Currently viewing the tag: "World War II"

Looking Back 1941

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The British Invade catoctin mountain

by James Rada, Jr.

In the spring of 1941, the U.S. had yet to enter World War II, but other countries had been fighting for two years. Germany showed early dominance in the war, and it hadn’t been going well for the British Royal Navy. It had lost more than 55 ships and 18,000 men. Those who remained were exhausted.

“British Prime Minister Winston Churchill pressed the United States for desperately needed aid,” according to K.C. Clay in the report, “Rest Camp: A Report on the WWII Use of Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area by the Royal Navy.” “Pushing to the edge of US neutrality, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought ways of helping the British.”

During March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which allowed the U.S. to aid the Allied nations with food, oil, and material. It was given free of charge, but it could only be given if the help was essential for the defense of the United States.

Under this act, the U.S. was able to justify repairing damaged Royal Navy ships. While the ships were in port, the crews went ashore to recuperate from the stress of combat.

The Catoctin Recreational Demonstration Area on Catoctin Mountain was one of seven National Park Service sites that provided rest camps for the Royal Navy sailors. This pre-war U.S. aid to the Allies is largely unknown.

Clay, a National Park Service historian, identified four ships whose crews visited Catoctin Mountain. These were the H.M.S. Southern Prince, H.M.S. Bulolo, H.M.S. Menestheus, and H.M.S. Agamemnon.

During June, 150 sailors stayed at Camp Greentop in two groups of 75 men. Each group stayed for a week, enjoying swimming and other sports activities. Other sailors stayed at the Short Term Lodge, which the National Park Service had acquired after Bessie Darling was killed in the house in 1933. It was a 12-room boarding house with three indoor bathrooms.

“CRDA canceled visitor reservations for the summer of 1941 and configured the house to accommodate the sailors,” Clay wrote.

The largest group consisted of 85 sailors. In all, five groups of sailors stayed there averaging 56 men in each group.

The third site where Royal Navy sailors stayed was Hi-Catoctin. Two groups of sailors stayed there with an average size of 99 men.

As with just about everything that happened on the mountain which was supposed to be a secret, the truth was known to local residents.

“Although the British Ministry of Defense and the US War Department did not publicly acknowledge the presence of the sailors in the U.S., the residents of Frederick County were aware of them and extended invites to multiple social engagements,” Clay wrote. “National Park Service employees also provided social functions such as hot dog roasts and dances. To some of the war weary sailors, the Americans seemed over compensating for not being engaged in the conflict.”

This is not to say the British didn’t appreciate the efforts on their behalf. They repaid the kindness by putting on exhibition cricket and rugby matches for visitors to the park. They taught British songs, dances, and dialects to their hosts.

“Some sailors got on so well with the Americans that they married them,” Clay wrote.

Despite the camaraderie between the Americans and British, the British Admiralty had ordered the sailors not to talk about their assigned ship names, combat engagements, area of operation, and “any information that could possibly be used by the Nazis against them.”

The Nazis had sympathizers among the Americans who might have passed that information on.

Although locals knew of the Royal Navy presence, the U.S. media and the British press did not report on it until the U.S. Navy announced it on September 19, 1941.

After the successful 1941 season, plans were made for 1942, such as adding a telephone booth the sailors could use. However, the second season never happened because the U.S. entered the war and needed to use the facilities for its own purposes. It eventually served as a training camp for OSS agents and a rest camp for U.S. Marines.

Clay wrote that the rest camp story “is about the men who spent two years on alert for Nazi U-boats getting a week respite in the woods far inland from coastal waters. Some men arrived already decorated for valor. Others would go on to perform heroic actions. A few would sacrifice all within weeks of departing the camp.”

In total, more than 21,000 British sailors enjoyed a respite from the war on American soil, although only around 630 of them visited Catoctin.

Picture shows a British sailor relaxing in a cabin on Catoctin Mountain during WWII.

Courtesy of the National Park Service

Veteran Spotlight

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PFC John Little, Emmitsburg

KIA in the Liberation of Bizory

by Richard D. L. Fulton

John William Little was born on December 19, 1910, to parents John William and Minie Little, and resided on Frederick Street, Emmitsburg, Maryland, and had two sisters, Valerie and Anna, and three brothers, Robert, Roy, and James.

James was included as one of the brothers by a write-up that appeared in The (Frederick) News on March 12, 1945. However, James is not mentioned in the 1930 census. The census lists the Little’s three brothers as Robert, Roy, and Charles.

According to his draft card and enlistment records that Little had filled out when he was 90, he indicated that he was employed at St. Joseph’s College as a fireman before entering service, and that, regarding his education, he had attended “grammar school.”

Little was enlisted at Fort George G. Meade on April 3, 1942, and given the rank of private. He was subsequently stationed at Camp Cook, California, and Camp Chaffee, Oklahoma, before going overseas (at age 34) and was a member of a tank crew in the 68th Tank Battalion, 6th Armor Division, in General George S. Patton, Jr.’s Third Army.

Little was given leave in December 1943, to return home, following the death of his father, to attend the funeral.

The 6th Armor Division entered the war via Utah Beach, Normandy, July 19, 1944, ultimately fighting its way through Northern France, Central Europe, and finally, the Ardennes.

He was injured in November 1944, when the tank in which he was traveling was knocked out by enemy fire, resulting in his being wounded in the face and left leg. The Gettysburg Times Reported on January 30, 1945, that “He was able to able to return to action shortly thereafter… after the medic treated him.”

Little wrote his last letter home on December 27, 1944, stating that “he was well, and expecting to be to be sent to some other country, which he could not identify, within a short time,” according to The Gettysburg Times.

That “some other country” would be Belgium, and Little would soon find himself and 6th Armor Division the rolling towards Bastogne, a Belgian city that the German troops were in the process of laying siege to, as part of an over effort ordered by Adolf Hitler to attack allied forces that were slowly griding their way towards Germany – an overall engagement that came to be known as the Battle of the Bulge.

The Battle of the Bugle would become Hitler’s last stand before his 12-year-long “1,000 Year Reich” began to implode from the allies tearing into it from all directions.

The German siege of Bastogne was ultimately broken by the U.S. forces, including the 6th Armor Division, during seven days of battle, from December 20 to December 27, 1944. In January, 1945, the U.S. forces were ordered to begin driving off the German troops that remained in the area.

