Three children of Pete J. Nosser JR., from left, Rusty Nosser, Daria Hood and Rowdy Nosser look over coded and decoded field documents announcing Germany’s surrender ending World War II in Europe. Nosser kept the original coded message and the one he decoded. Nosser, a staff sergeant, was a code clerk in the 513th Airborne Signal Company. (The Vicksburg Post/C. Todd Sherman)

[11/11/01]It was May 1945. Allied forces had landed at Normandy 11 months earlier. The Battle of the Bulge had been fought through the winter. German forces were being shoved from the east by the Soviet army and from the west by Allied forces headed by the U.S. Army.

Early in the morning that day, a young man from Vicksburg sat in the 513th Airborne Signal Company code room at Auxerre, France, a little more than 60 miles southeast of Paris. Suddenly, a coded message arrived and had to be translated into letters and words that the commander of the 13th Airborne Division could read.

The young man was Pete J. Nosser Jr., a 21-year-old staff sergeant from Vicksburg. After the war, Nosser returned home where he owned and operated grocery stores until his retirement. Known as a man with a hearty handshake and hello, he was also a professional sports fisherman.

Nosser, who died in October 1997 at 73, didn’t talk much about the war years. But the message he decoded that day was from the headquarters of the Supreme Allied Expeditionary Forces at Rheims, France. It was to units all over Europe and said that Gen. Alfred Jodl had just signed the documents unconditionally surrendering all German forces to the Allies. World War II was ending.

Although Jodl had signed the surrender documents at 2:41 a.m. central European time on May 1, the actual end of hostilities was not to take place until 11:01 p.m. on May 8.

Sometime after decoding what turned out to be a two-page message, the young Nosser did something he probably should not have done. He tucked the original, coded Teletype message and the accompanying translation into his gear … and left it there.

It was after his death that his children were going through his personal items and found the three pieces of paper.

“We didn’t know he had this until after he died,” said Daria Nosser Hood, as she carefully took the paper out of an envelope.

The paper on which the coded version of the message was written had turned a dark brown with age, and the paper containing the translated version is also showing signs of age.

Hood said her husband sent copies of the documents off to various people, including an auction house in Kansas City, Kan., and the U.S. Military Academy Museum in West Point, N.Y.

“It’s (an) original field document,” Hood said, adding the original message announcing the surrender of the Germans is in a Forbes collection in New York.

“I believe it is an authentic piece,” said Jerry Coates of Gettysburg, Pa., a retired employee of the National Security Museum of the National Security Agency.

He said given the relatively low level security classification assigned to the message, the document was probably decoded on an M209 machine.

“That was a low level code machine that used a roll of paper (tape) with adhesive on the back,” Coates said.

“Probably he shouldn’t have kept it, but it was at the end of the war, and things got pretty lax,” he said.

W.W. “Wen” Beckham of Jackson was a friend of Nosser’s during the war and served in the same signal company.

“I was his platoon sergeant. He was in charge of the code room,” Beckham recalled.

Beckham said as head of the code room, Nosser would have been in charge of decoding a message like the one his children have.

He also recalled part of the 13th Airborne Division was stationed in Auxerre, and other parts were in the nearby towns of Sens and Joigny.

Nosser, like many of the veterans being honored today, preferred other topics to his war experiences.

“He would never talk about war stories until about two years before he died,” said Rowdy Nosser.

Hood and Nosser said their father was a student at The Citadel after graduating from high school.

“He used to tell us how (Gen. George) Patton really saved his life. (Patton) pulled him out of line because he was so polished and clean. That’s what really kept him from going into the Battle of the Bulge,” Nosser said.

Hood said as her father became more and more ill, he would be talking to his children about something that had happened during World War II but couldn’t find the words to finish.

“He would talk a little bit, and then he would stop. I found that with a lot of people in the service; they get to a point and it’s very hard,” she said.

“He said people would never know the sacrifice the people in World War II made,” she said.

Nosser and his wife, Ouida, who has also died, had five children. They all live in or near Vicksburg.