Tracing my father’s war story

On this Armistice Day, Ryle Dwyer shares his journey to find the grave of his father who was killed in WWII

THIS year’s Armistice Day has particular implications for me. My father was killed while serving with the US Army during the Second World War, but I grew up not knowing where.

His last letter — mailed on the morning he was killed — was written “from somewhere in Luxembourg”. In it, he mentioned that they would be moving into another country in the next 48 hours, but I was never sure that he actually made it into Germany, because he was buried in Luxembourg.

One night, while surfing the internet a few years ago, I entered a search for his unit, and came up with the name of Tom Ingram, who was looking for photographs, so I sent him an email. He responded with a copy of a citation that he got with the Bronze Star, which he was awarded for trying to save my father after he was shot near Wallmerath, Germany.

It was ironic that the one name I came up with happened to have been beside my father when he was shot.

“The rest of the company was forced to withdraw, but Pvt Ingram refused to leave until he had given all possible aid,” the citation read. He remained with my father until he died in the middle of a snow-covered field.

This year, Mr Ingram informed me of a reunion in Lorraine, France. I was invited, so I took the opportunity to meet him there.

My father spent over a month at the front in Lorraine in the late autumn of 1944. The Germans had withdrawn so hastily following the Normandy campaign, that there was no discernible frontline for a time.

“One night, I went out on a listening patrol with three of my men,” my father wrote on October 15, 1944. “Before we’d done 25 yards a Jerry patrol passed behind us. Well, you can imagine how surprised we were. Anyway we had to go on. Well, we passed at least twenty of the s-o-b-s, did our job and returned.

“There’s a part of France that I know better than I know any part of the USA,” he continued. “And I don’t like my neighbours, believe me. They aren’t nice people — they should happen to Hitler.”

My father’s regiment of the 90th Division crossed the Moselle River near Thionville in the early hours of November 9, 1944. “We ‘liberated’ several populated places as the communiqués say,” he wrote the following week.

“The houses empty — the street fills with people so happy they jump and laugh like children. They laugh and cry and simply lose all control of themselves in their emotion. You’ve seen children tremble with excitement at the prospect of a gift or candy — just picture grown people that excited.”

The older French people still remember their liberation. There were many signs about Lorraine for the Americans — “We shall never forget.”

They paid the whole tab for the stay — the hotel, the meals, the tours and a cruise down the Moselle. They would not even take money from me for postage stamps.

On the second day, the whole party visited the American cemetery in Luxembourg. Tom Ingram actually directed me to my father’s grave. He had visited it before. It seemed fitting that my first visit should be with the man who was with my father when he was killed some 65 years earlier.

At one of the stops near Thionville, at the site where American airmen died, a group of French children aged no more than eight or nine sang “Oh what a hell of a way to die!” to the air of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. It must have taken many hours of practice for those children to sing it in English.

Involving the children is a way of perpetuating the memory. While many Americans seem to think that, ever since presenting them with the Statue of Liberty, the French have only given them grief — the people of Lorraine certainly exhibited great warmth for the Americans.

Those French people showed real appreciation for what the Americans did for them in the Second World War, and I shall never forget their kindness during what was my first visit to France.