Dutch people in the US Army? For a new project I am researching Dutch and sons of Dutch immigrants that served in the US Army during World War II. Nick van Beek, 9, emigrated with his parents to the United States in 1893. The Van Beek family came from Bennekom (GLD) and settled in the […]
HIS LAST PASTROL. Researching and reconstructing the battlefields has always been a passion of mine. Working closely with my friend Myra Miller has allowed me to request many service records of WWII veterans. Two years ago I requested my very first Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF). An IDPF contains information regarding an individual soldier’s death. […]
In November 2019, WWII Veteran Ceo Bauer returned to Normandy for probably the last time. We made the trip a bit more special for the 95th Infantry Division Veteran and visited the site where his friend of the 35th Division was Killed in Action on July 14, 1944. In Honor of Rolland J. Hill and […]
Edgar Valderrama – 5th Infantry Division, 11th Infantry Regiment, Company C Entering the City We were a scraggly, dusty, sorry looking line of Dogfaces dragging ourselves single file into the first German city I had seen since ‘joining’ the Fifth Infantry Division as a replacement. The city had been rendered an impressive pile of ruins […]
Guestblog by Edgar Valderrama – 5th Infantry Division, 11th Infantry Regiment, Company C. We reached the Danube after the war had ended. They say the Danube appears blue to those in love. I was in love, yet the Danube sure looked like any big muddy river to me. The end of the war had caught […]
Last Friday I was invite by the War Museum in Overloon, The Netherlands, to join one their first-time ‘Museum in the Dark’ event. The Museum is known for it’s annual Militracks Event, but this was something different. The event is evolved around the military experiences of Vincent J. Speranza, former member of H company, 501st […]
When you guys are reading this, I’ll be on an airplane on my way to Okinawa, Japan. For two weeks I will move around the island to research the World War 2 Battlefields. Throughout the trip I will be actively posting pictures and other content on Facebook and Instagram. But the biggest effort will be […]
Today I took possession of the pocket knife owned by Prentice W. Ball. This WWII relic was found on April 1, 2018, by Frank van Vark and my dad, Ronald van Meesen. Traveling to Germany, me and my dad went back to the original location and foxhole where the knife was found. In March 1945 […]
On January 10 1945, near Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, Alex M. Penkala was sharing a foxhole with Warren H. ‘Skip’ Muck. On that day in January their foxhole received a direct hit from a German 88mm FLAK gun. Both men are portrayed in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. The series is […]
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