When Lieutenant Bornhofft (crouching in the above photograph) was gravely injured in battle in the German city of Halle in 1945, it soon became apparent he would not be returning to service (as he would need to be evacuated for medical treatment to save his life). At that moment his men signed a captured Nazi flag to give to him before he was whisked off to keep as a memento. One of those who signed his name that day was my Uncle, Sgt. John A. Flannery (I believe he is the clean shaven man seen standing at the very back in the photo).
After a long, agonizing recovery from his wounds, Bornofft returned to civilian life with his family. At some point the signed flag was handed down to his daughter Lisbeth. Recently she reached out to the Flannerys she discovered still resided on Shea Road in Campbell Hall - the address of the family farm given as John Flannery's address on the flag - seeking to connect. My mother then placed me in touch with her. I almost immediately recognized who Lisbeth's father was as I had interviewed my Uncle John 25 years ago about his experiences fighting in Germany. I knew Lt. Bornhofft’s story well. He was the guy who named his Irish setter "Flanny" after my uncle. I responded to Lisbeth and provided her my notes (see below) from the 1999 interview. In return she provided various material to me that she had collected about this very special platoon within the 104th Division which liberated Nordhausen work camp and helped capture the German rocket scientists who were busily at work there.
What completely astonished me was the war diary Lisbeth had acquired from a soldier within my uncle's platoon named Don Talley, who described Uncle John coming under fire in several close calls on the battlefield.
5/1/99-- From notes taken during an interview with Uncle John Arthur Flannery at his Beattie Road home in Rock Tavern, NY this bright, warm Saturday
Uncle John said that before the war he owned a 1936 Chevy ragtop which had previously been used as a state trooper car. He said that he had a gas heater installed in the car for warmth in the winter. He said that the car was nicknamed “The Junk”. He said that he once took a trip to New York City with the car before the war with his brother Rotz, and that the two had to change a flat tire along the way in Paramus, New Jersey. He said that his sister Catherine drove the car throughout the war years to and from her work.
Uncle John confirmed that soldiers were encamped near the farm to guard the railroad bridge soon after Pearl Harbor. He said that his brother Fig was home on furlough from Fort Jackson at the time and was reportedly unhappy to find soldiers sleeping on the floor of his family’s living room.
Uncle John also confirmed that pilots based out of Stewart Field frequently performed dogfighting training maneuvers over the skies of Orange County, and that two military planes collided over the farm in Burnside. He said eventually these training missions were transferred out of New York to Texas due to safety reasoning.
Uncle John said he was drafted into World War II on February 15, 1942. He said that he had originally registered for the draft in Schenectady, NY, but that he later transferred his registration to Goshen, NY. He said that this act probably bought him a few months from being taken into service, as the way the draft operated, men were being taken in proportion to the quota imposed for whatever region they were registered, and that Goshen was a better place to be registered due to the large number of men being taken out of the Schenectady area at that time.
Uncle John was attached to the 104th Division, or the “FightingTimberwolves,” which was then based out of Camp Adair in Oregon. He said that the 104th also did a lot of training at Camp Carson in Colorado, where his division trained alongside the 10th Mountain Division, which later went on to fight in Italy. (He said Senator Bob Dole was a member of the 10th.) The 10th was said to have trained with mules, and this caused a great amount of tension between the 10th and the 104th, as the men from the104th were reportedly fond of taunting members of their rival division on the training grounds by asking, “Which ones are the mules?”
Uncle John said that countless fights occurred between men from the 104th and the 10th during those times, and that it was hardly worth going into town from Camp Carson when off duty due to the occurrence of drunken brawls between soldiers of the rival divisions.
Uncle John said that New York governor Hugh Carey, and New York City mayor Ed Koch were both members of the 104th Division, along with a future governor of Iowa.
Uncle John said that the 104th was comprised of soldiers from all over the United States, and not just from the Northwest. He said that many soldiers were stationed for training in the West because it was uncertain in those early years whether Japan would ever attempt an attack or invasion of the West Coast. Uncle John said that some of his training maneuvers entailed coastline defense.
