When I head to Europe next week, I’ll be furthering my journey into a World War 2 history project that started last December. The project quickly became my obsession the moment I opened that green, plastic storage bin in my basement.

The bin contained World War 2 photos, letters from the war, U.S. Army medals, books, and other war memorabilia from the life of my father-in-law Haig Derderian. From 1944-1945, Haig served in the U.S. Army’s 12th Armored Division in World War 2. He served in the 714th Company B Tank Battalion. That bin contained Haig’s perfectly preserved Corporal stripes that he wore on his uniform and the Purple Heart medal that he earned after being injured by an exploding mine in Germany in April 1945.

My wife, Sue, said her dad – who passed away in March 1990 – never talked about the war, so she knew very little about what he did and what he experienced. So, once I found pieces of Haig’s World War 2 past in that bin, I started putting the puzzle together. The more I dug for the truth, the more interesting his untold story became.

My research, which now has totaled more than 100 hours at night and on weekends, has led me to writing a book about the life of Army Cpl. Haig Derderian as a U.S. soldier and his 714th Tank Battalion.

I’m heading to Europe in April with my company, OpenSystems Media, where we are exhibiting at the largest world’s largest trade fair, embedded world, in Nuremberg, Germany. But for 4 days before, I’m heading to Strasbourg, France, to do research on my book, study fragile wartime documents, visit French towns bombed by the Nazis and talk to elderly locals, and meet with an 87-year-old French historian who was alive as a little girl when the Nazis invaded France in World War 2. More on her in a bit.

Haig and his Tank Battalion as well as the rest of the 12th Armored Division began arriving at Le Havre Harbor, France, on Nov. 11th, 1944. Le Havre Harbor is located about 100 miles north of Normandy, France, where U.S. forces stormed the beaches on June 6, 1944 and pushed back the Germans. The significance of that battle was that U.S. armed forces reclaimed much of France from the Nazis, including Paris. So when the 12th Armored Division landed in France five months later, they were able to easily roll through the country on their way to their main objective — invading Germany. The 12th Armored Division was nicknamed the Hellcats. “Speed” was its password through the U.S. military because it moved through Europe extremely fast and with precision.

Unboxing Haig’s life as a soldier in World War 2 hasn’t been an easy task. So, I enlisted the help of Heather Steele, CEO of the World War 2 History Project, to help me unravel the story. Heather founded the organization in 2013 to educate the public about World War 2. In 2016, she began doing archival research on a volunteer basis on the war to educate people, including professors, historians, universities, authors, and families of war vets. She also guides veterans and families of vets on battlefield tours in Europe.

Heather has been an immense help, collecting for me over a thousand pages of documents related to Haig and, specifically, his Tank Battalion. She collected these documents from the U.S. National Archives in College Park, MD, over the last 2 months. The documents include detailed daily reports from November 1944-May 1945, including hourly journals written by an officer in the Tank Battalion, daily after-action report summaries, maps of the 714th Tank Battalion’s movements through France and Germany, casualty reports, and other incidental reports.

My main focus in my research has been on the Battle of Herrlisheim, which occurred about three weeks after the Battle of the Bulge started in December 1944 about 200 miles northwest of there. Herrlisheim is a small city in France near the border of Germany and it was founded in the 8th century. The Battle of Herrlisheim featured some of the most intense fighting in northern Europe and lasted from Jan. 8th-20th, 1945.

It all started with bad intel. The 12th Armored Division thought Herrlisheim had 800-1200 German soldiers and only a few tanks occupying the French town. Haig’s Company B Tank Battalion was the first unit into town and got the surprise of their life because Herrlisheim was crawling with Nazis and heavy armored machinery. Nearly 20,000 German soldiers and more than 50 Panzer and Tiger tanks and heavy artillery were in the town and surrounding area.

Unknown to them, this was the start of Adolph Hitler’s Operation Nordwind, which was Hitler’s plan take over Strasbourg, France, about 19 miles south of Herrlisheim. If Strasbourg had been taken, it would had severed supply lines for American troops in France.

After the battles had ended and the smoke, blood, and stink from the battlefield dissipated, the 12th Armored Division had lost 1700 men and dozens of U.S. Army M-4 Sherman tanks. The 12th lost two-thirds of its combat forces, 2 infantry battalions, and two tank battalions were either killed wounded or captured by the Germans.

Haig’s Company B Tank Battalion, which included 17 M-4 Sherman tanks, had been in the first wave of the assault against the Nazi’s superior Panzer and Tiger tanks and had retreated from Herrlisheim before the slaughter of the 12th began.

When I visit France next week, I’m meeting with French historian and author Lise Pommois, who is an expert on the Battle of Herrlisheim and the battles in the Alsace region of France. She was a young girl when the Nazis invaded France in World War 2 and she remembers when the American soldiers liberated France in 1944. When she got older, she befriended many of the veterans of the 12th Armored Division and even attended many of their reunions. Unfortunately, Lise never met Haig because he passed away in 1990 and she began attending the reunions in the 1990s. But she most certainly met some of the vets who knew Haig.

Lise and I will visit Herrlisheim where the battle took place in 1945 and we’ll visit major battle sites in the area. We spoke last week on a Zoom call and she’s full of wit, energy, intelligence, clarity, and knowledge and I can’t wait to meet her in person. We have 2 days of research planned together.

My wife initially was worried that I would end up going on this research trip, staying in some French hostel, then kidnapped, tortured and held for ransom. I assured her I would be completely fine and safe and that I speak German.

So I booked a couple nights in the small, rural town of la Wantzenau, France, in a 420-year-old former sawmill that has been burned down 3 times during that period — the last time by the Nazis in World War 2. I’m taking my chances it won’t burn down while I’m there!

This visit to France is not for vacation or touring. It will be for an intense 72 hours of research and writing. It will be one of the coolest things in that I’ll be visiting Herrlisheim – in person — after only learning about the town in December while beginning my research into Sue’s father. He fought in one of the major battles of World War 2 there and I’ll literally be standing in a town where he was fighting at during the war.

After I leave Herrlisheim and the area, I’ll be driving the route that Haig and the 714th Tank Battalion took on their trek across Germany toward Nuremberg. I have every city in Germany where they stopped in March and April 1944 plotted on a map and I plan to go through each town before I hit Nuremberg, where I’m staying for the trade fair.

I’m not sure what will unfold when I follow the movements of Haig’s Tank Battalion, but at least I’ll get a view of the landscape that Haig saw through his own eyes in April 1945.