After the end of the war in Germany, a popular US Army medical officer died in tragic circumstances in Glonn. A memorial stone in Hohenbrunn commemorates his fate.
Hohenbrunn - A gravestone in the Hohenbrunn community cemetery makes the ignorant puzzled. A certain Captain Lawrence E. Cooper Jr. is said to have died 75 years ago on June 6, 1945 in Hohenbrunn. So read on it. It is only a memorial stone, because the actual grave of the deceased US officer is located at Mount Zion Cemetery in Steele, Pemiscot County, Missouri. And the place of his death was not Hohenbrunn, although this memorial stone had been on the site of the former ammunition depot ("Muna") for decades, but at Glonn (Ebersberg district). There he drowned while swimming.
Memorial stone had to be moved out of the muna
The last Muna commander, Sergeant Alfred Hilscher, recommended the memorial stone to Mayor Stefan Straßmair (CSU). Because that was in the administrative part of the Muna. And he couldn't stay there after the dissolution. In 2007, Straßmair arranged for the memorial stone to be placed on the municipal cemetery in the southwestern part of the site. An honorable commemoration is preserved there, albeit unadorned.
Not much is known about Captain Cooper, who died at the age of 27. He was born on May 21, 1918 in Cooter, Pemiscot County, Missouri. Cooper graduated from Cooter High School, studied at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and planned to return from military service to medicine in Cooter. Captain Cooper began his service in World War II in July 1943 and spent most of that time working abroad on the European continent. Cooper was a medical doctor in the "262nd Ordnance Battalion", which means a weaponry battalion. This crossed France, Belgium and Germany and finally arrived in Hohenbrunn in early May 1945. Shortly before his death Cooper was recommended for the soldier's medal.
He was the only son of his parents
The monument in Hohenbrunn was built to commemorate the deceased. An obituary explicitly states that the doctor "meant a lot to both officers and employees of the unit he so faithfully served". That may also be the reason why there was such a large memorial stone. A photo of the monument was immediately sent to Cooper's parents.
It was not until 1949 that the remains were transferred to the United States to be buried in the family grave. Until a few years ago, Cooper was said to have drowned in 1945 in one of the fire-fighting ponds on the Hohenbrunn Muna site. Finally, the memorial stone also reads: "who lost his life here", "who lost his life here". But research has finally shown that the leisure accident did not happen there, but in the Kastensee.
The burial is said to have taken place at a military cemetery in Germany (called Reuth) and then in Lorraine (Saint-Avold). Since Cooper died in Germany, the family exercised the right to bring the only son home.
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