As the children and grandchildren of the men of the 111th continue to clear out family homes, treasures occasionally surface.
A few weeks ago, Sergio Gomez (son of 111th Master Sergeant Frank Gomez) discovered a box in the garage of his parents’ home in San Antonio. It contained, to his great surprise, five of the six Dutch ceramic tiles we have talked about before on this blog. That makes five soldiers who somehow obtained these tiles (perhaps a gift?) and mailed them home nearly 80 years ago.
As we reported in previous posts, the 111th was billeted in a tile factory in Maastricht, Netherlands, in late September for about a month before their extended winter stay in Heerlen, nearby. American troops had liberated southern Netherlands from four years of Nazi occupation just two weeks earlier. https://wwiitracings.wordpress.com/2014/03/12/a-french-orphan-and-the-tiles-of-war/.
Our best guess is that someone employed by the tile factory had given the tiles to some of our men as a gift in appreciation. The people of the Netherlands remain grateful to the American troops to this day.
In 2021, we arranged to send a complete set of the six tiles to the Centre Ceramique in Maastricht. A year later we visited the museum and had a chance to see those tiles once more. The tiles have an interesting past and were prototypes whose production was ended by the German occupation. https://wwiitracings.wordpress.com/2021/04/16/the-tiles-of-war-part-2/ and https://wwiitracings.wordpress.com/2022/10/25/back-to-the-netherlands-part-2-the-tiles-of-war/
There’s a lesson here: Take a good look around your parents’ or grandparents’ attics, basements, or garages for any historic treasures waiting to be discovered!
WWII Tracings 