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In February, 1942, Adrian Earl Kibler of Hastings,
PA, a 21-year-old surveyor crewman with the PA Department of
Highways was inducted into the rapidly expanding U.S. Army. He
left behind his young bride, the former Ethel Angert, who he
had married on November 27, 1941, ten days before Pearl Harbor.
Six months after induction, Kibler graduated from Fort Sill,
OK, Officer Candidate School as a field artillery officer. He
spent the next twelve months training with the 229th FA Bn of
the 29th Inf Div before being transferred in Sept., 1943 to the
991st FA Bn, one of the first Army units to receive the new M12
self-propelled 155mm guns.
In January, 1944, the 991st sailed for England,
where it trained for seven months, and then shipped out for battle-torn
Normandy, France, arriving on July 11th. For the next nine months,
Kibler served as a Forward Observer, Battalion Air Observer,
Motor Officer, and Communications Officer, seeing combat action
through France, Belgium, across the German border and as far
east as the Mulde River. His awards would include the Air Medal
with four Oak Leaf Clusters. From the air, in February, 1945,
he personally directed the first U.S. shells to land within the
city limits of Cologne, the first major German city to be captured
by the Allies.
After the war, Kibler returned to Hastings,
PA, where he was a heavy equipment operator in various PA coal-mining
operations, before being appointed Postmaster of Hastings in
1956 by his former WWII Supreme Commander, President Dwight Eisenhower.
Long before and after his retirement from the Post Office in
1985, Kibler had also been active in numerous civic and church
endeavors. He and Ethel are the parents of five children and
several grand and great-grand children.
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