Coincidences

Coincidences

We are often amazed by life's coincidences, reminding us we live in a small word and our lives are touched by others in ways we would least expect. Such an incredible coincidence has affected my family. The characters and events are woven by chance into a bizarre web of circumstances linking Minnesota and Belgium over a 70 year period.

My story begins in Minnesota with my husband's father, Andrew Froberg. "Andy" was the watchman at Nevers Dam on the St. Croix River, north of Taylors Falls. Nevers Dam was built in 1890, and Andy worked there from 1912 to 1918. During that time he met and married Hannah Holmquist. They built and lived in a small, one-room house close by the dam. In 1913 Devers Dam came under the control of Northern States Power Company. Robert Pack, originally from England, was general manager of NSP. He had two small daughters, Brooke and Eleanor, and occasionally he brought them to the dam to stay with their nurse in a house located nearby. Sometimes when she went out, the nurse would ask Hannah to stay with the girls. The Frobergs left the dam in 1918 and settled in Center City. It was there that my husband, Howard was born. The Packs continued to visit the Frobergs, sometimes arriving in their chauffeur-driven limousine.

In 1942 Howard entered the service and was a member of the 743rd Tank Battalion. He trained in camps in the states and eventually was sent to England to train for the D-Day invasion. The 743rd Tank Battalion spearheaded the assault in Normandy, France, and landing early in the morning of June 6, 1944; on the section of beach they called "OMAHA". The 743rd was attached to the 30th Infantry Division and fought through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. They had closed the "Aachen Gap" in Germany when they were ordered back to Belgium to fight in the "Battle of the Bulge". The German, in their last desperate attempt to win the war, had been able to penetrate the American lines. In others words, they had bulged into American-held territory. This particular conflict brought Howard to the city of Stavelot, Belgium.

In this city was a young woman, Anny Maertens de Noordhout. Although her home was Liege, Belgium, the war had forced her to evacuate her home and take refuge with relatives in Stavelot. An estimated 3000 V1 bombs had been dropped on Liege. The second day of the bombing, Anny's house had been hit and badly damaged. Anny and her small daughter had been severely injured. When they had heard the bombs coming, the little girl had pushed the other children under the kitchen sink. She, however, was not protected and broken glass from a large window cut a deep gash in her head and also cut her leg. Anny was cut in her neck and bled profusely. Some American soldiers brought them to a hospital. The hospital was full, so Anny and her daughter were taken down to the basement. Because there was no electricity, Adrien, Anny's husband, had to hold the little girl on his lap while the doctors stitched her wounds. Beds were found for them but every time another bomb could be heard coming, the little girl would jump out of bed and into Anny's. Each time she did this, her wounds would open again. Finally the doctor told Adrien, "Your wife and daughter are not ready to leave here, but if you can find a car, take them out to the country, out of this HELL." This was around the first of December 1944. Adrien found a car and took his family to stay with relatives in Stavelot. Besides the injured daughter, there were two sons and another daughter. They arrived in Stavelot with nothing but the clothes they were wearing, but clothes and food were shared and their wounds began to heal.

On December 17th they saw American troops retreating into the town. Early the next morning the family counted sixty big German tanks coming down the hill into the town. It was the SS Division Adolf Hitler commanded by Colonel Peiper. The tanks rumbled past the house where Anny and her family were staying and two shells hit the house. It was so badly damaged they had to leave it. They crept out of the house by a back door, down a narrow street to a house of an Aunt who had died sometime before. They stayed there until about five o'clock in the evening, when they realized the roof of the house was burning. They heard later that the SS had set fire to four houses because the street was too narrow for their huge tanks. So this group of seven adults and five children had to flee again! In the center of the town is an open area they call the "Grand Place" or the "town square".

There was one more relative's house they could go to, but it stood directly across the town square from where they were. Intense fighting was going on. An American tank and a German tank sat in opposite corners of the square. Many dead people, civilians and soldiers, laid scattered on the ground. Anny and her group decided the best way would be to walk directly across the open area where they could be seen. They thought if they tried to sneak around the backs of the houses, either side could mistake them for the enemy and try to shoot them. S o this brave little group set out. Imagine the terror! Imagine the terrible fear in the hearts of the five small, sobbing children! Suddenly they heard a voice cry out in German, "Halt, kinder, kinder!"

