Memorial

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Sgt Ernest B. Schlaud enlisted in Detroit, Michigan on 22 April 1941. He worked in a automobile factory before he enlisted.
In April, 1941 Ernest Schlaud heeded the call of his friends and neighbors to leave his job for a year tour of duty with the Army. Eight months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Schlaud's tour of duty was extended "for the duration of the emergency." He was trained as an artilleryman and for two years was stationed in Alaska. The Japanese had invaded Alaska's Aleutian Islands, but had been driven out by US forces. Schlaud returned to the States and was reassigned to Europe. The Battle of the Bulge, late in 1944, had badly mauled many US units. Schlaud was sent to the front as an infantry replacement.
On April 9, 1945, Schlaud was cut down by shrapnel from a German artillery barrage. He had volunteerd to walk beside a tank and he was killed when a shell hit the tank and the shrapnel hit him. He died that day in a field hospital. Schlaud's commanding officer wrote his parents that he was a favorite with the men in his unit. "The men called him `Smiling Ernie,'" he wrote. "He often volunteered for dangerous duty in place of married men."
Ernie and a number of his buddies were buried in a temporary cemetery in Germany. It was a farm field at Bruena, near Kassel. Americans were buried on one side of the field, Germans on the other. In July of 1945, the Americans were moved to a cemetery at Margraten in Holland. The German soldiers remained.