Over 4,200 miles from home, nineteen-year-old Eugene Lochowicz was drowning. In icy darkness at roughly 3:30 a.m., weighed down by a rifle, radio, extra ammo, haversack, heavy woolen garments, steel helmet, and combat boots, Lochowicz was a cat in a bag—trapped beneath river current in Nazi Germany.
Spilled from a capsized assault boat in mid-attack, Lochowicz was gone in seconds, his screams swallowed by mortar explosions, small arms fire, and the roar of a swollen flow.
There was no Private Ryan moment. No rescue mission. Lochowicz disappeared, last seen by a curious German farmer roughly 6 miles downriver. He was missing in action—the fate of 79,000 U.S. soldiers in WWll.
Almost six decades later, Lochowicz’ nephew, Kenneth, stumbled over a brittle newspaper clipping hidden in the folds of a wallet, and unraveled a lingering mystery. The yellowed paper in his hands held the key that picked the lock.
X marked the spot.
Tip of the Spear
In 1943, in the heart of WWll, as German soldiers froze at Stalingrad, Patton rolled across North Africa, and U.S. bombers pounded Berlin, a Catholic boy from 1662 A, South 8th Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, walked into a recruiter’s office. Fresh out of high school and 18 years young, brown-eyed and brown-haired, Eugene Lochowicz was 5’2” in height, 122 lb. on the scales, and wore 6.5 D shoes. Diminutive in size, with the heart of a lion.
The youngest of six children (three boys, three girls) born to Frank and Agnes, Lochowicz’s two brothers were already fighting in the European Theater: Ervin in Army Engineers; Ray in Army Air Corp. As sole remaining son, Lochowicz volunteered for the deadliest U.S. fighting of the twentieth century—toe-tagged by the deaths of 407,000 American soldiers.
By December, he stood on warm Florida soil, running the rigors of basic training at Camp Blanding. Roughly 13 weeks later, several months into 1944, Private Lochowicz shipped out to Europe with Company A, 28th Infantry Regiment, 8th Infantry Division, U.S. Army.
Roughly a year later, fighting at the tip of the spear, he vanished.
Blood and Valor
Growing up in the 1950s to 1960s, Lochowicz’s nephew, Kenneth, rarely heard mention of “Uncle Eugene.” Beloved member of the family and war hero, Eugene was a blank in time. Revered, but seldom referenced in conversation.
“Too much pain—so much it couldn’t be shared,” Kenneth says. “Sometimes, the only way to cope is to walk away. My dad, Ervin, and my uncle, Ray, never wanted to talk about Eugene. He was missing and they left it at that. The three brothers had carried big plans to meet up in Europe during the war—until Eugene went missing in action.”
Ervin and Ray returned from the war. Eugene did not.
In 2004, Ervin, 84, died, and Kenneth began the long task of sorting his father’s belongings. Included among the possessions was a worn leather wallet. “Tucked inside was a photo of Uncle Eugene and a newspaper article from 1946 about his death. My dad, unknown to me, had secretly carried them for decades. For all those years, they were the closest he could get to his lost brother.”
Consumed by the clipping’s headline, “Milwaukee Boy Presumed Dead,” Kenneth devoured 75 accompanying words of text mentioning Lochowicz’s MIA status in Germany.
Instantly, a man on fire. “I started burning inside to find out what happened,” Kenneth says. “I had to honor my uncle. I had to resolve this loss for my family. I had to bring him home.”
Kenneth began to dig, scouring the internet for the barest scrap of historical detail. His wife, Jane, called government offices and wrote letters to Congress.
“I came out of a farming family, the opposite of Eugene’s background,” Jane says, “but I was captured, right alongside Kenneth, to find a hero I’d never known. We started out knowing nothing except that Eugene was MIA, but we were willing to dig as deep as needed.”
Down they dug, into a mystery on the Roer River and a boatload of frozen G.I.’s paddling into hell. A night of blood and valor, particularly displayed by a teenage private willing to cross water to eat muzzle flashes and shellfire—Eugene Lochowicz.
And he didn’t know how to swim.
