William Francis “Bill” Kiehn, born 10-10-1921, in Olmsted County, Minnesota, United States,
the only child from William H. Kiehn and his wife Florence Kiehn
and he entered service there. Kiehn volunteered for paratrooper and received training in Toccoa, Georgia
under Captain Herbert Maxwell Sobel
. Paratroopers were considered a new kind of soldier at the time. They were trained to jump out of airplanes using a parachute and usually behind enemy lines. In the late 1960s, Sobel, not loved by his para’s, shot himself in the head with a small-caliber pistol. The bullet entered his left temple, passed behind his eyes, and exited out the other side of his head. This severed his optic nerves and left him blind. He was later moved to a VA assisted living facility in Waukegan, Illinois. Sobel resided there for his last seventeen years until his death due to malnutrition on 30-09-1987, age 75.




In ‘Shifty’s War’, the biography of Darrell Powers,
a good friend of Kiehn, Kiehn was described as a muscular guy who would still go strong long after other guys were exhausted. But he was at risk of being washed out because he had a chip on his shoulder. Therefore, one day, Technical Sergeant Amos ‘Buck’ Taylor,
, here in the green jacket, who saw the potential in Kiehn, took extra time to teach Kiehn close order drill one-on-one real early in the morning to help Kiehn shape up. Buck Taylor survived the war and died 24-08-2011, aged 90, in Orange City, Florida. Powers did not like Kiehn at first, but the two became good friends and Kiehn came home with Powers to Clinchco once after receiving their jump wings. Kiehn made his first combat jump into Normandy on D-Day.














Death and burial ground of Kiehn, William Francis “Bill”.
Kiehn fought in the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne.
In 10-02-1945, during the fights in Haguenau, while Kiehn was taking a nap in the basement of an empty house, an artillery shell hit the house. The ceiling collapsed and Kiehn was killed before medic Eugene “Doc” Roe







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