By Cliff Radel
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The letter from the little French town touched hearts and rekindled memories in Cincinnati.
The writer, a policeman named Didier Masson, wanted to know all he could about Thomas Henry Schultze.
The men of Company K wore the T-O patch, short for "Tough 'Ombres," nickname of the 359th Infantry Regiment, 90th Division.
Co. K's troops were untested in battle -- until 8:04 p.m., June 6, 1944.
That's when Co. K and its Cincinnati sergeant, Thomas Henry Schultze, waded ashore at Utah Beach in Normandy on D-Day.
During the summer and fall of '44, Co. K pursued Hitler's retreating army across France and into the Moselle River Valley.
On Nov. 12, the river flooded and the Nazis counterattacked. The 90th suffered two days of heavy losses. Then, it attacked, liberated the river valley and entered Germany. At war's end, the 90th's troops stood on Czech soil and counted their losses. One of the dead, killed on Nov. 13 near the village of Kerling, France, was Sgt. Schultze.
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No one had asked about this man from the Queen City for nearly 60 years. His immediate family is long gone. Friends close enough to call him "Tom" are in their 80s.
What was known is that Thomas Henry Schultze served his country. And fought for freedom in World War II. He is buried in the French countryside, near where he died on Nov. 13, 1944.
Today, a French policeman, born long after the war ended, plans to place a red rose and an American flag next to the cross marking the GI's grave and say a prayer of thanks.
"I am very grateful for those soldiers. If not for them, I'd be speaking German."
He does this in honor of America's Veterans Day. He does this for a man he knows little about.
"I write you," the policeman explained, "for information about this hero killed near where I live."
So began the saga of finding Sgt. Schultze.
Masson knew the soldier's name, rank and serial number from his grave marker. Tech. Sgt. Schultze fought in the 359th Infantry Regiment, 90th Division. His parents' names were Malcomb and Louise.
Thomas Schultze is buried in St. Avold, France, at the Lorraine American Cemetery. That is Europe's largest burial ground for American forces who died during World War II. His grave is one of 10,489.
In his own way, Masson believes his efforts offer hope for better relations between France and the United States. The bad blood between the two countries over the war in Iraq upsets him. "I would like to get in contact with his family to prove that a Frenchman did not forget what this hero did and to tell my gratitude."
This search took a circuitous route.
Spanning generations, it traveled from World War II to today, from Cincinnati's streets to the D-Day beaches of Normandy, from Purcell High School's laughter-filled hallways to a French cemetery's fields of silence.
Thomas Schultze rests in grave 19, row 11, plot J of the Lorraine American Cemetery.
"That's on the northeast corner," said the cemetery's superintendent, Horace Thompson. He spoke by phone from his office amid 113.5 acres of rolling hills and white Italian marble grave markers carved into crosses and Stars of David.
Thompson started the adopt-a-grave program at St. Avold as a reminder: The graves belong to heroes who died to free Europe from the horrors of Nazi tyranny.
There is no cost to adopt a grave. Participants receive a certificate of adoption and an invitation to attend a Memorial Day service.
They aren't required to visit or say a prayer. Or bring a rose. Or a small American flag.
Masson, a 42-year-old sergeant in France's national police force, does all that. And he drives an hour to the cemetery from his home. He lives with his wife and their two sons in Etain, a town of 3,709 - 50 miles from the German border.
He did not adopt the grave out of a desire for personal glory. "I am not a hero," he said.
"The heroes are all of these Braves who left their country to fight the enemy in France."
Most relatives gone
A month after he died, Sgt. Schultze merited one paragraph in the Enquirer.
The obituary mentioned his mother, Louise, the address of the Pleasant Ridge home she shared with Thomas, and his pre-war job as a salesman for U.S. Plywood.
Louise Schultze died in 1966, 25 years after her husband, 22 years after her son.
Thomas Schultze was an only child. There is no record of him being married. Or fathering children.
His aunts and uncles and most of his cousins are dead. A second cousin, Greg Bennings, lives in Park Hills.
A schoolteacher, Bennings was born three months before his second cousin was killed in 1944. He has no memory of Cousin Tom, or any memorabilia, such as photos of the GI in uniform. But his middle name is Thomas.
Bennings' wife, Sue, has been researching her husband's family tree. She had no information about Thomas Schultze.
"All I had, was his name."
Mary Catherine Wildermuth of Pittsford, N.Y., is Thomas Schultze's last living first cousin on his mother's side. She remembers him with fondness.
