June 15, 2005

Trio recalls recon service

Members of Army 97th Division troop hold reunion in TC

By Carol South
Herald contributing writer

       Tapped by Uncle Sam in the middle of World War II, three members of the 97th Division's Recon Troop did their duty before returning home to the lives their draft notices had interrupted.
      On the cusp of manhood, the 144 members of the troop hailed from many states and all walks of life. The Army forged them into a unit that served as the forward eyes and ears of the division. Their method was simple: drive jeeps or armored M-8 vehicles ahead of the lines until the Germans shot at them. This fixed the enemy position, which they radioed back before they 'ran like hell' to get out of there.
      "Our troop was a calvary troop and we were made part of the division," said Carson Bonn of Traverse City, who served three years with the troop.
      Bonn hosted two other members of the group for a three-day reunion in Traverse City last week. The group has held regular reunions since 1972 and over the years the spouses and children have also grown close. Dwindling numbers do not discourage these World War II veterans and their families from rekindling every year the ties they forged in Europe.
      Meeting at the Bayshore Resort last week, the men reminisced about their service six decades ago toward the end of World War II.
      "I was 20 when I went in," said Jones Dagenhart of Lynchburg, N.C., a truck driver in the Army who began serving in 1943. "I had two brothers in the Navy and everybody my age in the neighborhood went somewhere."
      All three said that they did not have a choice to join up, they received a draft notice in the mail. Even Bonn, who was 26, married and had a young daughter, was inducted.
      "We were drafted for the duration of the war plus six months," Smith said.
      One of the youngest divisions, the 97th joined the European Theater during the Battle of the Bulge. They fought through the Ruhr pocket and captured Dusseldorf and Cologne. Then the division joined Pattons' 3rd Army and went into Czechoslovakia, where they liberated a concentration camp. They began taking prisoners as the war wound down, with the division ultimately capturing 48,791 enemies and occupying 2,000 square miles.
      The men marched their prisoners 50 minutes at a time before breaking for ten minutes of rest. Bonn noted that many of the German soldiers were happy to be caught, happy it was over.
      "The German prisoners were funny," Bonn noted. "When you'd stop to rest them the officers would get on one side of the road and the enlisted men on the other. With us, we were all one."
      At the war's end, Bonn said some Germans did not believe the hostilities had ended. Allied soldiers took extra precautions to protect themselves despite winning the war.
      "In Czechoslovakia, we were careful because we didn't want to get killed after the war was over," he noted.
      Members of the 97th Division were quickly reassigned and shipped back to the United States so they could join the campaign to invade Japan. After 21 days leave, they crossed the Pacific on a ship that took 28 days to travel from Seattle to the Philippines.
      "We were sitting on a ship in the Cebu Harbor when the war ended," said Bonn of the Japanese surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
      The men then comprised part of the occupation force that helped Japan transition to a democracy and rebuild after the war.
      Bonn, Dagenhart and Smith are proud of their service and believed strongly in their mission, as they do now.
      "If we hadn't been proud of it, you'd be speaking German today," Bonn said. "The whole world would be speaking German, if Hitler had had his way."