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4th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron Group


tigerfan
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This is my friend Ken. He's the driver. Also pictured are the radioman and gunner. The armored car is an M 20.

post-157937-0-99769400-1426332758.jpg

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Hello all.

 

Unfortunately it looks like I'm a real latecomer to this thread, but if anyone still gets an email notification from this thread, I'd like to talk to anyone with 4th Cav info. I have a 93 year old friend who served with the 4th from 1942 until the war's end. He landed on Utah Beach D Day +6 and drove LTC Edward C Dunn's armored car until Nov 1944, when he began driving the new Commanding Officer, Colonel John MacDonald. He also has that poster sized commendatiom, but was somehow able to keep it rolled up and protected until he got home. It's in great shape and I just scanned and printed myself a copy to hang on the wall.

So, Cobblejohn and Tigerfan, you still out there? Longshot, I know.

 

Mark Y - my late father was a 2ndLt platoon leader in F Troop, 4th Cav Grp (M) late 44 until wounded out in March 45. He was a replacement officer. You can email me at [email protected] if you like. Doubt your friend would remember my dad, probably never knew him although I do remember him talking about Col. MacDonald.

 

Larry

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hello Mark,

Merci pour votre réponse . J'ai vu la belle photo de la M20 du LTC Dunn ( find grave) . Avez vous d'autres photos de Ken B ?

Je possède pas mal de photo du 4th et 24th squadron en France et Belgique. Je suis à la recherche d'information sur le 4th Cavalry Group dans l'Est de la France et en Belgique .

 

jeep%2B24CRB.jpg

 

 

Hello Mark,
Thank you for your reply. I saw the beautiful picture of the M20 Dunn LTC ( Find Grave). Do you have more photos of Ken B?
I do not have a lot of pictures of the 4th and 24th squadron in France and Belgium. I am looking for information about the 4th Cavalry Group in the East of France and Belgium.

 

F_Woj_Spa_Belgium_F_Woj.jpg

 

Merci . Nicolas

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  • 3 weeks later...

Larry and Nicolas, I'm happy you responded to my posts. I do have quite a collection of photos that I'm in the process of scanning. I also have a mimeographed copy of the History of the 4th Cavalry from 1942 through 1945. This was at one time a classified document and each page is marked "Secret". It was personally given to my friend Ken by Colonel MacDonald. It's probably 100 pages or more and I will be scanning it and making it available as well. I'm making a 4th Cavalry tribute page on Facebook where I will upload a lot of things for now. My hope is that others, like myself, will also resort to social media searches to find out information about the 4th, and also be able to contribute to the page.

Larry, I will definitely be in touch with you via email.

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This is Ken in November 1944, after he turned in the armored car and began driving Colonel MacDonald.

 

Thats a wild looking modified jeep.

 

Im guessing the bumper marking is 1st Army -4th Cavalry

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Doyler, yes the Jeep is a little bit modified. In November, Colonel MacDonald came from the 3rd Army as the new Commanding Officer. Ken was then reassigned as his driver and left LTC Dunn's armored car after six months. He and Colonel Dunn had become quite close, which seems pretty likely when you consider all they had been through together up to that point. As it turned out Ken and Col MacDonald got along very well too, and he drove for him until a few months after VE Day, at one point trading the Jeep for a commandeered and refitted civilian Opal "command vehicle".

If you look at the picture closely, you'll see some side shields that Ken fashioned out of whatever was the WWII equivalent of modern day plexi-glass. He also took out the passenger seat and replaced it with a bigger, more comfortable seat he took out of a German truck. The bar visible behind the windshield on the passenger side was for the Colonel to hold onto as he stood to direct his troops. Very interesting story about the Colonel doing just that, during the battle for Humain. A real West Point Cavalryman, he stood, holding the bar with one hand and clutching his ever present riding crop in the other, while personally leading the 2nd Armored Division into battle against 90 Panzers. The rear of the Jeep was also modified to allow for the radio, which pretty much took up most of the space behind the front seats. On the armored car, Ken rigged up a driver's windshield and wiper, also taken off a German truck. The wiper was manually operated but he said it was better than nothing.

Oh, he rigged up the wire catcher too. At the time he made it, he said there weren't too many in use, but the decapitation wires were more commonly used by the Germans than anyone realized and pretty soon almost every Jeep was outfitted with a catcher.

