MSG John McCarthy’s Road to Lecaudey Farm (Part II)

Great thoughts and words, Kevin. They cannot be overemphasized. Thank you for them. Just today my wife and I went the graves of my father and mother (Army Nurse) and to the grave of an uncle of my wife that served in the U.S. Coast Guard in WW2. We placed a flag on each grave, as we have done for several years now.

Charles

 

More on the manifests of Keokuk Chalks #3 and 8.

Through a private researcher, I recently obtained a collection of Morning Reports (MRs) from the National Archives in College Park, MD for the 101st Airborne Division for the month of June 1944. Specifically, this collection includes MRs for the 101st Airborne Division Headquarters and Headquarters Company as well as several support units (Signal Company, MP Company, etc.). These MRs were completed throughout the month of June of 1944, but they focus on the events of June 6th and 7th.

A website link (provided by John S) dedicated to the 327th Engineer Combat Battalion of World War II provides a good overview of these reports. The website also includes a key to some of the commonly used abbreviations in the reports.

http://www.327engineer.com/MorningReports/MorningRportsIntro.htm#Abbreviations

From this website:
“Morning Reports were created each morning, as the name implies. They were an "exception based" system, only containing information on those individuals who were not "Present and Accounted for". Among the reasons for being listed on a morning report are:

• Promotion or demotion
• Being killed, wounded or missing in action
• Being assigned to a unit, or leaving a unit
• Going to a hospital for treatment, or to another activity for training

Every day of World War II, whether in training or during the most explosive warfare, a 3 1/4" by 7" Morning Report was issued from each company to higher headquarters.”

As an example, a 101st HQ MR completed on June 12, 1944 documents the death of BGEN Donald Pratt, the Assistant Division Commander of the 101st, who was killed on the morning of June 6th in Chalk #1 of the Chicago Mission glider lift. A portion of that MR is provided below.



Due to Forum limitations and the non-standard size of the MR cards, entire MR cards cannot be posted on this thread. However, several of the MR cards referenced in this post are available in full-size via these links.
Page #1 - left side (12 June 1944)
Page #6 - centre (14 June 1944)
Page #11 - left side (26 June 1944)
Page #13 - left side (14 June 1944)
Page #14 - right side (26 June 1944)


For the purposes of the research effort documented on this thread, the MRs provide a way to further document and verify the passenger manifests of Keokuk Chalks #3 and 8. This information, used in conjunction with available oral histories and other reference documents, also contributes to our overall Keokuk research effort.

Keokuk Chalk #8, whose horrific crash landing led to a significant number of KIA and WIA casualties, is probably the most documented glider within Keokuk. My father mentioned Chalk #8 in his account in Koskimaki’s D-Day with Screaming Eagles, T/5 Charles Laden (a Chalk #8 rider) documented his Keokuk landing experience on the http://ww2-airborne.us (his summary is no longer available on that site, but the text is available on my April 22, 2013 post on this thread) and SGT Ted Harrison’s June 6th experience is summarized in a recently discovered newspaper article. Some of these sources mention just the number of casualties, some list specific names, and others list a combination of both. The information provided in the recently acquired MRs now allow us to link this information together.

Utilizing the information provided in the sources listed above, along with the MRs, Don and I were able to develop this almost complete manifest for Keokuk Chalk #8. (My thanks to Don for his help with the analysis of the MRs.)

2nd LT Sam Shapiro – KIA
F/O Sylvan Runkle – WIA
PFC Raymond Demonge – MIA changed to KIA on subsequent MR
T/5 Robert McCullum – MIA changed to KIA on subsequent MR
T/5 William Weber – KIA on MR
T/5 Harrison – SWA on MR
T/5 Ted Lawler – SWA on MR
PVT Lester Gunderson - LIA on MR
CPL or T/5 Milton Reese - WIA
PVT Eugene Hart - SIA on MR
T/5 Charles Laden - No injuries, walked-away

SWA: Seriously Wounded in Action
LIA: Lightly Injured in Action
SIA: Seriously Injured in Action


With regards to PFC Demonge and T/5 McCullum, they were initially listed on the 101st Signal Company MR for June 20th as MIA and their status was changed to KIA on the 101st Signal Company MR for June 26th. See below.


