DOOR COUNTY, WI (WFRV) - Door County's Elmer Miller was in the 22nd Tank Battalion, 11th Armored Division, which arrived in the rugged Ardennes region in France the day the "Battle of the Bulge" started on December 16th, 1944. "After a very short train up, they get committed right into the fighting," explained Craig Kolakowski, Director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. "He is killed in action on January 5th, 1945, and is buried overseas." Hometown Heroes: Green Bay native Milo C. Huempfner was a one man army Madison's Wisconsin Veterans Museum now preserves some of his last correspondence with his wife back home in Wisconsin. It is a reminder that the men of America's greatest generation didn't set out to make history.They just wanted to raise a family. "They had a newborn," revealed Kolakowski. "He had met her. The letters are talking about that, her first Christmas, and shopping." Tragically, he didn't see the baby he called "a rascal" grow up. He also never received the Christmas present his young bride sent overseas to him, in the failed hope he would find comfort in a time of chaos. "His wife sent him an army-issue necktie and got it back undeliverable because he died. She never took it out of the packaging. We received it the way she got it back. This reminds us that they were just people and also reminds you about the cost of war or any war." The 11th would fight on into Germany and on May 5th, 1945, they liberated the Mauthausen concentration camp. Hometown Heroes: Pulaski native Eugene Kraszewski reflects on 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge But not before 432 of them were killed in action. Among them was Elmer Miller of Wisconsin. "As a proud descendant of Wisconsin veterans going back to the Civil War," said Kolakowski, "There is an ethos of service and it is encapsulated in the Wisconsin idea that you should look to serve something greater than yourself." To see the museum's collection click here.