WWII End Game: Chasing the Enemy Across Germany

The lawyer called to tell me, as executor to my Uncle Bob Daley’s estate I was entitled to his personal effects. I was sent a box containing his watches, his wife’s jewelry; things you would expect to find. But there was something else, a small package of photographs.  My Uncle Bob was my mom’s brother.  I knew him when, as a young boy, my mom would drive us to Kingston, NY where he lived quietly with his wife Louise.  Bob and Louise spent their time playing golf and entertaining friends. He never once spoke his time in World War II and I was too young to ask questions.  

Robert Henry Daley, my Uncle Bob, was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on July

28, 1910.  His parents. Arthur and Margaret Daley were immigrants from Ireland.  He had nine brothers and sisters. He married Louise Niely in 1937 and worked as a Postal Clerk for the U.S Postal Service’s Railway Mail Service. He sorted, routed, and dispatched mail on railroad mail cars. At age 33, he enlisted in the Army on March 15,1943. He was one of those Americans who joined the Army, served during WWII, then returned to his life. He led a good, quiet life working as a postal inspector on trains the rest of his life.

Uncle Bob was trained as a Fire Direction Center Operator, MOS 645. That meant he prepared firing charts for vertical and horizontal control. He set up and operated such fire control instruments as the aiming circle and range finders. He served 14 months with the 754 Field Artillery in France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany.  He served for the Rhineland and Central Europe battles and campaigns. He qualified as a Marksman Sharpshooter for pistol and Carbine. He was never wounded. Along the way he was given the Good Conduct Medal, The European African Middle Eastern Theater campaign Ribbon, The American Theater Campaign Ribbon, and the Victory Medal. He achieved the rank of staff sergeant. He was honorably discharged on November 8, 1945.

I knew nothing of my Uncle Bob’s involvement in WWII.  I was left with his photos to piece his story together and with his band of brothers; a story which also needs to be told. As I looked as the pile of thirty photographs, hidden away in his personal effects, I realized he took photographs during WWII.  Fortunately, he wrote on the back of some of them which allowed me to piece together where he went and what he was doing after D-Day in those fateful years of 1944 and 1945.  I will never understand fully the impact WW II had on him or all the men and women of that generation that went to war.  My Army service twenty years later was different.

It was the end game of WW2.  The American and English armies pushed the German Army backwards.   History has highlighted the magnificence of D-day invasion, the toughness of the Battle of the Bulge, and the glory of the Band of Brothers.  Yet, there other stories, of other soldiers, not all on the firing lines.  The “backwar” has a story also. 

The following photographs were taken by Staff Sergeant Robert Daley as the 74 Field Artillery Battalion moved across Germany and Austria in the last six months of WW II.  His notes on the back of the photos are in quotes.

 Floverich, Germany supporting the crossing of the Roer River. Nov. 24,

1944      

“This part of F.D.C. operation.  Brache, me, Bayless, Dec. 1944. This was a backwar development”

 Eden,Nov. 24, 1944     

“Ederen: Hessen, Picace, Clappe”

“Ederen: Van Kley, Lt. O’Loughlin, Tom Bond, Skeets McKinstry, D.l.Scheid” Feb. 2,  1945         Waldfeucht, Germany February 2, 1945

“Waldfeuch:  Wilson, Schivey, Pop Parsons, Masinado, Kimmel, Sharpe”

“John Clark and Pete Bunnelle and knocked out Tiger tank “

Dries,                 March 4, 1945.

“This was taken outside the farmhouse we in Dries, Germany.  This was our first firing position after crossing the Roar. “March 6, 1945”            

“Hugo Braghe, Frederick the Great, Maria, Van Clef, Nadia, Valentine, Garfield”

Gladbeck, Germany March 30, 1945

Beur, Germany, April 8, 1945

“Buer: Whitewolf, Tracy, Mathesen, Campbe

Essen, First contact with displaced persons, April 12, 1945         

“Scene from Essen: Scheid and Van Kley”

 Hoxter. Unit is now the military government there. April 18, 1945

+East gate of General Weber Caseerne (Correct spelling: Kaserne, meaning barracks) where the Displaced Persons (Russians, Poles, Italians, etc.) were housed before shipment back towards their home country.

“The donut and coffee truck in front of the school at Hoxter. The building. in background is the courthouse.

“Temporary bridge across the Waser at Hoxter. The original bridge was blown by the Krauts in their retreat east.

Atkinson, Sharpe, Van Kley, Through the windshield are McClure and Matheson

” Polish Lt.Zavatzesskinski and Sgt. Muealberger

Taken at Gen. Weber’s Caserne, Hoxter, Germany

May 7, 1945                             Germany surrenders  

June 4, 1945.                Cross Danube to Munich

“Maj. Bever, Capt. Pike, Pvt. Guthmiller. Entrance to Hitler’s Bier Ball, Munich”

Bunnelle, Langhofer, Dryer, Brache, Andorf, July 9, 1945

Honorable discharge, Fort Devons, Mass. Nov. 8, 1945

My uncle Bob, just another guy from Bridgeport, Connecticut, who served his country and returned to civilian life.  As Bob Daley’s battalion fought and chased the German Army across the battle fields, he took the time to take a few pictures and record the names of the men and places they fought.  He recorded his band of brothers.  It is a history that few today know or understand.  Lest we forget these other places and voices, some from an old box of photographs, the history of WWII will never be complete.

REFERENCES

The History of the 754th FA BN, WWII ETO

March 6th, 2013 by Ulmont E. Robinson and Charles Schmeling

The Roer River Battles by David R. Higgins, 2010

Robert Henry Daley’s “Honorable Discharge.”  “Enlisted Record and Report of

Separation,” and “Separation Qualification Record,” Army of the United States, 1945.