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Sgt Rudolph A. Dieffenbach enlisted in Newark, New Jersey on 17 November 1942.

By Al Dieffenbach:
It must have taken valor, and dedication and forbearance to travel as a warrior, oldest of seven children, from North Africa to Sicily, to D-Day, through Normandy and across the Rhine as a member of the 1st Division, America's famous "Big Red 1". The aide in the visitors building, a 24-year Army veteran himself, pulled an old sheet of green record paper from a file cabinet: "Infantry, Purple Heart, Battle field promotion, bazooka man, machine gun squad leader, Oak Leaf Cluster". For my big brother, six year older? For a guy who wasn't a star athlete, nor very big, nor a street fighter? Who never liked guns? Who would rather have worked on an old automobile? Who was an apprentice with a lower New York printing firm? Two years after you left, I was delivering telegrams for Western Union. Lots had a purple star, signifying that somebody's brother, or son, or husband, or father was wounded or missing. Fewer, but still too many, had two stars. The message inside was "killed in action." The first one we got had one star. The second lay unopened for four hours on the mantelpiece until Daddy came home from work and Mother's fears were borne out. Forty days before the end of the war in Europe. Two and a half years after induction, with never an hour's visit home in between. During actions described as "merely mopping-up operations" as the shattered German army fled eastward. The fateful action, the cemetery aide said, was near the village of Mengeringhausen, across the Rhine, pretty close to Essen, Germany, from where, we were told, our paternal grandfather had come.

Sgt Dieffenbach was initially buried at the Temporary American Military Cemetery of Ittenbach, Germany on 4 April 1945. After being disinterred he was reburied in a temporary grave at Margraten on 28 August 1945. After being disinterred from this temporary grave on 17 September 1948, he was given his final resting place on 9 December 1948.