Uncle John said that the training was hard but thorough. He thought General Terry Allen was determined to lead a well-trained Division. He said that Allen had been stripped of his command in North Africa early in the war, and that upon being reassigned to command the 104th, he approached the job with much zeal, seeking to redeem himself from past humiliation and defeat. He said his training went on for two years, which he thought was significant in comparison to the 18 and 19 year-olds who came over into battle at the end of the war with little military training whatsoever.
Uncle John said that Uncle Fig and Rowland Mc Bride were two of the earliest draftees from the area. He said that in that particular earlier draft, determining numbers were drawn from a fish bowl. He said that the drafted group was known by the slogan “Goodbye Dear, I’ll be Back in a Year,” due to the misconception that their involvement in war would be short-lived. Uncle John said that Uncle Fig served in the 8th Division, 13th Battalion along with Rowland Mc Bride, and that the two trained in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.
Uncle John said that the 8th Division landed at Normandy about a month and a half before his 104th division. He said the 8th was given orders at that time to take the Port of Brest. It was at some point during this campaign that Rowland Mc Bride was shot. It was apparently the case that Rowland and the men around him were captured and then liberated again. Uncle John said that Rowland claimed that at some point he was shot for a second time, and that he claimed to have recognize the shooter as the same one who shot him the first time. Rowland reportedly suffered a debilitating injury to his arm.
Uncle John said that there was a famous exchange of statements at Brest between the surrendering German commander and the American troops who seized him. Being so trained, the German commander expected only to be taken into custody by a commander of equivalent rank, and asked to see the Americans’ credentials, to which he was reportedly referred to the rifles the American were holding in their hands.
Uncle John said that he had gone to see the movie Saving Private Ryan and found it to be historically authentic in its presentation for the most part. However he said that one small detail he did notice which he thought wasn’t at all true to his experience was seeing soldiers in the film without their rifles either strapped to their shoulders or within arm’s reach. He said he saw in the movie rifles leaning up against walls, and soldiers relaxing apart from their weapons, which he thought was aninaccuracy, because it was his experience that soldiers hardly ever separated themselves from their arms.
Uncle John said that he finished training on June 6, 1944, and that he was soon after sent on a train with his compatriots to Camp Kilmer in New Jersey for overseas staging. From there, he boarded the USS George Washington where he was assigned to quarters on G-deck, which was below the waterline of the ship, posing a serious danger to him and others at that level in the event of a torpedo attack, as it was almost certain he would perish under those circumstances. Uncle John said that drills were performed to test the readiness of the troops in the event of a torpedo attack against the ship, and that the tests revealed that he was unable to reach the deck from his quarters in the time allotted for the drill, seeming to confirm his fear that he would have likely drowned had a torpedo attack on the ship really happened.
Uncle John said that the USS George Washington was part of a large convoy of ships which crossed the Atlantic at the same time. He said that the merchant ships in the convoy left their military escorts off the coast of Portugal. The George Washington then continued into the English Channel as part of a purely military convoy. Uncle John said that soon afterward he was using the facilities or head on G-deck of the ship when he heard a loud explosion which seemed to shake and rattle the entire vessel. He said he scrambled upward to the deck to find that the Americans were setting off depth charges from accompanying ships to fight off an apparent German submarine threat.
Uncle John said that it was in that particular area under similar circumstances that the USS Leopoldville later went down. The Leopoldville was said to have gone down to German submarines about 6 miles off Cherbourg. The sinking was later covered up by the Allied command. Uncle John confirmed that the 104th Division was the first to arrive onto French soil directly from America without first stopping in England. He said that there was joke at the time that the island of England was so crowded with soldiers prior to the Normandy Invasion, that it would have sunk if they tried to put on any more.
