Guthrie Center Colonel Wins Citation for Unusual Bravery
By Frank Miles
(Daily Times Herald War Correspondent)
Air Power Press Camp in German (IDPA) -- On May 17, 1944, my 21 year old son, Second Lieutenant William B. Miles, a first Liberator pilot was killed in action over Elba.
On May 17, 1945, I stood in the bomb-blasted mountain home of Adolf Hitler near Berschtesgarden looking at a picture of my boy's widow and their seven month old son he never saw and a photograph of him inset.
That day Colonel Ned D. Moore, Guthrie Center, chief of staff of the famous 101st air-borne division, was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry at Zon, Holland. He was the first American officer to enter combat there by glider on September 19, 1944. The citation reads:
"He with two enlisted men, was sent on a reconnaissance mission to locate tanks reported to be near the division command post and determine whether or not the tanks were friendly or enemy. Advancing along a canal over flat, open terrain, the party reached a position approximately 100 yards from a tank when it fired one round hitting and setting fire to a gasoline storage tank in the rear of the party.
Colonel Moore, sent information of the enemy tank back to the command post and, with complete disregard for his personal safety, elected to remain in his exposed position armed only with a pistol, to further observe the actions of the enemy tank. By so doing, he was caught between a cross fire of the friendly machine gun fire directed at the tank and enemy machine gun fire directed at the friendly troops in the rear of Colonel Moore.
"Successful accomplishment of this mission, which enabled the command post to prepare for an attack, was realized largely because of the courage and devotion of Colonel Moore. His action is in accordance with the highest standard of military service."
The Iowan entered West Point military academy in 1930. His step-father D.H., Bower, a West Pointer, was an army colonel when he died in 1932.His mother, Mrs. Maude Bower, lives at Guthrie Center, where she is active in war works. His sons, Ned, jr., 12, and Dave Moore, 10, plan to spend the summer with her on the Moore farm near Monteith. Colonel Roger Moore, a brother, arrived in France recently. The Colonel takes a lot of panning from brother officers to tooting Iowa's horn.
His division headquarters was in the Reich summer chancellery -- a collection of beautiful modern wooden structures with every office and housing convenience. Underneath were electrically lighted officer and sleeping rooms, reached by tunnels. The area was encircled by barbed wire fence. Pillboxes were installed in all directions. A barracks, a quarter of a mile away, was occupied by SS officers. Officer "ladies" lived in an adjoining house, natives said.
A mile distant was the grave of a German general named Kastner, who killed himself with a pistol shot in the head when he learned American troops were close.
Bavarian farmers in the area were busy in their fields. Many waved and smiled at passing Americans, who didn't wave and smile back.
"When we were south of the Roer," an army public relations officer told me, "German farmers on the other side plowed with white flags in the neck yoke of their horses and oxen.Then at night our men would encounter treachery from some of those same civilians.
"Hitler is dead" interrupted a British radio musical program.
"How the German people react will be interesting to note," a listening correspondent suggested.
I was in three German towns -- one of which was a nazi nest -- the next day.
No native I saw acted as if he were depressed. Everyone appeared to be going along as he had the day before in the stolid manner, which characterizes the race. Several told me they were glad Hitler was gone. There may have been mourning concealed from Americans because I have met some professed anti-nazis from the outset, who blamed Germany's crimes on Hitler's advisers and frankly admitted admiration for him personally.
One young woman who had a doctor's degree, whose record enables her to obtain employment as an interpreter in an American military government headquarters said that, though she predicted in 1934 nazism would lead Germany to destruction, she thought Hitler himself was naturally kind-hearted. The group of scribes to whom she spoke didn't feel it worthwhile to argue with her over our opinion that Hitler and hate were synonymous.
Most American soldiers with whom I conversed about the death thought the report "horse feathers".
"Youse guys is always sayin' somethin' was before it was," a rough talking MP jibed when I told him Hitler had died and asked what he thought about it.
Julius Streicher's home near Nurenberg provided revolting evidence of the nazi mind and practices under Hitler in hundred of photographs found there. The bushy-browed beast, who boasted that his was the only newspaper Hitler read word for word, had a collection of close-up photos, which portrayed SS persecution of Jews over which he obviously gloated. Some show police dogs attacking cringing, defenseless old men and women in a ghetto, others --uniformed nazis clubbing and choking and kicking victims of their sadistic natures, many nude women who had been forced to pose for the cameraman, some persons of all ages in intimate acts, and a number of piles of skeltonized dead bodies. Streicher had scores of pornographic books.
When he was gauletier (governor) of Franconia he had the head of any woman shaved he suspected of being friendly with Jews. He printed abominable lies about good Jewish men and women, some of who were recognized as outstanding German citizens before Hitler seized control of the country.
The man was a craven coward before any, who had courage enough to threaten to strike him. He was even more venomous toward non-Jewish Germans who sought to defend Jews than he was with the Jews.
Hitler conferred many "honors" upon him until he fell from favor and was retired. After that he lived as a country "gentleman" in a palatial residence on an estate near Nuremberg. He often strutted on the streets of Nuremberg until a few days before American GIs arrived.
Naziism encouraged many Julius Streichers.
Source: Carroll Daily Times Herald, May 31, 1945
