American soldiers have always had a fondness for souvenirs, and as a young sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, Kelly Chapman was no different.

The year was 1944, and the Allies had punched through the German line and were bulldozing their way through France. As American troops, including Chapman, advanced toward the edge of Versailles, just west of Paris, German soldiers hastily abandoned a nearby airbase.

It was there that Chapman, now 92 and living in New Hope, would scoop up the identification papers of a German soldier who fled the airbase ahead of the American advance.

For almost 70 years Chapman held onto the papers, and he often wondered what happened to his former enemy. Did he make it out of the war alive? Was he ever captured? How did his military ID get left behind?

Recently, with the help of a friend, Chapman got answers to those questions and was elated to discover that his old German adversary, Karl Hense, 91, was still alive.

Plans were made to fly an interpreter to Germany, and the men were to meet online through Skype to talk about their lives during the war and since. Chapman even sent the entire packet of captured identification papers back to the former German soldier.

But the reunion of these two old soldiers would hit a snag, proving that not every story has a tailor-made ending.

Staff Sgt. Kelly Chapman

Like many young men in the 1940s, Chapman was spurred to enlist by the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces.

"We didn't know what we were getting into," Chapman recently said during an interview at his home. "When Pearl Harbor happened, everybody went into the service."

These days, despite his advanced age, Chapman is still pretty fit. He walks with the aid of a cane after damaging two ligaments in his left knee last year, but he still manages to get around quite deftly. His voice is strong, and time doesn't seem to have slowed his senses one bit.

A graduate of the now-closed New Hope High School, Chapman went straight to work at the DuPont plant in Waynesboro.

"I did a lot of things there," he said. "I helped develop the Lycra system."

He would finally retire from DuPont in 1982 as a personnel supervisor. During that time, he also became president of the New Hope Telephone Co., a small business that is still up and running and remains independent. Chapman spent 40 years there.

"In '02 I gave it up," he said. "That was long enough."

Chapman is also a former president of Ruritan National, and as a 64-year member of the New Hope Ruritans he maintains a perfect attendance record.

But before all of that, Chapman had a war to get through.

After enlisting with five friends — all of whom would make back it back to the states — Chapman joined the Eighth Air Force, a heavy bomber squadron.

"I was in a headquarters outfit," he said. "I did not fly."

The headquarters company went overseas to England and eventually continental Europe, Chapman said, and was mostly filled with mechanics and clerks.

"We were really, sort of, protected," he recalled. "The only thing we had to worry about was bombs."

American soldiers have always had a fondness for souvenirs, and as a young sergeant in the United States Air Force during World War II, Kelly Chapman was no different.

The American pilots supported by headquarters operations had it much tougher. "The British bombed at night and we bombed at daytime. We lost a lot of men that way," Chapman said.

He had a bad knee for which he was hospitalized. As a result, Chapman missed the D-Day invasion. "On D-Day we were at the Eighth general hospital," he said.

At 9 a.m. on June 6, 1944, he said all of the soldiers there were moved to another hospital. Hours later "they were bringing wounded in," he said.

Allies push forward

Although Chapman didn't experience direct combat, he saw plenty during his more than two years in the European Theater of Operations. What especially stood out for him was the battle of St. Lo, where Staunton's own 116th Infantry was instrumental in liberating the town from the Germans in 1944.

"St. Lo was blown all to pieces," said Chapman, who flew over the town and saw scattered tanks, houses blown apart and countless fallen trees. "There was nothing left of it."

But St. Lo, he said, provided an opening for the Allied forces, who relentlessly pushed forward. "The Germans were on the rout," he said. "They just abandoned everything and got out. Patton and everybody were right on their heels."

By this time, Chapman had gone from bombers to fighter planes, when he was transferred to the Ninth Air Force. He was a driver for a highly decorated World War I veteran who had been promoted to colonel during the second world war.

"He had a bunch of ribbons that would go clear across his chest," Chapman said. "I was his go-fer, I reckon."

Under orders from the colonel in August 1944, Chapman was told to grab a photographer and take a Jeep from the coast of France to Versailles. The colonel, he said, wanted pictures of the war across the roughly 80-mile drive.

