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I have received the Individual Deceased Personnel Files of three CCA men that have greatly broadened the scope of the investigation. The bottom line is still the same as in the Overview below. But the understanding of the events and the deaths and where the remains were has greatly expanded. It will take weeks to fully examine these new records -- and re-examine the prior records in light of what is in these new records. So, I can only offer at this point what seems to have been the situation. There were four different dispositions of remains of the GIs killed in these actions and two new locations of CCA Tactical HQ.
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This is a sub-page of the Crombach Recoveries web page for 22 Dec 1944 at Crombach, Belgium. This page originated 16 Sep 2024 from a research paper written 26 Sep 2015. The core of this page is that research paper. I have since obtained several (but I still do not have 3) of the IDPFs that I wrote in 2015 that I did not have. The main 2024 updates to the 2015 original are (1) the addition of the location of recovery of the remains of Chester Seitz to the map and (2) adding links to the IDPFs that I do have. -- Wesley Johnston (Historian, 7th Armored Division Association) |
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My examination of two cases of still-missing 7th Armored Division World War II men led me to conclude that three sets of remains (S&R 1703-A, C, D) turned over to the German cemetery at Ittenbach by the Frankfurt Mausoleum in November 1960 are highly likely the remains of American soldiers.
These cases emerged from the information that I discovered in the examination of two cases of still-missing 7th Armored Division men (Andrew J. Baziow and Harvey H. Bryan). Both were killed in Belgium 22 December 1944. I will present the cases in the order in which I considered them. |
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Andrew J. Baziow (Click here for his IDPF.) and several other B/48 men presented a challenging situation. Some of their official dates of death did not fit the facts I found in various records. So I created a web page, presenting the facts that I found and reaching conclusions ( www.7tharmddiv.org/48b-1944-12.htm ).
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Harvey H. Bryan (Click here for his IDPF.) presented a very difficult case. A/33 had a unique assignment in the defense of the St. Vith salient in December 1944. The A/33 Morning Reports gave no help, since they recorded the position of the company headquarters, which was not near any of the three platoons. Accounts of 2nd and 3rd Platoons showed that they saw little action along the southwestern perimeter of the salient defense. But where was 1st Platoon? I created a web page for A/33 ( http://www.7tharmddiv.org/33a-1944-12.htm ) to gather and organize relevant information. The breakthrough came in the combat interview of the survivors of the Anti-Tank Platoon of Company "B" of 48th Armored Infantry Battalion - the same Platoon to which I suspected Andrew J. Baziow belonged. T/3 Linnell Jones, 4th I&H (Information & Historical), conducted and wrote the AT/B/48 interview 1 Feb 1945. 1/A/33 served as infantry to augment AT/B/48 at a road block about 500 yards north of Sart-lez-St Vith, Belgium (German: Rodt) on the northwestern perimeter. The two platoons took the brunt of a strong attack on 22 Dec 1944, described in eight paragraphs in the interview. While most of the account is about AT/B/48, some explicit references tell about the engineers:
The various accounts allowed me to construct a map of the locations, including overlaying the combat interview map overlay on the grid map. The location of the recovery of the remains of Chester Seitz (1/A/33) -- which is also wehre Albert D. Clouse (B/48) was recovered -- is an addition since the original 2015 map. 
Click on image for full size. |
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NOTE 23 Sep 2024: This section is greatly updated from the 2015 original. This discovery led me to examine the IDPFs of two recovered A/33 men, In 2015, I would also have liked to have examined the IDPF of Mike J. Orrico (IDPF) of A/33, who was captured and died of wounds as a POW and recovered, but that IDPF was not available. However, since 2015, I have obtained his IDPF.
Nor in 2015 were the IDPFs of A/33 recovered KIAs Chester Paul Seitz (IDPF) and Thomas Norman Shutt (IDPF) available.
In 2015, except for Joe Wilson Bailey, I had no IDPFs for the other B/48 men who have been recovered, Albert D. Clouse (IDPF) and Joseph A. Scheurich (IDPF) and 48 AIB Headquarters Company's Milton E. Fein. I have recently received their IDPFs and am adding access to them here as I work through them.
