Memorial

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T/4 Isidore M. Vasko was employed at the Metal Craft Company.

He loved baseball and started work as a car mechanic, he also worked part-time at a butcher’s to help his family financially, because his father had died early of influenza in about 1940.

He enlisted in Chicago, Illinois on 18 February 1941.

His parents were born in Slovenia. His father immigrated in 1901 and his mother in 1912.

He was married to Mary Viggiano on 19 November 1943.

Traffic had to use a temporary wooden bridge over de Alzette river in the town center. The tank drivers had to maneuver carefully to avoid touching each other on the bridge. Although the lanes roadway on the bridge had been separated from the footbridges on either side by heavy horizontal beams, the driver of one of the tanks coming from the town made the mistake of driving onto the right-hand footbridge. One of the men in the tank was standing up in the turret and was just taking a drink from a canteen when the vehicle tipped to the right, broke through the thin floorboards of the footbridge and fell with a loud crash into the river. Traffic stopped immediately, and in no time, the crews of the following tanks had leapt from their vehicles, hurried across the frozen marshland to reach the Alzette and waded through the water in an attempt to help. A few seconds later the first crew member emerged from the icy waters. His eyes revealed his horror and fright. Screaming and crying, he was wading around the tank when a second crew member came up out of the water. Holding on to each other, the two men moved toward the bank. They were to be the only survivors. The tank was resting on its turret and only the driver and the tank commander had been able to free themselves. Despite desperate efforts, the helpers were only able to open the escape hatch on the bottom of the tank some time later. Their endeavors were in vain, for they could only recover the dead body of one of their comrades from the interior of the tank. He had lost consciousness in the crash and had drowned in the oil leaking from the engine and the intruding river water.

Later two army cranes managed to right the tank and drag it to "Onnerklaus" (nearby field name) to remove the remaining two victims from the turret.

He should actually have been driving the tank, but on that day he was sitting in the position of the machine gunner to the right of the driver in the front department of the tank.

He was first buried at the Temporary American Military Cemetery in Grand-Failly, France.

One other crew member is buried at Luxembourg Cemetery: Lewis W. Meade.

On 19 October 2013, a memorial was inaugurated at the spot of the accident.

His brother Andrew served with the U.S. Marines and was killed in action on 8 July 1944 an is buried at National Memorial Cemetery Of The Pacific in Honolulu.