Gerald “Jerry” Jacobsen comes home

The Star-Tribune tells the story of Staff Sergeant Gerald “Jerry” Jacobsen, who joined the Army in 1942 and married his sweetheart, Catherine Burket, in 1943 and shipped to the war in Europe the following year with the 35th Infantry Division.

10 days after arriving in France, about a month after D-Day, Jerry was assigned to an isolated forward observation post. The position was shelled by German artillery and communications were lost. At the end of the battle, scores of soldiers were missing, including Jerry, and many of the fallen were unidentifiable. Jerry was officially listed as missing in action, and subsequently designated as deceased a year and a day later. Meanwhile, an unidentified body was interred in a grave in Normandy marked “A Comrade in Arms, Known But to God”; 73 years later exhumed and identified as S/SGT Gerald L. Jacobsen.

So, Gerald was returned to now-Catherine Tauer seventy-four years after their marriage on Friday and she recived his Bronze Star and Purple Heart;

The Star Tribune says that Jerry wasn’t the only member of his family to give the last full measure of devotion;

Six of Jerry’s brothers also served in combat, five in WWII and one in Korea and Vietnam; two of them, like Jerry, also gave their lives Robert in WWII and Donald in Vietnam.

Category: We Remember