08/11/2025
This year marks 80 years since the end of World War II. This article, which appeared in the Traer Star-Clipper 80 years ago this week, talks about two Tama County soldiers who served together in the European Theater. One, Joe Kriz Jr. of Clutier, made it home. The other, Gerald Fink of Lincoln, did not.
The Traer Star-Clipper Aug. 10, 1945, p. 9
Pfc. Joe Kriz Jr. Tells How Gerald Fink Met Death
Clutier Soldier Badly Wounded 19 Days Later
Pfc. Joe Kriz Jr., wounded Clutier veteran of the war with Germany, who has just been home with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Kriz, on a 30-day furlough from Fitzsimmons General hospital at Denver, Col., where he has been hospitalized since he was returned to the States, was a buddy of Pvt. Gerald Fink, son of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fink, of Lincoln township, who died Jan. 10, 1945, of wounds received in action in Belgium on Jan. 7.
Joe and Gerald were inducted into the Army on the same day at Des Moines - June 22, 1944. They went through training together at Fort McClellan, Ala., and at Fort George Meade, embarkation camp, they were quartered in the same barracks. They were members of the same company of the 112th Infantry, 28th division, overseas. Being from the same county, they became close friends.
Joe was near Pvt. Fink on Jan. 7 in Belgium, and saw him fall. Last Friday he told something of the story to the Star-Clipper, while stopping in Traer on his way to Gladbrook and Lincoln to visit Gerald’s widow and parents. Doubtless he was able to tell them things about their soldier’s death which could not have been learned from official sources.
“Gerald was wounded by machine gun bullets; at least five struck him,” Joe said. “It happened about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. The nearest first-aid station was four or five miles back, and he had to be moved under cover of darkness, because it would require the whole company to take him through the deep snow. There was a chance that his life might be saved, so early next morning the company started back with him. We made a stretcher out of a blanket. The boys alternated, four at a time, carrying him through snow waist deep. Another company was with us, taking back a wounded sergeant in the same manner. Gerald talked with me as we were carrying him. At the first-aid station an ambulance was available to move him to a field hospital. We never saw him again. We had been in action only a few days before he was wounded.”
Pvt. Frank King, of Vinton, also of Pfc. Kriz’s and Pvt. Fink’s company, was killed in action the same day Gerald was wounded. Joe drove to Vinton Thursday of last week to visit his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Forrest King, living about eight miles southeast of the Benton county seat. Pvt. King was the target of a N**i sniper.
Joe himself was wounded in action 9 days later, near the German border with France, headed for the Rhine. A mortar shell exploded within six feet. Had he not been in a foxhole he would have been instantly killed. A shell fragment about the size of a 25c piece grazed his left arm, entered his chest under the arm and lodged in his back. The chief damage was to spinal nerves, and the injury has left him seriously crippled. Joe was in a field hospital for three weeks, in a Paris hospital two days, then was removed to another a few miles from Paris from which he was flown to England on a hospital plane. He was in five different hospitals in England, the longest stretch in the 160th General hospital, near Cheltenham, where he remained from February until May.
Everybody has heard the joke about the surgeon who mislaid his knife and found he had sewed it up inside the patient. This almost happened to Joe, except it was a surgeon’s needle that was left in his body instead of a knife, during an operation for removal of the shrapnel from his back. Fortunately the doctor knew what had happened to his needle, but it was explained to Joe afterward, “you were too far gone to recover it then.” The needle was removed after he had been moved to England.
Joe was bedfast about a month, and as a wheel chair patient about the same length of time. Then he began to walk again. The treatment for the spinal nerve injury consists of physical therapy and exercise. He is definitely improving, but it is slow. He gets about with a cane.
The Clutier soldier says he has had good care. He can forgive the doctors for leaving a needle in his body, because, he says, “they had too many patients and too much work over there to handle it all without making a few mistakes.” A Red Cross lady wrote all his letters for a month until he was able to write again. He has high praise for the service rendered by the Red Cross.
Joe was returned to the States on a hospital ship, leaving England May 28. He was sixteen days crossing the Atlantic to Charleston, S.C. After three days in Stark General hospital at Charleston, he was moved to Denver.
“I have been well cared for in all the hospitals I’ve been in,” he says. “They are doing everything possible for me.”
Joe left last Monday to report back at Fitzsimmons hospital at Denver. He says his friends have been fine in writing to him while he was in hospitals in England and since, and he appreciated it a lot. The Star-Clipper hopes they will continue to remember this soldier with cheering cards and letters. It’s little enough that they can do in appreciation of one who has given so much in this war.
