On Sunday night I had the pleasure of speaking with a member of the 1251st Battalion Combat Engineers. That was my fathers unit and I've been struggling to find anything on the unit. One of the few sites that they were listed on the web, is about a monument in St Louis dedicated to Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. There they were.... listed with the Combat Engineers. So...I emailed the webmaster and asked where they got the info placing their name on the monument. Several weeks passed and I got a call from the president of the organization that had a phone number of a member of the 1251st. So I called the gentleman. It was a wonderful talk. He doesnt remember my father (there were 550 of them) and started by saying that it was a long time ago and he didnt think he remembered much. We chatted a long time and he had lots to tell me about where they were during the Bulge (on the road to Antwerp, in case the Nazi's broke through Bastogne), their time at bridge school, demolition work, and their building the bridge over the Rhine at Dusseldorf. We also talked about their work in building parts of Camp Tophat. They did a lot of the cement work (thus starting my fathers obsession with the gray stuff). We talked about the M-1, Ernie Pyle, Hitlers death....
He was pleased to hear the story of my fathers return to the Rhine: In the 70's my father was sent to Germany on business. He was in Dusseldorf and found a cab driver that had been there during the war and remembered where the bridge was. He took my father to the spot and my father got out of the cab and walked down the river bank a bit. I asked him how it felt to stand there after all those years. He smiled and said " It was nice to stand there and not be shot at". I hope that for every soldier in every war, that they get to return to the battle sites and stand in peace.