The Family Kalamazoo

Charles Peter Mulder was born to Clara (Waldeck) and Charles Mulder on 30 July 1917 in Caledonia, Michigan, most likely at home. He was the youngest of the five Mulder children. They grew up on their parents’ farm.

Chuck Mulder, high school graduation photo

As a teen, Chuck, as he was known, was very good-looking and a favorite with the ladies. But he was a bit oblivious to all the girls fawning over him. He wasn’t as outgoing as his brother, but he was no doubt very intelligent.

Around the age of 22 Chuck left Caledonia and boarded with the Patrick Slattery family at what I believe was 911 S. Park Street. It was transcribed from the 1940 census as Stock Street, but that is incorrect. This is a Google maps image. It looks like the house is still standing.

Also according to the 1940 census, Chuck’s fellow boarder was his brother Peter Mulder and their first cousin, Herbert Waldeck. I don’t recognize the names of the other boarders, although several of them are the same age range as Chuck, Pete, and Herb. Lines 21, 22, and 24:

Both Chuck and Herb enlisted on 16 October 1940 in Caledonia. Chuck’s employer is listed on the draft card as none. Herb’s lists his employment as the Fuller Manufacturing Company.  Because they enlisted together, it’s a bit surprising to me that Chuck went into the U.S. Army, and Herb became a sailor in the U.S. Navy. Chuck’s brother Pete had suffered a ruptured appendix and was therefore exempted from military duties.

On the front of the draft registration, we see that Chuck’s telephone # was 28F2. Imagine a phone number like that!

From the backside of the draft registration we can see that Chuck was nearly six foot and had brown hair and hazel eyes.

This whole project to write about my grandmother’s siblings began with my Uncle Don telling me that Uncle Chuck (his uncle, my great-uncle) was a war hero and that perhaps his story could be researched.

I did as much online research as I could do before I asked Chuck’s daughter Susie to order his military records from the National Archives. Then Covid struck, and the archives have been unavailable for family history research purposes. I asked Myra Miller if her team at Footsteps Researchers would be able to help. They are also stymied by the closure of the archives, although one of her people sent me a few online documents. One of them was a newspaper article I had not found myself.

In the meantime, since I started with the oldest of Grandma’s sibs, Dorothy, I had some time before I would put together Chuck’s story as he was the youngest of the bunch. I’ve long since finished stories of the other three siblings. I’ve stalled a long time, but have decided to go ahead and write about Chuck since the archives are still unavailable to us.

In a newspaper clipping from the Ironwood Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan, on 19 June 1944, Chuck, a machine shop worker, according to the paper, is quoted: “We’re going to give them the works; that’s all there is to it.”  At that point, Chuck was eager to go after the enemy.

Then I have the data from the army enlistment records.

The above enlistment record states that Chuck had four years of high school, but he was considered “unskilled labor” for the army. He would be trained by the army and gain a skill, though, in communications.

5th from right 2nd row

Below is a photo of Uncle Chuck from 1944 in Germany.

Here is another group shot, but we do not have the date. Doesn’t this look like it was taken the same time as the solo shot?

This group photo was taken 10 March 1944. He is front row, 3rd from right.

I wanted to find out if Uncle Chuck was really a war hero. An article in The Grand Rapids Press 8 March 1945 corroborates the story that Uncle Don had told me about Uncle Chuck’s radio team being involved in a dangerous mission to communicate across enemy lines in Germany.  Chuck (Sergeant Mulder) was Radio Team Chief.

Here is the article, and I follow it with a transcription for ease of reading.

CALEDONIA MAN GETS BRONZE STAR

Caledonia—T/4 Charles P. Mulder, Jr., has been awarded the bronze star for “zealous determination and unselfish devotion to duty” with the army signal corps in Germany, his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Mulder, sr., have learned.

“His parents have received a citation accompanying the medal, which asserted the award was made “for meritorious conduct in action in Germany.” It declared Mulder distinguished himself “by outstanding performance of duty as a radio operator with a communications team of an infantry regiment engaged in rolling back the Siegfried line after a penetration and in encircling a strongly defended enemy city. The courage, zealous determination and unselfish devotion to duty contributed much to the efficiency of the communications in this most difficult period.”

The citation is signed by Maj. Gen. L. S. Hobbs, commander of the 30^th division to which Mulder is attached.

Below you can read the letter that Maj. Gen. Hobbs wrote about the “30^th Signal Company.”

