14/05/2026
Stern. The final name connecting the Long Gray Line to 1941.
Herbert Irving Stern reported to West Point at 18 years old in 1937. Four years later the Academy handed him a commission. The Army handed him something else. His battery commander put him in charge of the unit on day one and left the next morning. Two sergeants taught him what the classroom could not.
December 19, 1944. Freezing fog. Belgium. Stern drove to the highest ground he could find and registered the guns on a German armor unit. He called in ten battalions of artillery. 120 guns. The advance stopped.
Four months later, his Jeep stopped outside a camp in Salzwedel. The smell reached them before the fence came into view. They opened the gate, released 3,000 women, and got them fed and cared for. He drove back weeks later and almost didn't recognize them. They were different people.
He is 107 years old. He is the last surviving member of the West Point Class of 1941. He still answers to the callsign. Dockyard Six.
OakLines Podcast | Episode 4 |
Col. Herbert Irving Stern, USA (Ret.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsRtI5phXh4
Photograph from The 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of Germany by Theodore Draper, Viking Press, 1946. Public domain. Source: Internet Archive (archive.org/details/84thInfDivBattleOfGermany).
