SOMEWHERE OVER THE ATLANTIC OCEAN — I’m writing this blog from 35,000 feet aboard a Delta flight on April 3rd heading to Europe. I’m on a journey continuing research for my book on my Father-in-Law, Haig Derderian, and his service in World War 2 to defeat Nazi Germany.

As I look out the window down on the seemingly endless ocean, I can’t help but imagine hundreds of battleships and cruise liners below transporting Haig and his U.S. 12th Armored Division back in October 1944 to Europe in their attempt to defeat the German war machine.

Throughout September and October 1944, Haig and the entire 12th Armored Division, which included his 714th Company B Tank Battalion, army commanders, infantry battalions, Army engineers, the medical division, and other heavy artillery units, began moving east across the vast ocean toward England.

In one of the largest U.S. military seaborne operations in history, the voyage took just over a week. Haig’s ship docked at the harbor in Southampton, England, where the Titanic had departed on its fateful voyage 32 years earlier.

From there, the 12th Armored Division moved across France with impressive speed in November 1944 — thanks to the victory by American troops during D-Day at Normandy, France, a few months earlier. Haig and his division sped toward the German border at a rapid pace and ended up hitting a roadblock in Herrlisheim, France, on Jan. 8th 1945. That’s where the journey of this book research project begins.

I arrive in Frankfurt, Germany, in the morning on April 4th and I’ll drive to a tiny French town called la Wantzenau, just a few miles from Germany’s border. There, I’ll meet with 87-year-old author, historian, and World War 2 survivor Lise Pommois. Together, we’ll drive to Herrlisheim and view the battlefield where Haig and the 12th Armored Division fought the Germans in freezing, snowy, muddy winter conditions for over 10 days in January 1945.

It will be the first time that Lise and I have ever met each other. In fact, prior to a month ago, I had never even heard of Lise Pommois. I got in contact with her March 3rd when I started digging into Haig’s World War 2 past and the movements of the 12th Armored Division during the war. Lise and I began emailing, we did a Zoom call, and then we agreed to meet to investigate World War 2 sites in France, including Herrlisheim.

While in Herrlisheim, we’ll also meet with a French defense minister, Nadine Beuriot, who will show us points in the commune that were destroyed during the immense battle. We’ll view old photographs from the war at the local government building that were taken by U.S. soldiers.

After that, Lise and I will travel to the French Maginot Line, which was a bunker system hundreds of miles long across France that protected the country’s citizens and military from the Nazis when the Germans invaded in the early 1940s. Some of the bunkers we will visit are as deep as 13-stories underground.

After Lise and I say our goodbyes, I’ll meet with 87-year-old Francois Thomann in Herrlisheim Pres Colmar, about 30 miles south of Strasbourg, France, who was a young boy when the Nazis invaded France. He wrote me in German in an email that he survived for several days in a basement in his house as a young boy when the Germans attacked his town.

While Francois speaks no English — only German and French — I’ll have his daughter Eve-Marie as an interpreter. Fortunately, I speak some German, so I’ll be able to communicate with Francois. He’ll tell me stories of surviving the German onslaught on his village and how the American Army saved his life.

From there, I’ll drive the exact route across Germany that Haig and his 714th Tank Battalion traveled through Germany between late January 1945 and May 1945. The route will take me from Colmar and Strasbourg, France, northeast toward Wurzburg, Germany, and then south east to Nuremberg. Nuremberg is my destination, where I will work for a week with my company, OpenSystems Media, at the world’s largest electronics and embedded computing show embedded world.

I plotted Haig’s battalion movements through morning reports and journals that I uncovered at the National Archives in College Park, MD, with the help of Heather Steele and the World War 2 History Project.

With the grace and blessing of my wife, Sue, she is fully supporting me going on the trip and research into my book and discovering more about her dad and what he experienced in World War 2.

It’s incredible to think that prior to Dec. 1st 2023, I never knew about Herrlisheim or that a major battle occurred in the commune in World War 2. I also never knew about Sue’s dad’s history in World War 2 — and neither did she, because Haig never talked about it with her.

What’s fascinating is that I’ll follow in the footsteps of the landscape — although in 2024 — of what Haig saw in 1945 Germany. There won’t be war-time ruins, but rebuilt cities. I’ll meet two war-time French survivors, daughters and sons of survivors, and German grandchildren who never experienced war and are embarrassed of what their German ancestors did during World War 2.

This experience and journey will be another chapter in my book. I can’t wait for the stories that I hear from Lise and Francois so that I can tell them to you and the rest of the world.