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Memorials
Kelso Crowder Horne
Kelso Crowder Horne

Memorial to the soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division for the capture of Hill 95 on July 4, 5 and 6, 1944.
Here lie the ashes of Lt Kelso C. Horne

Kelso Crowder Horne, born in Dublin (Georgia, USA) on November 12, 1912 and died in the same city on November 25, 2000, was an American serviceman associated with the département of La Manche.

He enlisted in June 1942 with the intention of becoming a paratrooper.

In February 1943, he was promoted to Second Lieutenant and enrolled in the parachute school. In March 1943, he was assigned to the 1st platoon of India Company, 3rd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. On June 6, 1944, at 2:06 a.m., Kelso jumped from a C47 and landed on his target, between the Merderet and the Paris-Cherbourg railroad line.

He joined the divisional HQ west of Sainte-Mère-Église. With some twenty men, he is sent to seize a farm on the banks of the Merderet. He then moved on to Chef-du-Pont and the La Fière bridge.

An impressive number of German corpses lay strewn along the roadway. Towards Cauquigny, a German lying among the dead called out to him: "Kamerad, kamerad!

Kelso Horne handed him over to a soldier with orders to take him back to the prison camp. No sooner had he turned his back than he heard a burst from a Thompson. The GI has just shot the German. A few days later, he is advancing along a road with his platoon when he is stopped by General Lawton Collins, commander of the 7th US Corps, who asks him where his commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Louis G. Mendez, is. Life Magazine photographer Bob Landry accompanies the general, gets out of the car and asks Kelso C. Horne for permission to shoot him. Horne for permission to take his picture. He says, "Well, go ahead and take it then." He looks at the camera, when the photographer asks him to look away, at which point he takes the photograph.

After asking his name and the town he was from, they left. His photo became a veritable icon of the American GI, after it appeared in the August 4, 1944 issue of Life Magazine. Doris, his wife, was called by a postal agent at 6 a.m. on the day Life Magazine appeared. When she saw the cover, she said, "I thought he was the handsomest man in the whole Army." She was also happy to see his wedding ring in the photo. Indeed, a classic joke among GI's wives claimed that the men removed their wedding rings on their trip to Europe and put them back on when they returned.

Colline Sainte-Catherine (Hill 95)

On July 4, the 508th PIR approached Hill 95 near La Haye-du-Puits. Together with his sergeant and friend Raymond Conrad of India Company, they are targeted, and a bullet passes right through Conrad. Moments later, as he returned to his post, a young GI accompanying him was mowed down by a burst from an MG 42. He escaped unhurt. The same day, at 11 a.m., Company 3/508 launched an open assault on Hill 95.

Kelso C. Horne suddenly felt as if someone had just hit him in the chest with a baseball bat: "I didn't hear it coming, but I knew it was shrapnel." He gets to his feet, noticing that he has lost his Colt on impact. He crawls to the shelter of a hedge, bleeding. He was taken to the rear to a field hospital, then transferred to Cheltenham hospital (England). He is still on his hospital bed when a wounded GI next to him looks at him and says, "You've just had a boy!". Kelso Horne is surprised! It was his father-in-law, knowing how slow the mail can be, who had the idea of placing an announcement of his grandson's birth in the Stars and Stripes. It ran in the July issue: Kelso C. Casey, Horne, Jr. had been born on July 18th. Kelso Horne remains in hospital until September 1944. He does not take part in the invasion of Holland (Operation Market Garden).

He then took part in the Ardennes campaign with the 82nd Airborne Division, engaged in the Stavelot sector, then in the fighting at La Gleize and Stourmont. In January 1945, after fighting in the Rhur, the 82nd Airborne Division was brought back to France to be reconstituted in February. It joined up with Russian troops on the Elbe in April, and early the following month the American division liberated the Neuengamme camp and most of its kommandos. After Germany's surrender, it was sent to Berlin.


Source Wikimanche
Photo Credit Momo50

 
Kelso Crowder Horne
Kelso Crowder Horne.
Memoriaux
Kelso Crowder Horne
Kelso Crowder Horne.
Memoriaux

Kelso Crowder Horne

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