Gus and Jean Pederson

Clay County Histories 

Markus Krueger | Program Director HCSCC

Brolo, Sicily. August 10, 1943. Gus Pederson and about 20 other American soldiers put up their hands in surrender. Nazi soldiers searched them, loaded them onto trucks, and sent them to the rear in captivity. A month and a day later, Jean Pederson got a Western Union telegram from the War Department saying, essentially, we think your husband was captured by the Germans last month, but the Red Cross has not confirmed this yet. We will let you know when we hear more.
Jean was living outside of Barnesville on Gus’ home farm with her in-laws, Emil and Alma Pederson. Jean was caring for her two-month-old baby named Faith. “If it’s a girl, name her Faith,” Gus wrote Jean months before, “and have faith in God that I’ll come home.” You can imagine how Jean, Emil, and Alma felt, unsure if Gus was dead or alive. Months passed without new information.
According to Pederson family tradition, the second telegram arrived on Christmas Eve, but they have saved that telegram for over 80 years now and it bears the date November 3. Maybe it just felt like Christmas Eve. The first to read it was Barnesville postman Paul McGrath. He had already come back from delivering all the mail on his route when he saw the telegram addressed to Jean Pederson from the War Department. It said, essentially, that the Red Cross confirms that your husband Gus is alive. He is a Prisoner of War. They will send her an address so she can write to him.
Paul McGrath got right back in his car to deliver that telegram to the Pederson Farm. Paul knew the important difference between Missing in Action and Prisoner of War for a family. He knew it as a veteran – Paul served in the Navy during the First World War. But Paul knew it more keenly because in that war 25 years before, his family got a telegram saying his cousin John McGrath, a Marine from Barnesville, went Missing in Action at the Battle of Soissons. The McGrath family never got that second telegram saying John was alive somewhere. John was never found.
John McGrath Park in Barnesville is named for him. Summer is a great time to go there. There’s a splash pad for the kids, and while they’re playing in the water, you can read the names engraved in bricks of all the young men Barnesville lost during World War I.
That second telegram told Jean, Emil, and Alma that Gus was still alive. They were able to send letters and care packages to Gus as he worked as a POW on a farm near the Baltic Sea. In the summer of 1945, Gus Pederson finally got to come home to his wife, his parents, his family farm, and he got to meet his two-year-old daughter Faith for the first time. But gaining his freedom was no easy task. It took a 43-day, 600 mile walk. I’ll tell you that story in my next article.