John Kline, b. 1925
John Kline was born on 10 January
1925 in Glen Ayre, IN, near Terre Haute. He
attended local country school, completing high school in April 1943.
The next month John was inducted into the US Army.
He completed basic training at Camp Wheeler, GA, and then spent time in
the Army Specialized Training Program (ATSP).
When this program was disbanded, John was sent to the 106th
Infantry Division, and assigned to the 423rd Regiment, to a machine
gun crew. In September 1944 this
unit shipped out to Europe. Sent to
the line near St Vith, Belgium, John’s unit was overrun by the German
offensive in December 1944, and on 19 December 1944, with more than a thousand
other Americans, he was captured by the Germans.
John spent the next four months as a POW in Germany, at camps IV-B (Mühlberg),
VIII-A (Görlitz) and, after a two month, 415 mile march, in the city of
Helmstedt, Germany. Conditions
steadily worsened, and hunger and disease claimed the lives of many.
John was finally liberated when advancing US troops overran Helmstedt on
13 April 1945. John was moved to a
field evacuation hospital, then to Paris, and finally in early May 1945 to the
US; he spent the time until his discharge in December 1945 at a military
hospital in IN, and at home in Terre Haute.
Again a civilian, John worked many years in sales in the Midwest region,
before moving in the late 1950s to the insurance field.
He and his wife Bettie (married 1943) raised a family of three boys.
Bettie died in 1977, and John later re-married (wife Margot).
At the time of this interview John Kline lived in Burnsville, MN.
More information, including
John Kline’s Service Diary, is available at: http://www.mm.com/user/jpk
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