The shooting stopped for the children! When they were safely inside the house, the shooting began again. The German tank was blown up and all inside it were killed. Shortly after this happened, Howard and his crew drove their tank into the town square and stopped in front of the house where Anny and her group were staying.

December in Belgium is cold! A blanket of snow covered the ground. The men in the tank took turns going into the house to get warm, always leaving someone on guard in the tank. Anny and those with her felt safest in the basement so they stayed there. Eighteen people survived eighteen days in that basement. When Anny heard that American soldiers had come into the house and were staying in the kitchen, she went to them and asked if any of them were from Minnesota. Now it happened that the Germans had been using all kinds of trickery, such as wearing uniforms taken off dead Americans, painting their tanks with American emblems, speaking English, and generally causing much confusion. The Americans were very cautious and at first didn't answer her. Later, one of the men did tell Anny there was a soldier there from Minnesota and told her what his name was. The next day Anny came to the men again and asked to speak to Sgt Froberg. Howard said to her, "What is it you want to know about Minnesota?

She answered, "I went to school in England with two girls who lived in Minnesota and whose father was 'head' of a power company there."

Howard asked her, "What were their names?" and she said, "Brooke and Eleanor Pack!"

Then as an added precaution, he asked her if she know their nicknames and she said, "Brooke was called 'Brookie' and Eleanor, 'Lilabets'."

"You really knew them!" exclaimed Howard, and went on to tell her how his father had worked for Mr Pack.

The days went by and soon it was Christmas. In spite of the bleak situation, Anny knew they must celebrate. Her family and the other people in the house and the American soldiers gathered in the basement of that house. Their Christmas decorations were a small branch of a pine tree and a bit of candle. Together they sang "Silent Night, Holy Night".

It was a ray of hope in an otherwise "dark world" and a Christmas to be long remembered!

One day Anny said to Howard, "When this war is over, you must come to visit us. We will be staying at my uncle's house in Brussels."

When the war was over, and before he returned home, Howard did go to visit them in Brussels and spent several days there. After he had boarded the Army truck heading back to Germany, he heard someone call his name. Anny had sent a box of fruit for him as a parting gesture of good-will.

Finally the 743rd came back to America and Howard came home to Lindstrom, Minnesota, in November of 1945. It was soon Christmas again and he remembered Anny and the friendship she and her family had shown him. He sent her a Christmas card.

Later, in January 1946, she wrote him a letter. Then they lost touch. Howard and I were married and settled on a farm. We got busy raising our family, a son, Ned, and a daughter, Nora. Anny went back to Liege. She and Adrien repaired their bomb-damaged house and finished raising their family.

Thirty years after the war, in January 1975, Anny remembered again the "Battle of the Bulge" and Howard. She decided to send a card to him. She wrote, "We still remember the nice American boys who were so helpful to us." Howard and I each wrote a letter to her and sent her pictures of our family, which by now included a son-in-law, Tom Holt, and a two-month-old grandson, Jame. Thus began a correspondence between Anny and me that continues to this day. The story doesn't end there.

In 1959, Howard and two other former members of the "743rd" got together and planned a reunion, to be held at our farm in Lindstrom. The reunion was a success and it was decided to continue having reunions biennially at the "Froberg Farm", always on the first Sunday in August.

In earlier years I had written accounts of our reunions and sent them to our local newspaper, The Chisago County Press. After the 1977 reunion, fearing I was being repetitious, I discontinued writing about them. After the reunion of 1983, I suggested to Howard that I wrote another article for the paper, and he said I shouldn't bother. But I feel these reunions are newsworthy events. People come from all over the country, stay in the local motels and shop in the stores, and so I decided to go ahead and write it up.

The day after the reunion, before I had written the article, I received a letter from Anny. She wrote, "I hope your picnic will be a success. How grateful we Belgian folks are to the American soldiers who so courageously saved us from the German SS in the Ardennes. Probably many of them had never heard of Belgium before."

I included her words in the article I submitted because I feel everyone should know that there are people in Europe who remember what those American "Boys" did and still feel appreciation for it. I sent a copy of that Chisago County Press to Karl Mory, the Secretary/Treasurer of our reunions. Unknown to me, he sent it on to the 30th Division News, a national magazine.