Bulldozers had already cleared the way, and Chapman said anti-aircraft guns were strewn about, along with German vehicles and dead horses.

"They abandoned everything you could think of," he said. "They were in a pretty big rush, it looked like."

Signs of a hasty retreat

When Chapman arrived in Versailles, the Ninth Air Force had already secured an airfield discarded by the Germans. A few planes — including Junkers JU-88 and Heinkel bombers — were left behind.

"They had a base of bombers," Chapman said.

The colonel had also managed to commandeer an eight-room house for himself, Chapman and a private cook. "He doggone sure was good," Chapman said of the cook.

On the airbase, the Germans had emptied drawers and desks, scattering papers, boxes and debris throughout the barracks, Chapman said. It was there he came across the ID papers of Karl Hense, roughly 20 pages l


"I thought it was a billfold," Chapmansaid. "It was his ID pad, sort of like a passport."

Chapman stuffed the find into his bag.

"It stayed there until I got home," he said.

Seventy years would pass until Chapman would finally learn the fate of the soldier who had left the German airbase in such haste.

Search for Hense planned

About five years ago, Chapman was at his New Hope residence and going through his old military belongings in hopes of finding his long lost Air Force dog tags.

"I haven't found them yet," he joked.

However, he did come across the identification papers belonging to Hense, which were still in his possession. Chapman would eventually hand the papers over to a Ruritan friend, Deborah Fordham of Weyers Cave.

At the time, Fordham was working in the German farmhouse at the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton. Fordham scanned the identification papers, but really didn't think much about them until a few weeks ago when she was sifting through old pictures and came across them.

Fordham, a Mormon, had once befriended a young man on the Internet through a Mormon-based social media website.

The young man just happened to live in northern Germany, and Fordham took a shot in the dark and asked him if he could try to find out if Karl Hense was still alive.

"Kelly wanted to know what happened to him," she said.

Fordham said in turn the man contacted another woman, who wasted little time in locating Hense, who was still alive and residing in the German village of Meschede with his wife. When informed there was a former American soldier in the United States who still had his military identification papers, Fordham said she was told Hense wept at the news.

After that, contact with Hense

was lost.

That's when Fordham decidedit was time to head out on a mission of her own — go to Germany and find Karl Hense. She enlisted the help of her son, Allen Fordham, 30, who is fluent in German and also an Army sergeant in psychological operations.

Thanks to another son, a commercial pilot, the pair took a free plane ride to Germany about two weeks ago.

"We may be a week, we may be two weeks," Deborah Fordham said, just two hours before their flight was to take off. "We're not really sure what's going to happen when we show up on his doorstep."

Landing in Germany

Despite repeated attempts, Fordham said no further contact was made with Hense before they set off from the states. Still, a list of questions from Chapman and a News Leader reporter were given to the pair, hopeful they would find the former German soldier.

The initial plan, if Hense was found, was to have the former adversaries converse online through Skype with Allen Fordham interpreting for the two old soldiers. But after their arrival in Europe, the Fordhams soon learned that Hense was suffering from dementia. They also were were told he didn't have Internet service at his rural home.

Undeterred, the Fordhams pressed ahead. By phone, they contacted Hense's housekeeper, who instructed the pair to wait an hour while she sought permission from Hense's daughter in hopes he could speak to the two Americans. An hour passed, and a second call was placed to the Hense residence.

"Karl picked up the phone, it was on speaker. He was very angry and told us he did not talk on the telephone and he hung up," Deborah Fordham wrote in an email from Europe.

The Fordhams, though, remained unfazed. That same day, they received an enthusiastic phone call from Hense's daughter, and plans were made the next day to finally meet Karl Hense.

Excitement at last

Traveling by taxi, they arrived at Hense's home just after 11 a.m. They were greeted by Hense's son-in-law, Thomas Pöppinghaus, who told them that Karl was in the back of the home waiting for them.

"He was wrong," Fordham said. "Karl was right behind him with a big grin on his face."

Fordham said she gave Hense a salute "from Sgt. Chapman." Hense snapped a salute in return.

With fresh strawberries and finger sandwiches spread about the dining room for the Americans and Germans, there was a champagne toast to friendship between the two countries.

Allen Fordham then set about speaking with Hense, now retired from the German train industry, where he worked in human resources.

