Posted by Allan Wilford Howerton on December 8, 2007, 12:35 pm, in reply to "Information on my grandfather - James Ralph Poe"
172.135.123.178
James R. Poe, ASN: 37640244, of McBaile, Missouri was a member of Company K, 335th Infantry. He was a replacement, having entered the company December 28, 1944 in the vicinity of Marche-en-femenne, Belgium. He was wounded in action on January 23, 1945 (early diagnosis: "foreign body" penetration, left forearm) during the battle of Ourthe, Belgium.
Ourthe, a day-long operation, was the last significant battle of the Ardennes Campaign (Battle of the Bulge). Eight company enlisted men and one officer were killed in action there and many wounded. The company was reduced to about half strength. The battle of Ourthe is described in detail in my memoir, "Dear Captain, et al.: the Agonies and the Ecstasies of War and Memory." James Poe's name is listed among the wounded on page 386. His name is also noted in an account (page 388) quoting a company medic, working in a house under a mortar attack, which indicates that the "foreign body" was a "piece of Jerry mortar through his arm" but that it "didn't take long to fix him up." Poe's name is also listed among five men who returned to the company from hospitalization on May 7, 1945 at Jamelin, Germany. This, one day before V-E day, was enough to earn a cluster for the Central Europe Campaign between the Rhine and Elbe rivers.
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