The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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208050 Jessie Dell Cook US Army Co. A 44th Combat Engineers from:Rt 4 Westmoreland Tn Jessie D. Cook was my papa and the best man I ever knew. He was shot and captured in WW11 in the Battle of the Bulge and was a prisoner of war for 6 months in Germany. He was in a Stalag prisoner camp during which he lived on grass, tree bark, dandelions & broth which they cooked, and vegetables for the guards. He was liberated when the war was over in May 1945. He received an Honorable Discharge, Good Conduct, Purple Heart & POW medals. He was discharged from service October 7, 1945. A year later he married my granny and they had three children, my dad, Roger, my late Uncle Steve who died shortly after papa passed in 2005 and one girl, my Aunt Jeanne. Papa enlisted in the Army, 44th Combat Engineers, Co. A on December 18, 1942. He built pontoon bridges to cross rivers under General Patton. His battles and campaigns included Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland and Ardennes. Papa never talked about the war much or his time held in captivity but I know he never forgot what he saw over there. I think it was just too terrible for him to tell us. He battled stomach cancer for almost 20 yrs. The doctors said they had to take parts of his stomach over the years due to the things he was forced to eat when he was a prisoner. I don't know what my papa saw, if he ever killed anyone, or even his thoughts about his experiences except that they were just too horrible to speak of. Regardless, my papa was my hero, my everything & I miss him so much! I have looked everywhere on every site I know since I began studying the Holocaust and WW11 but much too my disappointment I have yet to find any records of him. I am deeply disturbed by this & I'm hoping that it's just my lack of knowledge on going about such things. I'm hoping I overlooked something because my papa was and always will be worth remembering. Heather Cook Add to this record.  Related Content: Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.