Klein Amerika Church Memorials, 505th PIR
This area, known as Klein Amerika was drop zone N for the US 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment and is barely a mile from the German border at the Reichwald forest. Father Thuring, the pastor of the local church, was a military historian, author of a number of books about the Market Garden Operation and someone who was determined to remember what the Allies did for Holland. On the church are six plaques, sculpted by Niels Steenbergen, funded by the Groesbeek-Nijmegen Airborne Friends and placed on the 13th June 1979. One is to Captain Anthony Stefanich, C Coy 505th PIR who was killed in action when he tried to rescue the crew of a glider that had crashed on enemy-occupied territory. Others commemorated are Guy E. Belcher, Alpheus E. Fowlkes, Kenneth H. Lau and Sonnie J. Rockford, Roger F. Coffin, Stanley Creswick, Raymond Dionne, Walter Faranfontoff, Russel O. Eade and J. P. Shelton
