By Julia LeDoux

The daughter of a decorated World War II veteran is worried that no one will come to a celebration of his life set for this Saturday in Georgia.

Candice Easton told the Gainesville Times that her father, Cornelius Cornelssen VIII, enlisted in the Army in 1943 when he was 18 and was a heavy machine gunner in the 101st Infantry Regiment.

Cornelssen was awarded the Bronze Star for exemplary conduct in ground combat against the armed enemy during the Rhineland Campaign in early 1945. He earned two Purple Hearts for war wounds he received at Luxembourg and Arracourt, France.

"The character of the Greatest Generation was so strong, so young," Easton told Connectingvets.com.

Easton said her father was shot in the calf and fell to the ground during a battle in Luxembourg.

“As he lay there and waited for medics, he saw somebody around the field, a German picking off the wounded,” she told the paper. “He laid there and played dead and hoped for the best, and he got bypassed.”

A medic who arrived to help Cornelssen was also shot, Easton continued.

When the war ended, Cornelssen returned to Pennsylvania, earned a degree in engineering from Drexel University, where he met and married his wife, Jeanne. He opened up his own engineering firm in Camden, New Jersey and moved to North Georgia to be near his children in the 1990s. He lived by himself until an injury left him in his daughter’s care when he was 90. For the past few years, he lived in an assisted care facility due to declining health.

“My father was a very good man, and just because he died so old there’s nobody left to come,” Easton told The Times. “We’re from New York and he has two friends up there and they’re in their 90s and won’t be able to come.”

Easton is also now custodian of letters her father wrote to his parents during the war. In one, Easton said her father thanked them for sending cigarettes but hinted for something else -- chocolate.

"He taught me the most simple skill a person can develop in life is to consider what the other person is feeling during their interactions with them," she said.

According to the VA, more than 16 million Americans fought in World War II. Today, less than 500,000 are still alive, according to estimates.

Candice Easton

Cornelssen is survived by his daughter and a son who lives in Hilton Head, South Carolina. His celebration of life will be held at noon Saturday at the Flowery Branch Masonic Lodge, 5416 Spring Street, Flowery Branch, Ga.

"Every 18-year-old had to learn patience, perseverance, I don't come first, teamwork, suffering and not complaining," Easton said of her father and the other members of the Greatest Generation. "All of those lessons, I don't think anybody would choose going to war to learn those lessons. And, then they came back and started families with those values."

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