(C) Idaho Capital Sun
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Boise State student shares untold stories with families of Idaho veterans who fought in WWII [1]
['Christina Lords', 'More From Author', '- December']
Date: 2023-12-18
Kent Kiser has asked a lot of questions over the years about his grandfather’s brother’s service during World War II.
Always interested in military history, even from a young age, Kiser knew there was something special about his great uncle, William.
“I had some theories about him, but I didn’t know anything until I went to a family reunion,” Kiser said.
That’s when his cousin pulled out some of William’s mementos from the war, including a triangular yellow, blue and red military patch with the numbers “526” scrawled across the top in fine black thread.
“Every Armed Forces has this similar patch, except it had a number that I had never seen before,” Kiser said. “Now, I’d been around the block; I knew my stuff. But it had the numbers ‘526’ above it, and I thought that was quite odd.”
As a Boise State University graduate student studying history, Kiser started using his research skills through a class project to find out more.
What he uncovered, by requesting National Archives service records, sifting through declassified military documents, and voluntarily tracking down the loved ones of people who also served in 526, is an untold story of how the unit helped turn the tide of World War II’s infamous and deadly Battle of the Bulge, where about 19,000 American soldiers lost their lives.
In a effort to uncover the truth about his own relative’s service during the war, Kiser is now helping military families across Idaho — and those scattered across the country — learn about theirs.
On Dec. 8, he and the Idaho Military Museum welcomed a group of about 40 people, mostly made up of extended family members related to those who served in the 526, to a new exhibit that will be available to the public for the next four months.
Month by month, day by day, company by company, platoon by platoon, Kiser explained during his presentation where the battalion trained in the U.S., where they were sent in Europe and where it experienced some of the most dangerous situations it faced in Belgium. Many families heard these stories for the first time at the museum.
“We have a heck of a story here that someone just needs to tell. I’m trying. I’m trying,” he told the crowd.
Thanks to Kiser’s efforts, the 526’s long-lost story is finally being told.
Uncovering the World War II history of the 526
The 526 was a specially tested and trained task force that specialized in using top secret defense lights, or “Gizmos,” that were attached to American tanks used to disorient and blind enemy combatants. It was made up of soldiers largely from southern Idaho, including Pocatello, Emmett, Buhl and Weiser, and other locations such as southern California.
Know of a veteran who served in the U.S. Army’s 526 during World War II? If you have information about the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion or know of someone who served in that unit, contact Kent Kiser at [email protected].
Initially, they expected to be sent to combat in North Africa. But after the fighting ended there, their mission was to secure and capture strategic, important locations during Germany’s last major offensive campaign, the Battle of the Bulge, toward the end of the war in 1944. The soldiers of the 526’s top secret efforts prevented the German Army from acquiring three million gallons of U.S. fuel that had been abandoned along the areas of their advances and contributed to turning the tide of the battle — and the war — in the favor of the Allies, Kiser said.
Much of the information that surrounded the 526th’s service was hidden for decades in classified documents. The soldiers were sworn to secrecy about their mission, and many of them held those secrets until they died, never sharing with friends or family how they contributed to winning the war.
“The federal government didn’t really recognize (the 526 was) actually a thing until the mid-’50s, and what they actually did wasn’t really released until sometime between the ‘60s and ‘80s. Information began to trickle out, but in 1973, a huge fire at the National Archives wiped out all of this group’s documents. But I got a lot of them, thanks to a lot of you,” Kiser told the family members gathered at the opening celebration of the exhibit.
Kiser hopes to tell their stories now that those documents have been declassified and before those last remaining veterans who served in the unit pass on, he said.
Kindred spirits connect over World War II history, family relationships via social media
One person who has been indispensable to Kiser’s effort is Robert Estrada, a historian, ethnobotanist and field instructor at Northern Arizona University.
Like Kiser, Estrada became fascinated with the history of the 526 due to a blood relative’s storied service. His father, Mario, served in the battalion’s A Company and was one the youngest members of the 526 after editing his birth certificate to appear old enough to enlist so that he could join the fight.
Estrada’s father was awarded the Bronze Star in World War II, which is given to veterans for “heroic or meritorious achievement or service,” and went on to receive a Silver Star, the third-highest military combat decoration that can be awarded for “gallantry in action,” during his service in the Korean War.
When Estrada was pursuing his graduate degree as Kiser is now, Estrada also wanted to dive into the 526’s clandestine past during World War II. But he hit his own roadblocks to bringing the battalion’s history to light.
Estrada’s Northern Arizona University thesis committee told him not to pursue research on the 526 because World War II research is so common and, as an Arizona scholarship student, he was told the unit’s history wasn’t tied closely enough to the state to meet the committee’s requirements, despite the fact that the unit trained extensively in Arizona before being sent to Europe to fight.
Estrada would go on to research other topics, including his passions of studying early colonial American history and the Latino community’s contributions to U.S. and military history.
“But what got me into history in the first place was this topic,” Estrada said. “And so now maybe it’s providential that Kent reached out to me on social media. He said, ‘Was your dad in the 526 and you’re a historian?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s me.’ So we’ve been working with each other now for the last year or so ever since.”
Estrada said his father was a humble man who didn’t talk about his service in World War II often and may not know what to have made of the exhibit. But Estrada said he did think his father would be proud of the effort Kiser and others have made to tell these stories so they’re not forgotten.
“I felt a little overwhelmed when Kent reached out,” Estrada said. “And I felt like I was being watched by our ancestors or something. I feel like someone is smiling above us; they’re happy about this now.”
Estrada has done his own extensive research on the exploits of the 526, and he and Kiser hope to combine their research into a book – and perhaps more.
“This would make a phenomenal book, and I think a phenomenal motion picture,” Estrada said. “We don’t want to say too much publicly yet, but there’s so many anecdotal stories that we’re now starting to confirm from different families or oral histories. We’re just putting the pieces together.”
‘They did not get the recognition they deserved,’ soldier’s daughter says
Kathleen Damron Galloway’s father, Glenn Damron, was also instrumental in ensuring that the 526’s service would not be forgotten.
He helped organize the 526th Armored Infantry Battalion Association, which even created its own newsletter, The Pekan, and insisted the members of the 526 get together for reunions over the years, she said.
Visit the Idaho Military Museum in Boise The Idaho Military Museum, 4692 W. Harvard St. in Boise, is free and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 4 p.m. Saturday. It’s closed on most federal holidays. To contact the museum, call 208-272-4841 or visit its website.
He died in January 2022, leaving all of his photos, military uniforms and other related mementos to his daughter.
“She’s the one that made all of this possible,” Kiser said at the exhibit’s opening celebration. “She was the reason that I was able to find everybody – the reason that I could make it into a project. Her dad cared so much about all of your guys’ dads who served in the 526 and wanted so badly for it to turn into something.”
Damron Galloway, who lives in the Pocatello area, drove from Eastern Idaho to attend the opening of the exhibit, saying nothing would have kept her from coming to learn more about her father’s time in the service and to meet with some of the family of her father’s most treasured friends.
“My father would have been really happy about all this,” Damron Galloway said, motioning toward people crowded around the exhibit. “Him and the other 526ers. They did not get recognized; they did not get the recognition they deserve for what they did the same way other people in the war were recognized for what they did. Yes, I think he’d be very happy that somebody’s finally digging into it and actually putting an exhibit together.”
Very happy, indeed.
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