Chuck’s grandson Andy believes that the bronze star, since there is no mention of a “Combat V,” suggests that the award was given for doing a difficult job in arduous circumstances exceptionally well rather than for a single act of valor or gallantry. He said this makes sense since Chuck was a technical specialist and not a line infantryman. He still had a complex, difficult, and dangerous job to do.

Andy also clarifies Chuck’s rank since we do not have the archival records. He inherited 30th ID patches and a rank insignia for Technical Specialist 4, probably the highest rank Chuck held. This was a specialist rank equivalent to a buck sergeant – E5 in today’s pay scale. While this was a non-commissioned officer rank, technical specialists held no command authority.

Backing up a little over a month, in a letter written February 1 from Belgium to his parents (quoted in the above newspaper article), Chuck wrote: “Yesterday I had quite a surprise when I was awarded the bronze star medal by our commanding general. He gave it to me and then shook hands. This bronze star means five more points in the discharge point system.”

In a postscript, Mulder wrote: “I also have an ETO (European theater of operation) ribbon with two battle stars on it. I nearly forgot to tell you this. The two stars are for Normandy and the other countries. We will get another one, at least, for the Germany campaign.”

You can see that Chuck went from an eager entry into service to counting up points until he could be honorably discharged. This shows that he had experienced and seen a lot of war.

I wanted more information about Chuck’s participation in the war. He was with the 119^th Infantry Regiment, which was a part of the 30^th Infantry Division. According to Wikipedia, “The 30th Infantry Division was a unit of the Army National Guard in World War I and World War II. It was nicknamed the “Old Hickory” division, in honor of President Andrew Jackson. The Germans nicknamed this division “Roosevelt’s  SS.” The 30th Infantry Division was regarded by a team of historians led by S.L.A. Marshall as the number one American infantry division in the European Theater of Operations (ETO), involved in 282 days of intense combat over a period from June 1944 through April 1945.

Let me repeat that: “the number ONE American infantry division in the European Theater of Operations.”

In a book owned by grandson Andy who has made his career in the military, Chuck is mentioned in an incident that occurred. This book has no ISBN and most likely was printed as a souvenir. Andy explains that “there is a long tradition of books like this in US military service. Think of it being akin to a high school yearbook, and assembled by some of the soldiers themselves. The Navy calls these ‘cruise books.’”  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_book Do any readers know what the army calls these books?

Andy continues:  “The best I can say is that the book was probably printed over the summer of 1945 (while the 30th was waiting their turn to be sent back stateside). Unfortunately the author(s) are not credited by name in the book. It’s remarkable to me that a company would have had their own book in some ways – a U.S. army company is generally 3-4 platoons and no more than around 200 people at full strength. A reasonable assumption is that compiling the book may have been something for otherwise bored officers and senior NCOs to do during the summer of 45 to keep them productive, though it’s entirely possible that more junior personnel did most of the work. We’ll never know unfortunately. I don’t know if it was common for companies to have produced souvenir books like this in WW2.”

Andy surmises that Chuck was probably stateside when the book was printed. His photo is one of those “unavailable” on the bottom left of the second page.

In memory of the lives that were lost.

Note the name Dale E. Stockton as one of those lost and keep reading. I will post the pages here and transcribe them below.

BOOK PAGES

“Sergeant Mulder’s team was with the 119^th Infantry Regiment at the time the great offensive for St. Lo began. Our artillery had been pounding away for hours. Planes were overheard, flying in the initial bombing assault. The Regiment was on the road moving forward to the attack.

Orders were that only two men could ride in a vehicle. So Bennie Keech drove the Radio command car. “Dale” Stockton sat in the back operating the set, and “Chuck” Mulder marched to the side and a little ahead of the car. Bennie had to keep the car right in the center of the road, because the Infantrymen were marching in column on both sides of it.

As they moved down the road, the fury of the great battle grew in intensity. Then came the sound of falling bombs. Dale Stockton was fataly [sic] wounded. Bennie Keech was knocked unconscious by a bomb blast, a blast that lifted the car from the road and pushed it over to the side. Bennie was evacuated to a first aid station, where it was discovered that he had suffered a severely sprained back. “Chuck” Mulder was uninjured but his nerves were badly upset by the experience.

