The Bedford Boys Who Paid the Ultimate Price at D-Day-- Part 5: White, Wright, Yopp

SSgt.  GORDON H. WHITE JR.   Birth:  31 December 1921   Death:  6 June 1944,    Burial:  Forest Baptist Church, Bedford, Virginia.

SSgt.  ELMERE P. WRIGHT    Birth:   Birth 1915    Death:  6 June 1944     Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, France


Sgt.   GRANT C. YOPP   Birth:  27 May 1923      Death:   6 June 1944     Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, France.

A Heavy Price to Pay for Bedford, Virginia.  --GreGen

The Bedford Boys Who Paid the Ultimate Price at D-Day-- Part 4: Schenk, Stevensm Wilkes

SSgt  JOHN BURWELL SCHENK     Born:  13 September 1913   Died: 6 June 1944   Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, France.

TSgt.  RAY O. STEVENS    Born:  12 August 1919   Died:   6 June 1944   Buried:  Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Virginia.

Master Sergeant    JOHN L. WILKES    Born:   20 July 1919    Died:   6 June 1944  Buried:  Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Virginia.

--GreGen

The Bedford Boys Who Paid the Ultimate Price at D-Day-- Part 3: Parker, Powers. Rosassa, Reynolds

SSgt  EARL L. PARKER   Born:  22 January 1913,  Died:  6 June 1944,  Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Normandy, France

Pfc  JACK G. POWERS   Born:  18 April 1920,  Died:  6 June 1944,  Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, Normandy, France.

Pfc    WELDON ANTONIO ROSASSA    Born:  11 September 1921,  Died:  6 June 1944,   Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and memorial, Normandy, France.

Pfc    JOHN FRANKLIN "JACK" REYNOLDS    Born 13 November 1922,   Died 6 June 1944,  Buried:  Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Virginia.

--GreGen

The Bedford Boys Who Paid the Ultimate Price at D-Day-- Part 2: Gillaspie, Hoback, Hoback, Lee

Pfc  NICK NAPOLEON GILLASPIE--Born 28 March 1918,  Died:  6 June 1944,  Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial

Pvt BEDFORD TURNER HOBACK--  Born: 15 September 1913, Died  6 June 1944,  Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.

SSgt. RAYMOND S. HOBACK--  Bron:  21 January 1920,  Died 6 June 1944,  Buried:  Body never recovered.  He is listed at the Garden of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial.

Pvt CLIFTON G. LEE--  Born:  13 August 1917,  Died 6 June 1944,  Buried:  Normandy American Cemetery and memorial.

--GreGen

The Bedford Boys Who Paid the Ultimate Price at D-Day-- Part 1: Abbott, Carter, Clifton Draper, Fellers

SSgt. LESLIE C. ABBOTT JR.--  Born Oct. 7. 1921.  Died June 6, 1944.  Buried Oakwood Cemetery, Bedford, Va.

Pfc  WALLACE R. CARTER--  Born 31 January 1923   Died June 6, 1944.  Buried Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Va.

Pfc  JOHN D. CLIFTON--  Born June 18, 1923.  Died June 6, 1944.  Buried at Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Va.

T/Sgt. FRANK PRICE DRAPER, JR.--  Born September 16, 1918.  Died June 6, 1944.  Buried at Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Va.

Captain TAYLOR NICHOLAS FELLERS--  Born 10 June 1914.  Died June 6, 1944.  Buried Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Va.

--GreGen

Pvt. Bedford Hoback, Missing In Action at D-Day

From Find A Grave.

Birth:  15 September 1913, Bedford County, Virginia

Death:  6 June 1944 (aged 30)  Departement  du Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France

Burial:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial   Colleville-sur-Mer, Departement du Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France.

Killed in action June 6, 1944, Normandy, France.  Brother of Raymond Hoback; Regimental Combat Team, 29th Infantry Division; awarded Purple Heart; buried in U.S. Military Cemetery, Normandy, France.

--GreGen

SSgt. Raymond S. Hoback-- Part 2

Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy.  On June 6, 1944,  Operation Neptune, commonly known as D-Day, began.

Thirty-two Virginia National Guard troops from Bedford, Va., Company A, 116th Infantry, 29th Division were part of the first wave of more than 160,000 Allied troops that landed on a heavily fortified 50-mile stretch of French coast.

Company A was in on the assault on Omaha Beach where the hottest and most costly action took place.  By the end of the day, nineteen of the thirty-two men from Bedford, Virginia, were dead.

