in hedgerow and broken-terrain fighting. This training would serve them well as they prepared to leave via train for the front itself.

 

After being inducted into active duty on February 26, 1943, Dan went through his basic training at Fort Leavenworth, about 35 miles from his family farm. He was assigned to the Medical Detachment of the 71st, itself recently being attached to the 44th Infantry Division. The 71st participated in maneuvers at Camp Polk, Louisiana until April of that same year. In a strange twist of irony, Dan found himself back on the Kansas plains when the 71st relocated to Camp Phillips, just outside Salina, for final pre-deployment preparations. The men undoubtedly endured rounds of thunderstorms that fueled restless muggy nights. Those nights bloomed into sweltering afternoon heat as they trained; just three months later they would look back fondly on this weather as they endured winter in the Vosges Mountains.

On August 22nd, the entire Division left by rail and headed east. Arriving a few days later, they settled into Camp Myles Standish, just outside of Boston. Their orders were to leave via Boston Harbor for the European Theater in less than a week. Soldiers with free time and easy access to a big city is a volatile combination and the bar district was quickly overrun by the 44th. No doubt fueled by the nerves of looming deployment, Dan’s companions drank, smoked, and fought their way through the entire city.

Boston’s elites and the City’s finest had enough and the Mayor, Maurice Tobin, closed all the bars and had the men of the 44th Division escorted back to Camp Standish with a very clear understanding that they were not to come back. The commanding general of the 44th, Robert Spragins, reinforced the message the next day, informing them that they were officially “Banned in Boston”. The phrase has lost its cultural significance but at the time referred to literature, music, movies or other entertainment deemed to contain objectionable sexual content or foul language.

On Tuesday, September 5th, the 44th Infantry boarded two ships moored in Boston Harbor. Dan’s Regiment was assigned to the USS Monticello, a converted Italian ocean liner with a unique history of its own. Launched in 1927 as the SS Conte Grande she made voyages between the United States and Italy until transferred to Italy-South America tourist service in 1932. She was laid up in Santos, Brazil by her Italian officers upon hearing of Mussolini’s attack on France in June of 1940. She idled here until February of 1942 when she was transferred to a Brazilian registry. The US purchased the Conte Grande, renamed her “Monticello” and commissioned her as a troop transport ship on April 16, 1942. Two years later, on that September morning, Dan and his division walked up her gangplanks and settled in below decks for the ten-day Atlantic crossing.

In the early part of my research I was able to come across a few neat documents from various sources. I’ve used a few to make additional contacts and I’m waiting to see if they bear fruit.

This is my grandfather’s draft card. It’s pretty cool to see his actual handwriting on a document from 1942. My best guess is he would have signed this card sometime in November or early December of 1942 after legislation was passed that obliged 18 and 19 year-old men to register for the draft. Shortly thereafter (December 5), President Roosevelt signed an order that precluded men between 18 and 37 from volunteering so that there were sufficient able-bodied men in the US to defend the homeland.

I remember grandpa telling me a story about how he ‘became’ a medic and it was basically a sergeant going down the line of new draftees and saying “infantry, infantry, infantry, medic, infantry, infantry, infantry, support, infantry…” and he got ‘tapped’ as a medic and assigned to the Medical Detachment:

Hard to read, so here’s an enlargement from the center column:

According to his Report of Separation, he was formally inducted on February 19, 1943 so at least he didn’t have to sweat it too long between signing his draft card and actually getting called up. The odds at that time were about 1 in 5 and, if his luck wasn’t great before entering the service, he traded it in for divine protection once he was in.

I’ve mentioned his actions that earned the Silver Star being the catalyst for my research and I had more information sent to me by a member on one of the WW2 history forums I frequent. Below is the Awards Report for November of 1944 for the 71st IR.

There he is – Private McCarty earning the Silver Star. I currently have a full set of operations reports from the National Archives on its way to me and I’ll bet I come across this report there as well.

Last, but not least (for now anyway), is a clipping from the Chillicothe Constitution Tribune from July 13, 1945.

I’m hopeful I’ll hear something back from the Ft. Leavenworth Historical Society in the next few days about the time between when Grandpa was drafted and when the 71st left for Europe. If not, I’ll jump ahead and we’ll pick up his story as they landed in Cherbourg, France in September of 1944.

 

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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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