Serendipity

Three years ago I wrote a series of posts about my wife's aunt (Othelia's story) army nurse WWII experiences, from Fort Snelling to North Africa, Italy, France, Germany & Dachau.  It's not in your million hits category, but it is among the most read of my writings.

Fast forward 3 years and a phone call from Bavaria. Wolfgang.  He had seen the posts on the 95th Evac Hospital odyssey and discovered Oat's photo of GI's playing baseball - included in the last post in the series.  Remarkably, he printed the photo, walked to the edge of his village on the banks of the Wörnitz River, held up the photo against the horizon and verified it was Ebermergen, taken in 1945.  (95th  Evac unit records show a hospital setup in Ebermergen in late April, 1945)  The clincher were the power lines in the photo,  still in place today. So he tracked me down and phoned me with the story, hoping for more background on the 95th.

This all came about because Wolfgang's local history club is writing a history of Ebermergen and from stories he has collected from the few remaining elders who remember 1945, he knew that Oat's unit, the 95th Evac Hospital, was stationed in Ebermergen for a few weeks at the close of the war and that a number of the nurses were deployed to Dachau for a time.  Searching for "95th + Ebermergen", he discovered Distant Innocence. Voila, the power of Google for good. (I have subscribed for a copy of this book.)

So here you have the first offering of my planned town ball series - completely serendipitous. This Ebermagen Field was certainly one of thousands GI's platted in pastures across Germany after VE Day. These same GI's returned home and replicated these primitive ball fields in towns all over the country, launching the golden age of town team baseball.

GI baseball. Ebermergen , May 1945

See also: Serendipity Chapter 2  a surprise from Ebermergen

Copyright © 2018 Dave Hoplin