Two more died later in the Normandy Campaign.  Also, two other Bedford men assigned to different units died.

Bedford's population at the time was about 3,200 and proportionately the community suffered the country's highest casualties on D-Day, and for that matter, all of World War II.

--GreGen

SSgt Raymond Samuel Hoback-- Part 1

From Find a Grave.

Birth:  21 January 1920  Bedford County, Virginia

Death:  6 June 1944 (aged 24)  Colleville-sur--Mer, Department of  du Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France.

Burial:  Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial  Same as above.

Plot:  Name listed in the Garden  of the Missing  Army-Air Forces Tablet  22 Line 08.

His body was never recovered.

--GreGen

Privates Bedford and Raymond Hoback of Bedford, Va., Both Killed at D-Day, June 6, 1944

I went to Find a Grave for this.  And, was it sad.   Go to either the listing for the father, John Samuel Hoback (1894-1977) or mother, Macie E. Robertson Hoback (1888-1972) and under children you will see the names:

Bedford Turner Hoback   1913-1944
Mabel Frances Hoback Phelps   1915-2111
Elsie Leachman Hoback Davis    1918-2012
Raymond S. Hoback    1920-1944
Giles Cecil Hoback 1931-2005

The whole family was long-lived except for Raymond and Bedford.

For some reason they don't have Lucille Hoback Boggess, their sister listed.  She was the one who was interviewed in the previous article on Bedford, Virginia.

All are buried in Virginia, except Bedford and Raymond.  Bedford in buried at Normandy American Cemetery and memorial at Colleville-sur-Mer, France.  Raymond's body was never recovered and thought to have been swept out to sea.  He is listed at the Garden of the Missing at the same cemetery as his brother.

The pictures of the two men is at right of this entry.

--GreGen

Death of Clinton, Iowa, Pearl Harbor Survivor Daniel R. Kramer, 103

From the May 5, 2020, Clinton (Iowa) Herald  "One of last Pearl Harbor survivors dies" by Carie Kuehn.

Mr. Kramer died Monday, May 4.  He grew up in Dubuque, went to the University of Iowa, joined the U.S. Navy and lived through the attack while stationed on the battleship USS California.  The ship was hit forward and aft by two Japanese torpedoes in the early minutes of the attack and later by a bomb.

Nearly one hundred officers and men died.

Mr. Kramer was 25 at the time and had been married just six months

He recalled:  "General quarters was sounded.  My battle station  was on the bridge of the battleship.  The battleship sank slowly in the water where the main deck was under water but the rest of the battleship was not."

He stayed in the Navy until 1946, then moved back to Clinton where he worked for Du Pont.

When 2020 started, there were just 20 Pearl Harbor survivors remaining in the United States.

--GreGen

Here's Hoping Bedford, Va. Doesn''t Participate in the Great Virginia Confederate Monument Orgy July 1

Bedford, Virginia, home of the National D-Day Memorial  because of its loss of 19 men that day out of 34 engaged and they have a wonderful memorial to them.  I have been writing about this town's sacrifice the last several days.

However, Bedford and Bedford County also has a monument honoring its Confederates who fought during the Civil War.  There is a lot of  news of hate crimes being directed against other Confederate monuments in the state these days, especially in Richmond, and I am wondering about the fate of the Confederate one Bedford.

Will it be allowed to remain or have to be defaced and taken down because of offense to some?

Here's hoping the town continues to honor its war dead and service they gave, regardless of whether or not they were Confederate.

Maybe one Virginia town is not going with the current wave of hate.

--GreGen

Bedford, Va. Remembers D-Day-- Part 4: "Where Are My Boys?"

Several weeks after D-Day, a package arrived at the Hoback's home.  It contained Raymond's Bible.  Lucille now treasures it.  For decades it sat prominently in the family room, never to be moved.  It is inscribed "Raymond S. Hoback, from mother, Xmas, 1938."

Her parents never got over their loss.  She remembers her mother, in her dying days, waking from nightmares screaming, "Where are my boys?"

April Cheek-Messier, a local resident who is president of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, says the sadness that lingered in town for many years has been replaced by "immense patriotism."

On the 75th anniversary, Lucille Hoback Boggess still feels the loss:  "You wonder what they would have done with their lives, how Bedford would be different if all those boys had come hone," she says.  "You never forget.  I miss them every day."

