They struck the base of the chimney, the warheads exploding in rapid bursts, and the length of the stack shuddered as if the ground beneath it had twisted violently, and then the huge chimney began to tumble and fall in graceful patterns as slowly as if it were melting toward the ground, the bricks detaching themselves from the main shaft and spinning lazily through smoke rising from the exploding artillery shells.
Docker put the cannon on safe and listened to the sound of bells and whistles in the winds and watched the huge smokestack collapse in powdered heaps along the far bank of the river.
When the last of the explosions had come like winter thunder through the settling dust and smoke, when the air was clear again. Docker and his men saw that the distant stretches of earth were flat as a man’s hand from the silver shores of the Rhine to as far as they could see into the heart of Germany.
A Roll Call
CORPORAL EDWARD G. SOLVIS was honorably discharged from the United States Army at Camp Grant, Illinois, four months after the end of the World War II. At a Lions Club luncheon given in his honor by the president of Citizens’ Trust of Davenport, Iowa, Solvis was informed that he had been promoted to assistant cashier and appointed to the bank’s pension and credit union committees. As an additional gesture of appreciation, his years of wartime service was credited to his seniority at Citizens’ Trust.
After adjusting himself to the routines of civilian life, Solvis assembled his notes and wartime diaries in chronological order and began to prepare an informal history of the unit in which he had served.
He corresponded with the surviving members of Section Eight, sent them questionnaires to fill out and, as his original design expanded, addressed inquiries to other individuals and organizations who might have had information about or related in any way to the section. When this work was as complete as he could make it, Solvis asked Buell Docker to assist him in finding a permanent repository for his files and records and diaries. It was through Docker’s contacts that the permanent Edward G. Solvis Collection was established at the College of Pennsylvania.
The following information is from the Solvis Collection in the archives of the college at Ardmore, Pennsylvania.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JOSEPH PITKO: His body was never recovered or accounted for by Graves Registration. Private First Class Pitko is still carried on the battalion roster as MIA (Missing in Action) in the Ardennes Campaign.
PAUL BONNARD: Widowed, with three grandchildren, Bonnard lives at the gatehouse and continues to tend the grounds of Château Rêve, converted now into a retirement home for the Order of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS IRVING GRUBER: Gruber is buried in the family plot at the Beth Shalom Cemetery in the borough of Brooklyn, New York. His headstone lies between that of his mother and his older sister, Hilary.
PRIVATES FIRST CLASS LEO PIERCE AND CARMINE SPINELLI: They are buried in the Netherlands-American Military Cemetery in Margraten, Holland.
JOCKO BERTHIER: Under a war reparations act, Berthier was granted fifty thousand Belgian francs as compensation for the injuries he suffered during the German occupation of Lepont. He was later awarded Belgium’s third highest civilian decoration for his voluntary assistance to the American gun crew at Lepont during the Battle of the Bulge. Berthier sent Solvis several photographs of his enlarged and renovated cafe-bar, which now occupies two additional storefronts facing Lepont’s old church.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS CHESTER DORMUND: Answered only one inquiry. After his discharge from the Army, Dormund worked as a short-order cook in Sweetwater, Texas. On his nights off, he wrote, he liked to watch the harness races and “bet a little money on the wretched trotters.”
CAPTAIN WALTER “DER HENKER” BRECHT: Captain Brecht left a widow and two sons in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany. During the Allied occupation, Frau Brecht contributed her husband’s library of Spanish and Portuguese plays to the American Armed Forces Library at Munich. Solvis learned of this from an article in the service newspaper, Stars and Stripes, which listed the specifics of Frau Brecht’s bequest in a story outlining the cultural opportunities available to GI wives in Germany.
FIRST SERGEANT MILES KORBICK: Released from an Army hospital in Georgia in 1947, Korbick was discharged from the army the same year. He opened one of the first laundromats in Florida — “Korbick’s Korner” — which was the beginning of a chain that has expanded into seven southern states.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS SAMUEL GELNICK: His body was returned to the United States at the request of his wife, Doris. Gelnick is buried in the Star of David Cemetery in the borough of the Bronx in New York.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS GUIDO LINARI: Linari never replied to Solvis’ requests for information. Solvis’ third letter was returned from Linari’s former home on Pell Street in New York City stamped “Not Known at This Address.”
LIEUTENANT GENERAL WALTER ADAMSON: Adamson retired from the army in 1954. He captained a senior officers’ polo team at Boca Raton, Florida, and contributed articles to leading military journals. His extensive memoirs. The Last Great War, were published posthumously in 1970.
GENERAL JOSEF “SEPP” DIETRICH: The commander of the Sixth SS Panzer Army was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes in 1946, but was paroled and released in 1955. In 1957, General Dietrich was sentenced by a German court to eighteen months in prison for complicity in the deaths of Captain Ernest Röhm and other SA (Sturmabteilungen) officers in 1934. The general died in Germany in 1966.
PRIVATE FIRST CLASS SONNY LAUREL: Laurel is buried in the Mount Olivet Home of Eternal Rest in a suburb of South Chicago. Funds for a Little League baseball park were donated to the city by his parents, the Wellington Laurels. The Sonny Laurel Memorial Field was constructed in Rogers Park on the north side of Chicago on land contributed jointly by the Laurel family and Loyola Academy.
COLONEL OTTO SKORZENY: Skorzeny, sixty-seven, died of bronchial cancer in Madrid, Spain, on July 8, 1975. After World War II Skorzeny was acquitted by an Allied War Crimes Tribunal. While awaiting a denazification trial, Skorzeny escaped from a German prison camp at Darmstadt and spent the remaining years in Spain, where he worked as an industrial engineer. In the 1960s he was accused by official sources in Israel of organizing a network of ex-Nazis called Die Spinne (“The Spider”) whose goals were said to be the resurrection of the Nazi Party and the destruction of the state of Israel. In 1973 it was reported by an Italian magazine that he had served as a consultant to a group planning the assassination of Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba.
COLONEL GEORGE RANKIN: Promoted to Brigadier General four years after World War II, George Rankin was killed in action in the first months of the war in Korea.
MAJOR SYDNEY KARSH: Discharged from the Army in January, 1946, Karsh served for twenty years as a senior partner in the New York law firm of Masterson. Karsh and Nevins. Specializing originally in international labor legislation, Karsh and his associates have in recent years devoted their full time to the International Amnesty Movement, in cooperation with the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
CORPORAL WALTER SCHMITZER: Schmitzer was discharged from the United States Army with a seventy percent disability, suffering from a variety of nervous disorders adjudged directly connected to his combat experiences in the Ardennes. Schmitzer supplemented his Army pension by working as a dispatcher for Goodwill Industries in Detroit, Michigan. In 1967 he moved to Laguna Beach, California, and answered only one subsequent inquiry from Solvis. “I haven’t married and don’t expect to now.”