Remembering PFC Maurice C. "Pete" Henrichsen, who was killed 80 years ago today during the Battle of the Bulge.
 
Born in 1916, Pete grew up in central South Dakota, the youngest of three brothers. (Pete and his brothers never knew about their 2X great-grandmother who was born in Ireland.)

In July 1942 Pete married a local schoolteacher named Georgia. The patriotic call to duty in WWII was particularly strong; Pete's cousin, Jimmie Henrichsen, had died on the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor.

After enlisting in the Army, Pete reported for duty in December 1942 and served with the Cannon Company, 358th Infantry, 90th Division.
 
The Battle of the Bulge (16 Dec 1944 - 25 Jan 1945) was a German offensive campaign in the densely-forested Ardennes region of Belgium, France and Luxembourg. American forces numbered over 600,000 in the largest and bloodiest WWII battle fought by the United States with 89,000 casualties and 19,000 deaths.
 
Pete was killed 16 Jan 1945 during the push through Luxembourg. He was buried at the Henri Chappelle American Cemetery in Belgium.
 
Pete's brother, George, who’d enlisted in the Army in 1940, was captured by the Germans in late August 1944 and spent the last nine months of the war as a POW in Stalag VIIA near Moosburg, Germany. He did not learn about his brother's death until he returned to the U.S. 
 
The Henrichsen family and the entire SD community grieved the loss of their beloved Pete. In time a romance blossomed between George Henrichsen and his widowed sister-in-law, Georgia. They later married, and I am their daughter. My brother, Maurice C. Henrichsen, was named after Pete.

Today, on the 80th anniversary of Pete's death, I again think of all the sadness of 1945 and contemplate what might have been.