Posted by Allan Wilford Howerton on February 15, 2007, 4:27 pm, in reply to "Company K, 335th Infantry, 84th Div." Sergeant Wesley C. Chestnut of Alhambra, California was the company clerk. Part of the original cadre at Camp Howze, Texas from December 1942, he served throughout the war and returned to the U.S. with the division when it was demobilized in January 1946. T/Sgt. Clyde J. Wright of Dinuba, California, was also among the original cadre at Howze. He was one of the more colorful members of Company K. An assistant squad leader in the first platoon when we went overseas he became a squad leader (S/Sgt.) just before the Ardennes campaign and was promoted to T/Sgt. in late January 1945 and served as platoon sergeant for the first platoon through the rest of the war. On May 6, 1945, two days before V-E Day, he left the company for Fort Beale, California and forty-five days of home leave for rest and recuperation and did not return. Wright was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for service at the battle of Lindern. He was the recipient of two Purple Hearts for light wounds (one from a nick from a barb wire fence) and was hospitalized briefly for the other (a bruised thumb at the battle of Ourthe, Belgium during the Bulge). There are many stories about Clyde Wright in "Dear Captain, et al." I did not find Wesley Chestnut or Clyde Wright when I wrote the memoir and do not know if either still live.
Message modified by board administrator February 16, 2007, 3:48 pm
S/Sgt. Joseph W. Humphrey of Memphis, Tennessee, a squad leader in the ill-fated second platoon, was killed in action at the battle of Eisbergen, Germany on April 7, 1945 just after the crossing of the Weser River on the drive from the Rhine to the Elbe. Nine other Company K men lost their lives that day and fifteen were wounded in a fateful operation that, from my viewpoint, could have been avoided. The battle is described in detail in my memoir "Dear Captain, et al.: the Agonies and the Ecstasies of War and Memory." Earlier, Humphrey, who received posthumously a Silver Star Medal for Eisbergen, had won Bronze Star medals at Lindern in the Siegfried Line and at Ourthe in the Ardennes campaign where he skillfully and heroically rescued a soldier who would otherwise have been killed. This event is also described in the memoir.
| 150 |
|
Message Thread:
|
