Sgt. killed after earning Bronze Star during WWII

This story is part of Mon Valley Sons of World War II, a series about our sons who lost their lives in service to our country during World War II.

By JOHN J. TURANIN
For the MVI

Monongahela’s Neil “Bud” Cain had just entered combat in France in July 1944 with the U.S. Army’s 110th Infantry Regiment. Three weeks later, Sgt. Cain was recommended for the Bronze Star medal for heroic achievement in combat.

Sgt. Neil “Bud” Cain

As they fought into Germany and through the enemy’s defensive obstacles called the “Siegfried Line” on Sept. 30, 1944, Bud Cain was struck multiple times by enemy gunfire. He would not survive to see October 1944, and Bud’s fiancée, Mabel Sayre, would never hear the vows that had been promised.

The Cain family

Neil Daniel Cain was born Oct. 16, 1919, to Daniel and Anna Netta (née Hartman) Cain in Monongahela (known as “Mon City”). Daniel and Anna had married in Monongahela in 1906. Daniel was an electric lineman, while Anna managed the Cain family household.

The roots of Neil Cain’s family run deep in American history. The Cain family heritage traces back to Scotland and Ireland, arriving in the United States by 1860, as well as to the British colonies of Virginia and Pennsylvania. The surname was spelled Kane in 1860.

Much of the Hartman family arrived from Ireland and England before eventually settling in colonial Western Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War.

Neil was the fifth of six children and the only son born to Daniel and Anna. Helen May arrived in 1908, followed by Edith Katherine (1911), Mary Lucinda (1913) and Anna Ruth (1916). Betty June, born in 1925, completed the family. The Cains lived in a rented home at 708 Railroad St. in Monongahela from 1920 through 1940.

Neil attended the Lincoln and Central schools and was an avid swimmer. In 1931, Neil joined three of his friends on a road trip to Deep Creek Lake in Maryland. In the 1930s Bud Cain played on the Nifty Newsies football team, composed of employees and newsboys of the News Agency Company. In 1935, the team won the Junior Football League Trophy and was celebrated with a banquet. Bud also played softball for the local Rangers’ team, and he was selected to play right field in the league’s All-Star game in 1936.

After completing his first year of high school, Neil left to enter the workforce and help support the family. In 1940, he worked as a clerk at a store. By 1940, Neil’s father was working as a laborer at Monongahela Cemetery, and the four oldest daughters had married and moved out to start their own families.

Global war is brewing

The citizens of Mon City monitored the burgeoning wars overseas. Germany had long been executing the “Third Reich” political-military strategy of Fuhrer Adolph Hitler. They entered alliances with the like-minded leaders of Italy and Japan.

By the end of 1940, Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia, Austria, Poland, France, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Pursuing its own empire-building aspirations, Italy had expanded into Ethiopia, Albania and was invading France by 1940. Japan had assumed control over Korea from the Russians in 1905, but by 1940, Japan had invaded China and French Indochina.

Anticipating the potential for the U.S. to be drawn into hostilities, the Selective Service and Training Act was passed by Congress in September 1940. The act established the first peacetime armed forces draft and called four divisions of the National Guard into active duty for 12 months. Sixteen more divisions would be called into active duty by March 1941, doubling the size of the U.S. Army.

Neil Cain registered for the draft along with thousands of other young men on its first day, Oct. 16, 1940. The 21-year-old stood 5 feet, 8 inches tall and weighed 135 pounds with blue eyes and brown hair. At the time, he was working with his father at the Monongahela Cemetery.

He decided that he was ready to serve his country and not wait to be drafted, so he joined the Pennsylvania National Guard on Nov. 23, 1940. The Pennsylvania National Guard is the 28th Infantry Division of the U.S. National Guard. Neil Cain and the other National Guard soldiers of Monongahela were assigned to Company A of the 110th Infantry Regiment.

The 28th Division was called up Feb. 17, 1941. Pvt. Neil Cain and the others in Company A immediately began daily training at the local armory until they left for Indiantown Gap, Pa., for 12-month training on Feb. 28. The 110th enjoyed its first weekend leave home to Mon City two weeks later.

In August 1941, the division participated in maneuvers at Fort Anderson-Pinn-Hill, Va., and then on to the Carolina maneuvers from September to December. Neil Cain was eventually promoted to Private First Class (Pfc.), and while in North Carolina, he was promoted to corporal (Cpl.) in November 1941.

The U.S. enters World War II

While the division was training in the Carolinas, Japanese forces launched a surprise attack on the U.S. military bases in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. The U.S. declared war on Japan, and as an ally of the Japanese Empire, Germany declared war on the U.S.

Cpl. Cain and his colleagues knew that their training would soon be put into serious use.

But the 28th Division was not to ship overseas for almost two years. In January 1942, the Division moved to Camp Livingston, La. In June, Cpl. Cain was promoted to the rank of sergeant (Sgt.) The division participated in the Louisiana combat training maneuvers from September to November 1942.

Little did they know that they were preparing for the eventual Allied invasion of the European continent. But in order to invade the continent, they first needed to learn how to land thousands of troops, arms and material from the sea to a shore heavily defended by the enemy. There was a lot to learn.

Sgt. Neil Cain was fortunate to be furloughed over the 1942 Christmas holiday season, which he spent with his family and friends in Western Pennsylvania. While home, he began a relationship with Mabel Sayre of Rochester, Beaver County, Pa., a stenographer at a high school. By July 1943, the couple had fallen in love and announced their engagement.

The division moved to Camp Gordon Johnson at Carrabelle, Fla., from January through March 1943 for amphibious warfare training. Afterward, it was assigned to the VII Corps of the Second Army at Camp Pickett, Va., and beginning in August of that year, they trained in mountain warfare in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia for two months.

