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Some troopers convey residence captured flags or weapons as warfare mementos. World Warfare II prisoner of warfare Victor Leerhoff opted as a substitute to convey a bit of German bread again to his mom within the northwestern Minnesota city of Fosston when the warfare led to 1945.
That 77-year-old bread is now tucked away in a Maple Grove cedar chest, the place the Rev. Nancy Carlson, the youngest of Leerhoff’s three youngsters, has written “SAVE” throughout its field.
“It appears good,” mentioned Carlson, 59, a retired pastor and chaplain. “It by no means obtained mould in all probability as a result of they did not use a lot yeast and the salt dried it out rapidly. It’s laborious as a rock, however nonetheless appears contemporary as new.”
When “CODA” gained the Academy Award for finest image final month, Carlson was impressed to jot down about her dad’s historic loaf and her quest to seek out the bakery that made it. Leerhoff was a CODA — a toddler of deaf adults — just like the baby portrayed within the Oscar-winning movie.
Leerhoff’s father, Detmer, was born deaf, whereas his mom, Amelia, misplaced her listening to at age 4 when she contracted rheumatic fever on the boat whereas emigrating from Sweden.
Because the oldest of 5 youngsters, Victor Leerhoff “was the one who would go into city and translate for his dad and who additionally taught his youthful siblings the best way to converse English,” Carlson wrote.
Born in Iowa in 1925, Leerhoff moved within the Nineteen Thirties along with his household to Fosston, the place they farmed east of city. He had simply turned 19 when he enlisted within the Military in 1944.
In February 1945, Leerhoff’s rifle out of the blue exploded whereas he was preventing with the Military’s third Division Infantry close to the northeastern French village of Colmar. “He did not get harm, however he wanted a brand new rifle,” based on Carlson.
However when Leerhoff returned with the rifle, his unit had vanished.
“He seemed up within the tree and there have been two Germans pointing their rifle barrels at him, so he surrendered,” Carlson wrote. For the subsequent three months, Leerhoff and his fellow POWs had been marched for at the least 250 miles round Germany, ravenous and sleeping in ditches and barns.
Again residence in Fosston, Leerhoff’s sister Eva got here residence from faculty for lunch sooner or later to seek out nothing on the desk. A “lacking in motion” telegram had arrived, and Detmer Leerhoff had retreated to the barn to course of the information about his son.
“Each evening on the similar time, Amelia would stand on the kitchen window that confronted east and spend at the least a half-hour praying for Vic,” Carlson wrote.
On the finish of April 1945, Amelia was on the Fosston publish workplace when the clerk handed her one other telegram. Panicked, she refused to learn it, however the clerk jotted her a notice: “It is OK, your son is protected.”
After being let out in Germany, Leerhoff and a buddy discovered a bakery and purchased a loaf of bread. Heeding warnings to not eat an excessive amount of of their emaciated situation, they reduce the loaf in half after which every wolfed up half of their portion.
“For some cause, my dad introduced the remainder of it residence — did not eat it although he was ravenous,” Carlson wrote. “He introduced all of it the way in which from Ettringen, Germany … and gave the loaf to his mother.”
Carlson mentioned her household glimpsed the bread solely as soon as earlier than it was wrapped in wax-like paper and stashed in a front room hutch close to the good dishes. Amelia gave the bread to Victor and his new spouse, Gladys, once they married 75 years in the past. Carlson ultimately inherited it.
In 2016, Carlson and her husband, Jim, visited Bavaria to retrace her dad’s footsteps throughout WWII. Armed with a map supplied by the son of Leerhoff’s warfare buddy and a photograph of the final barn that had sheltered them, the Carlsons popped into a fireplace station in a village close to Ettringen, the place a firefighter acknowledged the barn and pointed the way in which.
“What a tremendous factor to be within the place the place my dad was so a few years in the past,” Carlson wrote.
They even discovered the bakery, the place a girl put her hand on her coronary heart and mentioned she remembered the prisoners from the barn. They ordered some cheesecake as a result of no bread was on the market that day.
“It was fairly emotional,” Carlson mentioned, “to be within the bakery the place my dad had purchased the loaf of bread.”
After the warfare, Victor Leerhoff was store supervisor at a tire store and served as an officer at Cross of Glory Lutheran Church in Brooklyn Heart. He died in 1995, a month in need of his seventieth birthday.
“He by no means talked about his time within the warfare till I used to be older,” Carlson wrote, “after which the story got here tumbling out.”
Curt Brown’s tales about Minnesota’s historical past seem every Sunday. Readers can ship him concepts and solutions at mnhistory@startribune.com. His newest e book appears at 1918 Minnesota, when flu, warfare and fires converged: strib.mn/MN1918.
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