Finding the 300th

This journey started when Jan Ross, of Erving, Massachusetts, wanted to find out about what her father did in WWII. Donald H. Ross was a sergeant in the 300th Engineer Combat Battalion. He traveled with the 300th for the journey from landing at Normandy to the end of the war in Europe in Schroding, Germany. He told his family little of his experience, and even his wife, Agnes, has only limited recollections of his stories although at 84 she is still very sharp. Donald Ross passed away in 1983 taking with him his personal war story.

The first phase of this journey was a visit by Jan and her husband, Brad Peters, to Europe in July, 2005 with a side trip to Paris and the Normandy invasion beaches. They took guided tours, visited museums and collected books and brochures. Although this brief visit provided some information and answers for them, it raised many more questions.

Returning home, Jan searched the internet for information on the 300th and found a web site for Jeff Palmer in Oklahoma. Jeff's father, Charles Palmer, was with the 300th during the European Campaign. Jan and Jeff exchanged e-mails and Jeff sent an annotated map of the path of the 300th across Europe with specific dates and places related to the 300th. The Camp White web site revealed yet another source of information, Warren Chancellor of Texas, who provided detailed information and answers to specific questions about his unit. Brad's brother, Bob Peters of Texas attended the reunion of the 300th in Dallas in June, 2006. He spoke to the veterans and their families expressing our interest and solicited their support.

Methodology and Research

The logical vehicle for this communication is the internet. Not all veterans have direct access to the internet but other veterans or families may be able to download and print the information for them. The internet is low cost, flexible and can be maintained on a current basis.

Jan and Brad purchased the web domain and secured the services of a web designer. Paul Lindale, of Northfield, Massachusetts designed the site and continues to maintain it. Crocker Communications of Greenfield, MA hosts the site at a reduced rate. On Memorial Day, 2007, this site went live as a tribute to this battalion.

Jan and Brad traveled to Dallas, Texas in June 2007 to attend the 51st reunion of the 300th. They presented the site to the veterans and their families explaining how it was developed and showing how to navigate it. Over three days, Jan and Brad taped eight hours of interviews and scanned nearly 200 photographs. In October 2007, Jan and Brad travelled to Tyler, Texas to attend another reunion of the 300th. Again, they taped more interviews and scanned more photographs. In November 2007, they wrote letters to additional veterans and veteran families who have not been able to attend reunions. This effort generated several additional contacts, remembrances and photographs.

David Armstrong, a film maker from Hollywood, located the 300th web site doing his own research and contacted the authors. His grandfather was in the 989th Treadway Bridge Company that was assigned to supply bridging materials to the 300th for the construction of the bridge at Carentan. Mr. Armstrong shared some of his own research with the authors and supplied contact information for two of his researchers who might be able to help locate 300th records.

During the winter of 2008, the authors contracted with these researchers obtaining copies of Army records of the 300th in College Park, Maryland and St. Louis, Missouri. Previous attempts to locate these records by veterans and others were unsuccessful and the records were believed to be lost or destroyed in the St. Louis fire at the Archives in the early 1970's. This research in the archives has provided the authors and the men of the 300th with nearly 2500 pages of copies of official Army reports. The documents include: Morning Reports, Unit Journals, Unit Histories, Signal Corps photographs and After Action Reports, all specifically of the 300th. All of these records were completed during the war by members of the 300th themselves sometimes providing an hour by hour accounting of the war and the 300th activities. Jan Ross, co-author of this site, has found several references to her father, Sgt. Donald H. Ross, in these records.

The year 2008 also added an entirely new element to the site: Audio of interviews the authors recorded with the veterans at the reunions. With the very generous support of Markwayne Mullin, grandson of 300th veteran Kenneth "Cowboy" Morris, 56 audio segments from 30 seconds to four minutes are up on the site.

