Eldest brother:

WWII FALLEN HERO – South Dakota National Guard - T/5 Herman Wilhelm Wudel from Alexandria, South Dakota

Herman enlisted in the Army in 1940. served with 147th Field Artillery in California and with the 119th Engineers Battalion, 12th Armored Division in the European theater. He was serving in the demolition squad, Corps of Engineers, First Army in France when, on February 4, 1945, he was seriously wounded in action. Telegrams were sent out first to notify his family that he had been wounded and later to notify them that he had died on the day he was wounded. Herman is buried in Epinal American Cemetery in France.

Middle Brother:

WWII FALLEN HERO - Army Pvt. Edwin O. Wudel from Alexandria, South Dakota – 145th Inf,

37th Inf Div

Eddie volunteered for the service in 1942, trained as an anti-aircraft gunner, and shipped out to the Pacific theater with no furlough home. His brother, Herman, was already in the army and able to visit Eddie just prior to his leaving and said that Eddie’s “spirits were high, and his smile as ready as ever.” Eddie’s last letter home was written July 11, 1943, contained the lines: “I’ll be home in a year pitching bundles, and no one will ever get me out of Hanson county again.” It was delivered after his death. He was killed in action on Munda Island of the New Georgia group in the South Pacific on 28 July 1943.

Youngest brother, Alfred Nathaniel Wudel, also served in the army during WWII and survived.

The Alexandria Herald wrote: “…the two brothers lie buried in a foreign land, as far distant from one another as they are from home. Yes, we will win the war—we must win it in order that all that is good shall triumph—but at what tremendous cost!”

And then the unthinkable happened…

KOREAN WAR FALLEN HERO – The youngest brother, Army Cpl. Alfred Nathaniel Wudel, who had survived WWII, lost his life on 1 April 1951 in the Korean War.

THEIR 1st COUSIN -

WWII FALLEN HERO - Army S/Sgt Winfred N. Wudel

Enlisted in 1935. Discharged in 1938. Recalled in 1941. Assigned to the European theater as a rifleman in the 60th Armored Infantry Regiment, a component unit of the 9th Armored Division and was killed in action on 5 March 1945 in the vicinity of Euskirchen, Germany. A historical record relates that the men of this organization electrified the Allied Armies and brought despair to the Germans by seizing the Ludendorf Bridge across the Rhine River. As the men moved out under a heavy curtain of anti-aircraft and sniper fire, Sergeant Wudel was instantly killed as the result of shell fragment wounds to the head.

Compiled from their profiles in the FALLEN SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF SOUTH DAKOTA PROJECT

Edwin O Wudel