As a part of that effort, the 6th Armor Division was ordered forward to take the village of Bizory (sometime misspelled as Bixory on some web sites) away from its German occupiers. Bizory lies about 2.6 miles northeast of Bastogne.

The village was soon liberated, and the 6th Armor Division was solely credited with accomplishing the objective. Unfortunately, Little, who would make his final stand in the fight to liberate Bizory, was initially declared missing in action on January 8, 1945. He was 34 at that time. Little was shortly thereafter reclassified as killed in action. But it would appear that Little’s body was never recovered. His name is listed on the “Tablets of the Missing” in the Ardennes American Military Cemetery, Neuville-en-Condroz, Arrondissement de Liège, Liège, Belgium.

Little was awarded the Purple Heart W/Cluster and was also posthumously promoted to private first class.

Photo Courtesy of U.S. Army public domain

PFC John William Little, Photo Courtesy of findagrave.com

Memorial Day

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Memorial Day is traditionally known as the official start of summer. The first Memorial Day was celebrated in 1865, known as Decoration Day, established to recognize the fallen soldiers of the Civil War. After World War II, the name was changed to Memorial Day to remember and honor those who have died while serving our country. 

In 1971, The National Holiday Act moved Memorial Day to the third Monday of May to provide a three-day weekend. Today, many civic organizations, Veterans of Foreign Wars, AMVETS (American Veterans), The American Legion, and Knights of Columbus keep with tradition and celebrate Memorial Day on May 30.

Annually, the Thurmont American Legion Post 168, in conjunction with AMVETS Post 7, Voiture Locale 155 40/8 locomotive Chewy, and the Town of Thurmont, hosts a ceremony to include a guest speaker and a wreath laying to honor our military from each War/Conflict at Memorial Park. Memorial Day is about honoring our military that have given the ultimate sacrifice for our freedoms

Girl Scout Troop 37191, Cub Scout Pack 270, BSA Scout Troops 270 B/G, Venturing Crew 270, and Christian Service Brigade provide the the flag ceremony, honoring this year’s Memorial Day Ceremony. Courtesy Photo

PFC Howard Mace

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From Iran to Gettysburg

by Richard D. L. Fulton

Photo Courtesy of Howard’s daughter, Coleen Reamer

Pvt. Howard Mace appears second from the left in this photograph, taken in the Middle East.

Photo Courtesy of National Park Service, Gettysburg

Photographed is Camp Sharpe.

Private First Class Howard Mace’s career in the Army during World War II found him guarding supply convoys carrying supplies through Iran to Russia, bombs being shipped from Virginia to New York, and 400 German POWs on the Gettysburg Battlefield.

Mace, who was born in Medix Run, Pennsylvania, was 30 years of age and working at the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia when war was declared against Japan and Germany in 1941. Although he could have been granted a deferment, he decided to enlist in the Army in April 1942, serving in the 1325 Service Command Unit as a military policeman.

After completing basic training in 1942, he and his unit were deployed in 1943 to the Middle East (Iran area), where the unit guarded supply convoys heading through Iran to the Russian allies, where the unit remained on duty until early 1945. In early 1945, Mace was dispatched to Norfolk and, subsequently, was assigned to guard convoys delivering bombs to military installations in New York City.

Soon thereafter, Mace was reassigned to assist with guarding around 400 German soldiers and officers being held at Camp Sharpe (formerly a Civilian Conservation Corps camp) on the Gettysburg Battlefield. The CCC camp had been converted into a special forces training base in 1944 and was renamed Camp Sharpe. (See German POWs helped save Adams’ Agriculture in this issue of The Catoctin Banner). Mace’s primary role at Camp Sharpe was to guard the prisoners when they were outside of the compound on work details in the farm fields, orchards, and canning factories.

Mace’s daughter, Coleen Reamer, a Hamiltonban Township supervisor, said her father didn’t talk much about the war to her but did occasionally discuss the war with her brother, Ronald.

Reamer informed that her father said that “he liked that duty (guarding the PWs – POW was a post-World War II designation) very much because the prisoners did all the cooking, cleaning, polishing and had no desire to go anywhere since they were treated so well.” He stated that Gettysburg, like the rest of the country, was under food rationing, but the POW camps were not.

Reamer reported that guards and military staff could invite guests to visit the camp and the prisoners generally prepared the meals. “Because the camp had plenty of otherwise rationed items, the townspeople enjoyed being invited to the camp for a tour and dinner,” she said her father observed.

Reamer said, “The belief by Americans was that if we treated German POWs well, then that would hopefully translate the same for our American POWs held by the enemy overseas.”

Only a few prisoners attempted escapes were ever reported from the three German prisoner-of-war camps that were built on the Gettysburg battlefield. Two escaped the Emmitsburg Road camp but surrendered to a family wife and her daughter-in-law in York. Another escaped one of the other camps but surrendered to a New York City book dealer. Two others escaped and were caught at Zora (on Waynesboro Pike).

Reamer said her father did mention an escape in which two of the German prisoners slipped away from a work detail and were found sitting at the Gettysburg Town Square. They only wanted to see a movie, but the Strand Theater on Baltimore Street refused to accept PW canteen script for admission.

Mace served at Camp Sharp until he was mustered out on November 7, 1945. He was awarded the Good Conduct Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and the European-African-Middle East Campaign Medal.

He married his wife Jo-Ellen Anna Nary in 1946, and they had four children: Coleen Reamer, Ronald Mace, Vikki Mace, and Beth Vivaldi.

(Reporters Note: Mace likely would have been at the Camp Sharpe compound when the Army suffered its only casualty that would occur in conjunction with the prisoner-of-war camps at Gettysburg. On September 1, 1945, when a shot rang out in Camp Sharpe, guards fanned out to locate the source and found the body of Private First-Class Joseph Ward, lying lifeless on the floor of one of the guard towers; they saw that he had been shot. It was subsequently ruled that his death was a suicide.)

1944: The ‘Nazi’ Mason-Dixon Invasion

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Richard D. L. Fulton

(Adapted from ‘Nazis’ in Gettysburg:  World War II Comes to a Civil War Battlefield by Richard D. L. Fulton, pending publication.)

It seemed like just another routine and ordinary morning in 1944 in tranquil Frederick and Adams counties to the casual observer, but something was about to occur which would be beyond the routine and the ordinary – perhaps even horrifying – in these rural counties.

