One Army brother honors another lost in a Christmas Eve tragedy
By Todd South
Dec 24, 04:50 AM
Tom South remembers very little about the day his family got the news.
The 10-year-old boy was half the age of Bill, his older brother. Bill was a soldier. There was a war.
At some point, he doesn’t remember exactly when, a man who was aboard the ship with Bill came to their Bonner Springs, Kansas, home.
Even that is a vague memory. Something about an explosion. And where Bill was, he couldn’t have survived. He couldn’t have faced the icy waters that killed so many after the ship went down. It must have happened quickly.
At least those are the memories that remain 77 years after that fateful day during World War II. And Tom South, a child at the time of his brother’s death, is now 87 years old.
His older brother, Sgt. Myerl “Bill” South, died in the waters of the English Channel on Christmas Eve 1944 along with 762 other American soldiers aboard the SS Leopoldville, a Belgian troopship shuttling more than 2,000 soldiers with the 66th Infantry Division from England to Cherbourg, France.
https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/military-culture/2021/12/24/one-army-brother-honors-another-lost-in-a-christmas-eve-tragedy/
