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After his high school education Arthur Whitbeck enlisted in the army. At Camp Claiborne in Louisiana, he was trained as a tank technician and assigned to B Company, 784th Tank Battalion. Arthur was part of a crew of a Sherman tank.
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784 Tank Battalion embarked on Oct 30 '44 in America and arrived on Christmas Day in Le Havre (F). The front line lay along the German border and the Batlle of the Bulge (Ardennenoffensive) was in full swing. The battalion immediately moved further. Within one week, on Dec. 31, they had entered Germany at the border at Eschweiler.
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Task Force Byrne went smoothly. That changed on March 2, when Arthur's B Company fought at Sevelen, which was strongly defended by German paratroopers. The Americans were sealed off from reinforcements and supplies ...
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On March 4 Arthur and his comrades were ordered to attack Kamperbruch. The commander expected little opposition, but the Germans had set up tank guns. Arthur's tank was directly hit.
Read the whole story: Combat route (4) >
Registration ARC
to the UK
Landing on Utah Beach
Siegfriedlinie
Died on pleasure flight
Buried in Margraten, Block RR, Row 12 Grave 290
Air Evac. Nurse diploma
Married
Body washed up
Panama
To Europa
Departure for Europa
Arriving in England
Landing Omaha Beach
Nazi Germany declares war on the US
Battle of Stalingrad: Red Army defeats Germans
Born: | Ca 1924 |
Location: | Hudson, New York |
Family
Family Whitbeck was of African American descent. Whitbeck's
father worked in a garage and the family lived at 6 Spring Street
in Hudson. Arthur was nicknamed Snookie by his grandfather.
The name can be seen on a preserved shopping
list that Snookie sent to his grandmother
asking her to buy supplies for him
and to send them to the front. The
items on the list included writing
paper, brushes, crackers and socks.
The family lived in the town of Hudson,
along the river of the same name, north of
New York. Hudson is generally
regarded as the oldest settlement
along the Hudson River, named after
Henry Hudson, the 16th century English explorer
and traveler who was the first to explore the river.
The Whitbeck family is directly descended from the founder of Hudson, the Dutch settler John Thomas Van Witbeck, who around 1660 bought land from the local Indians (the Mohicans) and settled there with his family. Arthur J. Whitbeck was therefore of both African American and Dutch descent.