WWII Stories Told on High Trestle Trail in Iowa

When Jim and I decided to bike the Raccoon River Trail and the High Trestle Trail just before the memorial of the D-Day landing on Normandy Beach, we didn't think we'd hear war stories so far away from radio and TV.

But I heard a slapping/flapping sound when I pedaled my bicycle and wanted it fixed. The gun shop next to the Flat Tire Lounge in Madrid was now a bike shop. The young bike mechanic inside explained to me that the store is a bike shop in the summer and a gun shop in the fall. I saw a long dagger in a sheath in the display window.

As the mechanic spun my wheels and checked out the gears on my bicycle, I started to look around. I saw a sign that said, "3rd Battalion Rangers" over the cash register, high up on the wall. The young mechanic told me the owner, who wasn't there, had been a major in the Army Rangers. He won the Silver Star in Afghanistan and went on to fight in Iraq.

I wondered if the owner was the scary looking dude I'd seen in the gun shop with all the scary signs in his shop (now gone). The guy I saw was kind of a scrawny, leathery guy with a scraggly beard. If that's the owner, his name is Kirk Ringgenberg. That's the name on the Silver Star award.

Randy Armentrout, accompanied by Russell, his 10-year-old son, mentioned his uncles' war stories after the bike mechanic talked about Ringgenberg. After I heard one WWII story, I invited the Armentrouts up to the Flat Tire Lounge so my husband could hear the stories too.

The only thing I remember about Paul Armentrout is that he was the lead aviator in a squadron and told his group that he was going to be gone for half an hour to dive down from the sky and wave his wing by way of saying hi to his brother. Unfortunately, the entire squadron followed him. The Americans watching on the ground, not knowing what was going on, got nervous and started to respond with small arms fire to warn off the aircraft. Paul got in a lot of trouble for that little misadventure.

One other thing about Paul. He wasn't supposed to keep his flight missions. Keeping even one flight mission was a court-martial offense. He kept all 40 flight missions. He was scared to death he'd be found out, but eventually, his flight missions became valuable and rare historical documentation that no one else or few other people had. He was not court martialed.

However, I found Ross Armentrout's story even more compelling. In WWII he was assigned to military intelligence. He had the usual issue of weapons, but his main tool was a typewriter. He was in the basement of a house in France that Americans had occupied as a central military intelligence post. Suddenly overrun by German forces, the Americans managed to get an American general out of harm's way in time, but other American soldiers were not so fortunate. Many surrendered to the Germans. Ross Armentrout and four other American soldiers hid out in the basement. Despite repeated searches, the Nazis didn't find them.

Then the Germans set up their own intelligence headquarters in the same house. Five Americans were still trapped in the basement.

What to do? Surrender or not?

They drew straws, and the count came out three against surrendering and two for surrendering.

They planned an escape. In the middle of the night, they crept upstairs and slit the two German sentries' throats. Then they shot the rest of the Germans except for an SS colonel and an SS major. They forced the officers down in the basement and held them until the Americans recaptured the area.

As soon as the Americans secured the area, Ross Armentrout and his four buddies delivered the SS officers to corresponding American officers and Ross Armentrout was awarded the Bronze Star for the successful operation. Perhaps the other four soldiers were awarded the Bronze Star as well.

They found out later that their fellow American soldiers who did surrender to the Nazis were all shot in the back of the head, a war crime in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

My husband told Randy Armentrout that this Nazi atrocity had a great deal to do with American revenge-taking on German soldiers and also with the ferocity of Allied forces in the battles in Europe that followed.