Winston Churchill once said of World War Two that it was not a war of princes or chieftains, but of peoples and causes; a war fought by unknown heroes. Here we acknowledge the unknown heroes that Churchill was referring to as well; our fallen heroes as well as those that fought for our freedoms and returned with their memories. We remember and honour in our hearts the Allied heroes, war veterans and all the affected people, who valued freedom in their life above all else.

A    B    C    D    E    F    G    H    I    J    K    L    M    N    O    P    Q    R    S    T    U    V    W    XYZ

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Jack Petty

PFC, Co. K, 315th Infantry Regiment, 79th Infantry Division
Purple Heart
38687752. On 11 January 1945, Company K of which PFC Petty was a member, was defending the town of Rittershoffen, France, against fierce enemy attacks. At about 0600 hours, after a devastating artillery barrage, the enemy’s tanks succeeded in enveloping their forward positions and the company was forced to withdraw to the center of town. When a reorganization was effected, it was discovered that PFC Petty was missing, nor could any information be gathered as to his whereabouts. It developed that he had been captured, and a letter from his widow indicates that both Jack and a buddy, Frank, were captured, and behind enemy lines, Jack was wounded by friendly fire. Frank carried Jack as they moved from place to place for two days, then the Germans took Jack to a hospital near Frankfurt where he ultimately died on 15 January 1945. He was initially buried at Rittershoffen, France, then repatriated and buried at Restland Cemetery in Gatesville, Texas.

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Walter (Monday) Poniedzialek

Tech 5 (Corporal), US Army 540th Combat Engineer
Good Conduct Medal, Combat Infantry Badge (CIB), Expert Sniper-Rifle, European Theatre Ribbon with 5 bronze stars and bronze arrowhead, WWII Victory Medal, American Theatre Ribbon

Dad began his army stint at Fort Custer, MI in March of 1943. His campaigns included Naples/Salerno, Anzio, Rome-Arno, Southern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes/Alsace and Central Europe. His specialty was that of an auto-mechanic and he served in the motor pool and also as a motorcycle courier. He also acted as an infantryman and was in the heat of battle during the Ardennes/Alsace Campaign (Battle of the Bulge). Luckily throughout all his years of service, he was never once wounded.

I remember stories he used to tell when I was a little girl (he passed away when I was 12) and among them were the horrible months spent on the beaches of Anzio. Shelling went on day and night and things got so bad that they were forced to dig into the sand and to bury their trucks and other equipment in order to keep working and maintaining their machine shops.

The 540th were responsible for securing port and beach areas, providing support to front and rear line troops, building roads and bridges, clearing and laying mine fields, constructing and repairing railroads, clearing tunnels, using demolitions to clear ports and road obstructions, repairing and constructing facilities for hospital and POW camps & dumps and building and maintaining storage sites for ammo and supplies amongst other engineering projects.

The regiment had one of the longest, continuous service records of any unit in WWII. This period extended from the time they first landed on the shores of North Africa in November of 1942 until their deactivation in Germany in November of 1945. They were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation for their contribution to the Naples/Salerno Campaign and received the Unit Meritorious Service Award for their operation of the Port of Anzio.

To find more info on my father, the great 540th and their fellow engineers, please visit my site at:

www.6thcorpscombatengineers.com

I am continually searching for stories and photos from other WWII VI Corps Combat Engineers (36th, 39th and 540th). I would also love to hear from other engineers as well as any WWII vets and would be honored to place your history on my site.
~ Submitted by Marion J Chard, Proud daughter of a 540th Combat Engineer

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Ernie Pyle

WW2 Roving Reporter
The dead man in the picture below is Ernie Pyle, the famed war correspondent whose dispatches painted vivid portraits of the lives of common GIs. Pyle famously covered several theaters of war, including the brutal Italian campaign of 1943-1944, and was killed on April 17, 1945 on the island of le Shima, off Okinawa in the Pacific.

"When I think about the real treasures of American history that we have," says Mark Foynes, director of the Wright Museum of World War II in Wolfeboro, N.H., "this picture is definitely in the ballpark."

The impact of Pyle’s war coverage is hard to imagine from a modern perspective. American civilians and soldiers cried when they heard the news that he had been killed by a Japanese machine gunner while riding in a Jeep with three officers. An army photographer, Alexander Roberts, crept forward in the dirt with his Speed Graphic to make the image. He withheld it from publication, “out of decency.” Pyle himself often felt the same emotion about the dead he saw far too often. In Rick Atkinson’s recently published history of the Italian campaign, “The Day of Battle” (Henry Holt), he tells of Pyle watching as soldiers with pack mules brought back from the front a number of bodies, including Captain Henry T. Waskow, a native of Texas. Pyle watched and said nothing, writes Atkinson. “You feel small in the presence of dead men, and you don’t ask silly questions,” Pyle later explained. Later, Pyle described in a dispatch the scene that day. War reporting has never been better.

Finally he put the hand down. He reached over and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of the uniform around the wound, and then he got up an walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone. The rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall.

The lost photo of Pyle approaches such depth of feeling. "It's a striking and painful image, but Ernie Pyle wanted people to see and understand the sacrifices that soldiers had to make, so it's fitting, in a way, that this photo of his own death ... drives home the reality and the finality of that sacrifice," said James E. Tobin, a professor at Miami University of Ohio.