BRACELET FOUND IN EUROPEAN FOXHOLE DELIVERED TO DAUGHTER OF WORLD WAR II VETERAN IN THE WOODLANDS
On Sunday a team of French and American military historians returned the long-lost sterling silver bracelet of a WWII hero that was discovered in a European foxhole after more than sixty-nine years of being lost. The bracelet was returned to the Veteran’s Daughter and extended family at their family home in The Woodlands. First Lieutenant Leslie Harry Boerstler was born September 5, 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio to the late Francis Christian and Anna Marie Boerstler. Boerstler served with Company C, 401st Glider Company of the famous 101st Airborne Division. In early 1945, he was attached to the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment for Operation Oscar and other combat operations in the vicinity of Schweighouse-Sur-Moder, Alsace, France. It was during this period of combat, his bracelet, a Christmas gift from his new bride Mary Ann, was lost on the field of battle. Boerstler survived the war and returned home to America in 1946, thinking the bracelet was lost forever. Upon returning home, he retired after forty years with the General Electric Company working as an engine control systems manager. He passed away in 2011 in The Woodlands and was buried in the local Forest Park Cemetery. The obituary helped the historians locate his daughter. The bracelet was discovered in a foxhole in the Haguenau Forest of Alsace, France by local French military historians Mr. Gerard Aron and Mr. Thomas Fery in April of 2014. In an effort to locate his family, Aron and Fery recently turned to U.S. Military Historian and Army Veteran Zachariah Fike for help to locate the family. With a bit of detective work, Fike was able to locate Boerstler’s daughter, Joane Boerstler Noack, of The Woodlands, Texas. Instead of mailing the bracelet, Mr. Fery, a French Police Officer, traveled over four thousand miles from France to America with his fiance and joined by Fike they personally hand delivered the bracelet. This was Mr. Fery’s first-time visiting America. After 78 years, Boerstler’s daughter was reunited with a piece of history she never knew existed.
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