As Mason-Dixon residents went about their normal business, perhaps starting their day at their kitchen tables having cups of coffee or enjoying their breakfasts and reading over their local newspaper on the events transpiring in a far-away war relegated in faraway places most Mason-Dixon residents would likely never see.

America was only a few months away from D-Day and the invasion of Normandy, but as many rural area farmers and their families went about their routine chores, a few of them might have noticed a disruption in the nearby tree lines, unusual activities in a distant field, or something not quite right about vehicles rumbling their way down a little-used dirt road.

Suddenly it became clear, as events began to transpire within more reasonable fields of vision, that the individuals who could be identified appeared to be armed men in uniforms – German Wehrmacht uniforms.  At first a few individual German soldiers appeared, as if scouting, then squads and platoons began to walk out of the woods. 

Before residents could decipher any meaning to it all, German armored vehicles could be seen rumbling along the rural roads.  As the vehicles progressed closer, observers could observe the readily distinguishable and distinct Balkan crosses on the fronts and sides.  Even more disturbing, two war planes – also bearing Balkan crosses on their wings and sides – could be seen flying low over the fields, as if scouting ahead of the converging enemy.

Slowly, as the unbelievable seemed to be unfolding before those who were observing the remarkable events, the sole reason behind it all could only suggest one thing – the unthinkable.  The Germans were on the move, not in Europe, but in Maryland…in Frederick County, and making their way northward along the rural dirt byways, apparently, for all intents and purposes, completely undetected by any military authorities or local law enforcement.

How could this be?  There had been no warning.  Some of the local inhabitants might have been a little surprised, at least initially.  There were, after all, several hundred members of the famed German Afrika Korps “encamped” just outside Gettysburg.  Sure, they were just prisoners of war (referred to as PWs in that period of time) housed in the Gettysburg battlefield compound, but had the Wehrmacht launched a surprise raid on American soil to liberate them?

Several of the advancing Germans were “captured” by local farmers, who thought they could also be escaped prisoners of war and held them until they could be turned over to the military or police, but to their chagrin, their patriotic effort would ultimately have been as being proven to have been for naught.  The farmers could make little sense of what their prisoners were trying to say – their captives, not surprisingly, could only speak German.

Certainly, to whatever local farmers and residents who might have been witnessing this seemingly unanticipated “invasion,” there must have been somewhat of a sigh of relief when groups of American GIs began to appear on the scene to essentially “save the day.”

Finally, after more than a week of apparent hit-and-run tactics having been employed by the Germans, triggering similar responses by the American troops at hand, the sounds of warfare began to taper off, until the only thing anyone within hearing distance might have heard were demands that the German forces surrender, being made by the Americans, spoken in German, and being broadcast from loudspeakers. 

The American broadcasts announced to the Germans proclaimed that the Germans were surrounded, that resistance was futile, and that there was no sense dying when they could surrender and be treated in full accordance with the Geneva Convention.

 As the invasion slowly began to grind to a halt as more groups of American troops began rounding up surrendering Germans and removing them from the scene—as well as liberating members of the enemy who had been taken into custody by shotgun-wielding locals.

Why had the infamous and renowned German Wehrmacht given up so easily? Perhaps the main reason was because this German “invasion” had not been plotted and orchestrated in Berlin. The planning for this “attack” on American soil began just outside of Gettysburg within a forested area of the old Gettysburg battlefield known as McMillan Woods, at a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp which had recently been re-dubbed by the military as “Camp George H. Sharpe” (see The Ritchie Boys” From Antietam to Gettysburg in the November issue of The Catoctin Banner).

The week-long invasion had been orchestrated as a training exercise for the approximately 800-man 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th Mobile Radio Broadcasting companies, who would be responsible -upon deployment on D-Day – for attempting to coerce enemy troops into surrendering or retreating, and to spread factual information from behind enemy lines to the allies and generate “fake news” broadcasts to the enemy.

Because of the secretive nature of the exercises, the residents could not have been notified by the military in-advance, as it could have potentially jeopardized the covert nature of the operations emanating out of Camp Sharpe.  The civilian population would not learn of the truth behind the invasion until after the close of the war.

As to the column of German vehicles, George Mandler recorded in Interesting Times: An Encounter With the 20th Century 1924 – that the shells of simulated German tanks were also constructed of plywood and mounted on Jeeps.  Other types of German vehicles were nothing more than cardboard shells mounted on various other vehicles. 

And as to the two German “Messerschmitt” fighters seen overhead during the engagement, The Baltimore Sun reporter Bready wrote that the simulated aircraft strafing was being recreated by two “Cub trainers, based at the Waynesboro airport.”  Some of the German soldiers were actually German prisoners of war who had volunteered to participate in the maneuvers rather than just sit in PW camps.

But what about the distinct sounds of battle heard?  The (Frederick) News reported in 1945, “speakers had been planted in strategic locations and used to broadcast actual combat noises.”

Making mention of the few German troops captured by local farmers, Hanna and Walter Kohner wrote in Hanna… Walter: A Love Story, “The German front was so carefully duplicated that some of the soldiers dressed in German uniforms not only were captured by our own units and interrogated, but also by some Gettysburg farmers, who took them for escaped POWs.” 

Reporter Bready, jokingly referring to the farmer-captured Germans, stated, “Fun might be had counting up, in the hospital records at Ritchie, that cryptic entry, ‘Wound, buttocks, buckshot.”

Remnants of the “Nazi” Mason-Dixon Invasion still exist in the fields and woods of the affected woods and fields to this day.  “The hills and forests surrounding the camp will be giving up souvenirs for years to come,” The (Frederick) News reported in 1945, a statement recently reinforced with the discovery of German World War II equipage and medals recovered by relic hunters at an undeveloped parcel of land off East Route 30, near Gettysburg. 

Likewise, Sun reporter Bready wrote, “Long after the Jeep tracks and hoofprints are gone, the surrounding hills and forests will store up for future ages such memorials as C-ration cans, spent cartridges, and forsaken tent-pins.”

For additional information, see documentary “The Ritchie Boys”, Menemsha Films (menemshafilms.com).

Two German soldiers with rifles.

