"If you don't know where you come from, you don't know where you're going." Sister Addie Wyatt
Author: Molly Martin
I'm a long-time tradeswoman activist, retired electrician and electrical inspector. I live in Santa Rosa, CA. molly-martin.com. I also share a travel blog with my wife Holly: travelswithmoho.wordpress.com.
After her death, in Flo’s jewelry box I found a bracelet made from a Combat Infantryman Badge. The badge is a U.S. Army decoration awarded to infantrymen and Special Forces soldiers, colonel rank and below, who fought in active ground combat after December, 1941. The same badge appears here on the dance invitation. I imagine it had been awarded to Flo’s fiancé, Gene Gustafson, and that she had it fashioned into a bracelet she could wear.
For almost ten weeks—from May 4 to July 13, 1945—the 3rd Division enjoyed a rare stretch of life without combat in and around Salzburg. To help soldiers shift from warfighting to occupation duty, the army quickly organized a full slate of sports and recreation. The Salzburg rodeo that Flo photographed was likely one of those morale-boosting events.
Clubmobiler Janet Potts, already an experienced equestrian with competition miles behind her, took part in the show. Even so, jumping with an unfamiliar horse must have been a challenge. And the horses themselves raise questions: where did they come from? Were they seized from a high-ranking Nazi officer? Whatever their origin, they were striking animals—well trained, elegant, and responsive. One photo even seems to show an American soldier riding a dressage horse, completing the unlikely tableau of a rodeo in postwar Salzburg.
Indictment means possible life term for man accused of killing co-worker in Wright County workshop
One major labor organization noted that “violence like this rarely comes out of nowhere. It often follows a buildup that women in the trades know by heart.”
The man accused of killing a co-worker last month with a hammer in a Wright County workshop now faces a charge of first-degree murder and a potential life prison sentence in a slaying that drew outcry by advocacy groups for women in the trades.
A grand jury heard the case last week against David Bruce DeLong, 40, of Watkins, Minn., and indicted him on a charge of first-degree premeditated murder in connection with the attack in Cokato that killed 20-year-old Amber Mary Czech of Hutchinson, Minn.
The bludgeoning occurred on Nov. 11 at Advanced Process Technologies, which makes equipment used in food processing.
County Attorney Brian Lutes said the first-degree count carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole. DeLong also faces a second-degree murder charge.
DeLong remains jailed in lieu of $2 million bail ahead of a court appearance Monday. The Minnesota Star Tribune has reached out to his attorney for a response to the allegations.
An online fundraising campaign started to cover funeral expenses noted that “Amber was a hardworking welder who took great pride in her craft and dreamed of building a bright future through her work. Her witty personality, positive attitude, and beautiful smile touched everyone who knew her.”
Numerous labor organizations decried the workplace killing of Czech, including the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART), with 230,000 members in North America.
“While not a SMART member … this tragedy is reverberating across the trades community and far beyond,” read a statement from the organization. “So many tradeswomen and gender-diverse workers are carrying the weight of this news.”
SMART went on to point out that “violence like this rarely comes out of nowhere. It often follows a buildup that women in the trades know by heart: harassment shrugged off, bullying tolerated, intimidation minimized, warning signs dismissed, fear of backlash, comments ignored, jokes explained away, the stares of resentment, and behaviors everyone chooses not to see until they can no longer look away.”
The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), which counts 500,000 workers across many industries among its ranks, said in a statement, “When a young tradeswoman’s future is so violently crushed, we must look to the criminal justice system to do its job — but as brothers and sisters in the construction trades we must also do much, much more. … We must not only condemn the violence that took Czech’s life but also the attitudes and behavior that normalize an atmosphere of fear for too many construction craftswomen.”
Around 6 a.m., a caller to 911 said Czech was bleeding heavily from a blow to the head, and there was a bloody sledgehammer on the floor nearby. Emergency medical responders arrived and declared her dead at the scene.
A sheriff’s deputy identified DeLong as the suspected attacker. DeLong said to a man at the business “something to the effect of, ‘I hit her with your hammer. She is by your toolbox. She is gone,’” the complaint read.