Uncle John said that his ship entered into an extremely crowded English channel, where he described seeing ships as far as the eye could see. Uncle John recalled seeing an aircraft carrier cut in the path of his ship under tight navigation paths. The George Washington was anchored off the port of Cherbourg on the Normandy coast South of Utah Beach. He said that Cherbourg was a wreck and all the piers were demolished, but that military engineers had figured out some way of making use of the port nonetheless. He said that troops from the George Washington were brought ashore in small transport boats which were called “Scows”.
Uncle John said that he believed that Uncle Rotz may have docked in Cherbourg some months later when his unit entered the war.
Onshore in Normandy, Uncle John was assigned to a field called J-42 where he and other members of the 104th set up camp. He said that he remained camped at the J-42 field for two weeks as the men of 104th debarked from four separate ships, and as the division’s equipment was unloaded andorganized at the site.
Uncle John said at that time General Patton was streaking across France toward Germany at rates and ease that no one really anticipated, and that there was even some lament heard by soldiers in the 104th that the war might be over before they even had a chance to fight. There was also a rumor that circulated among the camp that Patton had been snubbing the 104th in his demand for reinforcements, purportedly saying, “send me any division but the 104th.” With this it was believed that Patton still bore a grudge against Terry Allen for Allen’s defeat in North Africa.
Nevertheless, whether the rumor was true or not, the 26th Yankee Division, which arrived in Normandy at about the same time as the 104th, was sent to reinforce Patton’s 3rd Army, while the 104th remained. Uncle John said there was an exception to this in that drivers from the 104th were taken out of the division to assist the effort to supply Patton’s troops on the Red Ball Express, which was a secured route to the front, which was marked with signs along the roadside bearing red circles.
Uncle John said that the 104th was moved off the J-24 location to an area called “Hay Le Depuis (?)” where it was said a great many paratroopers rained down on D-day. The 104th was then further broken down at that point with its “walking” infantry transported to Paris and then North to Belgium. The mechanized division, of which Uncle John was a part, was thenordered to drive its equipment to the Dutch boarder. He said the soldiers were given a strip map, which listed a series of towns and villages which the convoy was expected to sequentially follow in order to arrive to its proper destination. He said he remembered stopping at a town called Mecklen near the Dutch boarder, where his unit camped. He was soon afterward attached to the 1st Canadian Army in relief of the British 49th Division, which had been fighting under Canadian command. Uncle John said that along with the American 104th Division, that the 1st Canadian Army had a Polish division under its command at the time. With the 1st Canadian Army, the 104th continued on toward a town called Wuustwezel, Belgium near the Dutch border where fighting began. He said his first day of combat was on October 23, 1944.
Uncle John explained that the allied forces veered away from Holland eastward toward Germany. He said for this reason the Dutch people suffered a miserable winter in 1944-45 because of the Allied decision not to immediately try to liberate the country from German control. John Leyen, a Dutch native who would later immigrate to America and farm in Rock Tavern, was caught by the Germans that winter trying to sell a pig on the black market. He was said to have been imprisoned just three weeks after his marriage. Uncle John said that he knew that John Leyen had always felt bad about those circumstances.
Uncle John said that a bridge was dropped into the Maas River in front of the 104th Division on the path to Antwerp. (Later research shows that the 104th was reassigned at this juncture on the banks of the Maas from the 1st Canadian Army to join the seventh Corps of the First US Army, moving toward Aachen, Germany.) Uncle John said that it was the objective of the 1st Canadian Army to secure the Port of Antwerp .
Uncle John said that he read statements made by author, Stephen Ambrose in historical text regarding Holland in World War II which Uncle John considered to be false. Ambrose reportedly made the statement that “no Americans fought in Holland” during that time. Uncle John said that in reality he had witnessed the dead bodies of American soldiers being “stacked like cordwood” there.
Uncle John also rejected the historical assertion that the 3rd Army took Colon. He said, “the 3rd Army was part of it, but not all of it,” as he believed his 104th played a significant role in that victory.
