U-14 returning from duty in the Spanish Civil War

After one week and the conclusion of her first war patrol, the U-14, a Type IIB U-boat, arrived at Swinemünde on September 6, 1939.  As war clouds gathered, the U-14 had left the German port of Memel in the eastern Baltic under the command of Horst Wellner on August 30, 1939 for operations off the Polish coast.  The next day Germany invaded Poland and the war began.  She became the first German U-boat to attack an enemy vessel during the war when she attempted to torpedo the surfaced Polish submarine from a range of 1,000 meters at 10:22 p.m. on September 3, 1939.  However, the torpedo exploded prematurely and the intended victim escaped.  (Dönitz’s Crews: Germany’s U-Boat Sailors in World War II)

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American Military Cemetery at Oise-Aisne,  Plot E

On Monday, September 6, 1943, official executioner Major Arthur S. Imell hanged U.S. Army Private Charles H. Smith at Oran, Algeria for the crime of murder.

The Army originally buried Smith in Oran, Algeria in the U.S. Military Cemetery in Plot U, Grave 1-2, but reinterred his body in 1949 at the American Military Cemetery at Oise-Aisne in Plot E, in Row 4, Grave 77.

(The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II)