"When he was a boy, he would take me for a fun ride in his wagon around Pleasant Ridge."
Wildermuth has no photos of her cousin and none of his possessions, especially the Purple Heart he received posthumously.
"When his mother died," Wildermuth recalled, "she left her personal effects to a friend who was already in a nursing home."
The 'Old Maestro'
Thomas Schultze entered Purcell High School as a freshman in 1929, the year the school opened. His graduating class, 1933, was the first to attend all four years at what is now a Walnut Hills landmark.
His photo appears in the 1933 yearbook, next to this citation:
"The 'Old Maestro' from Pleasant Ridge is always the center of attraction in any gathering. His air of breezy self-confidence and easy assurance never fails to gain him an enraptured audience."
He needed that breezy self-confidence. Times were tough.
"Prospects for the Class of '33 were pretty poor," said a Schultze classmate, Anderson Township resident Bob Frohmiller.
"The Great Depression had taken its toll on Cincinnati. Fellows graduating from college were lucky to be soda jerks."
Imagine how tough it was on kids fresh out of high school.
"Tom was a bon vivant," recalled Chuck Stubbers, Purcell Class of '33, living in Silverton.
"He dressed well. He dated quite a bit. He was always outgoing."
Bill Toohey sat next to Schultze in class. "Knew him well," said the retiree living in Naples, Fla.
They grew up together, first in Norwood, and then, when both sets of parents moved, in Pleasant Ridge.
"Tom was big. Six feet tall, 150-160 pounds. Good lookin' guy. Light years ahead of everybody when it came to chasing women."
Toohey enlisted in the Navy in June of 1942. Before he went off to war, he ran into his old classmate.
"Tom told me: 'It'll be a cold day in June before those bastards get me into the Army.' The next thing you know, they drafted his ass. And - bingo! - he's dead in France."
Battle at Moselle
Thomas Henry Schultze entered the Army on Nov. 14, 1942. He died on Nov. 13, 1944.
Norm Richards knows what Sgt. Schultze did during the nearly two years he was in uniform. For months, the St. Louis man has researched the 90th for a divisional reunion planned for November 2004 in France. The event will commemorate the 90th's battle for the Moselle River Valley.
Sgt. Schultze died there.
Richards' research placed Schultze in the 359th's Co. K.
"It landed at Utah Beach," he noted, "at 20:04 hours (8:04 p.m.) on June 6, 1944."
Three months later, on Sept. 6, 1944, Co. K passed through a little French town on its way to the Moselle. The town is Etain, the place Didier Masson calls home.
From Etain, Sgt. Schultze and Co. K forged on. He received two promotions, but stayed in the infantry. That was dangerous work.
Fifteen million GIs fought in the war. Only 14 percent served in the infantry. Yet, they accounted for 70 percent of the casualties.
The 90th - from D-Day until the war's end - suffered 25,988 casualties. One was Sgt. Schultze.
On the morning of Nov. 12, 1944, the Nazis attacked as rain and a flood-swollen river swept across the Moselle valley.
Artillery and mortar fire hit Co. K one mile north of the French town of Kerling. The Americans had been fighting nonstop for two days. No sleep. No warm blankets. No dry boots. Rations and ammunition dangerously low.
"Weather - rainy," typed the company clerk in his morning report. "Morale - good."
"Think Radar O'Reilly in MASH, " said Eric Voelz, an archivist at St. Louis' National Personnel Records Center. "That report is what you often see him typing."
A morning report "listed all of the people that something had happened to the day before and included all of that day's events."
At 4:30 p.m., on Nov. 13, Co. K attacked the Germans in Kerling.
"Met little resistance," the morning report noted. "Took up position around village and dug in. Have received small amount of artillery fire. Weather - cloudy, rainy; Morale - fair."
Among the missing in action: Sgt. Schultze.
On Dec. 11, 1944, his death notice reached the War Department in Washington. War-time security kept details sketchy. The report simply noted: "Killed in action, diagnosis made in field, not in medical installation prior to death."
Two days later, Louise Schultze received a letter that every soldier's mother dreads. It began:
"It is with regret ..."
Louise Schultze decided to leave her son's remains in Europe. There is no record of her ever visiting his grave in St. Avold.
So, Masson goes in her place.
He stands before the white marble cross and marvels at what this GI and every one like him did.
"With their bravery," the French policeman said, "these soldiers altered the face of the world."
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E-mail cradel@enquirer.com