Source: Unpublished German photograph: Personal collection R. D. L. Fulton

Cartoon Source: The Baltimore Sun, December 16, 1945

Veteran Spotlight

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by Richard D. L. Fulton

Lehman & the U.S.S. Barb

The Sub That “Sunk” a Train

The World War II submarine U.S.S. Barb (also known by its naval designation SS-220), was said to have compiled “one of the most outstanding records of any U.S. submarine in the war,” sinking more than 96,600 tons of Japanese ships—a total of 17 Japanese ships, including an aircraft carrier.

Under the command of Lieutenant Commander Eugene “Lucky” Fluckey, the Barb’s commander earned the Navy Cross and Medal of Honor, and the ship and its crew were awarded four Presidential Unit Citations and a Navy Unit Commendation with eight battle stars.

The late John Lehman, born in Reed (near Hagerstown), ultimately became a resident of Frederick.

Lehman joined the Navy in the wake of the Korean War as a trained radio operator, having attended the Bliss Electrical School in Tacoma Park. He joined the Navy before he could be drafted into the Army, wherein he received additional training, notably in the field of radar.

He was subsequently sent to London, Connecticut, to attend classes on submarine-specific radar.

Following the completion of his education in Connecticut, he returned to Mare Island, California, where he was assigned to the crew of the U.S.S. Barb.

Initially, the Barb was dispatched to the North Atlantic under Captain John Waterman, where the submarine sank only a single German ship.  The Barb was then assigned to Pearl Harbor, where Fluckey assumed command.

With Lehman manning the radar, the Barb sank four Japanese ships, including an aircraft carrier in the East China Sea, off the coast of China, before making its way up to a Japanese-occupied port on the China coast, where the crew of the Barb took on a Japanese sitting duck convoy of 30 anchored ships.  About that raid, Lehman stated, “(sneaking into the harbor) was the easy part… Getting out of the harbor safely into open water was the tricky part,” adding that upon escape, the submarine was forced to remain on the surface in order to safely negotiate mines and rocks.

For this daring assault alone, Fluckey was awarded the Medal of Honor, and the crew of the Barb received the Presidential Unit Citation.

The Barb also participated in a rescue operation when an unmarked Japanese ship—designated the “Hell ship”—transporting Australian and British prisoners of war was tragically sunk. The crew of the submarine rescued 14 of the POWs.

But one of the Barb’s more notorious ventures began on July 19, 1945, when the ship sailed close to the Japanese shoreline, and the crew noted a railroad that had been constructed with the apparent intent that it be used for transporting military supplies. The submarine sat idle for several days to allow the crew to observe the arrival and departure of the supply trains.

Then on July 23, the submarine closed in on the shoreline, followed by eight of the ship’s crew, launching themselves in a small boat to gain access to the beach. According to warhistory.com, the team then crawled through high grass, across a highway and a ditch, and then began to lay pressure-sensitive explosives along the train tracks.  Lehman said he tried to volunteer for the mission, but the commander was not about to send his primary radar operator into the attack.

In a little over an hour, after the assault team was back on board the sub, a supply train triggered the explosives and blew up, and the rest is history. The attack became the only ground combat assault carried out upon Japanese soil in the war, and the Barb became the only submarine with the image of a train sewn onto their battle flag.

Fluckey described Lehman as one of the best radar men with whom he had ever sailed, citing Lehman several times in the lieutenant commander’s book, Thunder Below.

Lehman passed away in Frederick in 2021, the last surviving crew member of the Barb under Fluckey’s command.

As to the fate of the U.S.S. Barb, it was decommissioned and loaned to the Italian Navy, who renamed it the Enrico Tazzoli. Still in Italian hands, the ship was sold in 1972 for scrap for $100,000, according to warhistory.com.

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How I Came to Know My Father ~ Part 4

by Sally T. Grove

Courtesy Photo of Chester L. Grove, Jr. in Uniform

Dad and Mates

Courtesy Photo

I started to understand my father, Chester Grove when I was 20 years old in 1977. That’s when I found the journal he kept during World War II. I read about experiences he didn’t talk about…fighting in war.

A cold March rain came to add to our discomfort…my arm was now stiff but the bleeding had stopped. My buddy’s head and legs were giving him plenty of trouble…we had to slow the pace and take turns helping him along…we often went through the forest on trails and dirt roads, tanks and guns concealed in the forest…we were constantly wet and chilled.

Our guards stopped at a house in the next town and ate while our stomachs just growled with hunger. At 4:00 p.m. we came to a little German town and sat down while the guards talked to a German captain. We had been walking since 5:00 a.m. and we were a tired and hungry bunch of Joes…

Dad had been going for at least 20 hours straight. I doubt anything that life dealt my father after the war could compare with what he had experienced in Germany. No wonder my father was always grateful for the small blessings in life. He taught us to stop and savor the view, to hear the calls of Bob Whites and Whip-Por-Whils echoing in the air at sunset, and to know that in our family we were rich beyond money.

...one at a time into the house… the Jerry’s captain interrogated us… I was next to be questioned and was glad my time had come, for the uncertainty of waiting was terrible. I went into the room and the officer behind a large desk asked, “What’s your name?” I answered with my name, rank and serial number. He then asked my outfit. I wouldn’t answer so he told me the answer, the division and also the regiment I was from… I was not surprised that he knew the division but I was given a great surprise when he also named the regiment. I still cannot understand how he found out unless he forced one of the fellows to talk (which I doubt) or found the answer on a letter or paper of some kind someone was carrying. He then asked whether we were Panzer’s troop, flyers, or infantry, and I guessed then that he didn’t know much about our outfit. I refused to tell him and he got very mad and threatened to hit me unless I talked. He even drew back his arm in a motion to strike me but it turned out that he did not strike. I was very mad when he threatened me and I’m sure that if he had struck me I would have gone over the desk after him and killed him, for I know I could not have taken a slap without fighting back. It is good that he didn’t for I surely would have been killed if I had tangled with him.

I cannot even imagine my father having the thought of killing someone. He was the gentlest soul I have ever known.

After he had finished questioning all of us, he said that since we would not talk we would have nothing to eat until we decided to talk… We waited for about two hours in the rain and cold March wind, while the guards ate and we looked on with watering mouths and hungry eyes. Finally we were told to go in the house… we were brought in a small bowl of cold potatoes, about one apiece. But they vanished in a flash, serving only to sharpen our hunger.

Dad hadn’t eaten since 8:00 p.m. the night before. He had gone 24 hours without food.