101st Signal Company MR for June 20th.
Of note, and related to some other ongoing research, T/5 William Finn is listed as MIA. From his own account in Koskimaki’s book, Finn was taken as a POW on the evening of June 6th, most likely from one of the Big Dipper gliders.



101st Signal Company MR for June 26th.


As I mentioned, we have an almost complete manifest for Keokuk Chalk #8. From Harrison’s account: “Only two men were able to walk away from the crash.” Most likely that refers to T/5 Charles Laden and one other… maybe. From my father’s account, he mentioned 3 WIA and 8 WIA on Chalk #8. The numbers don’t exactly add up, but we are close. With all the different accounts, a bit of uncertainty will always remain.

With regards to the manifest of Keokuk Chalk #3, my father mentioned in his account that his friend, SGT Joe Paris and “several” MPs were KIA casualties on that glider. From other sources, I have been able to identify PVT Ambrose Konter and PFC William Smith as possible candidates for these KIA casualties. The 101st MP PLT MR for June 26th lists SGT Paris and PVT Konter as KIA on June 7th. This indicates that PVT Konter was most likely one of the other KIAs on Chalk #3.


101st Airborne Division MP PLT MR for June 26th.


By chance, PVT Konter is also listed on a burial record available on a Trigger Time Forum post from October 8, 2008

http://triggertimeforum.yuku.com/reply/9345/Father-Sampson-and-bodies-of-KIA-on-D1#reply-9345

An attached file in that post indicates that PVT Konter was buried in the Blosville Cemetery next to PFC John Hall who was KIA in the Brecourt Manor action as portrayed in the Band of Brothers mini-series.


I have also recently obtained copies of the 101st Airborne Division G-2 and G-3 Operational Reports for the month of June 1944. For readers with access to the Green Room, Pat will be creating a thread which will have these documents and the entire file of MRs that I obtained available for review. This thread will be posted in the near future.

R/Kevin

 

Attention

The man who was killed at Brecourt was John D. HallS (with a "S" at the end)

- John D. Halls was pfc, Hq Co, 2/506th PIR, killed at Brecourt and buried at Hiesville
- John D. Hall was tec5, Svc Co, 1/506th PIR , killed in the crash of 42-100819 and buried at Blosville

 

Yes. John D. Halls was reinterred at Blosville cemetery on 4 july 1944

 

Pat,

Do you mean the westernmost of the two paths running roughly north?
If so, I think this may be a bit too narrow.
Could be wrong, though. It's been known...

If you carry on north to where it joins the eastern path, there's a Jeep visible in Streetview, presumably coming back from the chateau...

Cheers,

Sean

 

Hi All,

I've found out through some research that my grandfather, Gerhard Baum, was a passenger in Chalk #5. He didn't speak much about his participation in WW2 but I was able to find an excerpt from a book in which he describes his war-time experiences. I have attached a copy of the excerpt (two parts). I also know that he was a POW at Oflag 64 in Poland and was liberated around January of 1945. Hopefully some of you will find this useful and maybe someone could actually provide me with a little more information with regards to my grandfathers experience.

Thanks,

Andy Baum

 

Summary of the status of the Keokuk Chalks #3 and 4 glider pilots

In 2013, I began a research effort to locate and then interview any surviving pilots from my father’s D-Day glider, Keokuk Chalk #4, as well as Keokuk Chalk #3, the glider that landed less than 20 yards away from Chalk #4 on the evening of June 6th. This effort achieved its first success in December of 2013 with Don’s discovery of the on-line obituary of F/O Winfield Goulden, pilot of Keokuk Chalk #4. F/O Goulden had passed away seven months earlier in May of 2013, but I was able to locate and then speak with his widow, Sylvia Goulden. A summary my conversations with Mrs. Goulden along with scans of key pages from F/O Goulden’s logbook are provided in my January 29, 2014 post (here). Information provided by Mrs. Goulden then led me to Frank Blalock, Jr., the son of F/O Frank Blalock, Sr., the co-pilot of Keokuk Chalk #4. During a phone conversation with Frank Jr. in February 2014, he informed me that his father had passed away in the early 1950s.

