991 Engineer Treadway Bridge Company stayed at Kingston Deverill Wiltshire on 23 may 1944
991 Engineer Treadway Bridge Company stayed at Kingston Deverill Wiltshire on 23 may 1944
The 991 Engineer Treadway Bridge Company is one of the units on the UK Station List made by Mr. Grinton. This and other records on Back to Normandy was compiled from Headquarters, European Theater of Operations, Kingdom Station List, and dated 7 September 1944. (-) minus sign behind a unit name indicates that part of the unit was elsewhere. Counties are mentioned as the so called pre-1974 British counties. The map co-ordinates are automatically made with Google Maps. If you have a more accurate location, photos, stories or links, please sent your information to Back to Normandy. The unit is also know as member of the US Army, Army Air Force. In this period, around this date of 23 mei 1944 the 991 Engineer Treadway Bridge Company were here in Kingston Deverill, Wiltshire.
The original station list was obtained from the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA) at College Park, Maryland. The NARA describe it as HQ/ETO Station List, 4/30/44 and reference Box 15, 270/48/32/2. In the European and Mediterranean theater the US Army had 3.5 million troops there. About 1.7 million were combat troops and around 700.000 were service troops along with 592.000 army air force troops and the rest were replacements, patients, overhead and staff. The correct count of support- and line troops in this context is difficult.
My father was Leo John Luechtefeld from St Libory in southern Illinois in the midwestern US. Much to my amazement his name appeared here on the manifest of the ship in which he traveled on D-Day in the website above as Luachtefeld Leo J SGT as a member of the 991 Treadway Bridge Engineers. His conversations about WWII were infrequent, but the description of the trip across the Channel and landing as well as the names of the men in the story match what was reported there. Leo was seriously injured some weeks later by a land mine while traveling in a jeep near St Lo and spent the next two years in Schick General Hospital in Iowa. I believe I have photos of interest which I will locate and post in future.
