Schweighouse-sur-Moder: Honorary Citizenship and the Street Where They Fought

Erin receiving honorary citizenship plaque from Schweighouse-sur-Moder, France, standing with 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division veteran Bud Gahs.

This is the house where PFC Wayne Cruse was killed in January 1945.

Just up the street, PFC Barney Parrish fell in front of another home. On that same day, in that same cold, 42nd Rainbow Division veteran Lockered "Bud" Gahs held his position against a German attack on this house and was awarded the Bronze Star for Valor for what he did here. He was nineteen years old.

The town was called Schweighausen during the war. The street looked different then. The people inside these houses knew what was happening outside them.

I have been coming back to this street for years, with Bud and without him, following the documentation trail of what happened here in the weeks of Operation Nordwind.

I know this ground. I know the names of the men who fought on it and the names of the men who did not come home from it. I have sat with the families who carry those names, and with the French families whose grandparents were liberated by the men of this company.

The previous summer, Bud was surprised with the Legion of Honor on this street, pinned with the medal steps from where he had fought 77 years before. He was also made an honorary citizen of Schweighouse-sur-Moder, and I was also given this incredible honor at the same time.

When we returned a few months later, it was my turn to be surprised.

Bud and I had both been awarded honorary citizenship of Schweighouse-sur-Moder at the same ceremony where he received the Legion of Honor, but my plaque had been lost along the way. So when we came back, standing in front of this house with Bud beside me, our French friends presented it to me there on the street where it all happened.

I am still not sure I have the words for what that means. The men of this company are always with me. To receive this honor on the ground where they fought, beside a man who was there, given by the descendants of the people they freed — that is not something you put down and walk away from.

You carry it forward. And so, I am.