From an email note received the day before we left to travel to Belgium – by 93 year old Retired Lt. Col. Glenn Doman:

“Your father Donald was one of my boys in K (King) company, 346th INF Regiment, 87 Infantry Division (Golden Acorn) and it was a high honor to serve with a great hero like your dad. On January 7, 1945 around Tillet Belgium, one of our boys was seriously wounded in an open field. Your dad ran into the field under enemy fire and helped recover our wounded boy, most certainly saving his life. I was honored to recommend him for the Silver Star.”

It was the middle of a freezing winter in 1945 when my Dad’s company of largely mid-west college and farm boys helped stop the final German advance in Europe in the straight-standing Ardennes forest and open fields in Belgium.

In the warmth of a summer day sprinkled with sun and showers, we found the road to Tillet, with a nearby open field, and several markers that honored my Dad’s company and Division. There in Tillet, I read to my son a letter that my mom had written back to my dad’s army CO – a beautiful summary of his life’s work…

He was not a soldier for the rest of his life… He was a bio-chemist and father and a quiet man who loved to garden and build houses by hand… He was a hero to us for so many reasons unconnected to the war…

But back then… Young and cold… He followed his training and did what seemed right… And he survived and was honored… And never spoke of it again…

His company is also documented as helping to push the Germans out of the nearby, still charming medieval village of St. Hubert, where a magnificant cathedral still stands and where each year animals are blessed…

I have added a medallion to St. Hubert to my chain that holds a celtic spiral of life renewal… In honor of my Dad and his life’s work… And the footpaths that lead us to where we are…