Memorial

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Ernie went to Rising Sun High School in 1933. When Ernie was 15 years old he left school and started working at Cameron Bros (his first job). Cameron Bros was a company which canned a variaty of food and transported it by train to the big cities. His biggest hobby was playing baseball, and so he played with the Rising Sun Midgets. One of his other passions was the voluntary firemen in Rising Sun he was part of.

When Ernie was 20 years old he met a girl named Annie and married her on December 20, 1938. At the time of their wedding Ernie was 21 years and Annie 19 years old. They didn’t have enough money for a weddingparty or weddingpictures or someting like that. Ernie worked at a poolroom and Annie was a housewife. They had 2 children Dorothy Ann (a.k.a. Dot) born on June 25, 1939 and Ernest Edward (a.k.a. Ed) born on October 1, 1940.

He enlisted in Baltimore, Maryland on 18 July 1944.

Ernie and Jack’s squad passed through an open field and a little stream on their way up to the top of the hill (at the opposite of Huppenbroich). While “climbing” the hill through the big layer of snow and heavy wind the men found higher up an old mineshaft, excellent for cover. Lt Cole ordered his 27 men to hide there until they received support from a Tankdivision which was kept in reserve to support them. At 10.00 Hours, while hiding in the mineshaft, Sgt Green ordered Jack Jolly to make a scout patrol in the area and find out were the German positions were. During Jack Jolly’s scout patrol German artillery spotters saw Jack and opened artilleryfire at him, and so the others in the mineshaft, among them Ernie. During this heavy artillery barrage Ernie’s mineshaft received a direct hit by a German artilleryshell, which killed 22 of the 27 American soldiers hiding in the shaft. Most of the men were instantly killed by the impact of the explosion, among them Pvt Ernest W. Little. Jack Jolly survived as one of the lucky few the German artillery barrage and told as a direct eyewitness what happened to Ernie’s family.