About half an hour later, the three of us that were wounded were told that a truck was waiting to take us to a hospital and the rest would march on to the concentration camp. I almost wished to go on to the concentration camp rather than split up with the rest of the fellows, but I wouldn’t have been allowed… so we parted our little group that had been through so much together.

What would have happened had he gone to the concentration camp? Would things have turned out differently? Thank God his life took the turns it did or I would not be here to tell you my father’s story.

It was dark and we rode for ages in the small truck and went through countless towns. Finally, about 11:30 p.m., we were taken into a large German house, which was being used as a Jerry field hospital. We gave our name, rank, and serial number to a Jerry orderly at a desk and then sat down among half a dozen wounded Jerries to wait our turn with the doctor. I was taken into a room equipped for operating. A radio was playing an American song. The first American music I had heard for months… A beautiful, young blonde-haired girl was helping the doctor. He told me it was his daughter. I laid on a table and was stripped to the waist then strapped down hand and foot. The doctor drew out a large scalpel and laughed as he drew it across my throat in a motion to cut it. If he had not been laughing, I would have been very much afraid, but I knew it was a joke so I laughed back.

My father had a great sense of humor, a gift he gave us all. We still laugh when we think about Dad learning to play tennis. For all of our lives, my father came home from work and changed from his suit into blue jeans. Blue jeans were his primary play clothes. So, when Dad played tennis, he played in jeans. That was fine in cool weather, but when the mercury skyrocketed along with my father’s passion for tennis, the problem had to be fixed. For Father’s Day, my siblings and I bought Dad tennis shorts. My father appeared in the hallway, boxers hanging inches below the shorts. Being a time before it was chic to have boxers showing beneath shorts, the whole family dissolved into laughter. Dad not only graduated to shorts that summer, but was introduced to briefs as well.

The doctor said, “Don’t feel so good now do you?” He told me in broken English that he had studied medicine in Chicago and I felt a little better.

Sadly, this is where Dad’s war diary stopped. He didn’t explain how long he was held captive, when he was liberated from the Germans, where he recuperated from his wounds, or when he returned to the states. Thankfully, my father had lived through these horrendous events and lived to write a part of his story.

Slowly, after reading the last page, I closed the stenographer’s notebook. Dad was a writer. This was my father but outside the lens of my experience. Were his memories too horrible to speak? Did Dad write this journal to have an outlet to express his feelings, hoping that in the writing of the words, the horror would be erased from his memory?

My mind’s camera had always framed a gentle, quiet man. The man I had known came home each afternoon by 4:30. He took a nap, his eyes closing and his body surrendering to a fast, deep sleep, the very moment his head made contact with the mattress on my parent’s carved-pineapple post bed. As kids, we rushed to see Dad when he came home; if we were two seconds late, our sharing had to wait until dinner at 5:00.

I clutched the notebook to my chest, my heart racing as I slowly ascended the stairs. Now that I knew all of this, I could not pretend that I didn’t know.

I opened the door and found various members of my family sitting around our house. I relaxed my grip on the notebook, looked at my mom and each of my siblings, knowing that I knew what they did not. I don’t remember how it happened, but I shared Dad’s notebook with my family that day.

You see, my father died when I was twenty, the day after Thanksgiving. He had gone hunting, fell out of a tree stand, and hit his head, dying instantly.

I remember vividly, too vividly, the night that my father’s station wagon, along with another car, pulled into the driveway and my Aunt Kitty got out and walked to the door. I assumed that Dad had finally gotten his deer.

When, in anticipation, I opened the door to my aunt and uncle, I knew that I was wrong. Their faces said everything. I don’t know how I held it together that night. I told my aunt I would tell my mother when she returned home from her quick grocery run. Somehow, my family made it through the night, and the days and nights that followed.

The next day, the day after my father died, I would descend the stairs to the basement. I would go through my father’s belongings, wanting so much to touch him, to hear him, to know he was there. I would open a trunk and find a small stenographer’s notebook, its brown cover worn, well-traveled, the edges frayed—my father’s war diary.

I would learn things about my father that I had never thought to ask him. Some questions to this day remain unanswered. Still, the journal provided me a glimpse into a man I did not know, and it is how I came to know my father.

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How I Came to Know My Father ~ Part 3by Sally T. Grove

Courtesy Photo of Chester L. Grove, Jr. in Uniform

Courtesy Photo

I started to understand my father, Chester Grove when I was 20 years old in 1977. That’s when I found the journal he kept during World War II. I read about experiences he didn’t talk about… fighting in war. About the assault on the Rhine, he wrote:

Where I lay, there were two more of my buddies, so I crawled back along the wall trying to locate the rest but could not do so… The Jerries must have heard me for just then a pebble dropped from the wall about ten feet away… I realized that it might not be a stone after all. I hugged the ground as tightly as I could, pushing my body against it. I also, in that split second, turned my face against the wall. Then it happened, a blinding flash and a deafening noise. I could neither see nor hear. Dirt flew all over me.

A grenade had taken my father’s sight and his hearing. A dark veil hanging over his bright blue eyes. How it must have magnified his fear!

I felt my face for I was sure it must be bleeding, but then my sight returned and gradually my hearing, although my ears kept ringing… I looked at my buddy in front of me and his head was smeared with blood as well as his foot and legs. I shook him thinking he was dead but he moved, then another grenade not quite as close hit the ground. A blinding flash and blast followed, however it did not touch us.

Concern for others, even in the face of adversity does not surprise me. Although my family didn’t have much growing up, we never did without, thanks to my father. Dad had just three suits: one for winter, one for summer, and one to wear when the in-season suit was getting cleaned. His children, on the other hand, went shopping each September for new school clothes, and each spring, we shined in our new Easter outfits.

I knew then that they would keep grenading us till we were dead or came out. I never prayed so hard and so desperately in my life, I know that I could never be an atheist, ever, and that anyone no matter what his feeling, put in the same situation would ever deny God.

Dad never talked about religion, he lived his belief. Mom was the one who took us to church on Sundays. Dad came for Baptisms, First Communions, and Confirmations, but Sunday mornings were always Dad’s time at home, while we went to mass with Mom. I have never known a more-loving man than my father, so I am not surprised that he professes his belief in God, still he never talked to us about his faith.