Sheriff’s deputies reviewed surveillance video inside the business and saw DeLong walk from his workstation to Czech’s, grab a sledgehammer and swing it. The victim was out of view of the camera.
DeLong’s swings indicated that he targeted her once while she was standing and four more times after she fell to the floor.
After his arrest, DeLong confessed to killing Czech. He said he didn’t like her and had been “planning to kill [her] for some time,” the complaint continued.
Flo stood at the border and looked across the Alps into Austria
My Mother and Audie MurphyCh. 77
In May, 1945, just after the end of the war, Flo must have been excited to summit the Brenner Pass and see into Austria. Brenner Pass has long been a strategic gateway through the Alps, and its role intensified during World War II. After Germany annexed Austria in March 1938, the pass suddenly lay deep inside Hitler’s expanding Reich. Two years later, on 18 March 1940, Hitler and Mussolini met there to reaffirm their Pact of Steel.
When Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in 1943, Germany moved quickly to seize the pass and push the border with Mussolini’s new puppet regime far to the south. By 1945, American troops occupied the area, and the pass was returned to Italy once the war ended. In the chaotic aftermath, Brenner Pass also became one of the escape routes, part of the “ratlines” used by fleeing Nazi leaders. After the war, the pass once again marked the border between Italy and the newly independent Republic of Austria.
The sign shows the hard road from Salerno to AustriaSeen from the other sideGreat views from up there!
On June 25, 1945, Flo turned thirty-two, and her friends gathered to give her a proper birthday celebration. She spent the day with her clubmobile partner, Janet Potts, along with Janet’s boyfriend, Capt. Lloyd (Jens) Jenson, and Flo’s own boyfriend, Lt. Col. Chris Chaney. All four arrived in uniform as they wandered through the fortress castle that served as headquarters for the 15th Infantry above Salzburg. The women wore their Red Cross-issued dresses; the men their Army greens. They teased one another, snapped photographs in the grand corridors, and convinced Flo to pose in the old stocks for a laugh.
Later, they changed into civilian clothes and headed out for a picnic. Indoors, there was a birthday cake, and they captured more pictures—two couples who looked close, relaxed, and hopeful in the early summer after the war’s end.
These became the last images, and the last mention, of Flo’s relationship with Chris Chaney. The photographs made them seem comfortably paired, and although Janet and Jens eventually married, Flo and Chris did not stay together. She kept no letters from him after the war.
What became of him remained unclear. The two had talked about traveling to Paris and England, plans that never materialized. Most likely, he received an early chance to go home and took it. As a highly decorated officer with a Silver Star, he would have been near the front of the line for repatriation. Flo’s life moved forward, and whatever they had envisioned together faded with the summer.
Flo, Chris and JensJanet and JensRailroad tracks leading down from the fortressFlo posing in the ancient stocksFlo on her 32nd birthdayJanet and Jens at the picnicWhat did Chris do to deserve this?Or this?Celebrating war’s endThird Infantry Division buddiesHappy Birthday FloThere was even a birthday cake
More than 33,000 people in the province of Salzburg, including almost 13,000 in the provincial capital, had to register as former members of the NSDAP (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) or one of its organizations after the fall of the Nazi regime. Through the process known as denazification, the Austrian state sought to hold these people accountable and punish them, sometimes severely. However, the vast majority of those registered were considered denazified by the end of 1947 and escaped punishment. The US occupation authorities interned high-ranking functionaries of the Nazi system in Camp Marcus W. Orr, commonly known as Lager Glasenbach.
Flo and her cohort got to hear the Salzburg Festival Orchestra in concert
The denazification of Salzburg‘s cultural and art scene was one of the main concerns of US occupation policy. This also included the removal of over 2,000 books with National Socialist content from the holdings of the municipal library in Schloss Mirabell, which was able to resume its post-war service at the beginning of June 1945. Civilians were once again able to watch films in the cinema from July 1945. In the same month, the first public concert after the end of the war took place in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum and in September 1945. A performance was shown for the first time in the Salzburg State Theatre, which had been requisitioned by US forces.
Bavarian dancers at the Salzburg Theater. Photos: Flo WickFlo got to know Margot Hielscher, a famous German actress. Here she is performing at the Salzburg Theater.
