Mayor Lyle Holmgren – Mayors Message May 2024

Memorial Day is an American holiday, observed this year on Monday, May 27th, honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military.

Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971.

It is a tradition to honor those who served in the military and sacrificed so much at a special Memorial Day program at the Tremonton Cemetery. This year’s program will be held on Monday, May 27th, beginning at 9:00 a.m. We will be honored to have Governor Spencer Cox address us.

Many stories exist of men and women from our community who served in World War II. I would like to share one of those stories that is close to home for me.

World War II was the most devastating war the world has ever known. More than 75 million souls were lost. So many were lost that we will probably never know the true number.

For our part, 16 million US men and women served and fought, and many died defending the world from tyranny in Europe and the Pacific.

My uncle was one of them.

His name was Lyle Holmgren; I am his namesake, and this is a part of his story.

He arrived in England early in 1944, attached to the 775th Anti-aircraft Battalion. They were based in Falmouth Bay in Cornwall, near Landsend on the southwestern tip of the British Isles.

Falmouth Bay became one of the Allies’ staging points for D-Day. The 775th was scheduled to be part of the invasion but was replaced by another battalion at the last minute because the 775th used half-tracks—the general needed a battalion with tanks.

On June 5th, the day before the D-Day invasion, Uncle Lyle writes about watching soldiers quietly loading onto ships. They all wondered what fate would befall them.

Six weeks after D-Day, the 775th received orders to ship to France. They arrived in the country and then sailed to Omaha Beach; there, they unloaded and started their eleven-month march across France and into Germany.

They helped defend the Red Ball Highway, one of Patton’s main supply lines to the battle fronts. They protected soldiers from Luftwaffe air raids and strafing attacks. They celebrated VE Day alongside the Rhine River.

After VE Day, they witnessed a broken and docile German people who had been misled by a madman.

He finished his tour near Munich. It was not clear if he made it as far as the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, but he shared photos of the devastation there.

They were making preparations to be shipped to the Pacific when word came that atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bringing an end to WWII.

Regrettably, the battalion that replaced the 775th suffered more than 60 percent casualties on D-Day. Uncle Lyle always felt that the general’s last-minute decision saved his life.

“What do we owe our fallen and their families on this day? Remembrance, for sure, yet we also owe a keen awareness of what they fought to defend: this great big experiment we call America.” — General James Mattis

I can only offer a humble thank you to the millions who served and to