In those few minutes, which seemed a year, I saw visions of my favorite fishing places and hunting territory… saw them clearly as if I were there. I pictured mom, dad, and all the family, as well as all my friends who I was sure I would never see again.

My dad’s sister, Aunt Kitty, told me that Dad was always her best friend. They were closest in age of all their siblings and played together as children. They fished in Carroll Creek and rode their bikes through the streets of Frederick. I once read a letter that Dad wrote to his father; he signed his letter, “Love, Your Fishing Buddy, Tommy.”

Again a grenade dropped within 20 feet and I pressed into the earth… a voice spoke in broken English “Hello boys, come out, ve know you are there.”… I scarcely breathed for each breath sounded like a bellows, at least in my ears… I was soaked to the skin in blood and water and was shaking like a leaf in the wind. I thought of my first-aid kit with its sulfa drug to keep my wound from infection, yet I dared not move for every move brought a grenade.

The waiting must have been torture. Dad knew that the Germans were close, and they had his life in their hands.

Night started to fade… empty boats floated by… then we heard footsteps on the beach… the Jerries were afraid to come down in the darkness for fear of ambush. They had waited until they had light enough to see and then investigated. We were prisoners.

Dad’s fear must have been great when he heard footsteps approaching. The soldier became a prisoner.

At least the constant fear of uncertainty and falling grenades was now over. We had lain under the wall from 12 p.m. till daylight… four and a half hours of terrible uncertainty, awaiting death or capture or possibly help.

Dad relinquished one state of uncertainty for another. Perhaps being a prisoner of war was better than lying in wait for an unknown fate.

We were searched and stripped of all equipment but our clothes, even our first-aid pouches were taken, as well as our cigarettes, water, rations, and anything the Jerries decided they wanted. I refused to give up my pay book and finally they agreed to let me have it… I then tried to get the other fellow’s books back but they would not allow this.

Why was his pay book so important? What did it mean to a soldier?

Certainly a soldier got paid whether they presented a pay book or not.

Thankfully, by the time I knew my dad, he had given up cigarettes for a pipe. I know that pipes are bad for you, but to this day, pipe smoke makes me think of my father.

We had four guards for the eight of us and we were forced to carry a fifty pound box with us. We climbed up a steep, rocky ridge just before the sun peeped over the horizon. The going was rough…those hills were hundreds of feet high and very steep. Our (the U.S.) artillery had begun firing again and we were in constant danger from our own shells…We were really scared and I never thought we would make it through there alive.

I had seldom seen my father show raw emotion, except, that is, when Dad made a decision to reverse a doctor’s recommendation for our family. I was 10 when my brother Craig was born. We didn’t know it for several years, but Craig’s brain had been damaged during the birth process—Craig was developmentally disabled.

The doctors told my parents that Craig and our family would fare best if Craig moved into a group home.

Unfamiliar with the plight ahead, my parents placed Craig in Kemp Horn Home.

Our family was not allowed to see Craig for a month. When we finally visited, it was raining. “Song Sung Blue” played on the radio. My family’s hearts mirrored the rain as we visited with Craig. My father decided that doctors do not know best, and Craig came home with us that very day. My family never looked back.

Veteran Spotlight

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Cpl. Donald Kuhn From India to Burma: World War II

by Priscilla Rall

Last month, I wrote of how during World War II, Donald Kuhn traveled north in India, hearing jackals howling and starving children begging for food. When he finally got to the airbase at Tansucoa, he was assigned to Intelligence, an S-2, with tremendous responsibilities. He typed up every mission report as soon as the pilots were debriefed after each mission. Then, the reports went to the Communications staff that then put it in code to be sent to General Santameyer, General Chenault (of Flying Tigers fame), and four other top brass.

Every day, two planes went out to take reconnaissance photos of Burma. They had no guns for defense, just two cameras each. As soon as they returned, Kuhn had to process them, label them, and then file them for use in future missions. Another duty for Kuhn was to take a one-pound chunk of opium from the safe and cut it into small pieces that could fit in a vial to be placed in each pilot’s emergency belt, along with a small silk map of Burma, pills to purify water, and a special comb that had a hacksaw in the handle, supposedly to saw oneself out of a prison cell if captured!

Each emergency belt had a number, and it was Kuhn’s responsibility to keep records of each belt that he handed out before each mission and to record them when they were returned, and to put the opium back into the safe. What the opium was for he did not know, but one can only guess. At one base, he was actually responsible for the safety belts of every pilot in every airstrip in all of India.

Eventually, Kuhn was incorporated into the 459th Squadron, which was fitted with all P-38 twin-engine planes, although no one had been trained on these aircrafts. It was brimming with guns, and under its wings, they could hang two 100-pound bombs, put jelly bombs (napalm), or extra fuel tanks if the mission was particularly far away. The mission for the day would come down early in the morning and could include 10 or all 25 aircrafts. They were to bomb and strafe railroads, supply depots, and once all planes went out, to bomb the vital airstrip at Rangoon, Burma. When the planes returned (and not everyone did), Kuhn wrote up all of the ammo expended by each plane and gave that report to the higher-ups.

On Easter Sunday 1945, Kuhn vividly recalled that a single Japanese plane attacked his airfield (that had absolutely no defenses), and dropped a cluster of incendiary bombs, burning their barracks or “bashas.” Donald had just left the building and saw the approach of the enemy plane. A cautious man, he had already scoped out a nearby pipe that ran under a railway track. First, he grabbed his barracks bag, which was by the entrance, and grabbed a family photo off the wall, then he hopped into the pipe. Thankfully, no one was killed by the bombs, but many of the men were wounded by shrapnel. When it was safe to exit his place of succor, he noticed that a piece of shrapnel had pierced the photo he had of all of his sisters.

The airstrips were very primitive, just gravel and grass. They moved a lot, as they needed to be as close as possible to the fighting. Finally, the enemy was being pushed back east. The only troops were the American Merrill’s Marauders and some British and Indian troops. There were a number of air-warning units of several men each. They were secreted in the Chin Hills of northeast Burma. They reported all planes, friendly or not, to Kuhn’s airfield, then he had to write with a grease pencil on an acetate overlay of a map exactly where the enemy was, as well as how far the Allies had progressed. Earlier, he was responsible for marking all of the locations of German troops in North Africa, so he knew just where Rommel was, as well as the Allied troops. “The men would come in to see how we were doing, and at that point, not very well!”

