Daniel John Mertes was born on 4 March 1924, in Peru, Illinois, the youngest son of John Bernard and Katherine (Schiener) Mertes. He grew up on Sixth Street in Peru in a full household that included his older brother Bernard, his older sister Veronica, and two grandmothers — his maternal grandmother Anna Schiener and his step-grandmother Barbara Mertes. His father John worked as a store clerk at Westclox, a local clock factory that was a fixture of the Illinois Valley community.
By 1940, Daniel’s brother Bernard had followed their father into the workforce, taking a job at Westclox as a delivery clerk. Daniel, meanwhile, was still in high school. When he came of age and registered for the draft, he was a young man of some stature — 5 feet 11½ inches tall, 170 pounds, with blue eyes and blonde hair.
Bernard was the first of the Mertes brothers to enter military service, enlisting on 25 Jun 1941, months before the United States entered the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor. He went on to serve as a Corporal in the coast artillery in the Aleutians, the remote island chain stretching off the coast of Alaska that became a theater of the Pacific War.
Daniel followed his brother into service, enlisting on 23 February 1943, in Peoria, Illinois. His training took him to several posts across the country. He first went to Fort Knox, Kentucky, the home of the U.S. Army Armor Corps, before moving south to Camp Rucker in Alabama. From there he was sent to Camp Pickett in Virginia. Somewhere along the way, he earned a promotion to Private First Class.
After his stateside training was complete, Daniel was shipped overseas to England, arriving shortly after the new year of 1944. He was assigned to Company D of the 746th Tank Battalion, an independent tank battalion that would soon be at the center of the Allied effort to break out from the Normandy beachhead.
The 746th Tank Battalion landed in France in the days following the D-Day invasion of 6 June 1944, and was committed to the grinding campaign to push beyond the beaches and through the dense Norman hedgerow country. By early July, Allied forces were pressing through the Cotentin Peninsula, fighting for control of the road network around Carentan—a key crossroads town whose capture was critical to linking the American landing zones.
It was in this fighting that Daniel Mertes was killed. On 9 July 1944, as his unit was engaged in combat with enemy forces southwest of Carentan, he died. He was 20 years old.
The months that followed were a painful waiting period for the Mertes family back in Peru. In the year after his death, Daniel’s mother Katherine wrote to the Army to ask where her son had been buried. She learned that he had been laid to rest in the American Cemetery at Blosville, France. When she wrote again in 1946—this time asking about her son’s personal effects—she was told they could not be located.
In 1948, Daniel’s remains were returned to the Illinois Valley. He was laid to rest in St. Joseph Cemetery in Spring Valley, Illinois, not far from where he had grown up.
His brother Bernard, who had served through the war in the Aleutians, was discharged on 5 August 1945, and came home.
This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project www.storiesbehindthestars.org This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? If you noticed anything missing in this profile, you may contact the author. Click on the author’s name located at the bottom of the story page next to the words “added by.”
- SBTSProject/Illinois/LaSalle
- SBTS Historian: Pam Broviak
Sources:
- 1920 U.S. Census, John B. Mertes, Ancestry.
- 1930 U.S. Census, John B. Mertes, Ancestry.
- 1940 U.S. Census, John B. Mertes, Ancestry.
- U.S., Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2020, Bernard P. Mertes, Ancestry.
- U.S., World War II Army Enlistment Records, 1938-1946, Daniel J. Mertes, Ancestry.
- Individual Deceased Personnel File, Daniel J. Mertes, NARA.
- “PFC Dan Mertes Serves in England,” The Daily Post Tribune, Stars and Stripes Honor Edition, 25 March 1944, p. 5, col. 1.
- Record Group 92: Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General Series: General Correspondence Relating to Organizations File Unit: 314.6 T/O (European) Weekly Burial Reports 101: 1944, image 42 of 69, NARA.
- Record Group 64: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration Series: Morning Reports, Morning Reports for October 1943: Roll 124 (3 of 4), image 281 of 1,000, NARA.
- Record Group 64: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration Series: Morning Reports, Morning Reports for October 1943: Roll 124 (3 of 4), image 327 of 1,000, NARA.
- Record Group 64: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration Series: Morning Reports, Morning Reports for July 1944: Roll 518 (1 of 4), image 473 of 1,000, NARA.
- Unit History – US, 90th Infantry Division, 1940-1945, After Action Reports, July 1944, Fold3.
- https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/62851283/daniel-john-mertes