Another development in 2008 involved the story of the destruction of LST 523 off Utah Beach with significant loss of life and injuries of men of the 300th and navy personal. Tracy Sugarman, a navy man as well as an author and illustrator, and Tony Leone, an author and coast guard man, witnessed the tragedy and assisted in the rescue. Their stories and that of the men of the 300th who survived provide a very complete narrative of the event with several images now on the web site. The story of LST 523 is one of the most important and tragic events of the Normandy invasion.

In the fall of 2008, the authors, along with 300th veteran Warren Chancellor and his wife Suzy, met with the Senior Archivist of the WWII Museum in New Orleans. The museum was presented with a printed version of the web site as well as enlarged prints of the 300th map and men of the 300th. The WWII Museum accepted the donation and wrote that the material would be available to others for research. We will continue to provide the Museum with updated material from the site. The Museum indicated that as it expands, consideration is being given to much better focus on the contributions of Combat Engineers in WWII.

Early in 2009, another valuable resource became available to the authors. Don Richter, veteran of the 300th and one of the author's best resources, after repeated unsuccessful attempts to contact the wife of the commanding officer of the 300th, Col. Riel Crandall, finally made contact his daughter Adrienne Manzone in Connecticut only a couple of hours from the authors home. Adrienne, later visiting her mother, found the bound album presented to Col. Crandall by the officers and men of the 300th in June 1945. Jan and Brad visited Adrienne and her husband Paul and spent several hours scanning nearly 200 excellent quality photographs and pages of information. This material is now up on the site. Special appreciation is expressed to Adrienne and Paul Manzone for their valuable support for this project.

The Dallas reunion in June 2009 provided a single major contribution to the web site. Nettie Palmer, wife of 300th member Harold Palmer, has attended 300th reunions in Dallas for several years with her son-in-law Adrian Lopez. This year, she brought with her a small metal box filled with photographs of the 300th taken during the campaign in Europe. The small photographs, about 2 x 2 inches, are in excellent condition. Many are of the men of the 300th, their equipment, destroyed towns, disabled German tanks and planes and very rare photos of American gliders that landed in France during the Normandy Invasion. This contribution to the web site is the single largest collection of photographs taken by the men of the 300th themselves. The 200 new photographs are in a special collection in the Photo Gallery.

Another addition to the site is additional material about LST 523. Contact with Navy survivors of LST 523, a 300th survivor and the sister of a man of the 300th who lost his life on LST 523 have added new information to the web site. James Kennedy, Jr., a survivor of LST 523, provided his own account of the tragedy in a telephone interview. Contact made by phone with Bessie Maberry Coonts provided detailed information about her brother Simon Maberry who was lost on LST 523. This new information is now available on the site.

The 300th Engineer Combat Battalion is now represented at various WWII reenactments! The aurhors were contacted early in January, 2010 by a WWII reenacting group saying they wanted to represent the 300th in their WWII reenactments. In Bedford, PA on February 19, they participated in the first reenactment as the 300th. There were several reasons why they chose the 300th. They already had restored WWII vehicles, authentic clothing, weapons and equipment. The 300th web site gave them plenty of information and photographs to be as accurate as possible. No one else was reenacting a combat engineer unit and they felt the engineers were not as appreciated for their contributions as they should be. Most importantly, it was an honor for them to recognize the service of the 300th in WWII. The full story is in the Appendix of the History and several photographs of the reenactment are in the Photo Gallery, 300th in WWII Reenactment.

Reunions in Dallas and Tyler in 2010 and 2011 provided new 300th veteran family contacts. Keenan Williams provided hundreds of photographs and paperwork from his father's extensive collection and Barry Renfro provided two albums of his father's photographs. Mike and Sharon Koch provided dozens of her father's photographs and Willie Hein provided dozens of his photographs for the site. These four collections more than doubled the number of photographs and images on the site.

As of the end of 2011, the site now contains approximately 120,000 words of narrative; 1,800 images; 250 recollections and 60 audio recollections. In addition, in 2010 veteran Ben L. White sat down in front of a video camera and recorded two hours of his recollections. Many of these stories are now transcribed and added to the site in the History in several chapters.

