70 years ago today, Corporal Edward J. Powers of the 86th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Mechanized, 6th Armored Division, U.S. Army was killed in action in or near Chateauneuf, France during the Brittany Campaign.
My Dear Elderly Mother has childhood memories of her Uncle Eddie who was born and raised in Springfield, OH.
The "Super Sixth" landed in Normandy in July of 1944, a little more than one month after the D-Day landing. Soon after the Allies' breakout from the Normandy beachhead, facing fierce enemy resistance, difficult terrain and lengthening supply and communication lines, the 86th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Mechanized was pressed into a role that was more combat-oriented. Such are the demands of war.
You can read a brief account of the Super Sixth's Brittany Campaign here. Included is a mention of Eddie and the names of his squadron mates who were killed in action that terrible day, long ago. You can read Combat History of the 6th Armored Division, here (it's a PDF file that is 40MB in size. The portion relevant to our subject today appears on page 17 of the book; page 18 of the PDF file). For a more general sense of what the theater of operations was like during the Brittany Campaign, you can watch, here, an official U.S. Army documentary for The Big Picture television program which recounts the Army's efforts in France during the months of July and August 1944.
Eddie Powers was a regular guy, from a medium-sized city in west central Ohio. Like so many millions of other Americans, Eddie went off to war to fight - and defeat - totalitarianism; he went to Europe to liberate the oppressed. And just as was the fate for so many of his valiant Allied brothers in arms, he never again saw his own country or his home; Eddie never again saw his brothers and sisters, his mom or dad.
Duty, Honor, Country.
No comments:
Post a Comment