For this week’s Owen-Withee Area History Series, I remember my dad, Harold, a native of Longwood, Wisconsin, and who literally stood at the front lines of World War II history. He served in the U.S. Army with the 252nd Field Artillery Battalion under General William H. Simpson’s Ninth Army, part of the Allied command led by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Like so many young men from small Wisconsin communities, he left home and was swept into events that changed the world.
Dad’s unit landed in France at Omaha Beach on October 10, 1944—D-Day plus 126. After a couple weeks drawing combat weapons and ammunition and completing final training, his battalion was sent to positions near the war front. He entered combat on October 31, 1944, near Hillensberg, Germany. From that day on, his artillery unit faced 188 days of combat, through mud, bitter cold, shellfire, and the constant fear that each day might be his last. The men lived with exhaustion, the deafening blast of the guns, and the strain of watching the war move village by village across Europe. Their war ended on May 8, 1945. For Harold and the men beside him, those months were not abstract history, but a daily fight to survive and a test of endurance few at home can fully imagine.
During part of that campaign, the 252nd Field Artillery Battalion was attached to the 102nd Infantry Division, the “Ozark Division.” Artillery units like his were vital to the advance, supporting infantry as they pushed deeper into Germany. The men lived with danger, fear, and knowledge that one moment could change everything – their end of life.
Among the most haunting things my father witnessed firsthand, was the atrocity site at Gardelegen (POW’s from the Buchenwald camp), where Nazi brutality was laid bare on April 14, 1945. Encounters like that changed men forever. Those days remind us that the war was not only a clash of armies, but a confrontation with evil on a scale still hard to comprehend. The unit with which Dad served was officially recognized among those connected with the liberation of Nazi camp sites, a solemn distinction that speaks less of glory than of what those soldiers were forced to witness.
Dad was at the Elbe River when Allied forces from the west joined Russian forces from the east, a historic link-up that signaled Nazi Germany’s end was near. He lived long enough to see that day, though he had never expected to return home to Withee alive.
Dad rarely spoke about the war. He said the memories were too painful and too horrible to revisit. He returned home carrying wounds that were not always visible, and like many veterans of his generation, he bore those scars for the rest of his life.
Dad’s story is also a reminder of those who never came home. Fifteen fellow natives of the Owen-Withee area paid the supreme price during World War II. Some died on the very battlefields of Europe where Dad marched with his heavy artillery battalion and its 105mm howitzers. Their sacrifice belongs alongside his story, because our community’s history was written by both those who returned and those who did not.
Today, Dad’s wartime medal collection is on temporary loan to the Owen-Withee Area Historical Society, a quiet reminder of what one local soldier endured in Europe. He saved little wartime memorabilia because the memories were too horrific. Most of the items on my memory board are duplicates, gathered over many years as I pieced together his story, much of it after he died. In many ways, the history he could not bring himself to tell had to be reconstructed from records, memorials, and the fragments he left behind. Medals can mark service, but they cannot measure the cost. If this story does anything, I hope it helps preserve the memory of one local soldier—and of all those from our community whose wartime sacrifices should never be forgotten.