(Radio Iowa) – Today (November 16) is the 80th anniversary of the start of the “Battle of the Bulge, the last ditch effort by the Germans in World War Two that broke through American lines in 1945. The Iowa Goldstar Museum at Camp Dodge recently honored one of the Iowans in that battle. Museum board member Bob Holiday talked about First Lieutenant John Phillipps of Waterloo, who got involved in the battle while trying to get some rare rest in the village of Medell, Belgium. “He was woken up before daylight. Captain wants to see you. You take six men a mile east out of town, down the road, and you find a fire break on a hill. Go up that fire break to top the ridge and put a machine gun out, because the Germans are going to counter attack,” he says. Phillipps took his men to the area, but the Germans were already there.

“They opened up on the Americans, and there were five Americans killed instantly. If you go back in the back of our exhibit hall, back here towards the back, you’re going to find the shirt that John Phillipps had on that day he was hit five times by this German machine gun,” Holiday says. Phillipps and a sergeant survived, but the Germans wanted him because he was an officer. “One of these Germans spoke English, and he said, You’re coming with us. And John said, What about the sergeant? And the German who spoke English said, you’re going to bring him with you, or we’re going to shoot him right here. John said he drug this guy — now John’s been hit five times — and he drug this guy against a tree, gave him his canteen, and they went on,” Phillipps ended up in a prison camp, but never found out what happened to the sergeant.

Holiday met Phillipps through the museum and went looking for the sergeant in 2020. They found out he was Lawrence Lyon from Texas and had survived the war, but was now dead. Holiday was able to contact the man’s family in Texas so Phillipps could to talk to his kids before he died a few years ago. Phillipps’ daughter Sharon Monfredini says it took a long time before she found out about her dad’s heroic actions. “As a child, neither my sister or myself ever heard anything. Dad would not talk about it,” Monfredinisays. “And it wasn’t until we were much older, in fact, probably ten years before he passed away, that he started to share his story.” She says it was an amazing thing to learn about her dad. “It was just shocking that we didn’t know what he had gone through. It maybe explained some behavior,” she says, “if there was maybe some violence on T-V that was very hard for him to watch. He was a very quiet man, but internalized a lot. He was quite a thinker.”

Bob Holiday and Sharon Monfredini. (RI photo)

Monfredinisays her dad was so glad to be able find out the sergeant he saved made it through the war. “Oh, my goodness, it meant everything, because he had actually survived and gone on to have such a wonderful life, married with kids and was a professional, and he was just so thankful for that, but very sad that the two of them never reconnected,” Monfredini says. Phillipps went on to become a successful businessman after the war.

Governor Reynolds issued a proclamation recognizing the importance of the Battle of the Bulge in defeating the Germans and ending the war.