That left F/O Arthur R. Collins, pilot of Keokuk Chalk #3, as the only possible survivor in this group as his co-pilot, F/O Richard S. Myers, was killed during the landing of Chalk #3 on the evening of June 6th. Of note, F/O Richard S. Myers has been previously incorrectly identified as Richard S. Meyers in some sources, but Patricia Overman (ELW) directed me to a memorial page on the National WWII Glider Pilots Association website that she maintains (here) that correctly identifies F/O Myers. He is buried in the Normandy American Cemetery above Omaha Beach. Also according to Pat O, F/O Myers was one of twelve 88th TCS/438th TCG members that were transferred to the 434th TCG for Keokuk.

I was particularly interested in speaking with F/O Collins because he was part of a group of four, including my father, who spent about 12 hours together on the night of June 6th/morning of June 7th as they made their way from their glider-landing site to the CP in Hiesville. Along the way, they hid from German patrols in roadside ditches (This possibly could have been on Route de Rabey near the General Pratt Waco crash site, if our current favored theory is correct. German patrols were documented to have been on this road during the early morning hours of June 6th.), overheard the Germans taking glider crews as prisoners in a nearby fields (possibly the Big Dipper group) and then spent the night hiding in a ditch in barnyard (possibly somewhere south of Hiesville).

While my father doesn’t mention F/O Collins by name, he does refer to the pilot of Chalk #3 several times in George Koskimaki’s D-Day with the Screaming Eagles. Here are a few key passages from that book:

Sergeant McCarthy’s glider Numnber “4” had come to rest safely in a soft field only twenty yards from a hedgerow. He observed, “Glider Number 3 which was just in front of ours slammed into an earthen bank and collapsed in a pile of splinters. The co-pilot (Myers) was killed as were several MPs and headquarters people.“

With darkness approaching, Sergeant McCarthy was in the hedgerow with the CIC Officer, (T/5) Plotke (Both Chalk #4 riders) and the pilot of the wrecked glider (F/O Collins from Chalk #3). He said, “Somehow this glider pilot had miraculously survived a crash in which his compartment was completely demolished. He did have difficulty moving about due to a broken heel. He was given a shot of morphine to ease the pain. The CIC man, whose briefings had been rushed and sketchy, directed me to take charge of the small group.”

“I knew we were less than a mile from Hiesville and the command post… We started out in the darkness, moving cautiously along the deep ditch beside the road… We stopped once more when a burst of small arms fire was heard in front of us… Then the sound of marching feet with the click-clicking of hobnailed boots could be heard approaching in the direction of our small group in the ditch. Our four-some went flat on their stomachs hardly daring to breathe as the enemy platoon marched by… I got my group moving again a short time later. Shots and shouts were heard from the direction of the glider fields. Unarmed medics and headquarters men were being rounded up by the enemy. I kept moving my group along the ditch. We came to the entrance of a farmyard.”

“I said, ‘I think we’d better find a place to hide for the night. We’ll never make it in the dark. Stay put while I look around.’ I crawled ahead into the barnyard and searched about in the gloom. A shadowy hedgerow loomed near the barn. Beside it I noted a shallow ditch. I went back for the rest of my party. They followed me to the ditch where they promptly stretched out. I remained awake.”


Based on our current most-favored theory about the landing site of Chalks #3 and 4, the red line on the Google Earth map below depicts the possible path along Route de Rabey that my father and F/O Collins might have shared on the night of June 6th.




