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Descendants of George W. Bates

Generation No. 3

4. DOROTHY JUNE⁴ BATES (BRUCE ADLER³, GEORGE W.², NICHOLAS (BOTTS)¹) was born June 25, 1917 in Portland, OR. She married (1) HERBERT M. JOHNSTON December 04, 1936 in Portland, OR. She married (2) ARTHUR ALEXANDER ULMER 1943 in Portland, OR, son of KARL ULMER and LENA ROWSKOWSKI. She married (3) ALBERT MEDARIS 1966, son of ALBERT MEDARIS and ANNA SMOOT.

Notes for ARTHUR ALEXANDER ULMER:
Military Record: Sept. 2, 1943 to Oct. 27, 1945. Battery A 929, Field Artilery Battalion. Grade: 1st Lt.
Decorations & Citations: Silver Star Medal GO 33 Hq. 104th Infantry Division '45 Purple Heart GO 34 Hq, 177 General Hospital '45 European-African-Middle Eastern Service Medal
Wounds Received in Action: Feb. 24, 1945, European Theater

Buried beside his wife, Verna, Sept. 24, 1997 at Sutter Cemetery, Sutter, CA.

A day during the war years, from:
"Timberwolf Tracks, The History of The 104th Infantry Division 1942-1945" by, Leo A. hoegh & Howard J. Doyle (copyright 1946, by Infantry Journal Inc.

Boyd Lewis, United Press war correspondent, stated:
The story of how Company I of the 415th Infantry Regiment of Maj., Gen. Terry Allen's 104th Division called down American artillery fire on its own position and withstood the shelling for seven hours was told today by the men who gave the order to fire.
They were 1st Lt. Arthur A. ulmer, Portland, OR, and Lt. John D. Shipley, Appleton, WI.
The story was told in the buttressed steel-doored factory basement--a building which recently was a backstop of the Siegfried Line but which now is a shelter for American troops.
Ulmer, a smiling, jet-haired man with big hands and a slow manner of speech, explained that he was an artillery spotter working with Company I in the embattled town of Lucherberg.
Ulmer was stationed on the third floor of a house while the doughboys of Company I fought it out in a moonlight battle with a group of German Paratroopers.
At his post Ulmer heard a German medical major give a command to cease shooting. He understood German well enough to gather that the German major had ordered a truce to permit the exchange of wounded prisoners, among whom was the Company I commander, who was critically hurt.
Descending to investigate, Ulmer emerged from the door and two Germans jammed a rifle into his ribs, demanding his pistol. When he surrendered it, they rushed away and darted back into the house, where he saw that the paratroopers were paying no attention to the German medical major, but were disarming the Americans, who were heavily outnumbered.
The German major was shouting and arguing and trying to make the paratroopers stick to the truce. Ulmer said, "But he was getting nowhere, so I went back to my observation post, grabbed my radio and climbed out the back window."
"I withdrew to the edge to town, where a platoon of Company I was defending a house. A bunch of soldiers came running by without any weapons, saying the Krauts had disarmed them and given them fifteen minutes to leave town."
While this was going on the Company I commander died for lack of attention on the floor of a church where the Germans had placed him.
Shipley then rallied the fleeing soldiers and got them into the house. Within fifteen minutes they were armed with two bazookas. The Germans started to blast holes in the house, attacking with machine gun fire and grenades.
Outnumbered three to one, Ulmer and Shipley took a desperate decision. They decided to call down american artillery on their own positon.
They believed that the Germans were more exposed and would suffer much greater losses than the Americans would. They got most of their men into a heavy basement which had thick fortress-like walls, posted riflemen at slits picked out of the brick walls.
Then, Ulmer radioed his artillery to crash down on the town with everything available.
Ulmer kept yelling at us all day long, "Keep shooting," said Capt. James Nealon, who was at the receiving end of the calls. "We gave it to him for seven hours.
The ground around the besieged company rocked with the concussions of its own shells. But toward the end of the day German resistance collapsed while Ulmer was still calling for more fire. By 16:15 Company I--what was left of it--was able to mop up the town with virtually no difficulty. Some 200 German dead lay in the streets.

More About ARTHUR ALEXANDER ULMER:
Fact 1: 1948, Adopted Sandra Evelyn Johnston

Children of DOROTHY BATES and ARTHUR ULMER are:

LAURA JEAN⁵ ULMER, b. May 23, 1946, Yuba City, Ca; d. January 11, 1992, Foster City, Ca.

ii.

SANDRA EVELYN ULMER, b. October 17, 1938, Salem, OR; m. (1) GENE ALLEN BERRY, October 05, 1959, Reno, NV; m. (2) THORNTON COYLE "GUY" HAINES, March 31, 1980, San Francisco, Ca; m. (3) JAMES CLAYTON DAVIS, April 01, 1984, San Francisco, Ca.

More About SANDRA EVELYN ULMER:
Fact 1: 1948, adopted by Arthur Ulmer, Yuba City, CA

Marriage Notes for SANDRA ULMER and JAMES DAVIS:
Married in Ruth Witt-Deamont's back yard. Peter Davis was best man. Kelly
Davis was maid of honor. About 30 people attended.

5. BRUCE ALDER⁴ BATES , JR. (BRUCE ADLER³, GEORGE W.², NICHOLAS (BOTTS)¹) was born November 13, 1920 in Santa Barbara, CA¹, and died May 16, 1990 in Reedsport, OR. He married BETTY MAE WIEGAND May 29, 1941 in Eugene, Or.

Marriage Notes for BRUCE BATES and BETTY WIEGAND:
Sandy Johnston attended the wedding with grandmother, Dorothy Reeder

Children of BRUCE BATES and BETTY WIEGAND are:

GAIL⁵ BATES, b. September 1945.

ii.

MARK BATES, b. 1947; d. 1966.

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