The orders and maps of an artillery unit did not promise a quiet December in Belgium. James Roberts Fonda was serving with the 106th Infantry Division as German forces launched the offensive remembered as the Battle of the Bulge. His family’s later account places his capture in that campaign.
The archive does not preserve a personal diary of the moment he became a prisoner. It does, however, carry a December 1945 newspaper report, written after he was home, identifying him as a former battery commander and a prisoner of the Germans. His later obituary supplies the family memory of captivity lasting until the war’s closing months, despite attempts by American troops to reach the camp.
For his family, what mattered was not a perfectly reconstructed military itinerary but the difference between the man sent overseas and the one finally returned. In 1945 a newspaper could announce his discharge, his decorations, and his visits to family. The ordinary language of reunion stands in sharp contrast to the uncertainty that must have accompanied news of the German offensive.
James resumed his career with Burroughs after the war, ultimately working for the company for decades. Captivity had interrupted his civilian future; it had not brought that future to an end. The later working life is part of the wartime story too.
From The Fonda Family in America: An Illustrated Family History, Draft Edition, October 2026. The book contains the chapter’s fuller context and source notes.
Sources and references
- The Fonda Family in America: An Illustrated Family History: Chapter 9 — Through Two World Wars; October 2026 Draft Edition. See chapter source notes.