GreGen

Bedford, Va. Remembers D-Day-- Part 3: Both of Lucille's Brothers Among the Dead

Lucille Hoback Boggess was 15 that July, when her parents received two telegrams, a day apart, telling them that their sons, Bedford and Raymond Hoback were dead.  She recalls watching her father walk, heartbroken, to a barn where he could hide his tears and grieve alone.  Every evening that summer felt like a wake.

Boggess was very close to her mother, "Anything that hurt her, hurt me.  I felt helpless.  Bedford Hoback's body was identified.  He is one of more than 9,000 interred at the American cemetery at Coleville-sur-Mer in France.  

Raymond's corpse was never found.  He may have washed out to sea.  His name is inscribed with about 1,500 others on a wall of the missing, near where her brother lies.

--GreGen

Bedford, Virginia Remembers D-Day-- Part 2: 19 of 34 Bedford Boys Killed in Opening Minutes

Of the 34 soldiers from Bedford in Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, 19 were killed.  Sadly, that included both of Lucille Hoback Boggess' brothers.  The carnage that befell Company A happened in a matter of minutes:  German machine gunners. opened fire on them as the soldiers clambered ashore.

For the little community to suffer so enormously was an anomaly created by the times.  Many of Bedford's young men had joined a Virginia National Guard unit before the war, as the Great Depression lingered.  The unit became a part of the U.S. Army in early 1941.  Through grim luck, the small unit the Bedford boys were part of landed in the teeth of the most destructive German fire.

--GreGen

Bedford, Virginia, Remembers D-Day-- Part 1

From the June 2019 AARP Bulletin "Bedford Remembers" by Alex Kershaw.

Lucille Hoback Boggess of Bedford, Virginia, celebrates her 90th birthday on June 8, just 48 hours after the anniversary of D-Day.  The events of that day, 75 years ago would forever change her life and that of her family and her hometown.

Boggess remembers waving goodbye to her two brothers from the Bedford train station under a cold blue February sky in 1941 after their National Guard unit was called to active duty.  None of those soldiers, including several sets of brothers, could foresee the role they would play in the greatest invasion of that war (or any war for that matter).

On June 4, 1944, the southwestern Virginia town of Bedford, population 3,200, suffered the highest per capita loss of any American community.  When the telegrams began to arrive, the tight-knit town was devastated.

--GreGen

A D-Day Letter to His Mother With the Sad News-- Part 2: Continued Firing After he Was Dead

"Jim took the machine gun and crawled forward to a good position and set up the gun and began firing.  he was in a spot and was doing plenty of good, so the (Germans) started concentrating all their efforts on him....

"His platoon leader saw they were getting close and yelled to Jim that he'd better get out of there.  The boys in the platoon said it was possible Jim didn't hear as they had never known him to disobey an order but his friends seem to think that he was just mad and was doing so much good at the time he didn't want to move.

"So he stayed right there and fired until his gun was red hot.  Then they got zeroed in on him and landed a mortar shell right on top of him.  He died instantly but his hand was still clutching the trigger.  As a result of his continued fire, the platoon was able to advance to their objective....

"With all my love, Charles"

A D-Day Letter to His Mother With the Sad News-- Part 1

From the June 2019 AARP Bulletin  "Letters from D-Day."

The Center for American War Letters at Chapman University, directed by Andew Carroll, is an invaluable repository of the words of Americans at war.  If you have any such letters, please get them or facsmiles to the university.

Here is an excerpt from one that vividly recalls June 6, 1944.  The letter was from Pfc Charles McAllister, 101st Airborne, was written to the mother of his cousin, Pfc. Jim Dasher, also of the 101st.  His letter recounted what he had been told of Jim's courage that day:

"Jim's Section Leader had been killed and Jim was in charge so he took over the machine gun himself.  The enemy had them surrounded on three sides and had them pinned down with fire."

More to Come.  --GreGen

D-Day By the Numbers on It's 76th Anniversary

From the June 2019 AARP Bulletin.

THE PERSONNEL:  156,000 Allied troops from the U.S., Britain and France

THE SHIPS:  More than 6,000, including six battleships

THE VEHICLES:  50,000 tanks and other machines of war

THE AIRCRAFT:  About 11,000 American and British planes, flying 14,674 missions on D-Day alone.