Notes from Other IDPFs
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Joe Wilson Bailey's IDPF has 199 pages. The file is a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information, with much copying and disorder. It is best to consider the file in chronological order. I have separately prepared a spreadsheet listing all 199 pages, with a separate worksheet where they are sorted by date. In the following, square bracket numbers refer to page numbers in the PDF file of the IDPF of Joe Wilson Bailey unless otherwise noted. Missing Report [IDPF p 128] Bailey was a Rifleman in 1st Squad, Anti-Tank Platoon, Company "B", 48th Armored Infantry Battalion, defending a road block north of "Sart Leg St. Vith" (actually Sart-lez-St Vith, which in German is called Rodt). Specifically the position was 500 yards north of "Sart Leg St. Vith". This is extremely important because all subsequent reports inaccurately show the location as "500 yards north of St. Vith", which is about 3 miles east of where Bailey (and Baziow and Bryan) actually was. While the Missing Report has the correct location, it has the wrong date: 24 Dec 1944, which propagates through all subsequent reports. This is due to the highly confused situation that led the 27 Dec 1944 B/48 Morning Report to show all MIAs for the period as missing as of 24 Dec 1944, since at that point it was not really known when all of the men went missing. The investigators never caught the discrepancy. They obtained the 48 AIB After Action Report for 24 December 1944 [133], with the Battalion at Manhay, Belgium, about 29 miles west of St. Vith and 24 miles west of Rodt. By the evening of 22 December - two days before the erroneous date - both Rodt and St Vith were thoroughly under German control and never again out of their control until a month later. No one seems to have noted or investigated these conflicts in the records. The result was that they looked for Bailey in the wrong place (St. Vith). And even if they had looked for him in the place where 48 AIB was on 24 December (Manhay), they still would have been looking in the wrong place.
Bailey's Possible Burial at the Lommel, Belgium, German Cemetery 8 December 1950 Report [115, 108-109] Following a 16 Nov 1950 Investigation Directive, an investigation was made of the German cemetery at Lommel, Belgium, to find Bailey's remains. The result of this investigation was reported in the 8 Dec 1950 "Narrative of Investigation". The Belgian Ministry of the Interior had notified the Americans that the remains of a "Joe Balley" born 1.10.08 (Bailey's birthdate) were removed from the St Vith area to Lommel by the Belgian Graves Service in 1946. The investigation found no documentation of how this Bailey-specific information was known by the Belgians. And since the Belgian teams had by 1950 been disbanded, "it is considered impossible to trace any person who may have been connected with the original recovery." [108] The remains the Belgians had buried as "Joe Balley" born 1.10.08 were exhumed 24 Nov 1950 and examined and found to be the incomplete remains of two individuals, neither of which matched Bailey. [108] Teeth for one individual were charted in November 1950, but no chart is included in Bailey's IDPF. They were unable to determine which skull went with which spinal column [115]. Age of one remains was estimated at 29-34, based on pelvis.[108] Height of one, estimated from measurement of the left humerus, was estimated at 64". [108] The remains, upon exhumation, had no associated clothing nor equipment. [108] Cemetery records showed 17 remains buried as German unknowns recovered from the St. Vith area. [108] The Belgians had not realized that the exhumed remains were multiple; so "it is possible that the same condition exists" for the 17 unknowns. [109] The investigator ended the report with a recommendation that the other 17 remains be disinterred and processed, pending permission of the Belgians. He also recommended that the exhumed remains (designated SR 645 - a pencil margin note says "No Record Available") continue to be associated with Bailey, pending further investigation. [109] 18 December 1950 Report [110-111] An investigator from 7887 Graves Registration Detachment led the disinterment and processing and reported 18 December 1950 in another "Narrative of Investigation." They exhumed 31 additional graves at Lommel. Three bodies had no clothing nor equipment (164 plot 3, 92 plot 3 and 71 plot 3). [110] None of these three compared favorably with Bailey's tooth chart. [110] Remains from two graves (134 plot 3, 151 plot 3) did have US Army shoes. But neither matched Bailey's tooth chart nor those of others lost in the St Vith area. [110-111] However these two remains "were brought to the Dentral (sic) Identification Laboratory for further study". [111] He closed with the recommendation that remains SR 648 and SR 649 continue to be associated with Bailey, pending further investigation. [111] No other report in Bailey's IDPF tells what happened to SR 645, SR 648 and SR 649. On 19 Jan 1951, Bailey was declared non-recoverable. [182-183] Lommel Cases Worth Tracing Almost all of the investigation at Lommel focused only on whether or not exhumed remains matched Bailey. Three sets of remains (164 plot 3, 92 plot 3 and 71 plot 3) had no clothing and did not match Bailey. [110] But they were not compared to the tooth charts of other MIAs. Two sets of remains with US Army shoes (SR 648 and SR 649) did not match Bailey's tooth chart nor any of the others that they had with them. Those remains were brought back to the lab for further investigation, but there is no record of that investigation in Bailey's IDPF.
