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January 1945 was not a good month for the families of several boys fighting on the battlefields of Europe and Asia.
On Saturday, January 13, Mrs. Viola Dalton received a telegram from the War Department bearing the sad news that her son Kenneth had been killed in Belgium three days before Christmas. As was customary was such telegrams, no details were given.
What is known is that Sgt. Kenneth Dalton was a member of the 33rd Armored Regiment of the 3rd Armored Division. It also was known as the “Spearhead Division” because it had been one of the front line divisions in most of the battles since the Normandy landing.
Dalton had been badly burned in a tank battle on July 16. In addition to a Purple Heart, Dalton was awarded a Silver Star for heroism in rescuing members of the crew of his burning tank. After spending some time recuperating in a base hospital, Dalton returned to combat.
By December Dalton’s division had lost 150 tanks out of its normal combat strength of 200.
On Dec. 16, the Germans launched their last major offensive through the Ardennes Forest in some of the worst winter weather in more than 100 years. This offensive is commonly known as the Battle of the Bulge.
When the battle began, the 3rd Armored Division crossed the Siegfried Line and was at Mausbach, Germany. They were ordered back to Belgium to help stop the German drive. By Dec. 19, elements of Dalton’s Division had reached LaRoche, Belgium.
On Dec. 22, stiff German resistance was encountered near Melreux.
On that day, Dalton was killed somewhere near Holton, the next town south of Melreux. A memorial service was held at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Laurel on January 19. After the war Dalton‘ s body was buried in the Henri Chapelle American cemetery in Liege, Belgium.
The Advocate of Jan. 31, 1945, reported that Darrell Dalton, another son of Mrs. Viola Dalton, had been awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge for participating in combat with the 5th Army in Italy. Another son, Donald Dalton, had been discharged from the army after suffering, a broken back during tank maneuvers in Tennessee.
On Feb. 6, 1945, Mr. and Mrs. Julius Knudsen received a telegram stating their son Pfc. Vernon LeRoy Knudsen was killed in action somewhere on Jan. 18.
Knudsen had been wounded twice before. The latest was a shrapnel wound below one eye. His parents received a letter a week before his death. In it he wrote he was out of the hospital and would be returning to the front on January 12. He would be killed in action six days later.
Knudsen was born in Wayne in 1920. He came to Laurel in 1932 when his father bought the White Eagle gas station on the corner of West Second and Highway 15 (where the Citizens Bank now stands). After completing one year of high school, Vernon quit to help his father in the station.
Due to poor health, his father sold the station in 1940. Vernon then headed to California where he enlisted in the Navy in October 1941. After a two-year hitch in the Navy, Vernon joined the Army and trained at the Antiaircraft Artillery Center at Camp Haan. He was sent overseas in August 1944.
On Dec. 16, the day the German offensive was launched, Knudsen and five other American soldiers were billeted with a Polish family living in Freyming, a French town near the Luxembourg border.
On Dec. 18, they were sent into action in Luxembourg. A few days later, Knudsen earned his first Purple Heart. In January he earned an Oak Leaf Cluster to go with it. On Jan. 18, he was killed in action. No information was published concerning how he died or which infantry unit he was in at the time of his death.
Knudsen’s body was returned to Laurel in August 1948. Graveside services were held in the Greenwood Cemetery in Wayne on Aug. 28. Whether Vernon was ever buried there is not known to this writer but his body now rests in the Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier, Calif.
In 1953 his father sold the motel he had built in 1940 (now the Big Red) and moved to California where he died a year later.
Lester Dahl also was killed in January 1945 but space does not permit discussing it this week.
Other war news: Mrs. Reuben Anderson received word that her nephew Richard Papenhausen was wounded in France. His brother William had survived the sinking of the carrier “Lexington” during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. The Papenhausens were former Laurel residents.
The Anderson’s son, Harold, was killed when his ship was torpedoed in 1942.
Mrs. Mary Dimick was informed her grandson Martin Thies, a former resident of Hartington, was among the 133 sailors killed when the USS Nashville was struck by a Japanese kamikaze plane on Dec. 13, 1944.
Mrs. Henry Bohlken of Laurel learned her nephew Oliver Bohlken had been killed in action in Belgium on Jan. 8. His brother Gerald had been killed in action during the Normandy invasion. Two other Bohlken brothers, Paul and Bruce, were in the Navy.
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Stalling of Concord learned that their son Emil was in Belgium and had been wounded for the third time.
Sergeant Francis Broderick of Belden received a medical discharge due to a severe arm injury he received in action in Belgium.
Mr. and Mrs. Floyd P. Root of Belden received word their son Palmer had been wounded in action in France.
