War medal mission accomplished

When four members of the Werner family gathered at the World War II Memorial in Port Washington’s Coal Dock Park Friday, it marked the end of a seven-year journey for the family.

Bill and Linda Werner of Port Washington and his brother George and his wife Colleen of Slinger were waiting for Sen. Tammy Baldwin so they could thank her and her staff for their work in securing three medals, including the Bronze Star, that had been earned by their father William but never received.

“That’s what this is all about, giving him his recognition,” Bill said.

His wife Linda told Baldwin, “You made two gentlemen very happy. This means a lot to all of us.”

“Thank you for all your help,” George said.

William H. Werner was a 25-year-old Milwaukee man when he was inducted into the Army on July 26, 1944.

He was trained as a lineman, running cable wires for the Allies, his sons said. They don’t know much about his time in the military, they said, but they do know he was involved in the Battle of Remagen in Germany, where the Allies captured the Ludendorff Bridge over the Rhine River.

It was a pretty significant battle, Bill said, noting some say it helped shorten the war.

But their father was wounded in the battle — the sons aren’t sure if he was shot or hit by a mortar — and captured by the Germans, who took him to a nearby camp hospital. They wrapped his severely injured leg in a starched cloth and left him there.

Not too long after — perhaps only days later — the camp was liberated and Werner was sent home, the sons said. Doctors initially considered amputating his leg, but his wife Helen wouldn’t allow it. Werner recovered and returned to Wisconsin, where he became a lithographer and set up Triple A Plate and Negative and raised his family. 

Werner died in 1976 at the age of 61. 

The family’s saga began after that, when their mother wanted to get his gravestone at Wood National Cemetery in Milwaukee engraved with prisoner of war designation.

“She couldn’t get nowhere with it,” George said, because his father’s military records, like those of thousands of other servicemen, were destroyed in a fire at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis in 1973.

They combed family records and letters, and in a scrapbook kept by their aunt found a portion of a newspaper story that mentioned their father being liberated from a POW camp. The story was dated, and they were able to track down the original newspaper story that “told the whole story about the liberation of several guys,” George said.

He then called Bill, who had letters that their parents shared during the war, and between the two of them they gathered enough evidence to get the POW designation on their father’s gravestone.

“Then I went after the medals,” Bill said, noting he knew his dad had earned a Purple Heart but it was missing.

He petitioned the Army for the Purple Heart and any other medals his dad had earned, ultimately receiving a cache of four medals. One of the medals was the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with three Bronze Service Stars.

That piqued Bill’s interest.

“That got me thinking if he had a Bronze Star coming,” he said. “I wanted that. The Bronze Star is what it was all about.” 

  He contacted Baldwin’s office for help, and within six months he had the Bronze Star, POW Medal and Combat Infantryman Badge 1st Award.

Baldwin’s office also worked with the Army to update his father’s service records to reflect the awards.

These kinds of requests aren’t unusual, Baldwin said, especially because of the fire at the National Personnel Records Center, which destroyed 16 million to 18 million military personnel files, including 80% of the Army’s World War II records.

“There are often folks who have relatives who served in the war who need a little extra help to provide the evidence needed to receive the medals they earned or just to find out more about their loved ones,” Baldwin said.

George Werner said his family’s quest is not over. They are working to see if the Army has any of his father’s personal effects from his time in the POW camp.

“It would be interesting to see what he had in his wallet,” Bill said.

Most importantly, he noted, a photo of his young family that his father carried in his wallet. His father said it saved his life because the Germans found the photo showed his wife and his first three children, all blonde and blue eyed.

The fact his father could speak some German probably also helped, George noted.

The medals the family worked so hard to obtain have now been safely ensconced in a shadow box, while a copy of that precious photo is the centerpiece of a collage of their father’s service that the family holds dear.