Bailey's Burial at the German Cemetery at Ittenbach - WITH US Unknown X-259 In some manner never established in the IDPF, Joe Wilson Bailey's remains came to be buried as a German unknown at the German military cemetery at Ittenbach. The Ittenbach cemeteries (#1 American, #2 German) were established in 1945 by Graves Registration. [179] At some date before 1960, the Ittenbach #2 cemetery was turned over to the Germans. In June 1960, the Germans notified the Americans that the dog tag of Joe W. Bailey had been found with remains buried at Ittenbach Plot G, Row 10, Grave 181 [170]. A 10 Jun 1960 telegram from the Frankfurt Mausoleum notified the Department of the Army in Washington, DC, of this and is the first document in of this new situation.[97] The Germans sent the remains to the Frankfurt Mausoleum, where they were received as SR 1073. The Mausoleum lab discovered there were actually four sets of remains, which they documented 15-16 Nov 1960 as SR 1073-A, B, C, D. [170-178] They considered SR 1073-B likely to be Bailey and designated those remains X-9345 and kept them for further processing. The remains of SR 1073-A, C and D were separately packaged and returned to the Germans at Ittenbach. [67] All of the remains, except SR 1073-D, were severely burned. [168] Two had no teeth, and two had enough teeth to make a partial tooth chart (one of which is consistent with the Bryan's tooth chart [Bryan IDPF pp 33, 44]). Some remains were mostly fragments while others were more intact, but none were complete. Measurements were taken and estimates made. [170-178] But no attempt was made to compare the remains to anyone other than Bailey. The subsequent "Identification Laboratory Report" (21 Nov 1960) [168-169] said the remains were all severely burned and had no clothing. But "large and well preserved sections of [two] German Field Gray uniform" were with the remains, which is probably what had led to them being recovered as German. As the report speculates, "the unburned clothing may have been used in the wrapping and burial of the burned remains or it may have been placed indiscriminately in the grave." [168] One other aspect of the report weighs significantly. How did the remains become severely burned? The report speculates "It appears that these casualties were grouped together in a German conveyance, a Field Hospital, an Aid Station or some type of Morgue or Collection Area which was attacked and set afire and continued to burn with considerable intensity. … The absence of burned clothing with the remains is also an indication these casualties were probably hospital patients prior to being subjected to the severe burning action." [168] Rather than a German conveyance, the presence of the X-259 plaque (see below) should have suggested an American conveyance. It seems highly likely that these remains had been gathered together and were being processed by Graves Registration when a German attack hit them and forced their abandonment as the Germans overran the position - which is entirely consistent with the events of 22 December 1944 at Rodt and at the towns to which the defenders of Rodt withdrew: Crombach and Hinderhausen. But the most significant finding for those still-missing men (Baziow and Bryan and perhaps others) was this: "A partially destroyed metal plaque as used by U. S. G. R. units was found with these remains and bears the following stamping: ‘(U)NID X-259' which indicates these remains were handled in some manner by the U. S. Forces prior to burial at Ittenbach." [168] The fact that the plaque was partially destroyed should have told subsequent investigators that it almost certainly was not X-259 for Ittenbach but rather for some other cemetery. But they failed to realize this and searched only for X-259 Ittenbach - which not surprisingly had never been reached. [85] They should have looked at cemeteries that recovered St. Vith casualties, such as Henri-Chapelle, but they never looked there. And the fact that an X-259 plaque was found with the SR 1073 remains never led them to compare SR 1073-A, C, D with other men missing from the area.
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The DNA testing done should be for maximal benefit. This means that the most powerful state-of-the-art methods should be used. It also means that the results should be collected in a format that is compatible with the huge public genealogy-DNA companies and public web sites. Nuclear DNA is the strongest form of DNA for matching. Recent tests have shown that nuclear DNA is obtainable from World War II remains. And it can be done promptly and at relatively low cost, compared to the previously-used mitochondrial DNA, which is almost entirely useless for matching and only of value in eliminating non-matches. Nuclear DNA matches against recent relatives. In the past, it was necessary to collect DNA reference samples from family members of men likely to be the Unknown. But in the past decade, hundreds of thousands of people have taken nuclear DNA tests with genealogical companies, such as Family Tree DNA and Ancestry. And a public web site, GEDMatch, now allows people who have tested with different companies to upload their results in order to find more matches than just those in the database of the company with whom they tested. Even if some of the remains buried as German actually were German, this method may still result in DNA matches.
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Active overview of all pages at the 7th Armored Division web site
Clouse, Pfc Albert D
Scheurich, Pvt Joseph A