HENRI ROGISTER LETTER (1)

ROGISTER Henri 22 Rue du Progres B-4032 LIEGE BELGIUM Liege, le 17 Juin 1996 Dear David, As I promised you in my previous letter, I have been trying to find one or two tracks in order to learn if Nicole Warlet was still alive so as to locate her. Unfortunately, as I explained in my preceding letter, the answers were negative. On 10 June, I then decided to ask my friend Jean-Marie Fosty (Albert's brother) to have a "Wanted" advice published in a newspaper of the Liege - Verviers - Luxembourg area and with which he was working a few months ago, with the hope that some readers could locate Nicole Warlet. This research notice (see annexe) was published on Tuesday 11 June and early evening my wife received two pieces of information that corresponded very well with Nicole Warlet. As I was still on my way with some veterans from the 505th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne in the Grand-Halleux and Vielsalm areas, I could not check the information on the very day. But you may well think that Wednesday 12 June was a very busy morning. Following on the info obtained, I called the telephone number that had been given to me on two occasions and guess what a joy that was when hearing at the other and Nicole Warlet's voice! We talked for about twenty minutes and the following is the story of that the photograph taken in Henri-Chapelle in April 1946. The Warlet family living then in Verviers, had adopted three graves at the American Military Cemetery of Henri Chapelle and one of these graves was Thomas Rockwell's. Having received at this time the address of the family in the United States the Warlet family wrote the Rockwell family probably to let them know that their son's grave had been adopted by the family. In 1946, Mrs. Rockwell arrived in Belgium and was welcomed by Warlet family. Altogether they went to the Vielsalm - Rencheux area in order to locate the place where Thomas had been killed and so it was that Warlet family went to Henri-Chapelle Cemetery and that the photograph was taken. During a conversation between Mrs. Rockwell and Warlet family, Mrs. Rockwell said: "I would give ten years of my life to stay an hour with my son". Nicole told me she had about 15 photographs of that period and her elder sister still possessed another score of letters exchanged with Rockwell family. I also learned during that telephone conversation that Warlet family had four daughters and one of them lives in Liege. It is the elder sister who, being able to speak English, would write the letters to Rockwell family.