Bonnie Henry : Their stories share theme: survival

Arizona Daily Star ^ | Bonnie Henry

[SandRat]

One landed on Omaha Beach just past dawn on D-Day, June 6, 1944. The other survived a German POW camp.

Neither claims to be a hero — which is precisely why we honor these two Tucsonans as Veterans Day approaches. "Yes, I was scared. You had to be. But I credit our training for getting me through," says Bob Kirby, 88. A corporal with the 81st Chemical Mortar Battalion, Kirby waded in chest-deep water onto Omaha Beach 50 minutes past the first landings.

"Bodies were floating all around, and bullets were pinging in the water. I don't know why we didn't get shot."

With the men came their mortar carts and the mortars they would soon launch on the beach.

Instead of scrambling for cover once they hit the sand, they set up their equipment to fire explosives toward the top of a cliff. "But we were too close," says Kirby. "We were set up for 400 yards, and the enemy was 200 or 300 yards away. It went over them."

So they dug foxholes in the sand and waited for about an hour, then made a run to the base of the cliffs. "We finally decided it was safer to go than stay in the foxhole," says Kirby.

Moving laterally along the base of the cliffs, they made it to a draw by nightfall. "There were about 80 of us altogether, including support," says Kirby, whose K-ration that night was a "big, thick chocolate bar." The next morning, they headed for the nearby hedgerows, where they again set up their mortars. "We had good targets and could fire at them accurately now," says Kirby.

For days they stayed in the hedgerows, firing at the enemy, before moving farther into France.

"We were there for the liberation of Paris," says Kirby. "There was lots of flowers and food."

The battles were hardly over, however. Through Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany they rolled, chasing the enemy. "We were attached to different units throughout the war, and everyone loved us. We seemed to have an unlimited amount of ammunition," says Kirby, who has five battle stars for Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, the Ardennes and Central Europe.

He was in Austria when the war in Europe ended on May 8, 1945.

While waiting to take a troop ship to the States, he made a quick trip back to England to see the English girl he had married three weeks before D-Day. She would follow him back to the U.S., where they would raise four children.

Only once has he gone back to Omaha Beach and its cemetery overlooking the surf and the sand. "It was so sad. I decided I'd never go back again," he says. Captured in the Bulge Three days after the Battle of the Bulge began on Dec. 16, 1944, Ken Kroeger and the rest of his outfit were overtaken by the Germans. He spent the rest of the war in a German POW camp.

A Tucsonan since 1938, Kroeger, now 86, arrived in Europe in October of '44.

"We were a replacement company," says Kroeger, whose unit — part of the 28th Infantry Division known as the "Bloody Bucket" — found its first taste of battle in Germany's Hurtgen Forest.

"It was a beautiful forest. We were in foxholes with timber crisscrosses across the tops. The Germans were firing 88s and mortar shells. A lot exploded in the treetops, and we had shrapnel and the tops of trees coming down on us." The weather was cold, muddy, wet. Then Kroeger was moved to a cannon company on the border between Germany and Luxembourg.

"Some of us were billeted in homes. I happened to be in a bowling alley," says Kroeger. "The fellow who owned the bowling alley also owned the local bar. Every once in a while, he would bring in a keg of beer, and we played cards at night."

This went on pleasantly enough for about 10 days. And then on Dec. 16, the Bulge — the last major Nazi offensive against the Allies — began.

"We kept firing shells up the line. We fired until our ammunition ran out. Then we went to bazookas and rifles. They came over the town in a big pincer movement and took all of our company, about 150 men."

The entire company was marched into Germany, along with other prisoners. "There were a couple of thousand of us in line. You didn't know if they were going to kill you or what."

Near Frankfurt, they were loaded into boxcars that had been used to haul horses to the front and were shipped to Stalag IV-B, in Bad Orb, Germany, considered one of the worst German camps to hold American POWs.

Barracks were so overcrowded that many of the men slept on the floor. Food was little more than soup made from grass, ladled into prisoners' helmets.

"Two men did escape. They were captured alive, but later on they disappeared," says Kroeger.

Prisoners were free to roam the camp, though all were starving, and many became sick as time went on, says Kroeger, whose 6-foot-3-inch frame would shrink to 115 pounds.

On April 2, 1945, American soldiers liberated the camp. "A tank rammed through the gate. They brought in truckloads of food and took the sick guys to the hospital," says Kroeger.

The camp was emptied out, and Kroeger was eventually flown to Camp Lucky Strike, near Le Havre, France, where he and other former POWs awaited ships to take them home.

Long retired, Kroeger has two children, four grandchildren and a great-grandchild.

"I'm not sure what became of the POW camp, but it was in a beautiful place," says Kroeger. "It reminded me of the White Mountains or Mount Lemmon." DID YOU KNOW

Tucson celebrated the end of World War II on Aug. 15, 1945, with strangers dancing in the streets and hundreds parading through town in automobiles.

[2banana]

Wonder how these guys would treat a nazi (muslim) that shot up an army base...