Combat helmet of Colfax WWII vet to return home

COLFAX — Robert Kaldenberg has no memory of his father, Robert Lee Kaldenberg. The elder Kaldenberg was killed in action during Operation Market Garden, one of the deadliest battles of World War II.

A pilot with the 401st Glider Infantry Division, he was reported missing in action on Oct. 1, 1943. His remains, along with his dog tags weren’t found until 1951, by a Dutch farmer deep plowing a field for the first time since the end of the war.

“I’ve never know the person that he was, I’ll know he went off war and was unlucky enough to not come back,” Kaldenberg said.

After his father’s death, his mother, Elsie Kaldenberg remarried and moved out of Iowa, leaving Robert’s family behind. For years, the younger Kaldenberg had little to remember the father he never knew, only a few officials notices from the Army, along with two Purple Hearts, one earned during the Normandy beach invasion at D-Day, and another from Operation Market Garden. It wasn’t until earlier this year when Kaldenberg received a call from a cousin in Iowa, Dutch authorities had found his father’s combat helmet, and wanted to return it to Kaldenberg.

“They didn’t know I was alive, they didn’t know I existed, they found my cousin because my uncle and my grandfather made queries into finding my father in the 40s,” Kaldenberg said.

Kaldenberg, who lives in the Seattle, Was. area now isn’t sure how it’ll feel to hold his father’s helmet for the first time. For years, he’s resisted telling his children and grandchildren about his father, a man he never knew. Before donating the helmet to the Colfax Historical Society, he plans to bring it back to the Pacific Northwest, to show his family, and to tell them a little more about his father.

“I’m not going to try and keep the helmet in my little corner of America when most of the family is right there in Iowa,” Kaldenberg said. “I want it to be a memento to the people my father grew up around and died defending.”

Felix De Klein, an amatuer Dutch metal detectorist, found the helmet sometime in 2011. Working together with Thulai van Maanen, a retired member of the Dutch Army, De Klein was seeking to return as many of the items to the families of the soldiers who’d left them behind. After making contact with the Kaldenberg family in Iowa van Maanen arranged to have the helmet transferred to the Iowa National Guard, who will present it to the Kaldenberg family during a ceremony at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in the afternoon at the Colfax Veteran’s Memorial, with a reception to follow at the Colfax Historical Society.

Robert Lee Kaldenberg’s brother, John Kaldenberg, is one of the few Kaldenberg’s alive today who still remembers the Iowa native who gave his life during World War II. Like his brother, John Kaldenberg served during World War II, but the war ended before he was shipped overseas. The news that his brother’s helmet had found and will be returned to the family is only a small comfort for John Kaldenberg, however.

“I wasn’t really very interested in digging up old things, but the kids wanted to go for it,” John Kaldenberg said. “It feels like we’re having the funeral for the third time, but the kids wanted to do it.”

For John Kaldenberg, it’s easier to remember the good times with his brother, horsing around in the yard on their farm outside of Colfax.

“He was just a brother, the only brother I had,” John Kaldenberg recalled. “We did a lot of horsing around in the yard as kid, we didn’t have automobiles and bicycles like all the kids do these days so we just played in the yard.”

Kaldenberg said he’s not sure what to expect when he holds the helmet in his hands for the first time, but he’s doubtful it’ll stir any memories of his father.

“I’ve held things that were his, it doesn’t stir any deep memories, maybe because I don’t have any deep memories,” Kaldenberg said. “All I have are a few pictures, they were taken when I was less than two years old.”

Mostly, he’s grateful for the Dutch citizens who’ve continued to honor the memory of the soldiers like his father, the men who paid the ultimate price in the battle to defend freedom.

“I don’t have any expectation of anything, other than the gratitude of the Dutch people,” Kaldenberg said. “They are very much in favor of honoring those people wherever and whenever they can.”

Contact David Dolmage at 641-792-3121 ext. 6532 or ddolmage@newtondailynews.com