BANGOR, Maine — Pfc. William Golladay of Shenandoah County, Virginia, was a superstitious fellow. When his trip toward the German heartland started near the end of World War II, he wanted to sit in the same seat in his transport vehicle.
It was the spring of 1945.
But one day, Golladay — who had just returned to the 5th Armored Division, 46th Armored Infantry Battalion, 1st Platoon from a stay in the hospital for frostbite — found his transport seat occupied by Galen Cole, a 19-year-old Army private from Bangor, who had just joined the unit.
Cole, now 90, had no problem giving up the seat to Golladay, a rifleman of his same age but who had spent more time in combat.
Two days later, the day after Easter, the transport vehicle took fire from a German anti-tank artillery gun. Golladay and four others seated beside him in the half-track were killed. Cole was wounded but survived, earning a Purple Heart.
“I tried to find their families after the war,” Cole said of the fallen soldiers, adding that he was not successful.
That was until this year.
Four of Golladay’s nieces connected with Cole after the youngest of them, Nan Langhorne, of Gibsonville, North Carolina, found out earlier this year that her uncle Bill’s grave in Margraten Cemetery in Holland had been adopted by local Dutch resident Henk Dideriks.
The cemetery, one of the largest in the world, is in the town of Eijsden-Margraten and is the final resting place of 8,301 American military personnel.
“[Dideriks] said, ‘I know the whole story about how your uncle switched his seat,’” said Langhorne, who added the family had never heard about the switch.
Cole, as well, returned to the warzone of his youth many times and met Dideriks along the way.
“He places flowers on the graves three times a year — their birthdays, Christmas and Memorial Day,” Cole said of Dideriks, who adopted the graves of Golladay and a fellow fallen soldier from the unit.
“He has done that for 30 or 40 years,” after taking over for a couple who originally adopted the graves after the war ended 71 years ago, he said. There is a waiting list to adopt graves at the only American cemetery in the Netherlands.
After Langhorne connected with Dideriks, he contacted Cole, who united them all. Langhorne and her sisters — Emma Drummond of Staunton, North Carolina, and Laura Long of Edinburg, Virginia — arrived in Bangor Wednesday at Cole’s invitation, along with Emma’s husband, George Drummond. Their oldest sister, Caroline, was not able to make the trip.
“It took a while” to connect, Emma Drummond said with tears in her eyes, standing inside the Cole Land Transportation Museum, near a replica of the half-track that once carried her uncle.
A special event is planned for the Golladay relatives Thursday at the Perry Road museum, where a special section is dedicated to the 5th Armored and the group’s lost brothers-in-arms. Dideriks was invited to attend, but the retired railroad man no longer likes to fly, Cole said.
The visiting sisters don’t remember their uncle Bill — they were born after his death — but they remember stories about him that their mother and grandmother used to tell.
“He was smart and funny,” Drummond said.
“He would play tricks on people, and he liked to do magic,” Langhorne said.
Drummond said later that the sisters found his magic kit at the family camp.
Golladay followed family footsteps to the Massanutten Military Academy in his hometown of Woodstock, Virginia, where he graduated in 1942 at the age of 16 or 17, and was enrolled in the University of Virginia before the draft took him to war and Europe, the sisters said.
After listening to Cole explain the route taken by the 5th Armored, nicknamed the Victory Division, and what happened after the attack that killed their uncle, the sisters remarked that time was not on his side.
“He had five more months, and the war would have been over,” Langhorne said.
The deadly blast knocked Cole and others out of the vehicle and into a ditch and took the lives of Golladay; Pfc. George Blackard of Perry County, Arkansas; Pfc. Simon Brewer of Clark County, Nevada; Staff Sgt. Claude Newton of Ray County, Missouri; and Technician Fifth Grade Alfred Southard of Rooks County, Kansas.
Golladay and Blackard are buried in Holland.
Cole only knew his lost comrades for a couple of days, but their deaths stayed with him over the last seven decades. They are among the reasons he works so hard to advocate for veterans and to teach each generation about the sacrifices soldiers and their families make.
While in the ditch, “I prayed to my God that if I was allowed to return home, I would do my best to help my community and my fellow man and leave both better than I had found them,” Cole told the sisters.
“You were meant for something bigger,” Langhorne told him as she gave him a hug.