Ethel May RADLOFF (nee DAVIES), age 96, remembers her parents

Eliza J. Davies (nee Jones), 1854 - 1904

John W. Davies, 1838 - 1930

In August, 1981, my great-aunts Wilma Shanklin (nee Radloff) and Adeline Ayres (nee Radloff), asked their mother, Ethel May Radloff (nee Davies) to sit down and tell some stories about her life while a tape recorder ran. They sent the tape to me -- having decided that I was the likeliest collector of family stories in the next generation (I guess they were right!).

Below is a selection from that recording where she remembers her father and mother. The recording -- digitized by me from the analog tape -- is quite muddy and hard to understand at some points. I include below a transcript containing my best guess at what she says. Despite the poor sound quality, I find it is a joy to hear the three of them again; a joy I wanted to share.

Ethel Radloff at 96 years remembers her parents

Transcript of a recording made in August 1981

Wilma (Radloff) Shanklin: Tell him about Grampa Davies homesteading that farm out there.

Ethel Radloff: Oh, My father came from Wales. He was a Welshman. And, he bought a homestead for [inaudible]. Then he gave it up and sold some of it to his brother. And it seemed that he never worked after those boys were big. [Adeline laughs] [Next section not clearly audible] Those five (?) boys.

Adeline (Radloff) Ayres: Your dad died at 92?

Ethel Radloff: My dad, he died at 92, and some months. And, my mother, she came from England. And my mother was English and Welsh. And she had ten children. Five boys and five girls. And, she died at a early age. I think she was about 48. I was 18 when my mother died. So, of course, I had to take over. 'Course I always could work, but you had to. [Adeline laughs] There was a baby every two or three years.

And, we had oxen. I remember the oxen. I remember [muddled] we'd feed 'em. And there'd be a flat (?) that'd come down. And I was lookin' at those oxen and that old flat (?) came down on my head. [Adeline and Wilma laugh in background] So maybe that's why I'm not very smart now. [All laugh] And, I and my sister Laura – my sister Laura is 85 – we're the only two left out of the ten children.

Davies homestead, Town of Rose, Waushara County, WI, ca 1905. 

L. to R. possibly, Alice (1890-1978), Edith (1888-1970), Ethel (1885-1990), and

John Walter Davies

 1920 plat map, Town of Rose, Waushara Co, Wisconsin

Published by W.W. Hixson Company

(see especially sections 17, 20, and 21 for Davies and relations ownership) 

Source: Wisconsin Historical Society, https://wisconsinhistory.org, Accessed 03/28/2020

 Children of John and Eliza Davies

L. to R.: Lillian, Albert, Ethel, Ward, Edith, Frank, Alice, Edwin, Laura

 Ethel May Davies, age 18, ca 1903-4

Grandfather's War – Clifford A. “Kip” Christensen in World War II

November 21, 2019 is the 100^th anniversary of the birth of my maternal grandfather, Clifford Alvin “Kip” Christensen. This seems a good moment to recount what we know about his service in World War II. All who knew him agree that his service in Europe marked him profoundly. The horrors of war shook a young man who was intelligent and charismatic, but who had a dark turn of mind, and a weakness for drink that brought out a mean streak in his character. 

When my grandparents, Kip Christensen (1919-1972) and Audrey Radloff (1921-2000), married in Chicago in May 1941, the future must have seemed bright for them. A handsome couple with movie star looks, of which they were more than a little bit vain, they had come through the worst of the depression trusting that hard work would see them through.

Wedding photo, May 1941, Chicago, IL

Less than one year later, the young couple suffered the hard blow of a son born to live only one week. The infant Rodney died on April 16, 1942. Kip traveled by train from Chicago to Waupaca with a small white coffin on his lap, taking his son home to be buried.

Possibly looking for a fresh start, Kip and Audrey moved to Detroit, Michigan in the summer of 1942, along with thousands of others, as the city and its automobile industry transformed itself to become America's wartime manufacturing powerhouse. Ford Motor Company's gigantic Willow Run Plant alone would employ more than 40,000 at one time and would produce 8,865 heavy B-24 Liberator bomber aircraft by the end of the war. Tensions in the crowded city exploded into violence between blacks and whites for about 24 hours in June 1943, until federal troops enforced order. 

February, 1943, Detroit, MI

On November 29, 1943, Just over a week after Kip's twenty-fourth birthday, he reported to the Recruit Reception Center at Fort Sheridan in Lake Forest, IL. Just a few days later, he was shipped out to the Field Artillery Replacement Training Center at Camp Roberts, CA. He spent several months there, qualifying to be a Cook and to operate the Army's field artillery pieces.

Fort Sheridan, Lake Forest, IL, November, 1943

Camp Roberts, CA, 1944

Training as a Cook earned Kip a Technician, 4^th Class (or Tec-4) Rank, allowing him to be paid as – and addressed as – Sergeant. The Tec-4 patch (see inset in photo with overalls) has three chevrons and a letter “T”.

Artillery Training at Camp Roberts, CA, 1944

In April, 1944, Kip was assigned to the 97^th Infantry (Trident) Division, 365^th Field Artillery Battalion, and ordered to report to Fort Leonard Wood, MO by May 10, 1944.