"I could understand very little of what he said, but I could tell by his voice and mannerism as he described leaving Versailles that it was difficult for him," Deborah Fordham said. "I was mesmerized as he spoke of his escape from Versailles."

Perhaps because of his dementia, caused by a head injury sustained in a fall in February, Hense didn't dwell much on his escape, and instead had an almost childlike focus on his guests.

"He was very excited to have two Americans visit him," Fordham said.

But Pöppinghaus was able to fill in some of the blanks for the Fordhams. Hense's daughters, Felicitas Neumann and Beatrix Pöppinghaus, also provided details of their father's ordeal.

Abandoning base

Hense was stationed at the Versailles air base, where he was in the Army as part of a train detachment. Beatrix Pöppinghaus said her father's job was to eavesdrop on French radio communications, jotting down the Morse code letter by letter and then handing the information off to another soldier.

The Germans learned the Americans were on their way and barreling toward Paris, Pöppinghaus said. Fearful of being captured, the German soldiers, none of whom reportedly had much affection for Adolf Hitler, decided to abandon the airbase and split up into small groups.

Pöppinghaus said the soldiers knew if they were found by the Germans, they would be shot as traitors. If the French captured them, they would be killed by their enemy, he said. So they decided to destroy their identification papers. But then word spread quickly that the Americans were much closer than anyone had anticipated. Pöppinghaus said the German soldiers dumped everything they could but didn't have time to destroy anything before fleeing.

Hense, along with a handful of other soldiers, set out on foot from the airbase, at times stealing food along the way, Pöppinghaus said.

One of the soldiers, armed with a handgun, would knock on a door and then place the gun on the inside of the door with his foot on top of the weapon, smiling when the knock was answered. Sometimes that would get them food and shelter. Other times, it wouldn't.

Neumann, relaying a story she heard from her father as a young girl, told Allen Fordham that after a few days on the run, Hense found a bicycle. When he came across a weakened German soldier, he allowed him use of the bike instead. Later, when they came across a group of Allied soldiers on the road, Hense leaped into some nearby bushes and hid. The wounded soldier was captured and taken away.

Alone, Hense hitched a ride on a train, and he finally made it back to his hometown of Meschede. With Americans, French and the Russians seemingly on all sides, Pöppinghaus said Hense remembered hiding out for a couple of months.

None of the soldiers Hense was with after fleeing the airbase made it out of the war alive, according to Fordham.

"It was a very dangerous trek," she said.

Receptions, reactions

Debbie Fordham said while in Germany, she found it interesting that those in the western part of the country expressed gratitude toward the American forces for helping defeat Hitler's war machine, a sentiment she'd heard in other European countries but not Germany.

"Thomas said that this entire part of Germany was greatly relieved that the Americans did what they did. They believe they have such great freedom in their world because of America," she said.

While Hense didn't speak directly about receiving his long-lost identification papers, Fordham said his family noticed the pending reunion and discussions surrounding the Versailles escape seemed to get him to refocus.

"Getting the papers was something that pulled him out of it a little bit," she said.

With the Fordhams' quest to find Hense now over, Chapman said he was disheartened to learn of the German man's dementia.

"That's the sad part, that he's in this state," he said.

However, Chapman was pleased to finally learn once and for all what became of the man whose military identification papers he held onto for so very long.

"It was quite a story," he said.

Kelly Chapman

was sergeant in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.

• The attack on Pearl Harbor spurred him to join the war effort.

• He joined the Eighth Air Force, a heavy bomber squadron, where he was in the headquarters company comprising mechanics and clerks.

• By the time of the Normandy invasion, Chapman was transferred to the Ninth Air Force, where he was a driver for a colonel, who was a highly decorated World War I veteran. This job would take him to Versailles at the air base that Hense abandoned.

Karl Hense

was stationed at a Versailles (France) air base, where he was in the German Army as part of a train detachment in 1944.

• His job was to eavesdrop on French radio communications.

• As Allied forces advanced, he and other soldiers decided to abandon the base, leaving behind documents, including his identity papers.

• After a long ordeal, hiding from both Allied and German soldiers, Hense made it back to his hometown of Meschede, where he hid for two months to avoid being arrested by the Allied troops.

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