Richard Dern manuscript

Richard Dern was born October 14, 1925 in a small village outside of Frankfurt called Schwalbach. In 1926 his family emigrated to Buffalo, NY. In the 1930s during the Depression, his family moved to Blossom, NY to start a farm. In 1939 his mother and brother went to visit family in Schwalbach. While vacationing, Germany invaded Poland and World War II began. Dern and his brother, while American citizens, were able to return to the US but chose not to, to stay with their mother, who was not a US citizen and unable to return. At the beginning of the war, Richard and his brother began apprenticeships at a manufacturing plant of optical lenses for cameras. Two years after their arrival in Germany, Dern regained his German Citizenship and he and his brother were called for the labor service called the “Arbeitsdienst." Later, Dern received his draft notice and was inducted into the Luftwaffe. For training they were sent to Brügges, Belgium. From there he was sent to Fürth, near Nuremberg, for training on the 88mm Anti-aircraft Flack Cannon where he was first trained as a loader (position K3), then moved to the aimer position (K2).

Dern’s unit was sent to a Naval Base in a fjord on the Barents Sea in Norway. Dern and his unit were later sent to the Russian front, to guard the airport near Leningrad. His unit was tasked with later to cover the retreat of the German forces. With the surrender of Germany, Dern’s 88 crew was one of the few chosen to board a ship headed back to Germany. Their ship, however, ran out of fuel, and they went ashore to Denmark, where they were able to drop off their wounded to the Danish Red Cross. Dern and the rest of the men had to trek across the land back to Germany. When they made it to Germany, they were then sent to a POW camp. Dern made it back to his village in Schwalbach, and back to his farm life. While he was in town to acquire ration tickets, the American Sergeant in charge put Dern in jail for “treason” against the US. The officer in charge dismissed this, however hiring him as an interpreter for the MPs. He met his wife while working for the US military and married on February 1, 1947. In 1951 moved back to the United States, to Shelby Center, NY. The couple then moved to Lockport in 1952 where he and his father bought a machine shop where they started “Dern Machine Co., Inc.” in 1989, he and his wife, Helga, retired to Cape Coral, FL, and then moved to Boynton Beach in 2014. Richard Dern passed on February 19, 2016.