Kip's assignment to the 97^th Infantry Division at Fort Leonard Wood, MO.

Here is the uniform shoulder patch of the 97^th Infantry Division – the Trident:

The 97^th Infantry Division crossed the submarine-infested Atlantic Ocean during the final week of February, 1945, arriving at Le Havre, France on the first day of March. After staging at Camp Lucky Strike, France, the Trident Division crossed into Germany on March 28, 1945, passing near the devastated town of Aachen.

The 97^th arrived in time to participate in one of the last major battles of the war in Europe – The Battle of the Ruhr Pocket. During the first two weeks of April, 1945, German Army Group B, with about 350,000 troops under the command of Field Marshal Walther Model, was encircled and defeated. Seventeen American divisions, including the 97^th, were part of this climactic effort.

 Trident Division Campaign Maps, April 1-18, 1945

With German forces dissolving between the 16^th and the 18^th of April – more than 300,000 German troops surrendered to become POWs – the battle of the Ruhr Pocket was over, and the 97^th Infantry Division was redeployed. The Trident Division was moved to the German-Czechoslovakian border to hold down the left flank of the U.S. Third Army as it moved south and east through Germany and Austria. The 97^th Division's first objective was to take the city of Cheb, Czechoslovakia.

As preparations for invading Czechoslovakia went forward, the Flossenburg concentration camp was discovered within the Division's sector of control. When troops of the 90^th Infantry Division discovered the camp on April 23, 1945, approximately 2,000 weak and ill prisoners remained in the camp, and unburied corpses lay on the ground. The Nazi SS (Schutzstaffel), which ran the camp to house political prisoners, Jews and others, had been evacuating the camp as U.S. Army forces closed in during April, 1945. They forced prisoners on a 125-mile death march south to a German-controlled camp near the village of Posing. 

According the U.S. Army's website history of the camp's liberation (link below):

The 97th Division performed many duties at the camp upon its liberation. They assisted the sick and dying, buried the dead, interviewed former prisoners and helped gather evidence against former camp officers and guards for the upcoming war crimes trials.

I do not know what duties my grandfather was called upon to perform. As a child, I was told or came to understand that he had taken part in the liberation of a German concentration camp, and that it gave him nightmares for the rest of his life.

One more quote from the U.S. Army website history of the liberation:

One eyewitness U.S. Soldier, Sgt. Harold C. Brandt, a veteran of the 11th Armored Division, who was on hand for the liberation of not just one but three of the camps, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, and Gusen, when queried many years after the war on his part in liberating them, stated that "it was just as bad or worse than depicted in the movies and stories about the Holocaust. . . . I can not describe it adequately. It was sickening. How can other men treat other men like this'"

With operations in Czechoslovakia between April 25 and May 7, 1945, the 97^th Infantry Division was involved in some of the final hostile actions to take place in the European Theater of war. The Division met uneven resistance – at times almost none at all; at times, quite determined – as it drove to take Cheb from April 26^th through 28^th, 1945 and Pilsen on May 6, 1945. On May 7, all forces were ordered to halt offensive actions in expectation of the acceptance of the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany's forces on May 8, 1945, known now as V-E Day (Victory in Europe). 

Trident Division campaign map – final days of war in Europe

Kip Christensen, Camp Old Gold, France, June, 1945

After a brief stay at Camp Old Gold, near Yerville, France, the 97^th Infantry Division sailed on the S.S. Brazil troopship. They arrived at Camp Shanks, near Nyack, NY on June 24, 1945 and were granted thirty-day furloughs. The Division was to be redeployed to the Pacific for the expected invasion of Japan, but the destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic weapons led to Japan's surrender on September 2, 1945. Elements of the 97^th Infantry Division did participate in the occupation of Japan, but Kip Christensen was not among them. He was given an honorable discharge from Division Headquarters at Camp San Luis Obispo, CA on October 22, 1945. 

 

Military Service Milestones for Clifford A Christensen:

29 NOV 1943 – Enlistment – Recruit Reception Center, Fort Sheridan, Lake Forest, IL.

DEC 1943 – Field Artillery Replacement Training Center, Camp Roberts, CA for training on cook duties and in use of 105mm howitzer artillery.

MAY 1944 – Assigned to 97^th Infantry Division (Trident Division), 365^th Field Artillery Battalion, Special Services Battery, Fort Leonard Wood, MO.

JUL 1944 – Earmarked for assignment to the Pacific Theater, Division relocated to Camp San Luis Obispo, CA for training in amphibious landing operations.

SEP 1944 – Division relocated to Camp Cooke, CA for further amphibious training.

DEC 1944 – Heavy losses to American forces in the Battle of the Bulge cause Division to be reassigned to European Theater.

1 MAR 1945 – Division arrives Le Havre, France; proceeds to Camp Lucky Strike staging area.

28 MAR 1945 – Division crosses into Germany west of the city of Aachen.

1 APR – 18 APR 1945 – Battle of the Ruhr Pocket.

23 APR – 30 APR 1945 – Troops of the 90^th and 97^th Infantry Division liberate the Flossenburg Concentration Camp near the border of Germany and Czechoslovakia.

