S Sgt. Robert Keck

Biography and military service

Robert Keck was born in Leidringen, Germany but his family settled in Mountville when he was still a little child. Keck was 18 when he joined L Company of the 83rd's 329th Infantry Regiment as a replacement on January 3, 1945. Little equipped for winter warfare, as were most GI's, he had arrived in France two days earlier and was immediately put aboard a 40-and-8 — a railroad boxcar capable of holding 40 men or eight horses. After a train ride, he was loaded onto an army truck bound for the front lines.

"By then I already had frozen feet," Keck recalled. "It was that cold. I can tell you yet today how far back my feet were frozen." Even though he was born in Germany he was ready to fight the Nazis. "I had no problem going to war against the Germans, even though I knew I had uncles and cousins on the other side," he said. "But my dad made it clear we were Americans." Keck's most vivid memory of those days was the weather. "It was damned cold, and the snow was deep," he said. "That's the first thing you remember."Keck's Battle of the Bulge experiences took place in and around the villages of Bihain, Langlire and Petite Langlire, about 26 miles north of Bastogne.

When Bob celebrated his 19th birthday, he was on the banks of the Rhine River advancing through Germany. Bob has been wounded in the leg and face and had several near brushes with death. "Once I was on a night patrol and I was trying to get up on the bridge when the Germans blew the bridge on me," said Keck, who told of being left for dead when his platoon was forced into a retreat. "That's a horrible feeling. They thought I was killed. But of course I was lucky. I could tell a lot of stories like that, close calls that we had."

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