Ride Across the River
On July 1, 1944, less than a month after D-Day, four troop ships and 12 transports left Belfast, Ireland, bound for the coast of France and Utah Beach, carrying Lochowicz and the 8th Division.
Across France, the 8th fought a steady series of ferocious engagements through minefields, bunkers, and war-torn towns—all at tremendous cost. By itself, from July 4, 1944 to May 12, 1945, Lochowicz’s Company A (ranging in size from 100 to 250 soldiers) suffered 423 casualties, including 94 men killed in action and 30 missing in action. (Between June 1944 and May 1945, the U.S. military absorbed roughly 552,117 casualties in Europe, including 104,812 killed in action. Lochowicz fought in the heart of the maelstrom.)
“We know he fought valiantly in France in 1944,” Kenneth says, “but we don’t know any details, and that’s partially due to a family house fire around the 1950s when all the letters he wrote home were destroyed. However, we know he was later recognized with a Bronze Star.”
Indeed. Lochowicz was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for “meritorious achievement in active ground combat against an armed enemy of the United States while serving with Company A, 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment on August 18 in France…exemplary performances of duty, dauntless efforts and unwavering courage…”
Subsequently, advancing into Belgium and Germany, Lochowicz fought in the Battle of Hurtgen Forest (Sept. 16-Dec. 16) and the Battle of the Bulge (Dec. 16 – Jan. 25, 1945), and by late February 1945, he marched forward as the U.S. Army went full-force into western Germany and reached the banks of the north-flowing Roer River.
Under cover of night on Feb. 23, 66 days before Adolf Hitler would commit suicide in a Berlin bunker, Lochowicz and his infantry brothers carried 400-lb. assault boats across marshy terrain and muddy bottoms to water’s edge, knowing entrenched German soldiers, barbed wire, artillery batteries, and a legion of small arms fire awaited on the opposite bank. Lochowicz slipped on a lifejacket and readied to climb into the very first boat to attempt the river crossing.
First bird to fly gets all the arrows.
The Open Wound
Mankiller. For soldiers strapped with 50-100 lb. of equipment, the raging Roer was a potential deathtrap. Flood-swollen after German forces blew sluices at multiple dams, the Roer current pushed 10-12 miles per hour, with the river 10’ deep in spots and 75-plus-yards wide at Lochowicz’s designated crossing spot—Lendersdorf, roughly 400 miles southwest of Berlin. (In comparison, at present, the Roer is roughly 30 yards across and 3’-plus deep.)
Waiting several hundred yards off the western bank as darkness fell on Feb. 22, Lochowicz, 19, knew the assault was imminent. The Germans, also fully aware the hour was nigh, waited on the eastern bank behind or around obstructions, barbed wire, sand bars, mines, trenches, and fortifications.
Joseph Capone, Company E, 415th Infantry, 20 miles north of Lochowicz at Lucherburg, described the maddening wait:
Men of all faiths had opportunity for final devotions and again that nervous, uneasy restless tension gripped them as they wrote a last letter home … Some men tried sleeping, some played poker, some wrote letters, or some, as I did, merely talked … One last check of equipment, another cigarette, and out we poured into the pitch-black night that enveloped Lucherburg.
At 0230 hours we proceeded through to the eastern end of the town where the assault boats were hidden and then carried them through hip deep flood waters to a point as close to the actual river as possible. We came back 150 yards and “Sweat it Out.”
At 2:45 a.m., Feb. 23, 8th Division artillery crews opened across the 40-mile Roer front for a thunderous 45-minute shelling, intent on softening German troops and providing a wall of cover for the impending crossing. At 3:30 a.m., U.S. infantryman along the Roer scrambled for their boats. As described by Capone:
We … went to our boat, struggled to the river, and immediately shoved off. A powerful enemy counter fire was proving effective upon the first two boats. This caused the men in our boat to become excited and to lose control as the fast current threw us downstream and grounded us. I jumped into the water from my position at the rear of the boat and gave it a shove. At that moment the current caught the boat and, in making a desperate leap to catch it, I lost my helmet which sank quickly to the river’s bottom. A felling of nakedness crept over me as the constant enemy fire grew fiercer. A look back showed confusion and turmoil on our western bank.
