Walter Robert Battenberg (August 13, 1925-March 24, 1945)

67th Bombardment Squadron, 44th Bombardment Group, 8th Air Force

By Alexis Wood and John Lancaster

Early Life

Walter Robert Battenberg was born on August 13, 1925 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Walter, Sr. and Dolores (née Drees) Battenberg.¹ Walter, Sr., born in 1898, hailed from Wellesley, Ontario, Canada, while Dolores, born in 1899, grew up in Wisconsin.² Walter, Sr.’s grandfather, Jacob Battenberg, immigrated to Canada from Hesse-Kassel, an area located in present-day Central Germany, sometime prior to 1864.³ Individuals of German ethnic origin made up one of the largest immigrant populations to Canada in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a legacy still apparent in Canadian national demographics. In 2016, nearly ten percent of Canadian citizens reported German origins. Between the 1830s and 1850s, the time Jacob Battenberg must have moved to Canada, about 50,000 German Protestants, mostly Mennonites, immigrated to Ontario. They largely settled around present-day Waterloo County, where Walter, Sr. was born.⁴ Walter Sr.’s father, Henry Battenberg, served his community as a Lutheran Minister throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries amid this backdrop.⁵

On July 18, 1917, during the First World War, Walter, Sr. joined the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps. He received a compassionate discharge from the military less than a month later, on August 14.⁶ Canadian military personnel may grant a compassionate discharge to soldiers who experience exceptional circumstances which negatively impact their own or their family’s well-being, including economic or medical hardships.⁷

Walter Robert Battenberg 1943 High School Yearbook Photo

In 1919, following the conclusion of World War I, Walter, Sr. immigrated to the US. He settled in Milwaukee, WI, where he began work as a laborer in a chemical plant.⁸ During this time, Walter, Sr. met Dolores Dorothy Drees, a Wisconsin native. The two married on March 29, 1924.⁹ About a year and a half later, the couple welcomed their only child, Walter Robert Battenberg.¹⁰ The family remained in Milwaukee throughout Walter, Jr.’s childhood and adolescence. In 1930, the Battenbergs lived in a rented home in downtown Milwaukee.¹¹ By 1940, they had relocated to another rented home on West Vliet St., in Milwaukee, where Walter, Sr. worked as a manager for a filling station.¹² Between this time, in 1938, Walter, Sr. became a naturalized US citizen.¹³ In the early 1940s, as we see in this yearbook photograph, Walter, Jr. attended Rufus King High School in Milwaukee, where he pursued academic courses related to science.¹⁴

Military Life

Walter registered for the draft on August 13, 1943, his eighteenth birthday.¹⁵ Shortly thereafter, he entered the US Army Air Force, where he rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant with the 67th Bombardment Squadron, 44th Bombardment Group, of the 8th Air Force.¹⁶ Walter trained as a crew member for bomber aircraft. After training, he qualified as a waist gunner for a B-24 Liberator.¹⁷ The B-24 was a long range, four engined heavy bomber and boasted six gun positions.¹⁸ This class of aircraft included positions for two waist gunners, one on the left side and one on the right side of the plane. Waist gunners like Walter defended the flanks of their B-24 Liberators from enemy aircraft.¹⁹ The 44th Bombardment Group, nicknamed the “Flying Eight-Balls” after their insignia depicting a cartoon eight-ball with wings, operated out of England from October 1943 to June 1945. During that time, it flew 343 missions, most of which were dangerous daylight raids over Nazi-occupied Europe.²⁰

