Kenneth Nelson Shellum was born April 29, 1923 in Fergus Falls, Minnesota to parents Joseph and Nellie Caroline Hagen Shellum. Joseph was raised in St. James, Minnesota. He married Nellie, a Chippewa County native, in 1909 and they homesteaded near Havre, Montana for seven years before moving to Fergus Falls in 1919. Joe and Nellie had eight children: Alice, Mildred, Alma, Harold, Esther, Kenneth and Robert. A daughter Edith, Esther’s twin, died at age 7 months. The family moved to Bagley in 1936 to a farm in Copley Township. Joe also did carpenter work to supplement his farm income.

Kenneth worked in sheet metal. When he registered for the draft in June of 1942, he was working for general contractors Mason and Hanger in Merrimac, Wisconsin, helping to construct the Badger Ordinance Works, the largest munitions factory in the world in WWII. Kenneth was 5’9” tall and 155 pounds, with blue eyes and brown hair.

Kenneth was drafted into the Army on January 25, 1944 in Fort Snelling, Minnesota. He was sent to be trained as an infantry engineer at Camp Fannin, Texas. Following the completion of his training he was assigned to the 104^th Infantry Regiment, 26^th Infantry Division which sailed for Cherbourg, France on August 27, 1944. They landed on September 7, 1944 and spent a month on patrol duty along the coast of France. In early October the Division was sent to relieve the 4^th Armored Division who was maintaining defensive positions in the Salonnes-Moncourt-Canal du Rhine au Mame sector. On November 8^th, the Division went on the offensive, taking Dieuze, a commune in northeastern France, then advancing across the Saar River to Saar Union. Saar Union is Germany’s smallest state, but it took intense house-to-house fighting to finally capture it on December 2^nd. 

The Division was supposed to have a short rest at Metz, but that was interrupted by the German offensive now known as the Battle of the Bulge. The 26^th Division, including the 104^th Infantry Regiment, moved north to Luxembourg in mid-December to attack the Germans at Rambrouch and Grosbous in western Luxembourg on December 22^nd. The 26^th Division captured Arsdorf, a small village in Luxembourg on Christmas Day after heavy fighting. It then attacked toward the Wiltz River but was forced to withdraw in the face of desperate German resistance. The Division eventually crossed the Wiltz on January 20^th, but Sergeant Kenneth Shellum never got to celebrate this victory. He had been killed in the intense fighting on January 11, 1945. There is a remembrance memorial honoring the men of the 26^th Infantry Division in Eschdorf, Luxembourg. It reads, “Honour to the men of the 26^th US Infantry Division who fought in this sector during the battle for the Ardennes 1944-1945.”

Kenneth’s body was temporarily buried in Luxembourg but was returned to the United States in 1948. He was buried in Fort Snelling National Cemetery on September 9, 1948 with a family memorial service. He was 21 years old.

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