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Harry Kemp joined the Army with his twin brother, Larry, at age 19 and went to fight in France during World War II. Together, they helped break the Siegfried Line in Germany. Larry Kemp was killed at age 21 in January 1945 during a tank maneuver.
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The last time Harry Kemp saw his twin brother was on a cold January morning in 1945.
They didn't speak.
Mr. Kemp covered his sleeping brother with a brown wool, Army-issue blanket and let the exhausted 21-year-old rest atop a table in a house cellar in Rittershoffen, Germany.
Mr. Kemp, ordered to report to the battalion aid station for treatment of a bad case of laryngitis, never dreamed his brother would be killed by a German sniper later that afternoon.
''I didn't want to leave my brother, but I was on the verge of getting pneumonia,'' Mr. Kemp said. ''It was more or less an order from my platoon leader.''
While Mr. Kemp was recovering in an Army aid station in a French village, a captain informed him of his brother's death.
Mr. Kemp had to go back to the fighting the next day. His brother's body was sent to an American cemetery in France.
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EDITORS NOTE: We asked our readers to share their war stories, and today we bring you the first of those, the tragic story of the Kemp twins.
During the next seven months, The Augusta Chronicle will publish the stories of our World War II veterans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of America's entry into the war.
We thank all of you who have responded, and we want to hear from more. Please tell us why you think your story needs to be told. The Chronicle will select entries, and a staff member will contact you. Please do not send photographs or other items that would need to be returned.
Mail your submissions to: War Stories, c/o The Augusta Chronicle Newsroom, P.O. Box 1928, Augusta, GA 30903-1928. Or e-mail your stories to newsroom @augustachronicle.com. Please include your name, address and telephone number with your entry.
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Now a retired Martinez school counselor, Mr. Kemp has created a 47-page typewritten account of his experiences during World War II. It is dedicated to his twin brother, Larry Kemp.
''Ever since the war ended ... I felt I should put it down so my children and grandchildren ... can have some knowledge of the war and my experiences in it,'' Mr. Kemp said.
The twins were 19 years old when they enlisted in the Army, and 20 when they shipped out from New York Harbor, never having been out of the Southeast and not knowing where they were going.
''When the sun came up, it was right in front of us, so we knew we were heading east to Europe somewhere,'' said Mr. Kemp, the older twin by 20 minutes.
That somewhere ended up being Marseille, France, where the soldiers spent some time in the French countryside and the Maritime Alps before engaging in their first heavy fighting in Oberotterbach, Germany - a small town near the border of France.
American troops were working to break through the Siegfried Line - a concrete and steel German defense that stretched from Basel, Switzerland, to Aachen, Germany, and prevented tanks from passing through.
During the battle, the Kemp brothers spent five days together in a foxhole, bombarded by German artillery and mortar shells. Their company was in reserve, waiting atop a hill overlooking Oberotterbach until they were needed.
''TO SUM IT UP in one word, it is terrifying,'' Mr. Kemp said. ''It scares you to death to have enemy shells falling in your area and to hear those men who are killed outright and the horribly wounded screaming in agony.
''You just lay flat on the ground and hug mother Earth and get as close as you can for protection,'' Mr. Kemp said.
Later, during his first close encounter with a German soldier, Mr. Kemp earned a Bronze Star as the platoon's BAR man - the soldier who used a Browning automatic rifle.
A group of German soldiers with machine guns was keeping the Kemps' platoon from advancing past the Siegfried Line. Mr. Kemp and his ammunition bearers were able to take over the house the Germans were using.
A few days later, the weather got colder and Mr. Kemp was sent to the aid station with laryngitis. The station, a French house converted for medical purposes, was where Mr. Kemp learned of his brother's death.
''This was unbelievable to hear these words that my brother had died,'' Mr. Kemp said, leaning back on his couch and closing his eyes. The twins had been in Europe for less than three months and were barely 21 years old at that time.
The first thoughts coming to his mind were never being able to see his twin again, Mr. Kemp said.
''I wish I had told him many things about how much I loved him and how proud I was of him as a brother and a soldier,'' Mr. Kemp said.
He later learned his brother had volunteered for a tank mission that was to destroy a church steeple Germans were using to report American troop movement they could see from a distance.
Larry Kemp was walking behind the tank with other infantry personnel when the sniper's bullet instantly killed him.
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Harry Kemp receives a Bronze Star from Brig. Gen. Albert C. Smith for his actions on the Siegfried Line as a platoon Browning automatic rifleman in Oberotterbach, Germany.
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The twins' mother, alone because their father had died, received an official telegram, but Mr. Kemp later wrote her a letter to let his mom know her only other son had not suffered.
''He did not die in pain or agony,'' Mr. Kemp said.
But the older twin said he will always regret not being with his brother when he was killed.
MR. KEMP DOES NOT feel guilty because the circumstances were beyond his control, but he said he has often wondered whether he could have prevented his brother's death if they had been together.
Larry Kemp was buried at Epinal American Cemetery in France, a place Harry Kemp was able to return to more than 40 years later. He said his brother is buried with 5,500 other soldiers killed during World War II, their graves marked with white stone monuments.
Two months after Larry Kemp's death, on March 14, 1945, Harry Kemp was commissioned as an officer, one of 10 men who went to bed as honorably discharged enlisted men and woke up the next day as second lieutenants. The Army had to discharge the men before they could be commissioned, so they spent one night as civilians.
''To my knowledge, I was the lowest ranked enlisted man ever commissioned from the battlefield,'' Mr. Kemp said, smiling at the recollection. ''Nobody was more surprised than me.''
About a week later, Mr. Kemp led his platoon in a charge in Steinfeld, Germany, during which a bullet shattered two bones in his left leg and landed him in a hospital in Dijon, France. He was still there when Germany surrendered May 8, 1945.
At the end of May, Mr. Kemp had recovered enough to be moved to a United States hospital. He was sent to Oliver General Hospital in Augusta, the closest Army general hospital to his Florida home.
AFTER HIS ARRIVAL, Mr. Kemp made his way on crutches to the hospital telephone center, where Mary Alice Bailey, a long-distance operator, placed his first call home.
''I felt she was the most beautiful girl I had ever met in my life,'' Mr. Kemp said, a big smile on his face.
He asked her out, but she turned him down the first time before accepting later, and the two ended up dating during the year he recovered at the hospital.
''I came into contact with an awful lot of soldiers, and there was no one I was too impressed with until I met him,'' Mrs. Kemp said of her husband.
After he had been discharged from the hospital and the Army, Mr. Kemp returned home to earn his bachelor's degree in commerce at Florida Southern College.
''I sent her a telegram telling her I had to be back in Augusta for a checkup, and (asked) can we be married the first of September?'' Mr. Kemp said, recalling his marriage proposal.
When she didn't respond for a few days, he began to worry.
But Mr. Kemp finally received a short telegrammed reply.
''September will be fine,'' was all it said.
The couple was married Sept. 1, 1946, and now has two sons and three grandchildren.
Mr. Kemp earned a master's degree and was a Richmond County school counselor for more than 25 years. He retired in 1984 when he was asked to be a counselor for the Department of Defense, a job he performed until 1988.
Amid fading pictures and memorabilia from his younger days, Mr. Kemp still has the telegram his wife sent him almost 55 years ago.
Reach Teresa Wood at (706) 823-3765.
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