02 Feb February 2, 1945
Posted at 15:53h
in Letters
letter from: Prairie Farmer radio station to: Mrs. Alice Shonkwiler Noteworthy: wounded in action copy
HEADQUARTERS
COMMUNICATION ZONE
EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS
UNITED STATES ARMY
RELEASE OF RECEIPT NUMBER 59782
CHICAGO SOLDIER WOUNDED IN GERMANY
CENSORED
THE 187TH GENERAL HOSPITAL, ENGLAND --- With an infantry unit assigned to knock out enemy installations with electrically fired demolitions, Private George W Shonkwiler, 34, of 11007 South Union Ave., Chicago Illinois, had crawled up to an underground fort in Germany and planted a charge that blasted the entrance shortly before he was wounded by shrapnel. He is now convalescing at this United States Army general hospital in England.
"He is well on the road to recovery," said his ward surgeon, Captain Wallace P. Sheely of Gulfport, Mississippi.
"We blew-up the entrance to that underground labyrinth which brought 102 Nazis scrambling out with their hands up," Pvt Shonkwiler related. "We turned them over to guards and were moving to another objective when I was hit by shrapnel."
Under heavy shelling at the time and surrounded by snipers, Pvt Shonkwiler was evacuated by the medics through a gauntlet of energy fire.
"They backed a jeep up to a pill-box we had captured, loaded us on, and took off like hell," he smiled. "We tore along those roads with stuff exploding ahead, behind and beside us, but we made it."
He has been awarded the Purple Heart. His wife, Mrs Alice Shonkwiler, and son, Ronald, three, reside at the Union Avenue address.
END
