Kenneth Blue

Kenneth E Blue died peacefully in the comfort of his living room with his son at his bedside.  He was 95 years old and was preceded in death by his wife of 66 years.  He is survived by his son Kenneth F Blue.  Although life was hard for him in his growing years, he overcame obstacles through sheer stubbornness and an outgoing engaging outlook on life.  He had a life full of extraordinary experiences.

He was one of five boys and had one sister.  The family lived off of a 40 acre farm near Carbondale in southern Illinois.  His parents lost everything in the depression and never recovered from the loss.  Christmass was a banana and a pocket knife.  Water was rationed during the hot dry summers when the cistern would almost go dry.  There was no electricity (kerosene lamps) and there were only outdoor toilets which reeked in the summer and froze in the winter.  He either walked or rode his workhorse Red when he had to go anywhere.  At an Early age he nearly lost a finger when it was almost completely severed by a push mower.  The local vet came and sewed it back together without any anesthetic.  Another time he stepped on a long thorn and his heal was infected.  Again he got no anesthetic. He was held down and they sliced open his heal with a barber’s razor and removed the thorn.

Even though life was hard for him in his early years, he had a strong desire to achieve and improve his lot in life.  The only thing he knew was farming and the only jobs available were coal mining and farming.  So he chose farming. He was a strong husky teen.  To get a farming hand job he had to prove he could do the work of an adult. Standard pay for that kind of work was $1.25 a day.  After working several temporary farmhand jobs he decided he wanted to make more money.  People told him farmers were paying $1.50 a day plus room and board in northern Illinois.  He didn’t know where Northern Illinois was but decided to go there.  With a quarter in his pocket he caught a ride on a truck going north in exchange for helping load and unload the truck.  He quickly landed a job as a farmhand in the DeKalb area where he worked until he joined the Army during WWII. 

After finishing basic training in Mississippi, he was deployed to the front in Southern France with a combat unit near Vosges France. His battalion (the Lost Battalion) advanced too fast and was trapped behind German lines.   With 39 other soldiers he volunteered to form a combat patrol to contact American lines, get ammo, food, and water.  However his unit was trapped and engaged in combat by a superior German force and he was captured

Kenny ended up in a prison camp in Moosberg Germany with about 80,000 other prisoners called Stalag VIIA.  Kenny always was stubborn, tough, and a fighter. The German camp leaders quickly identified him as a resistor and forced him to do tasks reserved for troublesome prisoners .  The guards outfitted him with a horse harness attached to a wagon full of potatoes.  Each day he would pull the wagon through the camp to distribute potatoes.  The guards routinely struck him in the back with their rifle butts telling  him to work faster and harder.  Since he was fairly small and compact the guards liked to use him to crawl into tight spaces under unsafe bombed out crumbling buildings to search for air raid survivors.  Kenny thought this was against the Geneva Convention and demanded the Germans let him see a Red Cross representative.  They refused and he organized a prisoner strike in the camp. The Germans couldn’t take his insolence and told him to back down or go before a firing squad.  In military fashion he marched in front of the firing squad, stood at attention, and told them to fire.  When they didn’t fire, he yelled at the German officer in charge through a translator “ tell the son of a ****** he doesn’t have the guts to fire”.  The officer backed down and made arrangements for a Red Cross representative to enter the camp.  Eventually Patton’s army liberated him and the other prisoners in the camp. 

Post war he was part of the occupation force Germany where he was stationed at one of King Ludwig’s castles. He was proud of his picture showing him sitting in King Ludwig’s throne.  Just a think a poor farm boy from Southern Illinois was sitting in the King’s throne.  He met his future wife of 66 years while in Germany and gained some skills in the Army that ultimately helped him find work when he returned home. 

Upon his return to the U.S. he initially settled in Plano and bought a run down house with the help of some of the people in Plano who went out of their way to help him get a start.  He was always grateful for their help.

After a few years he moved to Oswego where he lived for 61 years and got a job at All Steel where he worked there for 39 years and was on the union bargaining committee for 29 years.    He always believed in helping those who were oppressed and was a strong advocate for them.  His retirement years were good. Cancer visited him three times in the last 10 years. He beat colon and prostate cancer  but couldn’t overcome a sarcoma.

The family will receive guests on Tuesday, February 21, 2107 from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM and again on Wednesday, February 22nd from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM at Dieterle Memorial Home, 1120 S. Broadway Ave. Montgomery, IL  60538.  Interment with military honors will be held at 11:30 on Wednesday at Lincoln Memorial Park, Aurora, IL.

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