Motts Military Museum Inc.

Winifred M. Breegle (Winnie) was a first-year teacher at a consolidated high school in Bloomingdale, Ohio, when in February 1944 she joined the Navy to support the war effort. Winnie delivered coded messages to the White House and military establishments in Washington D.C. She learned the Navajo language to interpret messages during key battles in the Pacific.

Winnie turned 100 in February 2022 and passed in January 2023.

Colonel Thomas N. Moe spent 5 ½ years as a prisoner in North Vietnam. He was stationed at the Danang Air base, where he flew 85 combat missions, including 60 over North Vietnam. In January 1968, while piloting an F-4C Phantom, a fuse malfunction exploded a 750-pound bomb on the wing of the F-4C accompanying him, damaging both aircraft and sending them into spiraling dives. Tom, his fellow pilot, and the other craft’s 2-man crew safely bailed out into a jungle in North Vietnam. Separated from the other men, Tom survived on his own for three days before being captured. Tom has vivid memories of the fateful day of the explosion, his attempted jungle survival, and over five years as a prisoner of war, enduring unimaginable torture, and harsh treatment. Tom and his wife Chris live in Fairfield County, Ohio.

The Nazis SS created the Nordhausen camp for the extermination of prisoners that were too ill to be productive at Dora, a forced-labor camp. Bob was one of the first soldiers to enter the Nordhausen camp, which had been recently vacated by their captors. He witnessed 2000-3000 decaying bodies and skeletons. Bob left the camp with a new resolve. The inhumanity he had witnessed (Bob was just 18 years old) gave him and his unit (the 4^th Calvary Group, a part of the VII Corps) a new and profound understanding of the evil they were fighting. The 4^th marched on with a reinforced purpose, defeating the Nazi’s in fierce battles in the Harz Mountains and taking the city of Halle. Thereafter, the Nazis surrendered, and Hitler killed himself. The war in Europe ended. Bob and his wife Alice live in Newark, Ohio.