At one point, the Japanese were closing in on Kuhn’s location, and all of the men were issued carbines for protection. Before that, they had no guns at all. But, the Japanese were stopped before they got to Kuhn’s location.

One of Donald’s most memorable experiences was when Lord Mountbatten, who was in charge of all the allied forces in Burma, visited his unit. He was there to give them a “pep talk,” when it seemed that the Japanese might be closing in on them and cutting the three airfields in the north off from the Allied forces in the south.

Cpl. Kuhn did ride on the famous Ledo-Burma Road, which he described as rocky with mountains and jungle all around. Once, Kuhn flew on a PT-19 Fairchild trainer plane, made right here in Hagerstown, Maryland. He laughed when he realized how many units he had been attached to. First the American Air Command #1, then the 5320 Air Defense Wing, then Headquarters 10th US Air Force, and finally, to the 459th “Twin Dragons” unit. This was dangerous business. Donald vividly recalled when two planes were lost on one mission. They never had any word on their status and were not captured. The entire unit rejoiced once when all 25 planes went out on a mission and all 25 returned! By the way, Air Commando Col. Phil Cochran, the inspiration for the comic strip “Terry and the Pirates” was in Kuhn’s 33rd Fighter Group, but in the European Theater. In all, 45 airmen were lost from the Hq. 33rd Fighter Group, the 58th, 59th, and the 60th Fighter Squadrons during the war in the CBI, or China, India, and Burma Campaign.

The war was winding down. The atom bomb was the final punch that knocked the Japanese down. Kuhn later learned that the 459th was to be in the “Forward Echelon” for the planned invasion of Japan. They were to be flown over China and back up the first invasion forces. Thankfully, that never was needed.

After the surrender was signed, Donald was finally able to return home. He took a Navy troop ship home, from Calcutta through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Then, they sailed through the Mediterranean, sailing by the famous Rock of Gibraltar into the Atlantic Ocean. He finally reached New York harbor in early November, and his ship pulled into a berth right next to the USS Missouri, where the surrender was signed! Then, off to Camp Kilmer and finally to Ft. Meade, where he was deactivated.

Finally home, he found that he began being troubled by a nervous condition of vertigo that made him feel like he was swirling around and could fly off into space at any moment. It was obviously a variation of PTSD; he worked it out, and a month or two later, it disappeared. He had a hard time deciding what he wanted to do. He first worked at a feed mill in Smithsburg and then on his brother-in-law’s farm. Finally, he landed a job in accounting at the Chewsville Co-op, where he worked for 34 years.

In 1950, he married Naomi Leatherman, and the couple moved into her parents’ home, where they had an egg and chicken business. One day they collected 800 eggs! The couple had two daughters and lived in the same home until he passed several years ago. Naomi still lives in the family home near Foxville.

Cpl. Donald Kuhn had a remarkable career in the U.S. Air Corps and was instrumental in the success of the 459th Fighter Squadron. Few of us even remember the CBI Theater, but now you know the rest of the story.

Ritchie Boy Exhibit on Display at Community Center

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A secret group of soldiers, who are credited with shortening World War II by two years, is being honored locally. The group, known as Ritchie Boys, was part of the D-Day invasion and subsequent march across Europe to defeat the Nazis.

An exhibit highlighting the impact of the Ritchie Boys during World War II is on display at the Fort Ritchie Community Center. The exhibit was recently donated to the Community Center from the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The Ritchie Boys were a military intelligence unit trained in psychological warfare, counterintelligence, sabotage, and other skills at Camp Ritchie in Cascade (later renamed Fort Ritchie). 

The Ritchie Boys consisted primarily of German-born soldiers, many of whom were also Jewish, that had fled Europe to the United States before the war. Because of their knowledge of the German culture and language, the U.S. Army used the Ritchie Boys for a variety of intelligence tasks, including interrogating prisoners of war, deciphering German communications, and various forms of psychological warfare. The name Ritchie Boys was bestowed upon the group due to their time being trained at Camp Ritchie.  

Guy Stern, a Ritchie Boy and former college professor, designed the exhibit using his firsthand knowledge, as well as access to other Ritchie Boys. Following its display at the Holocaust Memorial Center, the exhibit was placed into storage. At Stern’s suggestion, the museum agreed to donate the exhibit to the Fort Ritchie Community Center, where it will be open to the public. The exhibit will be available for viewing during the Community Center’s regular business hours for several weeks. 

The size of the exhibit is so large, the Community Center will not be able to keep it on display in its entirety indefinitely. The plan, however, is to feature parts of the exhibit in the museum, located in the Community Center. Photos of the complete exhibit will be available for viewing so that guests may still experience the impact the Ritchie Boys had during and after the war. 

Please visit www.thefrcc.org for more information on the Ritchie Boy exhibit and the Fort Ritchie Community Center. 

One of the Ritchie Boys in Germany.

Roger Atkins Turns 100 Years Young

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Over the past 100 years, Roger Atkins has been on quite the adventure!
Roger was born in the big city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on July 6, 1919. He recalled his first job, which was making nuts and bolts, followed by working at the Pittsburg Steel Mill.

Roger is a graduate from Purdue, with a degree in metellurgy. He also worked a summer as a lumber jack up north. A Veteran of the U.S. Army, he served in World War II. After his tour, he settled down for a career in government working for the U.S. Army, which included a tour in Vietnam, finally retiring in his mid-60s.

He has been a resident of his favorite little town, Detour, for 50 years. He has three children—two sons (Thomas and Kevin) and a daughter (Sheila), plus two grandchildren (Jason and Rebecca) and two great-grandchildren (Brady and Hudson). He enjoys getting his exercise at physical therapy, and spending time calling and speaking with his sweetheart of 35 years, Darleen.

Taste of the past Recipe Family Old-Time Barbecued Ribs

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This Fourth of July weekend, millions of Americans will huddle around outdoor pits, ovens, and grills to slowly cook themselves meaty, patriotic dishes, slathered in sauce. Barbecue is about as red, white, and blue as American cuisine gets.

The history of grilling begins shortly after the domestication of fire, some 500,000 years ago. The backyard ritual of grilling as we know it, though, is much more recent. Until well into the 1940s, grilling mostly happened at campsites and picnics. After World War II, as the middle class began to move to the suburbs, backyard grilling caught on, becoming all the rage by the 1950s.