Margot Hielscher (1919-2017) was a German singer and film actress. She appeared in over fifty films between 1939 and 1994. She was chosen to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest in 1957 and 1958.
Salzburg Festival
The US occupation authorities saw the Salzburg Festival as a central element in the reconstruction of Austrian identity. They lobbied hard to ensure that the Festival could take place again just a few months after the end of the war, although a large number of artists with Nazi backgrounds were not allowed to perform. Works by Austrian authors and composers dominated the program of the Festival, which began on August 12, 1945 with an opening evening featuring pieces by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Johann Strauss, and Franz Lehár. Concerts were performed until September 1, including six ‘Österreichische Abende’ (‘Austrian evenings’) and two concerts of religious music. (From STADT-SALZBURG.AT The City of Salzburg in 1945.)
In and Around Salzburg
Clubmobilers serving the 15th Infantry in the Bavarian Alps15th Infantry anti-tank companyMajor Noser and Lt. Col Chaney at kraut radar station above Salzburg, Lt. Col. Chaney
Flo and Janet got leave to travel to Brussels probably in June, 1945. In her inscriptions on this page in her album, Flo doesn’t indicate how they travelled the 450 miles from Salzburg, stopping in Cologne, nor whether they went with the soldiers in these pictures.
The War in Brussels
Belgium had been under German occupation since 1940, but Brussels was freed in early September 1944. The city of nearly a million people did not expect liberation to come so quickly, and enormous crowds poured into the streets, slowing the Allied advance as they welcomed their liberators. At the same time, Belgian railway workers and the resistance foiled a German attempt to deport 1,600 political prisoners and Allied POWs to concentration camps on the so-called “ghost train.”
The city escaped the widespread destruction seen elsewhere in Europe; it was not subjected to systematic or heavy bombing. The rest of the country was liberated by February 1945.
Flo and Janet in Brussels with the boysFlower market in Brussels
Cologne Cathedral Survived
When American troops entered Cologne on March 6, 1945, the Cologne cathedral was one of the few major structures still standing. The Gothic landmark became the backdrop to a famous tank battle as U.S. forces took the western part of the city and the Germans withdrew across the Rhine, holding the eastern bank for another month.
Remarkably, the cathedral survived both the battle and years of Allied bombing. Construction began in 1298, but the cathedral wasn’t finished until 1880. Just sixty years later, Cologne was hit by the first of 262 RAF air raids. Nearly a quarter of the city’s 770,000 residents fled after that initial attack, and the population continued to drain away until only about 20,000 remained by the final raid on March 2, 1945.
The cathedral’s twin spires even served as a navigational point for Allied bombers. Though struck 14 times and heavily damaged, the great structure endured, towering over the ruins of the city.
Cologne cathedral across the RhineCologne. Photos: Flo Wick
In May 1945 the clubmobilers settled in an apartment in Salzburg. They were attached to the 15th Infantry Regiment which had taken over a fortress above Hitler’s ruined mountain headquarters at Berchestgaden as their command post. Flo’s photos on this page in her album show scenes of Salzburg, the fortress and the surrounding hills, her sister clubmobiler Janet Potts and Lt. Col. Lloyd (C.P.) Ramsey with dog Baler. In a picture taken from the fortress, Flo drew an arrow pointing to the women’s apartment.
Salzburg, with a population of 36,000, had suffered heavy damage in the war: Allied bombs destroyed nearly half the city and killed 550 people. Much of its Baroque center survived, but rebuilding loomed large.
On May 5, 1945, Salzburg surrendered to advancing U.S. forces without a fight. Many residents greeted the Americans as liberators, relieved that 5½ years of war were finally ending—even if it meant accepting defeat. But the U.S. Army arrived as an occupying power as well. For years, no major political, cultural, administrative, or economic decision could be made without its approval.
Postwar life was marked by severe shortages, especially housing and food. More than 1,000 buildings had already been damaged or destroyed in the 1944–45 bombings, and the U.S. occupiers requisitioned many remaining properties for their own use.
The fortressFlo drew an arrow to the apartment (on the river near the center).Photo taken from the fortressThe fortress command post taken from the apartmentJanet Potts in the clubmobileLt. Col. Ramsey with Flo and Baler
tradeswomn musings 