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Sue: World War II has been called the greatest conflict in human history. More than 421,000 American men and women gave their lives in service during World War II, and of those, 68 men and one woman are recorded as being from Schoharie County. My name is Sue deBrujin, and I am a volunteer writer for Stories Behind the Stars. This is an initiative to organize a central digital location to collect the stories of each of the Americans who were killed during World War II. These are linked to war memorials and cemeteries so visitors can read the stories of the fallen at their gravesite or anywhere, utilizing the app Find a Grave. I have been focusing my efforts on writing the memorials of our Schoharie County World War II fallen as well as on the many ways their memories continue to be honored today.
Major Richard Diebler of the U.S. Army Air Corps was the Schoharie Central School Salutatorian of the class of 1937. He had received multiple medals before his plane caught fire during his 29th mission and crashed near the Belgian border. Major Diebler is buried in the Netherlands American Cemetery where each grave of the over 8,700 American World War II service personnel buried there has been adopted by a Dutch citizen who, over 80 years after the liberation from German occupation, respectfully continue to honor them on a regular basis.
The four men from Sharon Springs who lost their lives in service, Sergeant Walter Saul, Private Howard Slater, Lieutenant Andrew Empey, and Corporal Lawrence Stevens, are memorialized on a beautiful monument in front of the Sharon Springs Central School. On that monument is a quotation from English poet A. E. Houseman. “Here, dead we lie, because we did not choose, to shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose, but young men think it is. And we were young.”
The only woman from Schoharie County to lose her life in service during World War II was Second Lieutenant Florence Smith of Cobleskill. Family lore has it that Florence was so eager to serve her country that before turning 18, she lied about her age and tried to enlist in World War I. It wasn’t until she was 43 years old that she was finally able to serve. Second Lieutenant Smith. Served as a nurse with the U.S. Army Nursing Corps with the 79th Regiment General Hospital. Shortly after arriving in the European Theater of Operations, Florence died of pneumonia in a hospital in England. She is interred in the Cambridge American Cemetery, where on special occasions Florence’s picture is placed next to the Reverend White Cross, which marks her grave, along with flags of the United States and Great Britain. Her name is etched on a large headstone in her family’s plot in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery. Second Lieutenant Florence Smith has also been memorialized at the Military Women’s Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery and by the New York State Nurses Honor Guard.
Staff Sergeant Bob Walker of Cobleskill served with the 80th Infantry Division in the effort to liberate France from German occupation, landing on Utah Beach shortly after D-Day. Before leaving for the service, Bob asked his 17-year-old girlfriend, Barbara Underhill, to be his wife, but she felt they should wait until he returned from the war. Bob was injured twice, first by a shell fragment, which caused a collapsed lung. Once healed, he was sent back to duty, and just a few months later he was wounded again by a bullet wound to the stomach, and it was fatal. Bob’s fiancée, Barbara, kept the last letter she received from him in which she wrote Maybe I’ll be able to see you graduate next June. I don’t know. I may be too optimistic.” Although she later married and raised a family, that letter was framed, along with the news articles of his death and hung on Barbara’s living room wall for her entire life. After she passed away, her daughter, Annette Hornauer, continued the tradition of honoring Staff Sergeant Robert F. Walker, a man she never knew, by keeping the letter and articles hanging on her wall to this day.
The World War II monument in front of the Old Stone Fort has chiseled on it the names of each of the brave men and woman from Scoharie County who served and died for the cause of freedom in all corners of the world. A person dies twice, once when they take their final breath and later, the last time someone speaks their name. Speak their names, remember them.