79th Infantry Division Marker at German Military Cemetery

West of Stalingrad on August 26, 1942, the 79th Infantry Division was forced to withdraw from its defensive positions along the Don River near Serafimovich and moved southward due to heavy pressure from the 304th Rifle Division and the 14th Guards Rifle Division.  The division suffered four NCOs/enlisted killed in action; one officer and 18 NCOs/enlisted were wounded in action.  One infantry regiment moved southwest.  To the west was the 2nd Italian Infantry Division of the XXXV Corps of the Italian Eighth Army; to the southeast was the 113th Infantry Division.  The division headquarters was located at Karagichev.  (Stalingrad: The Death of the German Sixth Army on the Volga, 1942-1943)

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American Hangman

John Woods and fifteen other men from Greenwood County departed Eureka, Kansas on August 26, 1943 for Fort Leavenworth for possible induction into military service.  He was past his two-year probation and by mid-1943 the U.S. military had already faced heavy losses at Bataan, Guadalcanal, Kasserine Pass, Sicily and New Guinea.  Men, who had been rejected in mid-1941, were now seen in a new light.  And so, on August 30, 1943 John C. Woods was inducted into the United States Army, receiving Army Service Number 37540591.  John listed his mother as Mattie Martha Green as his next-of-kin and listed her residence as 1561 South Mosely Street in Wichita.  (American Hangman: MSgt. John C. Woods: The United States Army’s Notorious Executioner in World War II and Nürnberg)