By Walter Elliott
WEST ORANGE – The annual Veterans Day observance here in West Orange – scheduled to start 11 a.m. at Veterans Plaza, weather permitting – will have a more personal touch than usual.
Township Historian Joseph Fagan intends to have on rare outdoor display a pair of the late Sgt. Gordon J. Hansen’s World War Two medals during the service. Fagan, afterward, will return Hansen’s Bronze Star and Purple Heart to its display case within Town Hall.
Fagan, other township officials and veterans groups will be holding the annual commemoration by the Veterans Memorial Park monument that lists Hansen among West Orange’s servicemen and women who had made the ultimate sacrifice.
The township historian will be passing twice a World War Two Roll of Honor plaque on a Town Hall hallway. That plaque includes the names of West Orangeites who had served – including Sgt. Hansen – 1941-45.
Fagan’s presentation of Hansen’s Purple Heart and Bronze Star, however, would not have been possible if he had not received a package from the son of one of the late native and solder’s acquaintances in 2018. The Nov. 11 public display would also not have been possible without the blessing from Hansen’s descendants at a pre-pandemic family reunion.
Gordon J. Hansen (1924-45) was the only child of parents who had raised him from their Valley Way home. The Bethany Church member had been promoted from the Eagle Rock Grammar School and Edison Junior High School to West Orange High School in 1938.
Hansen was a high school senior and classmate of Charlotte Christiansen when the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. The U.S. formally entered WW II the next day.
After graduating with the WOHS Class of 1942, Hansen enlisted with the U.S. Army and reported for basic training at Ft. Dix. He and Christiansen became engaged but postponed any marriage and wedding plans until war conditions would allow.
Hansen was shipped to England with the 38th Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron-Mechanized in late 1943. His unit prepared for the Normandy Invasion and arrived in France June 12, 1944 – or D-Day Plus Six.
The 38th Cavalry joined the Allies’ pushing back of German forces into the latter’s homeland. Hansen’s unit protected bridges over the Seine River and was among the first troops to liberate Paris.
Hansen received his Bronze Star for his part in the Battle of the Bulge – the German army’s last counteroffensive.
Sgt. Hansen and another officer dodged direct enemy fire while running a truck down an exposed road. Their run resumed communication between their unit and artillery positions – which helped them stop a German Panzer tank advance.
Sgt. Hansen’s service ended on March 20, 1945 – 38 days before Germany’s surrender. He was running communication wires in a building when that structure exploded, killing him instantly. His body remains in a Normandy veterans cemetery.
A telegram of Hansen’s being killed in action was soon received by his parents and Christiansen and was published in a local newspaper April 26. Bethany held a memorial service and installed a memorial plaque on its organ. The Army also sent his family a posthumous Purple Heart.
There was also a township street renamed Hansen Way. His name, along with several KIA West Orangeites, was to also grace several walkways within the Essex Green Shopping Center before its1957 grand opening. That proposed Essex Green project was how Fagan first remembered Hansen.
“Hansen’s family treated Charlotte Christiansen like their daughter-in-law,” said Fagan. “They gave her his effects before she eventually married and moved away to North Carolina. His mother died in 1951 and his father, who remarried, lived until he was 97.”
Fagan, whose interest in local history long predates his township’s official designation, said he got a call from a Bob Jensen in 2018. Jensen explained that he was carrying out his late mother Charlotte’s bequest “to dispose of the war documents as he saw fit.”
“His mother died in 2008 but he (Jensen) was just getting around to it in 2018,” said Fagan. “The son also had a friend, a veteran, who would have put Sgt. Hansen’s medals on display in his South Carolina gym.”
Fagan soon received “a nearly 20-lb. package” of Hansen’s documents, medals and personal effects. He began sorting through the papers to reconstruct the sergeant’s last 30 months of service and life.
“I soon got in contact with relatives in Maine, Massachusetts and Alaska,” continued Fagan. “We met in a Pennsylvania hotel lobby and shared Hansen’s war documents with them. It was their first time seeing his war medals and had no knowledge of Charlotte Christiansen’s existence.”
It was at that meeting where the family granted permission to have at least some of Sgt. Hansen’s medals and effects put on display in Town Hall. Subsequent COVID-19 social distancing protocols, however, have kept that municipal building closed to the public.
The story of Sgt. Hansen and his medals is one of the millions being recalled on the 103rd anniversary of the end of World War One in ceremonies here and elsewhere in “Local Talk” land and around the world Nov. 11.
Some of those recollections remain as first-hand experiences by the diminishing ranks of veterans. Some of those recollections are recounted as memories by veterans’ relatives, friends or descendants.
What recollections that go unrecorded, however, will be lost in the fog or mist of history.
Fagan told “Local Talk: that there will be at least one more perpetual tribute to Sgt. Gordon J. Hansen. The Township Council passed Resolution 273-21 Oct. 26 to rename Main Street’s west side rear parking lot between Lindsley and Northfield avenues as the “Gordon Hansen Parking Lot.”
