23-year-old Peter J Monfre enlists in the U.S. Army at Fort Sheridan in Illinois.

Peter trains to become a Military Police Officer at Camp Forrest in Tennessee.

Peter boards the Thomas H Barry troop ship at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey.  They are told their destination is UNKNOWN.

Peter and his company spend eleven days on the Thomas H. Barry troop ship.

Peter and his company arrive at Liverpool and head directly to Bristol, England.  They will spend the next 319 days in England, training for the invasion of Nazi Germany.

The Company is temporarily sent to London for training and leave.  They will spend a total of 97 days in London, including Christmas and New Years Eve.

While in London, Peter gets sick and sent to the U.S. Army hospital in London.  The exact type of illness is not listed in the records.

Peter and his company head back to Bristol for four and a half months of training and preparing for invasion.  They get time to explore the town and mingle with locals and even throw a company party on February 12th 1944.

On June 8th, 1944 Peter and Company C travel to Southhampton and board the U.S. Robert Toombs Liberty Ship.  They will remain on board the ship in the harbor until the morning of June 10th at 5:30am when they leave for Normandy to join the rest of the U.S. and Allied Forces that landed on D-Day (June 6th 1944).

30 hours later, on June 11th at 11:00am, they found themselves anchored in the waters off of Omaha Beach.  Peter and his company would have to sit on their ship for yet another 30 hours before finally making their way ashore.  At 5:30 pm on June 12th, Peter J. Monfre took his first steps on mainland Europe and was now officially a part of the Allied Invasion Forces.

Peter and Company C travel 6 miles inland to Trévières, France .  The 509th MPs are assigned to traffic control in what is now called the V Corp Beach Area and they are bivouacked 3/4 miles west of town.

Only a week into their time in Normandy, Monfre’s unit would face their first test against the natural elements.  The strongest storm in 40 years hit the Normandy coast on June 19th and raged on for three full days.  The storm was so powerful that it completely disabled the artificial port, known as a Mulberry Harbors that the Allies had built.

After the storm, all supplies to the Allied Army had been abruptly and unexpectedly cut-off, leaving them with a now finite and decreasing amount of ammunition, food, fuel. The Allies were forced to temporarily stop any offensive operations until the storm subsided and supplies could again reach the front lines. The loss of the artificial port at Omaha Beach created an even greater sense of urgency to capture the port of Cherbourg.  Peter’s unit was reassigned..Read More

Three members of Peter’s Company, Jack A. Buck, Patrick J. Enright Jr, and Gordon R. McKinney are wounded by enemy shellfire while directing traffic in Carentan.  They were hit by shrapnel when the Germans tried to take back a bridge between Carentan and St. Lo.

For the next two months, Company C will be in charge of directing traffic and keeping order in towns throughout Manche and Calvados.  This included policing recently destroyed cities as well as keeping soldiers out of the brothels!

The Allies’ created a plan to break out of Normandy called Operation Cobra, which included increased bombings from the air mixed with a more concentrated front. The Allies were struggling to advance and part of the problem was the front was so broad and air support had been spread out. The plan was to began on July 25th with extensive bombings of German defensive positions on the line.

An American P-38 fighter plane was shot down either on purpose or by accident by American anti-aircraft gunners. Members of the 509th were sent to the crash site near Vierville-sur-Mer to investigate the crash. While walking in the field of the crash site, one of the soldiers stepped on a mine and was killed. The full name of the soldier is unknown, but his last name was Farrell, that he was a boxer, and that..Read More

Company C is sent to Paris and is assigned traffic control duties outside right outside of Paris in Saint Germain.  They will spend six days in Paris, a city alive in celebration, having only been liberated from Nazi control only seven days earlier.

Peter and his fellow soldiers leave Paris after one week and travel 80 miles Northwest to Ham, France.  They will spend the next 10 days in Ham, cleaning all their equipment, training, and resting.  Private Walter Jerabek from Peter’s company took these photos during their time in Ham. You’ll notice a young girl in a white dress in many of the photos. Maybe an adopted company mascot?

The 509th MPs were assigned the job of providing an escort for actress Dinah Shore & actor Edward G. Robinson, who were entertaining the GIs at various stops in France. When Robinson requested to talk to a German POW, the MPs had to put an American officer in German uniform to play the role since the POW cages were empty at the time. It worked, and Robinson never knew the POW that he supposedly talked..Read More

Peter and Company C enter Belgium and are stationed in the city of Liege. Liberated just days before they arrived, Monfre’s company had their hands full with duties in Liege and the city was also under constant attack from German V1 and V2 missiles, commonly known as Buzz Bombs.

Peter spent 22 weeks in Liege, longer than anywhere else he stayed during the war.  Their duties in Liege now began to include policing the town and dealing with crimes committed by American troops.  Troops who were caught and arrested for breaking the law would face a court martial in Liege and MPs would play a vital role in the administration and investigation process of these court martial cases.

On the fateful morning of 24 November 1944, the 15th General Hospital in Liege was hit by a V-1 buzz bomb, that found its mark in front of the Pharmacy building.  Sixteen lives of nurses, doctors, and patients were lost and countless others were injured.  Two members of the 509th who were first responders to the scene received the Soldier’s Medal for their heroics that day.

While directing traffic, an MP from the 769th MP’s named Donald E. McHenry spotted a fast-moving quarter-ton, and waved it to a stop at Liege.  When  Staff Sergeant Leon M. Hansen questioned the occupants—an officer and three men—he signalled for support. These 769th MPs had just snared a prize—four German spies given the job of sabotaging vital material and bridges.  In the vehicle were more than enough arms and explosives to wipe the MPs off..Read More

VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED.  The four spies that were caught are sent to Henri-Chapelle, Belgium and ordered to be executed by the 509th MPs.  The prisoners had participated in Otto Skorzeny’s Waffen SS Commando force Operation Greif, in which English-speaking German Commandos operated behind Allied lines, masquerading in U.S. uniforms and equipment.  The execution was filmed and can be seen above.

On Christmas 1944, an army vehicle overturned & plunged into a canal.  John J. Donaldson of the 509th MPs voluntarily & at great risk dove into the icy water to assist in the rescue of eight soldiers. Upon learning that two additional men were in the the truck, he made repeated dives in an effort to free the trapped victims but was unsuccessful in his desperate attempts to pry open the door of the cab...Read More

250 days after landing on Omaha Beach, and after enduring the entirety of the Battle of the Bulge while in Liege, Peter and Charlie Company crossed the border and headed into Germany.  Initially, they wouldn’t make it very far into Germany, as their first assignment had them stationed in the border town of Aachen. They would remain in the Aachen area for their first 16 days in Germany, and the Company was once again in..Read More

Over the next two months, Charlie Company would travel from town to town, moving further and further towards Berlin, policing and directing traffic as they went.  Cities on the way included Aachen, Stolberg, Düren, N. Kerpen, Kessenich, Ingelbach, Duderstadt, and Mühlhausen.  Photo is of Leonard J. Bloomenthal and a Nazi prisoner.

A week after Adolf Hitler commits suicide, Germany finally surrenders and the Allies celebrate Victory in Europe (VE) Day.  Peter and his Company are stationed in Mühlhausen, Germany during VE Day and had to both celebrate and police the town at the same time.

On August 1st, 1945, after 736 days overseas, 417 of them on mainland Europe, Peter J. Monfre is sent to the replacement depot in Germany to prepare to head back to the United States.  He leaves a couple of days later and is discharged from the Army two months later on September 28th, 1945.