Finally, in September 1943, they were informed that they were moving out. Luckily, Sgt. Cain was granted furlough and returned home to spend time with his family and his fiancé. On Oct. 8, 1943, the division boarded ships destined for Great Britain. It was time to get into the war.

But combat would have to wait. There was still more training ahead. The 28th Division set up its new base at Pembrokeshire, Wales. By February 1944, Sgt. Neil Cain was recognized for his leadership and had been promoted to the rank of Staff Sgt. The division continued to train in Wales through April 1944, including at the specialized Assault Training Center in Braunton, Devonshire, England. The division set up its command post in Chiseldon, England, on April 15.

D-Day, a July landing and a race across France

Allied forces landed at the beaches of Normandy, France, on D-Day, June 6, 1944, launching “Operation Overlord,” the invasion of the European continent. Fresh troops were required to penetrate inland after the shores were secured, so the 28th Division was held in England until July 22, 1944. Fortunately for the Allied forces, the 28th Division did not have to use much of its amphibious warfare training for the July landing. If it had, it would have meant that disaster had struck: the initial June landings had failed and the enemy was still entrenched at Normandy. Instead, the 28th Division walked ashore and joined heavy combat southward and eastward across northern France.

Staff Sgt. Cain and the 110th Regiment participated in the battles in and around St. Lo, Percy, and the Foret de St. Sever into August. According to the 110th Regiment History, in the five days of baptism of fire the regiment sustained more than 600 casualties, losing about 20% of its strength. On Aug. 10, while in combat, Staff Sgt. Cain performed gallantly and was recommended for the Bronze Star award for heroic achievement.

The Battle at Foret de St. Sever would be the last serious threat to the Allied advance until reaching the fortified Siegfried Line on the border of France and Germany. But first the 110th would march down the Champs Elysees in the French capital city for the official “Liberation of Paris” parade Aug. 29 to great fanfare witnessed by French Gen. Charles DeGaulle and U.S. Gen. Omar Bradley. It was a oncein- a-lifetime experience for Staff Sgt. Cain and his fellow infantrymen.

But the celebration for the 110th was short-lived. It was time to press on toward Germany.

Enemy resistance against the regiment’s eastward advance was steady but unmatched by the strength of the Allied forces. On Sept. 8, the regiment encountered just scattered resistance as it crossed into Belgium, and into Luxembourg on Sept. 11 on its way toward Germany. The main obstacle to entering Germany was the foreboding Siegfried Line.

The Siegfried Line

Built in the 1930s by Germany along its borders with The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, was the Siegfried Line, also known as the Westwall in Germany. It was a 390-mile defensive line of more than 18,000 bunkers, tunnels and tank traps intended to seriously hamper the entry of armed offensive forces into Germany from its western border. The tank traps were called “dragon’s teeth,” closely staggered rows of 3- to 4-foot-tall concrete pyramids with land mines, barbed wire and concrete pillboxes interspersed between them.

From Sept. 12-30, the 110th Regiment pounded away at the entrenched enemy defenses near Kesfeld, Germany, with infantry attacks, artillery bombardment, tanks and tank destroyers. The Germans responded with machine guns fired from the pillboxes and with artillery and mortar fire.

When the Americans captured a pillbox, they turned the German weapons around and utilized them against their former owners with deadly effect.

Surmounting the Siegfried Line was a brutal endeavor for the 110th Regiment. While the unit eventually broke through by Oct. 1, Staff Sgt. Cain did not live long enough to enjoy a well-earned respite. On Sept. 30, 1944, when his unit was fighting at nearby Heckhuscheid, Germany, Cain was mortally wounded by enemy fire multiple times in the back and chest. He died that day.

The highly decorated 110th Infantry Regiment would go on to fight in the difficult Battles of the Hurtgen Forest, Bulge, Colmar Pocket and Rheinland before German forces surrendered on May 8, 1945.

Neil Cain, remembered

Staff Sgt. Neil Cain was initially buried at the U.S. Military Cemetery in Henri Chapelle, Belgium, on Oct. 3, 1944. He was eventually transported back to the U.S. under the Return of the War Dead program and finally laid to rest in Monongahela Cemetery on April 14, 1948.

Cain was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart as well as the Bronze Star on Aug. 10, 1944. His name is listed on the Veterans Honor Roll Memorial on Main Street, Monongahela.

Author’s note

The grave marker for Staff Sgt. Neil Cain is engraved “Killed in action in the vicinity of Zweifall, Germany.” The U.S. Army’s Individual Deceased Personnel File of Staff Sgt. Cain obtained by the author contains Cain’s Report of Burial dated Oct. 2, 1944, which states the place of death as Heckhuscheid, Germany.

According to the 110th Infantry Regiment Unit History, on the date of Staff Sgt. Cain’s loss the unit was operating in the vicinity of Kesfeld just south of Heckhuscheid, approximately 50 miles south of Zweifall. Zweifall was still behind enemy lines on the date of his loss, and the regiment did not arrive in that vicinity until about two weeks later.

The author was unable to locate any documents that would explain the citation of Zweifall on Staff Sgt. Cain’s grave marker. The author concludes that the vicinity of Heckhuscheid, Germany, was the likely location of Staff Sgt. Neil Cain’s loss.

John J. Turanin is a retired Western Pennsylvanian and grandson of the Mon Valley. His new book is “Tin Men Steel Soldiers:The price paid in World War II by a Pennsylvania mill town: True stories of the lives and losses of 81 men is about Monessen, PA.” John is one of hundreds of volunteers with the nonprofit organization Stories Behind The Stars who are writing memorial stories for every one of the 421,000 U.S. service members and 31,000 Pennsylvanians who lost their lives during World War II. Those interested in joining the effort are encouraged to visit www. StoriesBehindTheStars.org.