Former Bayonne resident Frank Antos sent information to the Office of the Mayor about a wartime tragedy that took 29 lives 80 years ago today in England. On March 20, 1944, 29 soldiers from the 294th Combat Engineers Battalion, U.S.7th Army, were killed outside the Town of Sherborne, in Dorset County, England while conducting a training exercise in preparation for the Allies’ upcoming invasion of Normandy, France, more commonly known as D-Day.

According to a wartime report, “A live minefield had been laid in a training exercise in Sherborne Park…On completion of the practices for the day the mines were gathered and stacked on a truck.  This then slipped backwards.  It activated one of the mines and the truck-load burst apart in a colossal explosion which ripped through C Company.”

Of the 29 soldiers tragically killed, 25 were from were New Jersey.  That group included sixteen from Hudson County, of whom five were from Bayonne and eleven from Jersey City. The five soldiers from Bayonne were: Sgt. Donald J. Walsh, Pfc. Francis J. Murphy, Pvt. John W. Gadek, Pvt. Stephen Kosiorowski, and Pvt. John J. McHugh.  Pvt. Kosiorowski was Mr. Antos’s uncle.

There were also six soldiers from Essex County, NJ and one from each of the following New Jersey Counties: Bergen, Burlington, and Union. The remaining four soldiers were from Bronx, NY, Apache County, AZ, Cass County, MO, and Caldwell Parish, LA.

We would like to thank Frank Antos for sending the story of March 20, 1944, to the City of Bayonne. We join with him in saying, “May these 29 soldiers and all our veterans who have gone before us rest in peace.”