War Medals Return To West Orange After 70 Years

WEST ORANGE, NJ — The following article comes courtesy of West Orange township historian, Joe Fagan. Learn more about posting announcements or events to your local Patch site.

Gordon J. Hansen was born in 1924 and moved with his parents to their Valley Way home the following year. He was their only child and this would be the only home he ever knew. He attended the Eagle Rock Grammar School and Edison Jr. H.S. Hansen went to West Orange High School and graduated in 1942 just as the United States was gearing up to enter the fight in World War II.

As world events unfolded the Class of ’42 yearbook stated, “Hell broke loose our senior year, making our graduation an event not of local interest as those in the past, but one of national importance. We are rising young Americans. We are the ones who will stand behind the guns, the workers who will win the war of production, the statesmen who will create the peace of the future.”

Hansen’s classmates had an accurate perspective on the future and one that would determine his own tragic fate. He was killed in action while serving with the US Army in France only weeks before the end of the war in Europe. His death was reported in the West Orange Chronicle on April 26, 1945 but just a few details were known with precise circumstances mostly lost to history.

Hansen is listed on the WWII Memorial in Veterans Memorial Park paying tribute to town residents killed during the war. He is the namesake of Hansen Road in West Orange. Although, he is not forgotten he may very well had faded into oblivion as just another name of deceased veterans whose backstory is unknown. That all changed however when a recent phone call revealed Hansen’s records unknown for more than seven decades had been saved.

Unknown details came to light when Bob Jensen from North Carolina called to tell me his mother was the late Charlotte Christiansen of West Orange. He explained she graduated from WOHS in 1942 and was Hansen’s high school sweetheart and fiancé but never married him. After he was killed Mr. and Mrs. Hansen treated her like a daughter-in-law for many years. They eventually gave her all his military records, and medals.

Christiansen eventually married and moved away with Hansen’s belongings and story. She passed away in 2008 but instructed her son Bob, in a 1995 letter, to dispose of the war documents as he saw fit. It took him more than 10 years but he was just getting around to it now. After our conversation he sent everything to me in a package weighting close to 20 pounds from North Carolina. From the documents I was able to reconstruct a precise timeline, previously unknown, of Hansen’s complete WWII record.

Hansen served with the US Army and began his basic training in Fort Dix, NJ. His unit the 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized) arrived in England on November 21, 1943. There they spend time preparing for the Normandy invasion and arrived in France on June 12, 1944 at 2120 hours, (D-day+6). They disembarked safely over Omaha Beach as a secured allied beachhead to begin their push through occupied France into Germany. His unit first saw action holding back enemy attacks while attached to 2d Infantry Division during the Saint-Lô, France breakout. It was here US forces caused a German retreat and withdrawal from the Normandy region. By August 1944 they were given the difficult mission of protecting all bridges over the Seine River into Paris and were the first American troops to enter the city.

On December 16, 1944, a German counter offensive began along a 75-mile front which became known as the Battle of Bulge. The next day Hansen’s unit had been cut off from communication with rear artillery support. He and another soldier drove a truck down a road subjecting themselves to direct gun fire from German paratroopers. They somehow were able to reestablish communications with artillery positions who subsequently halted a German Panzar tank division from further advance. Hansen survived and was awarded the Bronze Star. He was running communication lines on March 20, 1945 in a building that exploded and killed him instantly. It was only weeks before the surrender of Germany ending the war and he was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart.

I recently met with three of Hansen’s relatives to share many details of a story they had not known. They also had no knowledge of Charlotte Christiansen’s existence. They travelled from Maine, Massachusetts, and Alaska and we met in a Pennsylvania hotel lobby. I shared Hanson’s war documents with them and it was their first time seeing his war medals, even if it took more than 70 years for them to come home. The Hansen Family collectively agreed they should now stay in West Orange and be put on public display inside town hall to remember this hometown hero.

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