Uncle John said he remembered a Father Murray celebrating Christmas Mass, 1944 in a small village in the (Huertgen) forest of the Aachen Salient surrounded by destruction, with the priest telling the troops, “the Christ Child didn’t have anything on us.”
Uncle John said the worst fighting he saw in the war occurred there in the forests of the Aachen Salient during the time frame of the Battle of the Bulge. He said that the Germans had used a series of dams on the Roer River to manipulate the water level of the river to go higher than normal as a protective measure in their last big offensive plan. Uncle John said that the high water would ultimately inhibit the allies from using its strength within the Aachen Salient to thwart the adjacent German offensive being waged in the Battle of the Bulge.
Uncle John said that there was many incidences of friendly fire within the forests of the Aachen Salient of which he was aware. He said he was aware that the lead soldiers of the 104th got fired upon by the division’s own canon company. He said the 30th Division also fought in the Aachen Salient forest at that time and that “they got hell beat on them by their own troops also”due to the confusing terrain. Uncle John described the 30th Division fighting on the 104th’s “left” within the forest and the 8th Division fighting on the 104th’s “right”.
Uncle John said that by the time the 104th crossed the Roer, the River was back within its banks.
Uncle John said that Uncle Fig “was next door” on the Roer as part of the Aachen Salient. Uncle John said that Uncle Fig came to visit him while his unit was stationed outside Duren. This visit was to take place at the relatively safe Company Headquarters of the 104th, which was set back from the front, but then Uncle John’s lieutenant got sick and his presence was required back near the front at Platoon Headquarters. Uncle Fig was reportedly nervous about going along with his brother toward the front, but Uncle John assured him that things were quiet there at that time. He said that he had spent weeks driving back and forth from the front to Company Headquarters transporting mail and rations, and knew the trail well, even as it included many detours through fields and around obstacles. Still, Uncle Fig reportedly questioned whether Uncle John really knew where he was going.
Uncle John said that his lieutenant who was sick that day was a man named Bornhoff. He said that due to his rank, Bornhoff received a regular ration of liquor, which he would typically order Uncle John to dispense to the men of the platoon. Uncle John said that he would sometimes have to grab the bottle out of the hand of certain men who would tend to take more than their fair share of the ration. Uncle John said that Bornhoff’s command later ended in the German city of Halle when he was hit with a bullet which descended through his torso and exited near his hip. Bornhoff recovered, and Uncle John went to visit him after the war, and found that he had an Irish Setter he named “Flannery”.
Uncle John said that the Germans and Americans at the time of Uncle Fig’s visit were dug in , and the front was stationary, but that each side would launch shells toward their enemy periodically just to remind the other of their presence. Uncle John said one of these types of “reminder” shells landed on the left side of the jeep in which Uncle Fig and Uncle John were riding just as the vehicle neared the Platoon Headquarters. Uncle John said the driver of the jeep panicked and left the vehicle to take cover in the ditch of the road. Uncle John said that he ordered the driver back in the jeep to drive the vehicle onward to safety, but the young man refused. Uncle John said that he then climbed into the driver seat and drove off. He said they were close enough to the Platoon Headquarters at that time that he figured the driver would easily find his way back.
Uncle John said that Terry Allen would often personally visit the front, placing himself in the same danger as the men in his command.
Uncle John said that while driving a jeep through Colon looking for a place to cross the Rhine, that the vehicle came under fire from a sniper position high up in the spire of the Colon Cathedral, which resulted in one of the jeep’s tires being flattened.
Uncle John said that the Ramagden Bridge over the Rhine, which the Germans intentionally tried to destroy without immediate success, collapsed before he reached it. He said he went across the Rhine at Bonn. He said that he crossed on a makeshift bridge comprising of cables stretched across the Rhine supported by whatever boats they could find to strap underneath. He said that tread was installed between the boats for easier crossing.
