Friday, September 29, 2017

In Honor of Uncle Bud

I seldom stray from my blog focus on nature or art, but here goes .....
Anna Wipli standing next to her son, Gerald 'Bud' Wipfli

I’m writing to honor someone I never met.  His story touches me because Dale and I are a distant part of his family and a very late chapter in his short life has just been completed.

Last winter Dale received a phone call from a government agency (I can’t remember the exact name).  Did he know Gerald Wipfli, a soldier missing in action during World War II?  -- Yes.  That would be Dale’s ‘Uncle Bud.’  The person on the phone is part of our government’s program to identify the remains of long lost soldiers.

Dale was very willing to provide a DNA sample, but later we found out he wasn’t needed. A closer relative was available.  Dale's maternal grandparents were Anna and Dominick Wipfli -- Swiss immigrants who met in Wisconsin.  Fourteen of their eighteen children reached adulthood.     Uncle Bud was the next to last child and the youngest is still living --  Aunt Betty.  Her DNA left no doubt that Uncle Bud had finally been found. 

We now know he died in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest near Schmidt, Germany – a  nasty battle shortly before the Battle of the Bulge.    It sounds as though he was found right where he died, standing in a foxhole.  In 2010 a company laying telephone cable stumbled across the site. 

Sometimes the government moves slowly.  He was found in 2010, we got the telephone call last winter, and by early summer we knew that would be  returned to his hometown, to be buried next to his parents.  He finally came home.  An honor guard met the plane; last weekend a service was held in the Catholic church of his hometown, Nekoosa, Wisconsin.  Many members of the extended family gathered to mark the occasion.

One particularly poignant tid bit of information surfaced recently.  A man named Tom Brady, son of Lewis Brady, contacted a member of the family.  He told us Lewis landed at Normandy with Uncle Bud – and that Lewis named his first born son after Bud.  Bud may have had a short life, but his definitely left an impression in that man’s heart plus in the hearts of his family.

9 comments:

  1. Nice for the family to know finally what happened to him. Amazing they could identify him at all after so long..and how long it did take. Wonder if he had something on him to help identify him. . Like a dog tag.

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    1. DNA is what was used for identification. One can tell is someone is closely related to another with DNA. You would think there would have been a dog tag too but I didn't hear of any

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  2. Isn’t that amazing? I’ll bet that service was extremely poignant.

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  3. Thanks for sharing Elva! Nice to have closure on your uncle, Dale! I didn't realize that your father had such a large family, Dale.

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  4. So interesting and poignant, but how did they narrow it down to look at his family? Must have been an especially good man for his fellow soldier to name a son after him.

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  5. Hi, thanks for the mentioning my dad Lewis Brady. I just watched this video that popped up in my YouTube Feed: https://youtu.be/mAmJUyHloTk which explains where Gerald Wipfli’s unit would have been when he got killed in action in Schmitt (the video spurred me to Google Geralds name once again which led me to your blog). Gerald was assigned as one of two platoon runners for Headquarters Platoon 28th Infantry Division, 112th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion, I-Company. Anthony Imburgia from ROCHESTER, NY was the other runner. My dad was a S/Sgt Platoon Guide for the HQ Platoon. A Lieutenant was the Platoon Leader & a Tech Sgt was Platoon Sgt.. Three other 12-man rifle squads made up the rest of the platoon (not counting support personnel). Here’s a link to my original and follow-up post from 2009 when my dad was still alive and I was searching online for some of his army buddies:

    https://www.ancestry.ca/boards/localities.northam.usa.states.wisconsin.counties.wood/1438.3.1.1

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  6. I updated some information on my dads obit memorial to include some of his unit history including Gerald.

    https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/penn-yan-ny/lewis-brady-5615460

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