Posted by Allan Wilford Howerton Link: Dear Captain, et al.
on March 6, 2009, 4:07 pm, in reply to "J. L. Buchanan"
172.131.137.225
T/5 J. L. Buchanan of Sycamore Landing, Tennessee served in Company K, 335th Infantry. He was killed in action January 23, 1945, six days after joining the company. He was one of thirty-three casualties (eight killed in action and twenty-five wounded) at the battle of Ourtre, Belgium, the last company offensive action during the Ardennes Campaign (Battle of the Bulge). He was one of thirty-one men who entered to the company at Devantave, Belgium as replacements following heavy casualties after the 84th Division moved from the Siegfried line to defend the far northwest sector of the Bulge around Marche-en-Femenne, Belgium in late December, 1944. One other man from that group, Pvt. Richard F Irwin of Glouchester, Massachusetts was killed in action the same day.
As he came into the company with the rank of T/5, Buchanan was most likely among the thousands of men reassigned from other units to frontline rifle companies to compensate for heavy casualties during this phase of WW II. The fatalities of Buchanan and Irwin are illustrative of what was, in many ways, a tragic aspect of the manner in which replacements were rushed into battle during WW II. With limited training and without buddies and colleagues to rely on for assurance and protection, many became casualties before having a chance to adapt and learn survival tactics.
Unless Buchanan’s personnel records survived a fire at the Federal Records Center at St. Louis in 1973, it will be very difficult to determine his earlier service unless there are pertinent papers in the family. Twenty percent of the records survived the fire and you might want to check with the St. Louis facility of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in case his records are among them. For information go to:
http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/standard-form-180.html
Chapter 14 (Death and Night at Ourthe) of my memoir "Dear Captain et al.: the Agonies and the Ecstasies of War and Memory" describes the battle of Ourthe in detail and lists T/5 Buchanan’s name and all the casualties. The battle of Ourthe lasted all day and much of the night. His and other bodies were found in the snow the following morning outside the village indicating that he may have been killed when the final attack was made at dusk under a smoke barrage. The casualties at Ourthe were among Company K’s highest for a single day of the war.
306
Message Thread:
« Back to thread