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Re: Bond of Brothers

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 12, 2003

"Bond of brothers

By SCOTT HALL Daily Journal staff writer

Aug. 12, 2003 The men of the 591st Field Artillery Battalion were young, many still in their teens, when they came to Camp Atterbury in March 1944 to await orders.

By December of that year, they were in the mountains of Belgium, surrounded by the German army in the notorious Battle of the Bulge. They barely escaped capture before continuing their fight through Europe.

Still sharing that bond, eight of those World War II veterans — along with some wives, widows and honorary comrades — came to Johnson County during the weekend to conduct their 56th annual reunion.

“We started in 1948 and never missed a year,” said the group’s informal historian, 85-year-old Herman Jansen of Bedford, Ohio.

“We meet because all the guys are good,” Joe Petito, 79, said with the thick accent of a lifelong New Yorker. “Years ago we had more than this: 40, 50.”
The reunion, highlighted Saturday by a tour of the recently reactivated Camp Atterbury near Edinburgh, had special meaning for three Franklin men who were not yet born when Battery B of the 591st endured the pivotal European battle of World War II.

Brothers Gary, Rob and Ken Kutruff hosted this year’s reunion in honor of their father, Bob Kutruff, a veteran from Battery B who died in 1986.

Their father had never attended the annual reunions, and he rarely spoke of his war experiences, which included a combat injury. His sons, all of whom have served in the military themselves, understood.

“Very few combat veterans will talk about their service,” said Gary Kutruff, a Vietnam veteran. “The only time you talk is to the people who were with you.”
Bob Kutruff went on to become a construction superintendent with Dunlap & Co. of Columbus, but when a heart attack took his life at age 62, his war memories died with him.

Thanks to his Army buddies, however, the Kutruff brothers have reclaimed some of that history. They attended Battery B’s reunion last year in New Jersey and volunteered to host this year’s event, where they heard more stories about their father’s courageous service and everyday recollections about his gregarious personality.

“His father was a yakety-yak,” Petito shouted, poking his finger at Rob Kutruff as the group ate breakfast at the Carlton Lodge in Franklin.

The reunions, conducted at various locations around the country, have brought an even greater sense of family to these men who faced death together.

“There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t talk to somebody from the outfit,” said Pat Chinnici, 79, of Vineland, N.J.

He and his wife, Evelyn, scheduled their marriage around the group’s second reunion in 1949. Since then, they have missed only one year, when Evelyn was recovering from a stroke.

‘Quite a group’

By now, Evelyn said, she and the other wives can tell the war stories as well as their husbands.

“They really are a sincere bunch of guys,” she said. “None of them are phonies or try to make an impression.”

Jane Dzielawa of Palos Hills, Ill., is a regular at the reunions, even though her husband, Joseph, died 25 years ago.

“They still invite me,” she said. “This is quite a group.”

Another honorary member of the unit is Franz Fetter, better known by the nickname “Mike.” Fetter was a 14-year-old Hungarian boy who had been conscripted into the German army and ended up in an Allied POW camp at the end of the war. When Battery B was assigned to guard the camp, its commander, Capt. Robert Likins, spotted the boy among the soldiers and drafted him as a personal assistant.

“He was looking for a kid to shine his shoes, keep his room clean,” Fetter said.

Given a U.S. uniform, the boy became an informal mascot for the unit, a relationship that lasted just a few months but changed Fetter’s life. He came to the United States in 1947, joined the Army for two years during the Korean War and has lived a long, happy life in Texas. He tracked down Likins in 1986 and began attending the reunions.

The 591st was part of the Army’s 106th Infantry Division, which went through boot camp at Fort Jackson in South Carolina before going on maneuvers in Tennessee.

“It rained three weeks straight: mud, mud, mud,” recalled Ralph Moore of Windsor, Wis.

The young troops then came to Camp Atterbury in 1944 for about nine months of additional training and their eventual deployment.

Even now, the veterans recall hitchhiking or catching a bus to Edinburgh, Franklin, Columbus and Indianapolis to get a drink or find some entertainment.

Jansen, who was several years older than most of his colleagues, would rent a cabin near Franklin for his wife and infant daughter to come visit.

Wendell Davenport, 79, of Baton Rouge, La., recalled how the camp’s 12 mph speed limit caused frustration for the eager young soldiers.

“Every time you got caught speeding, they’d demote you,” he joked. “Everybody was a private before long.”

At the Black and White restaurant in Franklin, Pennsylvania native Bob Kutruff met his future wife, a 17-year-old waitress named Yuba Dillow. He returned after the war to marry her and ended up settling down to have a family. Like her three sons, Yuba Kutruff still lives in Franklin.

The 106th left Atterbury in October 1944 and set sail, landing in England, then France, and traveling up the Seine River. The inexperienced unit’s first assignment was supposed to be a piece of cake, guarding a long stretch of sleepy border territory in a remote mountainous area.

“We were there one week, and all hell broke loose,” Jansen said.

Surprise attack

Contrary to plan, the location turned out to be the focus of a surprise German counterattack, pitting more than 1 million troops in combat and nearly derailing the Allies’ march across Europe. Within the first week after the initial Dec. 16 attack, two of the 106th Infantry’s three regiments had surrendered.

The 591st Battalion, however, was supporting the 424th Combat Infantry Regiment, the only one of the three to emerge largely intact despite being encircled by the enemy. They continued to advance with the Allies through central Europe and into the heart of Germany.

“These guys kept fighting on through,” Rob Kutruff said.

Around the third day of the battle, the 424th was facing heavy German fire, and Battery B was running out of 105-mm shells to feed its Howitzers. Cpl. Bob Kutruff, his sons learned later, was one of two truck drivers sent to get more ammunition from a storage site.

To get there, however, the trucks had to follow a winding mountain pass, of which a portion was fully exposed to enemy fire. Around 2 a.m. on Dec. 18, 1944, a German shell hit his truck.

“They blew the left-front wheel off of his dad’s truck, and it flipped over on top of him,” Davenport said.

Likins immediately rounded up a rescue team.

“He said, ‘You and you and you and you, let’s go,’” Davenport said.

Kutruff was rescued, sent to an evacuation hospital and spent three months recuperating in England before rejoining the 591st in Germany.

At first, however, the folks waiting at home were hearing only bad news, both about Kutruff and the U.S. Army.

“When Dad got hit, Mom got a notice that he was missing in action,” Rob Kutruff said. “All the newspapers said the 591st was wiped out.”

The group’s Atterbury tour on Saturday coincided with a reunion of Vietnam veterans, the Company D Rangers of the 151st Infantry Division, who were the only Indiana National Guard unit called up for infantry duty during the Vietnam War. The World War II veterans adjusted their schedule to attend a memorial service and view a helicopter skydiving exhibition put on for the Vietnam reunion.

Although the two groups of veterans differed greatly in age and appearance, they shared a bond of respect. One Vietnam vet, Don Hughes, walked up to Davenport at the air show and thrust out his hand.

“I want to thank you for what you did,” Hughes said.

Another Vietnam veteran, Maj. Ron Himsel, addressed the older veterans during the memorial ceremony.

“You guys are our heroes,” he said as the crowd applauded. “Talk about freedom fighters, they’re it.”

© 2003 The Daily Journal, Johnson County, Indiana"