My search for F/O Collins took longer than my previous searches for Goulden and Blalock, but earlier this year I was successful and I was able to locate and then speak with F/O Collins several times over a two-week period. F/O Collins is now in his early 90s with his hearing and memory staring to fade (understandably so), but it was a privilege to speak with someone who was there with my father on the night of June 6th and shared the experiences outlined in the passages above. Below are the highlights of my conversations with F/O Collins:

- Unfortunately, he could not recall any information related to the location of his glider landing.
- When asked about his landing, F/O Collins recalled hitting the hedgerow on the rollout.
- With regards to the broken foot that my father mentioned, F/O Collins stated that his foot was not broken, but rather “it was just a bad bruise.”
- He does remember the shot of morphine he was administered.
- When I asked if he spent the night of June 6th in a barnyard, F/O Collins replied, “I spent it in a ditch.”
- He did not specifically remember my father, but he did say again that he “definitely” remembered the ditch in the barnyard where the group spent the night of June 6th.
- When I asked how long of a walk it was from the barn where he spent the night to the Division CP, he replied, “I’m sure it wasn’t very far.”

Due to his hearing loss, it was difficult to communicate any more detailed information over the telephone, but regardless, it was still an honor to speak with F/O Collins.

The National World War II Glider Pilots Association is holding their 45th Annual Reunion in Memphis, Tennessee in less than two weeks and I plan to attend. I look forward to the opportunity to meet the veteran members of this group along with Hans and others.

R/Kevin

 

Great research Kevin. I'll be in Memphis for the reunion.

 

Kevin,

The Normandy research here is superb. Knowing how difficult it is.
Looking forward meeting you next week.

Hans

 

More on Keokuk Chalk #8...

As previously documented in several posts in this thread (starting here); Keokuk Chalk #8, carrying members of the 101st Airborne Division Signal Company, crashed though a hedgerow upon landing, crossed a road and then crashed through a second hedgerow, killing three 101st troopers, wounding approximately six to eight others while killing the pilot and wounding the co-pilot. Based on my research to date, Chalk #8 probably sustained the most landing-related casualties of any Keokuk glider.

Several oral histories have been provided by Chalk #8 riders, but an October 2013 interview I conducted with F/O Lynus Ryan, co-pilot of Keokuk Chalk #7 (here), provides the best insight into the possible location of the Chalk #8 landing site. Key points from that interview:

- Chalk #7 did not land in the same field as General Pratt’s Waco glider. In Ryan’s words, “We landed in a field next to the field where General Pratt’s glider landed.” Ryan confirmed that he did not land in the field south of Pratt Field. Beyond that, he could not specifically recall the direction of his landing field from Pratt Field.

- Chalk #7 landed “right behind” and “relatively close” to Chalk #8 as Ryan described it. Ryan reiterated three times during our discussion that Chalk #8 went through a hedgerow, crossed a road and went through a second hedgerow before stopping in a field on the other side of a road from where Chalk #7 landed. Ryan stated that he believed that Chalk #7 landed west of Chalk #8 and that “just about everyone was killed” in Chalk #8. Ryan also stated that he encountered the Chalk #8 crash site while walking from the Landing Zone to the CP in Hiesville, forcing him to make his way around the glider wreckage in the road.

In George Koskimaki’s D-Day with the Screaming Eagles there is a photograph of a badly wrecked Horsa, identified in the book only as a “glider carrying men and motorcycles of the 101st Airborne Signal Company on the evening flight”. In my September 2013 interview with Mr.Koskimaki, he stated that he is positive that the wrecked Horsa glider pictured in his book is Keokuk Chalk #8. He also stated that Signal Company personnel or 326th Medical Company personnel were the most likely source of this photograph.

Until last month, this photograph was not available for posting. However, Patricia recently obtained a scan of the photograph from the George E. Kosimaki Collection held at the U.S. Army Military History Institute in Carlisle, PA. That photo scan is provided below. My thanks to Patricia and Hans for obtaining and forwarding the photograph, respectively.

Keokuk Chalk #8 Crash Site​

Any new analysis or discussion regarding the possible landing site of Keokuk Chalk #8 to add?


R/
Kevin