Initially, we were not sure where and how this journey would evolve but we felt an obligation to share facts and personal recollections of the 300th veterans and their families in a timely fashion. We never imagined that the site would become what it is today and we know it will continue to grow as this effort encourages other 300th veterans and their families to come forward with additional information.

Recognition

For most of the veterans of the 300th Engineer Combat Battalion in WWII, the war and their service to our country formally ended in 1945. These men came home to go on with their lives, to earn a living, to marry and start a family, complete their education, continue on in the workplace and then enjoy their later years of retirement. Some of these men were less fortunate. They came home with emotional and physical issues.

But, almost without exception, they came home to their family, town and country celebrating victory - at least for a time. Daily life quickly moved on as the country settled into peacetime. Little recognition was given for what these men did as individual soldiers and virtually no appreciation of what the combat engineers did in the War. It should come as no surprise that most veterans had little to say about their experiences in the War - even to their families. Words couldn't describe it then and many still struggle with it now.

The 300th, not unlike many other units, years later began to organize reunions. This was the one time the veterans could talk with their "buddies," exchange remembrances, share photo albums and maybe exaggerate just a bit. In many cases, spouses and later children attended the reunions. (More details about 300th reunions). Some members of the 300th and/or their families have had the opportunity to visit Europe, WWII memorials and even retrace their journey through Europe 60+ years earlier.

It was a half-century after the war ended that the nation finally recognized WWII veterans with a memorial in Washington, DC. Tom Brockaw's book, The Greatest Generation, brought to the nation the huge contributions of these brave men and women. The 60th anniversary of Pearl Harbor in 2001 and D-Day in 2005, the movie Saving Private Ryan and the book and PBS/video series The War by Ken Burns in 2007, all generated a renewed interest in the younger generations about WWII and the people of that great war. This web site is a contribution to the recognition of these brave soldiers, especially the men of the 300th Engineer Combat Battalion.

Contributors

Warren Chancellor, Don Richter, Randy Hanes, Norman Webb and Army historian, Dr. Larry Roberts, all continue to provide information, advice and review of the site.

Additional information, recollections and photographs have been provided for the site by the following veterans or their families: Walter Allen, Lester Aumann, Jerry Barton, Chuck Bice, Clovis Brown (son Gary Brown), Jack Burk, Leonard Burk, Juke Burnham, Bill Byers, Tony Cannata (son Tony Cannata), Col. Riel Crandall (Daughter Adrienne), Steve Daniels, John Durant, Tommme Elliott, Orville Galloway (Doris Galloway Hutson), Charles Gardner (son Charles Gardner), Cloyd Gibson (daughter Joy Maes), Daniel Grob (son William Daniel), Willie Hein, Rayburn Kennedy (son Mike), Herman Killian (wife Barbara and daughter Carolyn), William Lakey, Vencent Laney (son Mark), Jimmie Lee, Joe Leyva (son Robert), William McAlexander, Cecil Milliner, Eddy Monfort (a researcher from Manhay, Belgium), Kenneth Morris, Harold Meyer, Hoyt Neill, Frank Neuhauser, Charles Olive (Daughter Sharon), Charles Palmer (son Jeff), Eugene Powell, Jake Phillipps (daughter Barbara Sprick, Kirksey Putman (wife Willie Faye), Faustino Rangel, Herbert Reinke, Thomas Renfro (Son Barry), Donald Ross (family), Alfred Stein, Servando Varela, Dale Williams (Son Keenan), Norman Webb, Ben L. White, and Forest Wood (daughter Marie).

Note: It is understood that personal recollections that are shared with Brad and Jan may be put up on the web site. Every attempt will be made to use the actual words of the veterans with the materials only edited for length, clarity, typographical errors and propriety of comments.

Copyright Information

No text, images or any aspect of the site design are to be published in any format (book, video, web site, etc) without prior written consent from the authors of the site, its designer and from the contributors who provided information, images or other content.

To contact the authors please visit the CONTACT page.