252409 Sgt. Ervil Clayton Kennett Jr. US Army 341st Infantry Regiment, Coy. C 86th Infantry Division from:Chatham, New Hampshire My uncle Ken, Ervil Kennett Jr, was a great man. After a firefight on the way to Ruhr pocket he went back to the area to help carry the men back to safety, he made me laugh saying the man he had was corn-feed from Texas.
He was in the battle for Orville, Rouen, from Belgium to Duren, to holding position on the Rhine river. They crossed into Boon to Hilkenback their battalion took the lead to Hagen. While in Hagen a machine gun opened up on them, he had been eating a can of peaches he jumped into a ditch to finish the peaches. They hadn't eaten in 18 hours, After the fight in Hagen was over they took a lot of prisoners. Ken helped search over fifty. He said they were a sorry looking bunch, mostly kids and old men.
They travelled 300 miles walking down to Nuremberg and went 3 days without food. The next real action came down a river called the Altmuhl. They found the bridge had been blown up, and made a beach head so that the engineers could put across a large pontoon bridge, for tanks to flow into Eichstatt. These men had a hard time crossing and German 88s would fire, taking out some of the bridges before tanks could cross. That drive took them onto the Danube river. They walked 28 miles until their cords in their heels hurt.
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