Christoph, Hello!
Did you see we have some kind of star to the left of this forum. Are we in trouble?
Now I am going to get interrupted because a girlfriend who is staying nearby is coming over so we (the famous we) can charge her car battery. No, she is not coming by car, she is walking and Steve will have to go take our car a couple of blocks away to garage to help her. I had War stuff all spread out but now have tucked it away so do not look messy.
Now by funny I meant that you were going to call back the documentary producer. But you have made me gasp many many times with your incredible responses!!!
I went back to the May 31, 2012, entry to see the Cemetery picture again. I need to print that and the picture above. Is this the Cemetery that Dad was looking for?
Does this mean that Theo's wife died too in the bombing raid? Gad, how hideous! The word submerged must be that they were both buried under rubble?
Man, I have so many things going on and leads to pursue and things to share. I get so frustrated because of such limited time and then access to what I want to look at. And then of course, if it is in German, I can not even read it. I recently looked up the book you referred me to Oben Auf Dem Berg. It is still only available in German on Kindle.
I heard from Kevin Bailey, the wonderful Archivist from the Eisenhower Presidential Library, and received this information:
"I have checked the U.S. Army Unit Records Collection for the two units you mentioned. We do not have much on the 299th Engineer Combat Battalion, (Box 642) about 30 to 40 pages of miscellaneous records is all consisting of an Operations Log for May 1st to VE-Day on May 8th, daily log for the month of April and a two-page one for March. All it has to say about the period that your father and his buddy reappeared is, and this is a direct quote,
"9 March - 26 March, 1945: During this period the battalion constructed and operated ponton ferries on the Rhine River." [Note: "ponton" is an old Army spelling of pontoon and was still frequently used in WWII]
There is also a 5 page report from the battalion's Chief Medical Officer and while he notes that in March that his personnel dealt with several wounded men and deaths from enemy attacks on the Rhine ferry service he makes no mention of anything else. One might assume had your father and the other man arrived in the battalion's area they might have been checked over by the medical personnel.
As for the 15th Field Artillery Battalion, (Box 372) we have even less in the way of records, only 15 pages and only for July, August and October of 1944.
The National Archives at College Park, MD may have more if you want to further check into these two units. Sometimes they have more complete records for some World War II units."
With your love of water, the Rhine, bridges, engineers, pontoon vs ponton, and so much more, I thought you and Marion would especially appreciate that response. What an incredible help Kevin has been for me!
Bye for the moment,
Jean J