Memorial

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Alton´s parents, Mary Rhodes, called Mollie and Andrew Jackson Pase had both been married before when they got married in 1923. When Alton was born in 1925, Mollie was 42 and Andrew was 62. He had several half-siblings, buth they were adults and had children of their own by the time he was born. So he was raised like an only child, and I guess that he was rather sheltered. His father died in 1943 at age 80. Mollie, if you go back several generations, had German ancestry. She also had a grandfather that fought in the American Revolution against the British in the 1700´d.
Alton was raised in the town of Thomas, West Virginia. His father was a blacksmith. Thomas is located in the high elevations of the Allegheny Mountains. Short summers and very cold and snowy winters. At that time, there were probably about 1,000 people in the town. People worked at the lumber mills, the coal mines or something related to the railroad. At the time Alton was growing up, Thomas was a prosperous, workingclass town.
The house that he was born in and raised in is still standing, althought it looks a little delapidated now. He only had to walk a shot distance to go to the grade school and high school. My mother, who was six years younger, said he was her favorite uncle. When she had school projects like going through the woods and collecting types of leaves, he would take her and carry her back piggy back. He graduated from Thomas High School in the class of 1943. My mother mentioned that Alton excelled in high school. Before he graduated, his chemistry teacher wanted him to choose chemistry in college. It appears that would have deferred him from European fighting. Alton said he was no better than enyone else. So he signed up for the infantry.
He entered the service on 31 July 1943 and received his training at Ft. Benning, Ga. and special training at St. John´s University of N.Y.; Shreveport, La. and Fort Breckenridge, Ky. He was sent overseas to England in September 1944 and from there he was sent to Belgium. He participated in the Battle of the Ardennes and was killed on the last day of the battle, while holding a defensive line in a forest near the town of Sadzot, Belgium.
On one of his furloughs home to see his mother, he left a note in his bedroom. He was trying to remember a quote from Daniel Webster, an American stateman and senator. He made a few errors in the quote, but this is what he wrote; ´God grants liberty only to those who live it and are always ready to guard and defend it. Let us protect our country. And by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace and of liberty´.
So young, so idealistic.
I asked my mom why her grandmother didn´t request that his body be shipped home. Her grandmother told her that Alton was shot then bayoneted. By the time the Americans could retrieve his body, German tanks had run over it (there were others too) and German troops had marched over his body. About all I could say was it happens during war - the part of both sides.
Alton´s mother died in 1962. All of his half-siblings have also died.