Upriver from Capone, attacking in tandem, Lochowicz and Company A gathered at river’s edge against a ghostly backdrop of smoke pots billowing white clouds across the water for additional cover.
As incoming Wehrmacht artillery fire began exploding on the western bank, Company A soldiers poured into assault boats, scrambling to crank engines. A Stars and Stripes 1946 news article describes the chaotic conditions faced by Lochowicz and his brothers in arms:
In the red light of bursting shells the battalion moved out of the shadows and started to cross the Roer. It was 0330 hours. Chemical smoke hung low over the water and spread out the glare of Jerry’s mortars as they began to fall among the men of A Company. The medics came up and went to work while the first wave pushed its motorboats out into the flood waters. One engine started, the rest never did. The mortars came faster. The assault troops gave up the engines which wouldn’t start and began to paddle against the 12-mile-an-hour current.
… but the job that was meant to be done by motorboats couldn’t be done with paddles, and the flood waters twisted them in midstream, hurled them spinning through a sluiceway and against the same shoreline they had left. When they tried to crawl out, machine-gun fire cut their number in half.
In sub-freezing temperatures, hunched in a flat-bottom assault boat at 3:35 a.m., alongside a dozen other G.I.’s paddling for survival in the lead boat of the first wave, Lochowicz, despite donning a life jacket, was a human anchor, kitted with an extreme amount of weight. His 122-lb. frame carried an M1 Garand rifle, 9+ lb.; two 2 bandoliers of 30.06 cartridges, each 3+ lb.; 536 hand-radio, 5 lb.; steel helmet, 3 lb.; double-buckle M43 combat boots, 4 lb.; heavy woolen layers of clothing, possibly including a 10-lb. overcoat; haversack and additional gear.
Ducks on a pond. Roughly midriver, in a barrage of mortar and tracer fire, six assault boats capsized, including Lochowicz’s craft. Once in the drink, he was done. Lochowicz disappeared in dark current.
Platoon leader Carlos Ennis, Company I, described the turbulent river scene: Since the attack was made during the hours of darkness and also that a concentrated barrage of white phosphorus smoke was laid on both our line of departure and the enemy line it was almost impossible to regain a person’s bearings in case of a boat turning over or from falling overboard.
First Lieutenant Harold MacGregor, in his regimental history, noted: Six 1st Battalion assault boats overturned in midstream, and men and equipment were carried far down the river. Heavy enemy mortar and artillery fire caused many casualties. All motor-powered and 75% of the assault boats were destroyed in the first crossing.
In daylight, after the immediate area was secured, medics searched both banks, but “failed to find a trace of EM (enlisted men).”
A later Army review provided a blunt assessment: “Pfc Lochowicz could not swim. The enemy could have been the only means of rescue. The enemy was very close and possibly could have rescued Pfc Lochowicz, however not probable.”
Back in Milwaukee, at 1662 A, South 8th Street, a dreaded telegram arrived. The youngest child of Frank and Agnes Lochowicz was missing in action.
Agnes carried the grief for life. Alone in her rocking chair, she would cling to a photo of Eugene and weep, exposing an open wound that could never heal. “All her boys came back—except for her youngest, my uncle,” Kenneth describes. “It was the deepest pain, made worse by never knowing his fate or where his body lay. No matter what, she wanted to bury his remains at home.”
Seventy-four years later, Agnes’ despair still echoed: Bring me my son’s bones.
X-Files
In 1949, as the American Graves Registration Command (AGRC) combed WWll battle sites and collected thousands of unknown remains, Josef Richarz, a German farmer in the Lendersdorf vicinity of Lochowicz’s MIA disappearance, recalled a G.I.’s body snagged on the Roer.
Per a sworn statement by Richarz: I arrived at Duren on 10 or 11 March 1945 and returned to the farm Boisdorf on 16 March 1945.
