I, Kevin, adopted the grave of Wilson A. Wendt
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Wilson A. Wendt Born in Charleston, SC, Dec. 31, 1923, was Private First Class with the 317th Infantry Regiment of the 80th Infantry Division.regno. 14192248 and he fought in the Blue Ridge Division
( 317 th Infantery 80th Division.)
He was killed in action on 11th of April 1945.
Wilson A. Wendt, PFC.
His Army service number: 14192248.
Buried in Margrate Cemetery The Netherlands.
Beloved son of Lucy Munnerlyn and Adelbert T. Wendt.
He was killed in action April 11th, 1945, in Germany (Erfurt), and was a member of 317th Infantry Regiment (80th Infantry Division).
Family register :
He was born on 31-12-1923 in Charleston South Carolina, his mother was Lucy Middleton Munnerlyn born 14-9-1866 she died 16-12-1954 and his father Adelbert. T. Wendt.
Born on 16-2-1899 who died on 2-9-1926.
His grandfather William Wilson Munnerlyn. Was born on 8-3-1869 he died on 20-3-1921 and his grandmother was Lucy Izard Middleton.
Nicknamed the "Blue Ridge" Division,
it was initially composed of draftees from the mid-atlantic states of Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
After World War II, the division was redesignated the 80th Airborne Division until 1952, when it was designated Reserve Infantry Division and a Reserve Training Division until March of 1959.
In 1994, the division was granted its current designation, 80th Division (Institutional Training).In WWII, the Blue Ridge Division landed on Utah Beach on August 3, 1944.
It was involved in the Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace and Central Europe campaigns and saw a total of 239 days of combat.
While helping the division pursue the fleeing German forces toward Erfurt, Germany, Wilson was killed in action on April 11, 1945.
The 80th Infantry Division was formed in September 1917, several months after the United States entered World War I, and served in military campaigns in France the following year.
In 1942, the "Blue Ridge" division was reactivated for military service and deployed to Europe, where it landed on Utah Beach on August 3, 1944, less than two months after the Allied invasion of western Europe on D-Day (June 6).
Soon after arriving in France, the unit engaged German forces in combat in Argentan and other locales in Normandy.
It subsequently drove eastward and reached the Saar region of Germany by early December.
Later that month, the 80th was diverted to Luxembourg to blunt the German offensive into the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge.
In January 1945, the 80th returned to the offensive and in the following months drove deep into Germany.
After crossing the Rhine in late March, the division advanced through Thuringia, reaching Erfurt, Weimar, and Jena by mid-April.
By war's end, the "Blue Ridge" division had advanced south through Bavaria and into Austria.
During its advance into central Germany, the 80th Infantry Division entered the Buchenwald concentration camp on April 12, 1945, to provide relief to the 6th Armored Division, which had arrived the day before.
Several weeks later, as the "Blue Ridge" division pushed into Austria, it liberated Ebensee, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp. Construction of the Ebensee camp had begun in November 1943, and Ebensee started functioning as a subcamp in March 1944.
Its purpose was to supply prisoner labor for the construction of elaborate tunnels in the nearby mountains to house underground factories for the production of rockets.
Code-named Zement (Cement), the project required backbreaking labor done at a brutal pace.
The camp population swelled to more than 18,000 in April 1945.
When troops of the 80th Infantry arrived at Ebensee on May 4-5, 1945, they found some 16,000 prisoners there.
A U.S. Army report stated that conditions in the camp were "deplorable" and that several hundred prisoners had died from disease and malnutrition on the day the camp was discovered.
The report further stated that :
All of the inmates of the camp were badly undernourished and many were suffering from various diseases and ailments.
No meals had been served at the camp for three days prior to the arrival of the American Forces in the area.
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