Uncle John said that his unit liberated the Nordhausen work camp, where the German V2 rockets were being manufactured deep inside a converted salt mine, around which many hundreds of starved corpses of work prisoners were found on the premises. He said that the 104th captured two rocket scientists near the facility.
Uncle John said that the Germans had tried to destroy a mass of dead bodies of work camp prisoners by putting them in an old barn and lighting the structure on fire, but this reportedly did little to cover up anything as the bodies remained despite the fire.
Uncle John said most of the survivors the 104th found at the camp were women workers. Uncle John said he thought that the men healthy enough to travel may have been sent away prior to the Allies arrival to the area. Uncle John said that the workers remaining there were of numerous nationalities. Mostof the workers who were found were in poor health, some appearing on the verge of starvation, and an effort was made to further detain the prisoners due to the concern that they might be carrying diseases which could be spread to the surrounding area. This detention caused resentment among the prisoners and they began to riot. An effort was made to seal off the entrance to the cave structures, but the workers apparently escaped anyway through an unknown entrance.
Uncle John said that there were two huge archways which served as the main entrance to the underground factory which were large enough to drive trucks through. Uncle John recalled a soldier nicknamed “Sleepy” being startled awake from his rest when the truck he was riding in accidentally collided with a rocket tail fin lying in its path inside the caves.
Uncle John said that an intricate assembly line was in operation within the old mine system so that the missiles could be entirely built from start to finish underground there. Uncle John said he remembered seeing a hospital facility within the caves and a kitchen facility containing huge kettles used for making soup and gruel.
Uncle John said that a large quantity of booze was found at Nordhausen, apparently to supply the German officers and privileged scientists who worked at the facility. Subsequently, many men of the 104th became intoxicated on this booze only to find themselves rudely awakened when orders came in that roadblocks were to be put into place to contain the fleeing camp workers. Uncle John said he recalled a scene where hungover soldiers were found crawling out of windows of the residences they took up in to plunge down directly into awaiting trucks below which were to take them out to their designated road blocks, which Uncle John described as ineffective.
Uncle John said that old German men from the surrounding area were recruited to dig a mass grave by hand to bury the dead of the work camp. Uncle John said that he spent 3 to 4 days stationed within the vicinity of the Nordhausen work camp, also known as the Dora Mittelbau concentration camp.
Uncle John said that before the end of the war he led a patrol through a minefield. He said that he didn’t know which side planted the minefield, but someone had already made it through leaving behind a line of white tape as a guide.
Uncle John said that he never saw any Russian soldiers near the end of the war, but that his unit did. He said that he was outside Halle as the war in Europe concluded, where he at one point met up with Paul Ringlehan of Campbell Hall. Joe Ahearn of Campbell Hall was said to be in the same area.
Uncle John said the Orange County County Clerk’s son, Dusenberry was killed on the Czech boarder on nearly the very last day of the war. The Maybrook VFW post is named the Dusenberry-Flannery Memorial post. Uncle John said that memorial services in Town of Hamptonburgh have sometimes excluded Uncle Rotz, perhaps because he wasn’t buried in the township. A man named Sidney Herbert from Campbell Hall was said to have also been excluded. He went down with the WASP when 1,500 were lost.
Uncle John said his unit was sent back to America to regroup at Fort Dix.There they were to have a month’s worth of R&R before they began preparations for the invasion of Japan, where the 104th would have figured prominently without the Japanese surrender that came soon after the American atomic bombing of August, 1945.
Uncle John said that Grandma Kit was issued a $10,000 insurance check from the government as a result of Uncle Rotz’s death on the battlefield. Grandma Kit never cashed it and it was found by Uncle Fig soon after her death in 1974.
Uncle John said that Uncle Jimmy consulted with some banking friends who figured out a way to cash the check, considered stale by then, and the proceeds were added to her estate to be divided.
---Interview and writing by James Robert Flannery. This account was proof-read by Uncle John in the months following the interview in 1999. No requests for changes were made by him except for several spelling errors of names.
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