Bennie was able to rejoin the Company in a couple of days, and he and Chuck were together until just a few months before the war’s end. Then Bennie received a furlough to the good old USA, and shortly afterward, Chuck was evacuated for a physical check-up. The men of the Radio Section miss Chuck Mulder and Bennie Keech. They miss and salute Dale Stockton.

His grandson describes it this way:

The book talks about how this incident occurred during the offensive for  Saint-Lô with planes that were flying overhead in the initial assault. Tragically, it would seem that the event described in this book was a friendly-fire incident. The 30th Infantry Division was tragically bombed by our own aircraft in one of the most controversial incidents in WW2, which involved the attempted use of heavy strategic bombers to support ground forces. http://www.30thinfantry.org/st_lo_battle.shtml

At the same time or shortly after he wrote that letter from Belgium, Chuck was admitted to a convalescent military hospital where, according to the following index, he stayed until August 1945.

The diagnosis is withheld by NARA, so it’s possible that if we get the records from the archives the information will be in there.

We do know that after what Chuck experienced in Europe, he suffered from what is now called PTSD. It used to be called “shellshock” or “battle fatigue.” Seeing his fellow soldiers killed, especially by friendly fire, was a defining moment in his life.

On a light note, at one point during the war, Chuck and his cousin Herb went to Missouri on leave. They went to a restaurant and bar in either Kansas City or St. Joseph. A pretty girl named Ruthann Holton (a resident of Sparks, Kansas) who worked for the Chase Candy Company in St. Joseph, MO, was out with her friend. Chuck and Herb flirted with the girls.  It turns out that Chuck really liked Ruthann, but Herb thought it was a mistake for him to get involved with her. So Herb did his best to confuse Chuck about her name and address. Chuck sent Ruthann a letter to Miss Maryanne Holman. Somehow what happened next was out of Herb’s hands as the letter was delivered to Ruthann anyway.

On 10 December 1944*, Chuck sent RuthAnn a Christmas V-mail, so they had definitely become “sweethearts” by then. (*I am not sure exactly how V-mail worked. If Chuck didn’t post it on the 10^th it would have been before that date).

Here is a letter that my great-grandparents sent to Ruthann.

On 9 July 1945, Chuck and Ruthann married at Raton, New Mexico. He was back from Germany and stationed at Camp Carson, Colorado. The couple were to live in Colorado Springs, which is where Camp Carson is located.

Now, how did the couple get married in July if Chuck was still in the hospital until August? That question led me to wonder if he was hospitalized, but more as an outpatient, at a hospital at Camp Carson. Camp Carson was huge and had at least eighteen hospitals!

My Uncle Don has some of his own memories of Chuck that I’d like to share. Uncle Chuck was his hero while my uncle was growing up. He tells me that my grandmother, sibling #2 had a special bond with her younger brother. Chuck was the youngest of the siblings, and he turned to my grandmother for advice. This is probably quite usual in larger families where an older sibling becomes close with the youngest.

Chuck and Ruthann had one child, their daughter Suzanne, who studied at the University of Michigan, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Malawi, and went to medical school at Johns Hopkins University on a full scholarship. I still have the wooden figurine that Susie brought me back from Malawi.

Chuck and Ruthann both worked very hard until retirement, although they did like to go out dancing before Ruthann experienced foot troubles. I remember them enjoying polka dancing. Chuck was the first to retire from The Upjohn Company, as he was seven years older than Ruthann. He walked most mornings with some retired friends. He also did most of the housework, yard work, and made dinners for Ruthann. He had atherosclerotic arterial disease in his legs, which caused him a great deal of pain. He also became legally blind from glaucoma. This disease runs in my family. Chuck would have inherited it through his mother’s Waldeck branch. Chuck voluntarily quit driving when he retired, and he used to try and read the Kalamazoo Gazette every day with the use of magnifying glasses.

In the photo below, Grandma and Grandpa are surrounded by her siblings and their spouses. Chuck is in the front row in the pink shirt. Ruthann is to his right.

Ruthann retired at age 65, but she wouldn’t have retirement time to spend with Chuck. He passed away far too early from a fast and mysterious affliction. Susie suspects he infarcted (blood clot to artery) his intestines as he went to the hospital with sudden, severe abdominal pain and became septic shortly after his admission. He was only 72 years old.

Chuck and Ruthann are buried together at Mount Ever-Rest Memorial Park South in Kalamazoo. For years now, on Memorial Day, my brother has visited  their grave with flowers to honor Uncle Chuck’s service and heroism.

Read Full Post »