Left: Photograph of Pvt. James Joseph Holmes posted by Adrian Thierry on Find a Grave. Right: Section of a map that ran on the front page of The New York Times on 8 February 1945 under the headline “Patton Moves His Line Forward.” Private Holmes was in the Sixth Armored Division near the town of Clervaux.
[2024, Dunlap]
Under grazing machine-gun fire from fortified nests, through thick fog banks, and over barbed-wire barriers hidden underwater, units of General Patton’s Third Army muscled their way into Germany from Luxembourg on 7 February 1945, crossing the swollen River Our and breaching the formidable defenses of the Nazis’ Siegfried Line. Among the soldiers in the 44th Armored Infantry Battalion of the Sixth Armored Division on that consequential day was 18-year-old Pvt. James Joseph Holmes of 3 Prince Street, the oldest of Alice and Gabriel Holmes’s seven children. Private Holmes was killed in action the next day. His body was not returned to Provincetown for more than three years. He was, at last, buried here on 27 August 1948, his memory honored by the businesses that closed from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. during his funeral. This memorial square, very near his home, was dedicated on Armistice Day of 1950.
Read that again: Holmes was 18 years old.
In memoriam
• James Joseph Holmes (1926-1945)
Find a Grave Memorial No. 126098024.