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On another topic...the member who originally posted this group sold it sometime back. So my question is....who owns this grouping now?? Alex

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  • 1 year later...
bellasilva

Bumping this thread to find out if anyone was able to digitize the 4th's history from 42-45. I own a group to the Commander of Troop C, who was killed in December 1944 during the push into Bogheim, Germany.

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  • 7 months later...

Bellasilva,

 

Yes, I did digitize the the mimeograph copy of the history but I haven't uploaded it anywhere yet. I ran a few pages through my OCR program in an attempt to produce a better copy than the mimeo, but the program had trouble recognizing some characters. That's the nature of mimeographs. Anyway, the copy of the original is legible, so I may just leave it as is. A lot easier than manually fixing the OCR version.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 3 years later...
On 1/25/2017 at 7:38 PM, mark y said:

Bellasilva,

 

Yes, I did digitize the the mimeograph copy of the history but I haven't uploaded it anywhere yet. I ran a few pages through my OCR program in an attempt to produce a better copy than the mimeo, but the program had trouble recognizing some characters. That's the nature of mimeographs. Anyway, the copy of the original is legible, so I may just leave it as is. A lot easier than manually fixing the OCR version.

 

Mark y,

 

I know this is quite a gamble, but the chance that I do get a reply could be a breakthrough for me and my research. I have been researching my great grandfather Desmo’s participation in the war for a few years now. He had been a part of the 4th Cavalry Regiment during the interwar years, and ended up being recalled to the 4th Cavalry Group due to the threat of WWII. We are unsure of a lot of things, and I like to go off of the memoir he had written many years after the war (1988) but there is a lot of uncertainty with many things, things between the memoir and official records of the war not matching up and many other cases similar to that, as well as the fact that I feel I have to take everything in the memoir with a grain of salt knowing that it was written long after the war, and he had been getting much older then and all of those sorts of things. Anyway, many different sources including what he wrote in his memoir, lineup, with the fact that he had fought with the Fourth Cavalry Group (4th Reconnaissance Squadron), in France during the months of June and July, up until he was sent home at the very end of July due to a gunshot to the leg. 

 

My family, who has been helping me with my research, and I, have come a long way from where we started, but there is still a VERY long way to go. As you probably know the 4th Cavalry Group was designed to be able to be attached and detached, and used however seen fit. After a somewhat recent trip to the Eisenhower Library and corresponding some with a man working there; we had found out that all or nearly all of the records on the 4th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron during the months of June and July (the exact same period of time my great grandfather had been in France) had been destroyed, due to enemy action that required they be destroyed. Anyway, there are many gaps, and the only way I have been really able to find anything on the 4th in France during June and July of 1944, is by researching the many other groups/organizations they were attached to, and going through all of their stuff hoping to find a brief mention about the 4th. 

 

I had found out about this history of the 4th from 1942-1945 by looking through bibliographies, one of which was the “Doctrine, Organization and Employment of the 4th Cavalry Group during World War II” by John N. Tully. I think that me having access to this publication would open so many doors and give me so much more information than all of my other research combined could ever give me. So, if by some outstanding miracle you see this, it would mean the absolute world to me if you could somehow give me access to be able to read this publication.

 

Thank you,

Lauren
 

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  • 2 years later...

I'm certainly a latecomer lol, anyways. I'm from Buffalo & I live on the East side only a few blocks from Titus St. In the Broadway - Fillmore neighborhood. I wear a 4th Cav. Group patch on my M-41 Parsons jacket in honor of these G.I.s. I researched T4 Matthew Jasinski & saw that he passed in 2008 which is why these items were purchased in 2009 or so. He worked for Ford out here in Bflo & was really missed by his loved ones. So from an Easy Side Polish neighborhood to war in Europe then a humble fulfilling home life. That's the legacy he left, as did most if not all the veterans of WWII. I love the patches & insignia for this reason, they still exist & have so much meaning behind them from military lineage to individual legacy & reminiscence.

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  • 8 months later...
Normandy_Mike
On 1/26/2017 at 2:38 AM, mark y said:

Bellasilva,

 

Yes, I did digitize the the mimeograph copy of the history but I haven't uploaded it anywhere yet. I ran a few pages through my OCR program in an attempt to produce a better copy than the mimeo, but the program had trouble recognizing some characters. That's the nature of mimeographs. Anyway, the copy of the original is legible, so I may just leave it as is. A lot easier than manually fixing the OCR version.

Hi mark y, just wondering if you ever solved this scanning problem or if you ever created anything like a pdf from it? I'd dearly like to read it. Cheers, Mike

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