At this time I observed that one deceased American soldier had floated to the base of the Rur River Bridge. The deceased was lying there for several weeks and was wearing a lifejacket. The deceased was still lying there in the water. I presume that he was removed by American troops.
Richarz’ presumption was correct. The body, located roughly 6 miles north of Lochowicz’s attempted river crossing, was recovered by Army personnel. However, no dog tags or identification were found. In adherence with military procedure, the remains were labeled “X” and assigned a file number. Thereby, the body by the bridge was transported to the Netherlands and buried at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Margraten, under a headstone labeled X-285.
Literally, for Kenneth and Jane Lochowicz, X marked the location of their uncle, Eugene Lochowicz.
“It’d still be a mystery today, but we were never, never going to give up,” Jane repeats. “Never.”
Homeward Bound
Assisted by congressmen, veteran’s groups, the American Battle Monuments Commission, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), and Albert Trostorf, a German historian, Kenneth and Jane put a shoulder to the door. DPAA began reviewing documentation of all X-file cases associated with the Roer River.
Connecting the dots, DPAA noted that a curious case file listed as X-285 was “pulled from the Roer River just about the [sic] S[outh]E[ast] end of the railroad bridge which crosses the Roer approximately 500 yds S.E. of Duren, Germany.”
Significantly, the file noted cause of death as drowning and gunshot wound. Lochowicz was either shot before falling out of the boat or hit by a bullet as he was carried downriver. It also listed approximate height as 68” and shoe size as 7, but considering the fog of war, Kenneth and Jane were undeterred.
“In my gut, I felt it was Uncle Eugene,” Kenneth says. “But feelings don’t bring resolution. The only way to be certain was DNA.”
In 2017, 13 years after Kenneth began a quest to locate his uncle after finding a telltale newspaper clipping in his father’s wallet, DPAA concluded X-285 was a “likely candidate for association,” to Lochowicz. In September 2018, X-285 was disinterred and the skeleton flown via Dignified Transfer to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
After mitochondrial DNA analysis, a match was confirmed in July 2019: The body once tagged X-285 was the boy from 1662 A, South 8th Street—Eugene Lochowicz.
On Nov. 16, 2019, after a 75-year absence, and a decade of persistence by Kenneth and Jane, Lochowicz returned to Agnes. “By consensus of our family, Uncle Eugene was cremated and we buried him with his mother, at the foot of her grave at St. Adalbert Cemetery in Milwaukee,” Kenneth explains, his voice breaking. “All those years she mourned for her son, and he finally came home to her.”
One More Name
Engraved in Portland stone at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands, Lochowicz’s name can be found on the Walls of the Missing, a monument honoring 1,722 American MIA soldiers. His name is among the few marked with a rosette, signifying subsequent identification.
However, the alphabetical listing on the Walls of the Missing also contains a soldier’s name with no rosette—Joe Neal Watson—who maintains a poignant tie to Lochowicz.
On the freezing night of Feb. 23, 1945, when Lochowicz tumbled into the Roer, a soldier fell with him into the swift water—Sgt. Joe Neal Watson, 25, from Marion County, Illinois. Watson was never found. He remains MIA.
More than 407,000 U.S. soldiers died in WWll. By the end of the war in August 1945, over 79,000 American servicemen were missing in action. Presently, 72,000-plus are still MIA—including Watson.
“There are families out there just like ours that are still trying to bring their sons home,” Kenneth says. “Just like Uncle Eugene, there are more soldiers waiting to be found.”
Respect to Pfc. Eugene Lochowicz, U.S. Army, #36836906, 1925-1945. Soldier, son, brother, uncle. Bronze Star Medal; Purple Heart Medal; Good Conduct Medal; European Campaign Medal with two bronze service stars; WWll Victory Medal; Combat Infantryman Badge 1st Award; and Honorable Service lapel button. Rest in Peace.
For more stories from Chris Bennett (@ChrisBennettMS or cbennett@farmjournal.com or 662-592-1106), see:
Corn and Cocaine: Roger Reaves and the Most Incredible Farm Story Never Told
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Priceless Pistol Found After Decades Lost in Farmhouse Attic