Walter Battenberg (Front Row Far Left) and Crew of the Kay Bar

In the spring of 1945, the US, Canada, and Great Britain jointly planned an operation to establish a bridgehead over the Rhine River in Germany, codenamed Operation Varsity. On March 24, 1945, more than 1,700 Allied airborne troops, supported by 2,700 aircraft, parachuted into Western Germany around the town of Wesel, which sits along the Rhine River.²¹ During the ensuing battle, the 44th Bombardment Group received orders to drop supplies on friendly troops near this location. Walter, who served as Left Waist Gunner on this mission, and a crew of eight other airmen departed from a base in Shipdham, England, about one hundred miles northeast of London, on a B-24 bomber named the Kay Bar bound for Western Germany. Depicted in this group photograph, his crew included 1st Lt. Leonard J. Crandall, pilot, of Peoria, IL; 2nd Lt. William B. Croll, co-pilot, of Larchmont, NY; 2nd Lt. William M. Hummer, Navigator, of Mine Hill, NJ; TSgt. Robert R. Ogilvie, Jr., Engineer, of Auburn, NY; TSgt. Larry L. Feeney, Radio Operator, of Syracuse, NY; SSgt. Irvin E. Germolus, Right Waist Gunner, of Albany, CA; SSgt. James M. Brown, Jr., Tail Gunner, of Denver, CO; and SSgt. James E. Roach, Nose Gunner, of Denver, CO.²²

After successfully dropping supplies to Allied troops near Wesel, Germany, the Kay Bar received anti-aircraft fire from enemy ground forces. US military personnel observed that one of the airplane’s engines had caught fire after sustaining damage. Observers subsequently saw the bomber stall in the air and nose dive into the ground at a high rate of speed. The impact caused the Kay Bar to explode, killing all those onboard.²³ Along with Walter’s plane, German ground forces shot down sixteen Allied supply bombers during Operation Varsity.²⁴

Legacy

The US Army Air Force initially reported the Kay Bar and its crew as MIA.²⁵ In late April 1945, a month after the crash, Wisconsin-area newspapers reported Walter as MIA, which meant that his family, as well as the families of the rest of the crew of the Kay Bar, did not know for certain what happened to their loved ones until after the conclusion of the war in the European Theater.²⁶ In May 1945, the US Army reported that Walter had been killed in action.²⁷ His remains, along with his crewmates’ remains, were initially interred at the Margraten-Aachen Cemetery in Holland.²⁸

Following the war, Allied governments and memorial groups remembered the sacrifices of Walter and other Veterans who served with him through a number of commemorations. In September 1988, the 44th Heritage Memorial Group dedicated a plaque outside the Shipdham Flying Club building, in Shipdham, England, to commemorate the 44th Bombardment Group of the 8th US Army Air Force, Walter’s unit. The plaque lists the dates through which the 44th remained stationed in Shipdham, as well as how many combat missions the unit flew and how many aircraft were lost during the war.²⁹ An additional monument, which sits on the grounds of the All Saints Church of Shipdham, commemorates all the US servicemen of the 44th Bombardment Group who died for their country and its Allies during the war.³⁰ Next to this monument, also on the grounds of the same church, stands the Shipdham Memorial Cross, which commemorates all those servicemen of the 8th US Army Air Force who died during World War II.³¹ Walter Battenberg’s legacy endures in all of these memorials.

Walter was survived by his father, Walter Sr., and his mother, Dolores. Sometime prior to 1950, the Battenbergs moved from Milwaukee to Levy County, FL, where Walter, Sr. became the proprietor of a cafe.³² In June 1949, four years after the conclusion of the Second World War, Walter, Sr. and Dolores chose to bring their son’s remains back to the US to be reinterred in St. Augustine National Cemetery in FL, so that he could be closer to his parents.³³ Walter, Sr. died in Marion County, FL, in September, 1962.³⁴ Dolores served her community later in life by remembering the lives and legacies of those fallen during the war, including her son Walter. In 1965, she attended a Gold Star luncheon held by the American Legion Auxiliary in Ocala, FL, which honored mothers who lost their sons in World War II.³⁵ She lived an exceptional life and died in 1996, at the age of ninety-six.³⁶ She and Walter, Sr. rest beside each other in Belleview Cemetery in Marion County, FL.³⁷ Their only son, Walter Robert Battenberg, rests about ninety miles northeast of his parents, in Section D, site 142 in St. Augustine National Cemetery.³⁸

© 2023, University of Central Florida