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1st Armoured Division, US Army
30th Apr 1943 Patrols
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Want to know more about 1st Armoured Division, US Army? There are:0 items tagged 1st Armoured Division, US Army available in our Library
These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War. |
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Emory Burris Ambrose 1st Armoured Div. I am looking for information about my grandfather, Emory Burris Ambrose, US Army, 1st Armoured Div. He was a POW from December 1942 until May 1945.
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Paul Albert Hagedorn 1st Armored Division Paul Hagedorn is my great uncle. This article about him by Mark H Hunter was published in the Denver Post on the 27th of May 2002:
'We were slaves; it was terrible' Vet survived Nazi camp, death march'
The best way to describe World War II veteran Paul Hagedorn is that he is a survivor.
The 84-year-old Army veteran survived some of the war's bloodiest battles, two years of starvation and slave labor in Nazi prison camps, and a grueling winter "death march" across Germany in the closing days of the war.
Hagedorn is also surviving a lifelong battle with war-related health problems and the effects of a stroke, a broken hip and two heart attacks.
"I can tell you things you wouldn't believe," Hagedorn said. "Sometimes I don't believe them myself." The only problem is, the terrible wartime memories overwhelm his emotional control and words can't come out - only tears.
"I don't know whether I feel fortunate or not. I feel guilty . . . so many of my buddies never came home," Hagedorn said after composing himself. "It was only by the grace of God. I don't know how else to look at it."
Hagedorn was born and raised on a potato farm in Southern Colorado's San Luis Valley. Drafted into the Army in 1940 and assigned to the 1st Armored Division, Combat Engineers, he built bridges and roads in North Africa.
His unit survived several battles with Gen. Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps, but it was overwhelmed in the 1943 Battle of Faid Pass. Hagedorn and others escaped only to wander in the Tunisian desert for six days before being captured.
"I carried a wounded buddy all night while we hid during the day," Hagedorn said. "The Americans kept pushing Rommel a day ahead of us. We couldn't find them."
Four miles from the American lines, near Kasserine Pass, Hagedorn was captured. His group was force-marched to Tunisia, then flown to Italy, packed into railroad cattle cars and moved to Germany, where he was incarcerated in several stalags POW camps.
While being held at Stalag 2B, the men were beaten and tortured while they dug ditches and rebuilt bombed-out factories, Hagedorn's wife Marjorie explained while he daubed his eyes. "The Lord kept him alive for me," she says, softly.
The men were transferred to Stalag 5B, where they worked in potato fields and chopped wood in nearby forests. For 27 months their only food was potato-sawdust soup.
"I was skin and bones. We were slaves," Hagedorn said. "It was terrible."
Malnutrition drained half his body weight, and endless labor ruined his back, denying him his postwar dream-job of operating a dairy farm.
Ironically, while Hagedorn's captors were beating him and confiscating his Red Cross packages, back home in the United States, German POWs incarcerated in the Monte Vista Armory were treated well, local historians say. Many German POWs worked on area potato farms, including Hagedorn's own family farm.
"They were doing what they felt was the right thing to do," Hagedorn said. He holds no grudge toward his farmer friends and family. "But it hurt me when I came home."
The winter of 1945 was one of Europe's coldest and was especially hard on men who were forced to work outdoors all day and sleep naked in unheated barracks.
"They'd take our clothes at night so we wouldn't escape," Hagedorn said. "Even if we did, we had nowhere to go."
As the Soviet Red Army swept across Europe, the Germans retreated, taking their captives with them.
Germans didn't want to be captured. They knew the Russians didn't take any German prisoners alive," he said. In early February, "in the dead of winter in knee-deep snow," he said, 12,000 Allied prisoners began walking across Germany. When Russian troops liberated them in early May, "there were only about 500 of us left.
I saw more hell there than at the front lines," Hagedorn said. "I had some buddies killed right in front of me."
As the war ended, so many American POWs were liberated that the Army gave them passes to make their own way to England. A week later Hagedorn was back in America.
There were no parades, no celebrations, no nothin'," Hagedorn said sadly.
