The ultimate sacrifice of Elwyn Holdiman—a Memorial Day update

Last November, I wrote about the discovery that one of my distant cousins, Elwyn Holdiman, was killed in action during World War II.

A pretty typical Kendall County farm boy, his story was uncovered during our annual salute to local veterans down at the Little White School Museum here in Oswego, where I serve as the volunteer director. We do a lengthy special exhibit on the topic as the nation celebrates Veterans Day each year, and last year we discovered Elwyn Holdiman’s story. You can read about it here.

Elwyn Holdiman attended classes at the one-room Squires School, located in Oswego at the corner of old Douglas Road and U.S. Route 34. He’s the tall kid in the back row circled in red.

But recently, the surprising reach of the Internet was brought home to me once again when a resident of the Netherlands ran across that blog post and contacted me concerning Holdiman’s death.

Werner van Osch, who created and maintains the 7th Armored Division Memorial Holland web site at http://www.7tharmoredmemorial.nl/index.php, contacted me to volunteer some more detailed information about Elwyn Holdiman’s death in combat back in October 1944.

Holdiman was a member of Company C of the 17th Tank Battalion, which itself was assigned to the 7th Armored Division. In the autumn of 1944, the 7th Division was part of Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army that was fighting in Holland in support of Operation Market Garden, the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to leapfrog over strong German positions using British, American, Canadian, and Polish airborne troops, along with Dutch resistance forces, to seize militarily vital bridges.

In fighting that was a small part of the Battle of Canals on Oct. 29 against the German 9th Panzer Division a couple miles from Heusden west of the Asten/Meijel Road, Cpl. Holdiman’s Sherman tank was destroyed by enemy fire while Company C was supporting an infantry push.

After reading the 17th Tank Battalion’s after action reports, I concluded that Holdiman had been killed in action, along with the rest of the crew. Four casualties were listed with the tank’s destruction, including Holdiman; 2nd Lt. Robert W. Denny, the tank’s commander; loader and machine gunner Pvt. Michael Ferris; and Tec 4 Leo W. Goers, the tank’s driver.

According to the report on Company C filed by the 17th Tank Battalion about the action on Oct. 29: “This Company did an excellent job but they lost Lt. DENNY who had just recently been Commissioned from the ranks, he had previously been a Platoon Sergeant in the same Company, Lt. DENNY was an excellent leader and his loss is a great loss to the Company. ‘C’ Company lost four tanks in this action and they definitely knocked out five German Tanks.”

A U.S. Army M-4 Sherman Tank, the standard Allied tank of World War II. Cpl. Elwyn Holdiman was killed in action when the Sherman Tank in which he was a crew member was destroyed by enemy fire on Oct. 29, 1944.

But the documents supplied by Werner van Osch show that I didn’t have the story quite right. Granted, the four soldiers killed I originally listed indeed died in that violent action. But a fifth member of the tank crew, Pvt. Frank Velus escaped with his life. The official documents also reported what happened after the four members of the tank crew were killed in action.

Holdiman’s family was initially informed he was missing in action on Nov. 11, 1944. Then after the deaths of the four members of the tank crew were confirmed, the Army officially reclassified him as killed in action on March 10, 1945.

The combat situation was apparently pretty fluid in that area of Holland as the Allies pushed the Germans steadily back. The British Royal Army was assigned to control the area, and when they moved in and secured it, they found the burned out tank on a secondary road in a peat bog just south of the road between Miejel and Asten.

According to a report filed by Royal Army Chaplain A.I Dunlop, the remains of Lt. Denny, badly burned, were found a couple yards from the tank, while the remains of Pvt. Ferris were twenty yards from the tank and were unburned. According to his report, the chaplain helped remove Holdiman’s burned and maimed body from the tank for burial. Dunlop added that Tech 4 Goers’ body was so badly burned the British didn’t remove it from the tank but left it in place.

The conditions being what they were, the British troops didn’t have time to identify the three bodies they’d recovered. They did, however, take the time to bury them in shallow graves next to each other, arranged with Ferris first, then Holdiman, and then Lt. Denny. The British soldiers erected crosses over the three, with the cross over Holdiman’s body carrying the inscription: “Unknown American soldier, K/A Oct/Nov ’44.” They forwarded reports about what they’d done—it would be up to the U.S. Army to handle further activity concerning the dead G.I.’s.

In September 1945, four months after the end of the war in Europe, U.S. Army Graves Registration personnel, with the help of a local Dutch family, located, recovered, and identified the three bodies from the hasty graves in which Holdiman and his three comrades had been buried. Holdiman was identified by the single dog tag that he still wore around his neck, even in death. The three were then removed to a U.S. military cemetery. Holdiman was reburied in plot KKK, row 11, grave 273 at the U.S. military cemetery at Margraten, Holland.

In early December 1947, the U.S. Army notified the Holdiman family that families of the nation’s war dead were invited to request the repatriation of their bodies from the sprawling European military cemeteries. The Holdiman family immediately requested that Elwyn Holdiman’s body be returned to the U.S. for burial in the family plot at the Lincoln Memorial Cemetery. In January 1948, the U.S. Army approved the Holdimans’ request.

Cpl. Edwyn Holdiman’s body was repatriated from Holland in 1948 and was reburied at Lincoln Memorial Park in Oswego Township in the family plot.

Cpl. Holdiman’s body was disinterred on Aug. 11, 1948, and readied for shipment back to Kendall County. His body was loaded aboard the USS Carroll Victory at Antwerp, Belgium for the trim back across the Atlantic on Oct. 29, 1948. The ship arrived back in the U.S. on Nov. 16.

After some minor repairs to the casket of damage sustained in shipping were completed on Dec. 10, Holdiman’s body was sent west to Illinois by train. Accompanied by a military escort, it was delivered on Monday, Dec. 13, 1948 to the Healy Undertaking Company on Downer Place in Aurora. His funeral was subsequently held at Lincoln Memorial Park in Oswego Township, where he was buried in the family plot.

As we look towards celebrating another Memorial Day, at a time when the nation’s young men and women are still fighting and dying in foreign battlefields, it is an excellent, and fitting, time to recall other young people of other generations—like Elwyn Holdiman—who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country and the fight for freedom and in defense of the Constitution.

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