PFC Russel Frederick Beiswenger
After he graduated from Defiance High School, Russel took a job at the Kettenring Golf Club, as a grounds keeper and then as a pro golfer from 1932 - 1943. His parents, Frank N. and Minnie (Ott) Beiswenger had a large family of seven children.
On April 15, 1939, Russel married Alice E. Carpenter. He was 25 and she was 23. The newlyweds moved into a rented house on State Route 18 in Richland Township and were enumerated there in the 1940 census. He gave his occupation as clerk-manager, while Alice worked as a cook.
He had registered for the draft in 1940.
In May 1943, Russel found himself on a Greyhound bus headed for Camp Perry where he would be inducted into the Army. His assignment was to Company K, 273rd Infantry, 69th Infantry Division. He took further training at Camp Shelby, Mississippi, and soon found himself in England and then in France.
St. Malo was a beautiful, historic town on the Brittany coast of France, known as a resort, but to the Germans and the Americans, its lure was the fine port there. It was the perfect way to get supplies into the troops. The Germans were there first with a garrison on a small island very near St. Malo. The Americans, French resistors, and the British came to gain control. First, the infantry went through the town to wipe out any German positions there.
The battle began on August 4, 1944, and PFC Beiswenger was killed in action on August 8th. It was September 2nd before the German garrison could be overcome with great loss of life and destruction. If fact, the port could not be used afterward because it was destroyed so badly.
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| Crescent-News, August 31, 1944 |
PFC Beiswenger was first laid to rest in the Brittany American Cemetery in St. James, France, but was returned home in 1948 to rest at Riverside Cemetery in Defiance.
The Crescent- News reported on July 9, 1948:
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| Riverside Cemetery |
Dianne Kline, Researcher
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