He's raised a family, outlived his first wife, worked many jobs and now keeps busy puttering around the townhouse he shares with Marjorie, his second wife. They knew each other before the war but married others. After their spouses died in the 1980s they found each other again and renewed their love.
Hagedorn is a member of the American Ex-Prisoners of War, Disabled Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars. He often spends quiet afternoons reading the "Ex-POW Bulletin," a monthly magazine that features several pages of "Taps" obituaries, evidence of America's loss of about 1,000 World War II veterans a day.
"There aren't too many of us left," Hagedorn said. "Out of 37 guys who served with me, only three of us are left."
As with many POWs, Hagedorn's war-related health problems were ignored by the Veterans Administration, and he didn't receive medical benefits until the mid-1950s.
He was also ignored when the Army passed out postwar medals. In 1996, after former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown called the Pentagon, he got his POW medal.
In spite of governmental neglect, he still loves his country.
"Glad I went, and I'm glad I could do what I did for my country - but when I came home, I was on my own," Hagedorn said. "I just don't know why it took them all these years."
His advice to young people considering a military career is cautious.
"It all depends. Some kids just can't find themselves, and they ought to try it. There are good opportunities for education and it's not a bad income," Hagedorn said. "I don't think I'd encourage my son to go, though."
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PFC. Harold Eugene DeForrest H Coy. 1st Infantry Division My Grandfather Harold DeForrest served with 1st Division US Army. I received many WW II documents saved by my Grand Mother who passed away 2 months after my Grand Father in 1973 and she left everything to my uncle, with his passing back in 2016 I am in possession of all the saved items by my Grand Mother. I was only 10 years old and never had the opportunity to talk to my Grand Father about WWII.
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Pvt. Mitchell Lincoln Burgess 1st Armored Division  Mitchell L. Burgess is my grandfather. He enlisted on 22nd of Mar 1940 and landed in North Africa with the 1st Armored Division.
He was captured by Germany on or about 14th of Feb 1943 in the vicinity of Kasserine Pass, Tunisia. According to a telegram dated 16th of Apr 1943 he was transferred to a POW sorting camp at Capua, Italy, around that time. He was again transferred to Dulag 226 it Italy before finally being sent to Stalag IIB near Hammerstein (Czarn), Poland. He was released from Stalag IIB and returned to US control on 13 Apr 1945 and present in Camp Lucky Strike according to a list dated 24 Apr 1945.
Other members of the 1st Armored were captured on the same day and also ended up at Stalag IIB. Their names were:
- Duval, Gordon E, 39305363 discharged 06 Aug 1945
- Eskut, Steve J; 6989039, discharged 01 Sep 1945
- Evans, Walter, 7041885, discharge unk and
- Janz, Glenn O, 37095721, discharge unk
The above names are those who survived the war and were returned to the US. The list of 1st Armored personnel captured on or about that date, were also sent to Stalag IIB, but died before they could come home was too extensive to write here.
While researching my grandfather, I contacted the International Red Cross in Geneva, Switzerland and made an inquiry there. They sent me a most helpful attestation full of useful information. I recommend others do this if they are similarly searching for information about a POW.
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Staff Sgt. Reuben Horace Summerhill 1st Armored Division Rueben Summerhill was captured in February of 1943 at the Battle of Kassarine Pass in Tunisia.
He was good friends with -- Deaton. They were separated at the battle, but reunited in Stalag 3B.
Rueben was first sent to Italy and used as forced labor. Then he was sent to Germany to Stalag 7A. Soon he was in Stalag 3B where he spent most of the war. He was a POW for 26 months.
Just before the Russian Army liberated Stalag 3B, a Russian Sergeant made friends with Rueben because Rueben had shared food with Russian POWs. The Sergeant helped arrange for Rueben and a few others to take a firewood wagon out of the camp, escaping before the Russian Army held American POWs for barter power.
It took Rueben three weeks of walking at night west across Germany and hiding in the day to reach the American forces. He stayed in France, recuperating and then returned to the Arlington Hotel in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to further recuperate, having lost more than eighty pounds.
He remained in the Army for his career, retiring in 1951 having spent 21 years in.
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