“Every man has two deaths, while he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name.”
--Ernest Hemingway
Thanks to the efforts of Sue deBruijn, a researcher and writer for Stories Behind the Stars, and Annette Hornauer, who’s long hung onto her mother’s memories of the 20-year-old who asked her to marry him before he headed off to war aboard the RMS Queen Mary on July 4, 1944, Staff Sergeant Robert Walker won’t be forgotten.
SSgt Walker’s story is just one of those Ms. deBruijn has gathered for Stories Behind the Stars, an online catalog of the more-than 421,000 American service personnel killed during World War II. (See related story.)
When she put out a call for local stories in June, Ms. Hornauer got in touch.
She had a story.
And it’s some story.
Her mother, Barbara Underhill, had saved all of SSgt Walker’s wartime letters, including the last, where he wrote, “Maybe I’ll be able to see you graduate next June, I don’t know. I may be too optimistic.”
Ms. Hornauer, her aunt, her mother’s sister, Norma Simmons, and Ms. deBruijn talked about the Warnerville infantryman killed on December 15, 1944 in Normandy, just as the tide began to turn against Germany, Friday at his grave high in the Cobleskill Rural Cemetery.
“It’s quite a story,” Ms. Hornauer said, if a sadly short one.
“Did she carry a torch for him? I guess. He was her first love.”
Barb Underhill and Bob Walker were both from Warnerville and they rode the bus together to Cobleskill School.
Bob was three years older than Barb, enough of an age difference that when he asked her to marry him before he shipped out, she said No, let’s wait until you come home.
But on December 15, 1944, SSgt Walker was killed in Normandy.
He was buried in the Lorraine American Cemetery in St. Avold, France; it took four more years for his body to make its way home to Schoharie County.
Ms. Simmons, who was just seven when Bob was killed, remembers that she was the one who broke the news to her older sister.
“They were talking about it on the bus,” Ms. Simmons said.
“His parents had never said anything–at least to us. I think they were pretty private. I think her reaction was just shock.”
Even though she went on to marry and raise a family, Barbara (Underhill) Lambert, kept Bob’s last letter and the news clippings reporting his death framed on her living room wall for the rest of her life.
When Ms. Hornauer was a teen, her mom gave her Bob’s letters—and the story; after her mother died, she hung the framed piece of history on her own walls.
She still visits the grave.
“Reading those letters, I feel like I know him,” she said. “I’ve always been interested in genealogy and those kind of stories,” especially stories of military service; she has a room in her home dedicated to family members who’ve served.
On Memorial Day, Ms. Hornauer planted a geranium at Bob’s grave, and since reading about Ms. deBruijn’s work for Stories Behind the Stars in the Times-Journal, the two women and Ms. Simmons have met there a couple of times to say Bob’s name, a sentiment and Hemingway quote Ms. deBruijn said she always keeps in mind.
Ms. deBruijn is a member of the Captain Christian Brown DAR, where her focus is on historic preservation.