Richard Threadgould, from South Lancaster, Massachusetts, was a member of the 743rd but had never attended any of the reunions. He did, however, receive that copy of the 30th Division News and read my account of the reunion complete with Anny's comments. I received a letter from him in March of 1984. He asked that the next time I wrote to Anny, would I ask her about the small village of Parfondruy in Belgium. He said he had a memento from the "Battle of the Bulge".

He had tried to contact the village, but his letter had been returned, marked 'undeliverable'.

I wrote to Anny and told her of Richard's request. She answered promptly and said, "Tell him to write to Mr Lemaire, 'echevin', Stavelot, Belgium".

I sent the address to Richard and told him we would be interested to know what the memento was if he would care to tell us. Within a short time I received another letter from Richard and he told me the memento was a picture he had picked up from a street in Parfondruy. It was a baby and a young girl and he had wondered all these years if they had survived the war. He said he had sent a letter and the picture to the address I gave him and would let me know if anything came of it. In June I heard from Richard again. He wrote, "I hit the jackpot! I received a letter from the 'baby' in the picture."

Her name is Monique Thonon and at the time of her letter she was forty two years old, married, with two children and living in Stavelot.

Monique and her parents had lived in the village of Parfondruy. In the afternoon on December 19, 1944, German SS came to the house and ordered all the people to go out to a barn, a short distance down the street. Monique's mother, who was pregnant, held 23-month-old Monique in her arms. When all were assembled in the barn, the SS shot them! They were all killed except Monique. Maybe because her mother was holding her, the bullets hit only her legs. The next day a neighbor lady who had heard about this massacre came to the barn. She saw this baby lying almost covered by her mother's dead body, partially frozen but still alive!

There were American soldiers from the 117th Infantry of the 30th Division nearby (see the Monique at Parfondruy' story) so she picked up the baby and brought her to these men and asked them to take her to the hospital in Verviers, which they did. Later, that day the SS came back and burned the barn and the death bodies.

Webmaster's note: It isn't soldiers of the 30th Infantry Division but of the 3rd Armored Division

The young girl in the picture was Monique's aunt, her mother's sister. Her name is Gilberte Adam and she also lives in Stavelot. It was to her that Mr Lemaire brought Richard's letter and the picture.

In 1984 there were many "40 Year" memorial services being held in Europe and the United States. On June 3rd a memorial service was held in Malmedy, Belgium, to commemorate the brutal killing of 150 Americans ( in fact 84). These men had surrendered, but the German SS shot them as they stood helpless and unarmed. At this service Gilberte met Barry Barnhart, Chaplain at the American Legion Post in Bitburg, Germany. She showed him the letter and the picture that she had received from Richard. She had written a letter to Richard in French, her native language, and asked Mr Barnhart to translate it and send it on to him. Mr Barnhart also wrote to Richard and told him that the story of the picture and his letter was the "focus of attention" at the memorial service in Malmedy that day.

Over the years, in her correspondence with me, Anny had suggested many times that Howard should come back to Belgium. He really wanted to go back and I wanted to go, too, but for the first seventeen years of our marriage we were busy farming. Then, because we live by a lake, we decided to quit farming and built a mobile home park and campground. Except for an occasional short trip, we just weren't able to get away. Finally in the fall of 1984 we hired caretakers for our business, and May 22, 1985, with our daughter, Nora, accompanying us, we left for Europe. Our first stop was Liege, Belgium, to see Anny!

After forty-one years, Howard revisited the battlegrounds of the Battle of the Bulge." We went to Stavelot and met Monique, the "baby in the picture." We went to Normandy, France, and watched the waves roll in, in peaceful silence, on "Omaha Beach", that stretch of sand where those many years before a very young Sgt Froberg and thousands of other young men had struggled to get ashore in one of history's greatest military efforts. We visited the American Cemetery, located on a cliff overlooking Omaha Beach. Twenty-two men from the 743rd Tank Battalion are buried there, and fifteen names are on the Wall of the Missing. Nora and I walked with Howard through the rows of crosses and found the names of every one of these men. We listened as he remembered each one. We came away thinking we must never forget them or why they were there.

I Have written this story because I am fascinated by the fragile threads that seem to hold it together. Also, I feel we need to remember that World War II was about people – young soldiers, husbands and wives, homes and children, loving and caring, and killing.

Photo taken in november 2002 by Henri Rogister

Howard FROBERG's wife

743th Tank Battalion

Campaigns

Normandy, France

Battle of the Bulge,

Belgium