THE SPAN:  Nearly 50 miles of landings, stretching west to east from Utah Beach to Sword Beach

ALLIED CASUALTIES:  At least 2,501 Americans and 1,913 British, Canadian and other Allied troops were killed on D-Day; about 7,500 were wounded

--GreGen

Japanese Submarine I-19-- Part 2: Guadalcanal, Fiji and Loss

That single torpedo salvo that ended up sinking an aircraft carrier, destroyer and damaged a battleship so badly it was out of action for quite a while was a major feat on naval warfare.

After causing the sinking of the aircraft carrier USS Wasp and destroyer USS O'Brien and seriously damaging the battleship USS North Carolina, the Japanese submarine I-19 assisted in nocturnal resupply  and reinforcement deliveries to the Japanese  forces on Guadalcanal from November 1942 to February 1943.  These missions were labeled the "Tokyo Express" by the Allies.

The I-19 later was involved in the evacuation of those troops.

Between April and September 1943, the I-19 was stationed off Fiji.  During this time, the submarine under the command of Kinashi Takakuzi, sank two Allied cargo ships and heavily damaged another one.  Reportedly, after sinking the SS William K. Vanderbilt, on May 16, 1943, the I-19 surfaced on machine-gunned the survivors in their lifeboats, killing one.

On November 25, 1943, at 20:49, about 50 nautical miles off Makin Island, the destroyer USS Radford detected the I-19 on the surface by radar and attacked with depth charges after the submarine dived.  The I-19 was lost with all hands.

--GreGen

Japanese Submarine I-19-- Part 1: Sank the USS Wasp, USS O'Brien and Damaged the USS North Carolina All in One Day

In the timeline on the battleship USS North Carolina I mentioned that it was damaged by the Japanese submarine I-19, which at the same time sank the aircraft carrier USS Wasp and destroyer  USS O'Brien.  Quite a haul for any submarine any time, any where.

From Wikipedia.

The I-19 was a Japanese Type B1 submarine  During the Guadalcanal Campaign, with a single torpedo salvo, she sank the USS Wasp, USS O'Brien and damaged the USS North Carolina.

It was completed April 28, 1941 and took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941.

On September 15, 1942, while patrolling off the south coast of the Solomon Islands, the I-19 spots a task force of American ships including the carrier Wasp, battleship North Carolina and destroyer O'Brien.  A salvo of six torpedoes were fired.  Three hit the Wasp causing heavy damage so bad that it had to be scuttled.  Other torpedoes hit the North Carolina and O'Brien.

Like I said, that was some good shooting.

--GreGen

Of Potlucks and Child Care on the Home Front in 1944

From the Dec. 4, 2019, MidWeek (DeKalb County, Illinois) "Looking Back."

1944, 75 Years Ago.

"Women who have been working at the Red Cross sewing rooms in the Chronicle Building are having their December potluck dinner on Tuesday next week instead of Wednesday.

"It is hoped that the entire corps of workers will be present for the event.    A turkey dinner with all the trimmings will be served at 12:00 o'clock."

***************************************

"The nursery school being conducted at the Teachers College (NIU) is closing its first month of operation and parents of enrolled children are enthusiastic  in their reports.

"Opening of this school came almost exactly at the time of considerable reduction of factory employment of mothers in DeKalb but it is becoming clear that there is a great need for this kind of project at all times."

--GreGen

USS North Carolina (BB-55)-- Part 3: Now a State Memorial to World War II and Veterans

APRIL 1945--  After surviving a typhoon off the Philippines and leaving Iwo Jima, the North Carolina shot down Japanese kamikaze planes but also was hit by friendly fire which killed four and wounded 44.

OCTOBER 1945--  The battleship reaches the Brooklyn Navy Yard (New York Navy Yard) where she was built for an overhaul.  The ship is adjusted for training for the U.S. Naval Academy.

JUNE 27, 1947--  The USS North Carolina is decommissioned.

JUNE 1, 1960--  The ship is stricken from the U.S. Navy Vessel Register (which means the ship will be sold).  But, a North Carolina man named James Craig, led a campaign to raise $250,000 necessary to  prepare a site to host the ship, which was successful.  Wilmington became the host.  (A lot of the money came from student donations.  I am happy to say, some of those nickels, dimes and quarters came from me in 4th grade.

OCTOBER 2, 1961--  The North Carolina is steered into her new home  across from downtown Wilmington on the Cape Fear River.

APRIL 29, 1962--  The battleship is opened to visitors.

--GreGen