Fenchel during his first year of tank training at Ft. Knox, Kentucky.
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Summer 1943 |
Fenchel and crew in front of one of their tanks that had the track blown off. France.
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1943-1945 |
Fenchel and young boy. Photograph taken by the U.S. Army Signal Corps on the day Fenchel received orders to advance to Luxembourg for preparation of their tank for the Rhine crossing.
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January 1945 |
Fenchel (right) with tank gunner, Aubrey Snell. Fenchel believed Snell was killed in action but five years after the war, he received a call from Snell saying he was wounded and placed in a German POW camp for the remainder of the war.
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circa 1943-1945 |
Fenchel's unit (Fourth Armored Division) crossing the Rhine on a pontoon bridge under cover of smoke. While Fenchel was driving the tank across the river, the bridge was hit by German 88 guns taking out an entire pontoon section. Engineers under fire and in swift river current moved a new section in.
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March 20, 1945 |
Fenchel drove this tank. It was the first one to break through the steel gates of the Ohrdruf concentration camp. Because Ohrdruf was the first liberated concentration camp in Germany, Generals Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton were escorted there immediately from their respective headquarters.
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April 1945 |
Fenchel (right) with a good friend who was killed in action. He was married with three children.
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Summer 1945 |
Fenchel (far left) with crew members in Czechoslovakia.
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Summer 1945 |
Fenchel during his internship at Madigan Army Hospital in Washington, DC.
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1951 |
Fenchel (first row, far left) with family. The four Fenchel brothers represented Army Armored Division, Marines, the Air Force and Army Engineers.
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1958 |
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