11 November 2013

Notes - close family veterans of WWII

         As you have been doing some reading you want to move right into Thinking in Numbers but first it is Veterans’ Day and you saw several friends on FB honoring their fathers so you may as well also. Your father Richard Bookman Orndorff served in the Engineer Corps of the U. S. Army. From your point of view the most important ‘campaign’ he was in was the in liberation of Dachau. Earlier blog notes contain more details. For instance, during World War II, as a chemist he worked at the Chicago munitions plant, worked for a short time at Oak Ridge (Manhattan Project), was with the Third Army Combat Engineers and in part helped free prisoners from the Nazi Dachau death camp, and as he spoke German he helped interrogate, disseminate and bring German scientists to work for the United States after the war. He would have gone to Korea but diabetes prevented his continuing military service. He was retired as a Lieutenant in the U. S. Army. He has a military marking at his gravesite in Otterbein Cemetery, not a hundred yards (across the street) from where he lived as a child at the corner of Knox and Walnut Streets. Your Uncle Ernie (Warren W. Ernsberger) said your father was a good man. Ernie also served, first with RAF Intelligence before and during the Battle of Britain and later served in Intelligence under General Patton. – Amorella

         2139 hours. This is how I remember it. I honor them both as well as the many others, civilians also (my grandmother, Elizabeth Mae Freeman Schick, and Carol’s grandmother, Grace Josephine Flook Cook, best friends in life, who worked at the Kilgore’s Munitions Plant in Westerville, Ohio), who served.  – rho

         Post. - Amorella

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