An American publisher visits the front lines during the advance into Germany in the hopes of finding his missing son, accidentally walks right into him as he’s being liberated from a POW camp. That was easy!

Early in May 1945, with the once-vaunted German Wehrmacht crumbling into chaos and peace in Europe only days away, Amon Carter, Sr., the publisher of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in Texas, was among a group of sixteen leading U.S. newspaper executives who had been asked by Secretary of War Henry Stimson to come to Europe especially to view the concentration camps.

Publisher Carter had a deep personal interest in the outcome of the war: His son, Lieutenant Amon Carter, Jr., had been a German prisoner of war since the day General (later Field Marshal) Erwin Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps overran young Carter’s 1st Armored Division battalion at Faid Pass in North Africa in February 1943. In common with many American parents whose sons had been captured during the war, Carter, Sr., had long had to bear a gnawing anguish: Was his POW son dead or alive?

One stop in the tour for publisher Carter and the other media executives was lunch with Lieutenant General William “Big Bill” Simpson’s U.S. Ninth Army. Simpson’s outfit was dug in north to south, along the Elbe River, the geographical landmark ninety miles west of Berlin which had been chosen by SHAEF as the stop line for the American advance into the battered Third Reich.

Just as the luncheon, held at the headquarters of Major General Robert C. Macon’s 83rd “Thunderbolt” Infantry Division, broke up and the media executives walked out the door, a vehicle carrying a small group of just-liberated American POWs came to a halt in front of the building. One of those who climbed out was Lieutenant Amon Carter, Jr., who, in disbelief, came face-to-face with his father.

As the Texas publisher stood rooted in astonishment, the young lieutenant strolled up to him and said quietly: “Well, here I am, Dad,”

Choking with emotion, the elder Carter silently embraced his son and held him tightly, patting the back of his son’s head.

Source:

Breuer, William B. “Strange Encounters.” Unexplained Mysteries of World War II. New York: J. Wiley, 1997. 209-10. Print.

Original Source Listed:

Stars and Stripes, May 3, 1945.

Further Reading:

Wehrmacht

Amon G. Carter, Sr.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Henry Lewis Stimson

Konzentrationslager (Nazi Concentration Camps)

Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel / The Desert Fox

Deutsches Afrikakorps (German Africa Corps) / Afrika Korps