Fred Brossman is a Spring Grove resident with quite an enthralling family history. He is a former principal, as well as English teacher, at Hanover High School. I had the privilege of interviewing him on Friday, Feb 21, 2025. During this interview, he shared with me stories of his familial involvement in World War II.
Brossman is of German descent, and grew up speaking predominantly German. His grandfather had served in the American Army during World War II. “One of the three battles that he fought in,” he said, “was the battle of the Ardennes, which was fought in the middle of the winter, and it was very, very cold.” The Battle of the Ardennes, also known as “The Battle of the Bulge”, lasted from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945.
During the battle, the militia slept on the ground, which was covered in snow. “It was probably from that that my grandfather developed problems with his teeth.”
As the military men went down the Rhine River (which runs through Basel, Bonn, Cologne, and Duisburg in Germany), they stopped in a city known as Mannheim, which resides in the upper Rhine plain. “His teeth kept causing him problems, so he decided that he would go to a dentist.”
He asked around about recommendations for a dentist office, and was recommended to Dr. Wiedemann, “who happened to be the president of the Journal Dental Association.” Brossman continued, “Before the Second World War, [Wiedemann] was taken out of office because he refused to join the Nazi party”. When he asked if there were any other trusted dental practices nearby, he was sent to Wiedemann’s daughter, who also was a dentist. Her office was a short distance away, so he went there to get his teeth treated. “And that is how they got started.” This is how Brossman’s grandparents met each other.
“Now, both my grandparents had their own houses in the city of Mannheim, and the Americans would come and bomb during the day, the British would come and bomb at night, and as it turned out, both of their houses were completely destroyed by bombs.” Brossman continued, telling how they were “very fortunate” that his grandfather had purchased a small country home up in the mountains, just above a town called Hemsbach. This is where they moved to during the war, since neither of their homes were available. “The British would parachute out when their plane was shot down, and they would get caught in the trees in their parachutes. German troops would come by in the morning, and if they found anybody hanging by the trees, they would shoot them. Now, we didn’t know at the time, but my grandfather would go out at night and he would cut the British soldiers out of the trees and hide them in the basement of their house until they were able to arrange a way for them to safely escape.”
Brossman then recounted the events of a strange encounter that occurred at a restaurant many years later. He and his family had been eating supper. He claims that there had been a “one-armed man” sitting there that kept staring at his mother, which had been making her quite uncomfortable. “After they had finished eating, the man came over to the table and said, ‘Are you Frau. Wiedemann?’ and my mother said, ‘No, Frau Wiedemann was my mother.’ And so the man sat down and he told us a story of how he had been a British soldier during the Second World War and had been shot down and ended up hanging from a parachute from a tree, and that my grandfather had gone out and cut him down and helped him escape from Germany.” Brossman then shared how the man had loved Hemsbach so much that he decided to move there when the war was over.
