Never would I have thought that I would one day write a historical article centered on a place I once lived.
When I first saw a World War II photo of a fallen soldier, I immediately knew the city and the bridge where the photo had been taken.
The image was taken in Worms, Germany, on the Ernst Ludwig Bridge, now known as the Nibelungen Bridge. The east tower visible in the WWII photograph is long gone, but it was almost a replica of the surviving west tower.
The photograph, taken by Associated Press photographer James Pringle, was widely circulated in newspapers across the United States. Two other soldiers in the image were identified in newspaper captions, but the fallen soldier remained unnamed for decades.
That soldier was recently identified as Private First Class Charles Theodore Plog of Poughkeepsie, New York. Although I was not involved in identifying him, I worked with the researcher who made the identification while writing the story of how his name was finally restored.
My father was a career Army man, and our family lived in Worms while he was stationed there from 1969 to 1970. The bridge crosses the Rhine River, and while picnicking on the east side, my mother took a photo of me with the bridge and the west tower in the background. I crossed that bridge many times as a child.
My fond memories of living in Worms are one reason I have a poster-sized photo of the surviving west tower in my home.
That personal connection made writing about PFC Plog emotionally different for me. This was not simply a historical location I had researched. It was a place I had known.
Returning to Worms is on my bucket list. One of the first things I would do is find an ice cream shop, because I loved the ice cream there as a child. I would also hope to meet some of the people who now live there and whom I have come to know through social media.
But I would also want to stand near that bridge again, take a closer look at the surviving tower, and visit the approximate place where PFC Plog fell.
What was once a backdrop to childhood memories became the setting for a story of sacrifice I never expected to tell.