23 APR – 6 MAY 1945 – 97^th Infantry Division redeployed to German-Czechoslovakian border to hold left flank of U.S. Third Army's drive into southeastern Germany and Austria.

7 MAY 1945 – All American forces in Europe ordered to halt offensive action.

8 MAY 1945 – Allied forces accept unconditional surrender of its armed forces by Nazi Germany (Victory in Europe, or V-E Day).

Late MAY to mid-JUN, 1945 – Camp Old Gold, near Yerville, France.

24 JUN, 1945 – Division arrives at Camp Shanks, near Nyack, NY on the troopship S.S. Brazil; granted thirty-day furlough.

22 OCT 1945 – Honorable discharge; Camp San Luis Obispo, CA 

Internet resources consulted in researching this post: 

The 97th Infantry Division During World War II (http://www.97thdivision.com/historyp1.html) Accessed 9 NOV 2019.

Dabrowsky, John R., Colonel, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center. “U.S. Army Liberates Flossenburg Concentration Camp.” U.S. Army. https://www.army.mil/article/8441/us_army_liberates_flossenburg_concentration_camp. 11 APR 2008, Accessed 10 NOV 2019.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Encircling the Ruhr.” The Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/encircling-the-ruhr. Accessed on 9 NOV 2019.

Ethel May RADLOFF (nee DAVIES) at age 96 (1981) - in her own voice

From left to right, Frank RADLOFF, Ethel May RADLOFF (née DAVIES), Audrey CHRISTENSEN (née RADLOFF), Harold RADLOFF, Adeline RADLOFF, Wilma SHANKLIN (née RADLOFF); Waupaca, Wisconsin; February 1943. (Howard RADLOFF is absent from photo, probably away in military service at that date)

In the early 1980s, my grandmother and her sisters pinpointed me as the young person in the family most likely to be interested in the family history. In August, 1981, my great-Aunts Adeline AYRES and Wilma SHANKLIN (both née RADLOFF) were inspired to record their mother, Ethel May RADLOFF (née DAVIES) telling about her life, and to send the audiocassette to me.

Here is a brief audio clip (.MP3 format) of my great-grandmother telling about her life at age 96:

Daughters of John Walter DAVIES and Eliza Jane (nee JONES)

Ethel Radloff (nee Davies) and her sisters, 1937. The five sisters were daughters of John W Davies and his wife Eliza J - nee Jones. In this photo, from left to right, are Laura E Freeman, Alice E Washatko, Edith J Nelson, Ethel M Radloff, and Lillie A Yohn. The photo was probably taken in Waushara County, Wisconsin.

RADLOFF Family post-war baby boom. Waupaca, Wisconsin, USA. October 1946.

All left to right. Back row: CA Christensen, Frank Radloff; left of stairs: Ruth Mortenson Radloff, Eileen Johnson Radloff, Wilma Radloff Shanklin, Adeline Radloff DeGodt; KIDS: David Shanklin, Dennis DeGodt, Donnie Radloff, Jay DeGodt with Lynn Christensen just behind, and Vicki Christensen; Right of stairs: Ethel Radloff, Kip Christensen, Harold Radloff, Art Shanklin.

 

Same farmhouse as in 1946 photo, November 2017, taken by Jason DeGodt. Farmhouse is just south of Highway 10 in Waupaca.

Ethel and Frank Radloff and Family, circa 1940

This is a studio portrait of my great-grandparents and their children. My best estimate is that this was taken around 1940. Ethel (1885-1990) and Frank (1883-1962) Radloff are front and center. Back row is Adeline (1925-2014), Harold (1914-1963), Wilma (1910-2001), Howard (1917-2009), and my maternal grandmother, Audrey (1921-2000).

Frank A Radloff, ca. 1906-1907

Frank Radloff (1883 - 1962), taken about 1906 or 1907. His parents came to the United States in 1874 from Pomerania, which was then part of Germany but is now in Poland. Frank (christened Franz) Hermann August Radloff was born in Watertown, Wisconsin, where his family had first settled after emigrating. Frank had seven brothers and sisters who lived to adulthood. 

He married Ethel May Davies on May 5, 1909 in Almond, Portage County, Wisconsin. For most of his adult life he farmed on leased parcels of land in Portage, Waushara and Waupaca Counties. For the last ten years of so of his life he worked for the municipal public works department in the City of Waupaca. He and Ethel had five children: Wilma, b.1910; Harold, b.1914; Howard, b.1917; Audrey (my grandmother), b.1921; and Adeline, b.1925.

Adeline Radloff skating on Shadow Lake, Waupaca, Wisconsin, ca. 1941

This is Adeline RADLOFF DEGODT AYRES (1925 - 2014) ice skating on Shadow Lake in Waupaca. I am guessing this is 1941-42 as she looks to be 16 or 17 to me. She had spunk in truckloads! I remember her working as a school crossing guard in the 1980s and slapping her stick down on the hood of a car that edged too far into the crosswalk. It is funny to think that today her grave marker is up on that hill in Lakeside Cemetery (behind her in this photo) with its inscription of "See You Later."