4 pounds bone-in country-style pork ribs

1 cup water

1 cup ketchup

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup cider vinegar

1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon celery seed

1 teaspoon chili powder

1/8 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Dash pepper

Preheat oven to 325°. Place ribs in a shallow roasting pan. Bake, covered, 1-1/2 to 2 hours or until meat is tender. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, combine the remaining ingredients. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour 1 cup sauce over ribs; turn to coat. Let stand 15 minutes.

Drain and discard sauce from ribs. Grill ribs uncovered, over medium heat 10-12 minutes or until browned, basting with 1 cup sauce and turning occasionally.

Serve with remaining sauce. Yields 4 servings.

Veteran Spotlight

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by Priscilla Rall

The 35 Missions of a Rocky Ridge Flyboy

World War II took Americans to places they had never dreamed of going. Most had never ventured far from their farming communities. One of these rural youths was Vernon Keilholtz.

Born in 1923 near Rocky Ridge, Vernon took the train to school in Emmitsburg for seven years until it went bankrupt after a major snow storm. After graduating from high school, he attended the University of Maryland for one year before enlisting in the Army Air Corps in August 1942. After training in Florida, he qualified for mechanics’ school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and in Michigan. Just before being sent to the Pacific, he was ordered to San Antonio for cadet training where he qualified as a pilot or co-pilot. In April 1943, he first soloed in a Fairchild 19A (manufactured in Hagerstown). Vernon then was transferred to Arkansas where he shared his barracks with the future entertainer George Goebbels.

At last, Vernon was assigned as the co-pilot of a B-17 along with nine other crew members. They were to stay together for the duration of their service. They left in May 1943 to fly to England from Nebraska, refueling in Gander, Newfoundland, and finally reaching Scotland. In England they were assigned to the 100th Bomb Group (the “Bloody Hundredth”) of the 8th Air Force, with the 351st Squadron stationed at Thorpe Abbott in southern England. Vernon’s first mission was shortly after D-Day on June 12 with Harvey Dickert as pilot. It was supposed to be a “milk run” looking for “targets of opportunity,” but their flight path took them over Dunkirk where the Germans had a plethora of anti-aircraft guns. One plane was hit, caught fire, and plunged into the English Channel. Miraculously, four airmen were rescued, but the rest perished. Vernon and his crew flew many missions to support our ground troops. On June 25, they were ordered to load up with cannisters filled with equipment for the French underground. They flew just 50 feet above the ground and their drop zone was illuminated by flares. They were so low that they could see the French women and children waving at them!

Their plane, the “Mason and Dixon” (named for the previous pilot and co-pilot, and not for the crew members who were from Gettysburg and Maryland) flew many missions to Berlin.  They were part of what the military terms “maximum effort” as just one of over 1,000 planes flying from airfields all over Britain. The planes would enter Germany from Prussia where the marshy land precluded the placement of large gunnery batteries. Then they would turn south for their targets. Vernon made bombing runs over Nuremberg and Bremen where the enemy had military assembly plants and ball bearing factories.

The squadron’s most deadly mission was on September 11, 1944, when 36 planes successfully hit the industrial area of the Ruhr Valley but were ambushed by an estimated 100 enemy fighters who shot down 12 U.S. planes as there were no Allied fighters for protection. Once enemy flack hit an oxygen canister under the pilot’s seat. An explosion followed and filled the cockpit with dust and papers. Fortunately, that was the only damage and they continued home safely. The planes routinely flew at 26,000 feet with temperatures of -30 degrees. All of the crew had heated seats to take off the chill, but it was still a cold business. When they returned to their base, the crew would be treated to a shot of whiskey and a package of cigarettes.

Early in the war, the airmen only had to complete 25 missions to be sent home, but that increased to 30 and finally to 35. When Vernon reached that goal, he sailed home on the Queen Mary. She had a speed of 31 knots and zig-zagged to elude any German subs lurking in the depths. He was a happy man when finally reaching the New York Harbor and seeing the Statue of Liberty waiting to greet him. He was granted a 23-day leave, but after a quick visit home, he traveled to Detroit were his sweetheart, Bea Long, was stationed at a hospital. She had been a nurse cadet at FMH. On November 13, Bea and Vernon were married at a church in Mt. Pleasant. Vernon was later assigned as a flying instructor pilot, flying B-24s and B-26s. As his time was not yet up, he was sent to the Pacific, ending up in Tokyo. In Japan, he was placed in charge of the motor pool in Nagoya. Traveling throughout Japan, he saw the tremendous damage as a result of the fire-bombing and the two nuclear bombs. Finally, Captain Keilholtz flew home and was discharged on November 23, 1946. For his courage and service, he was awarded the Air Medal with six Oak Leaf Clusters and the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Bea and Vernon raised their family in a lovely brick home east of Emmitsburg. They had a daughter and a son while Vernon became a cattle dealer, and few knew of his war time heroics. Sadly, Vernon passed away in April 2013, mourned by his family and many friends. Not only was Vernon a friend of mine, but he was the first veteran that I interviewed for the Frederick County Veterans History Project. A true representative of the Greatest Generation, his experiences in WWII deserve to be shared, especially by those who knew him.

If you are a veteran or know a veteran who is willing to tell his or her story, contact the Frederick County Veterans History Project at priscillarall@gmail.com.

Veteran Spotlight

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by James Rada, Jr.

James E. Shankle

James Shankle of Woodsboro began life behind the eight ball, as they say. He was born in Frederick on November 21, 1925.

“My mother abandoned me on the streets of Frederick,” Shankle said. “I was found by a policeman and taken to the hospital.”

The police officer took the baby to Montevue, which served as the city’s hospital at the time. An advertisement was placed in the newspaper, seeking a foster family for James. Mildred Roddick answered the ad and took the child home to live with her and her husband in Montgomery County.

Shortly after, Mildred’s marriage broke up, and she moved back in with her parents who lived on MD 550, north of Woodsboro. James suddenly found himself with a larger family, as Mildred’s mother, Minnie Nichols, became his primary caregiver. She would be the woman that James would come to call his mother.

He lived happily as Minnie’s foster son until the Children’s Aid Society got involved in James’s life. The organization, which was established to take care of foster children and assist with adoptions, had other ideas for James.

“That wasn’t very good,” James said. “They farmed us out to work.”

At the age of eight, James was told he would have to get up each morning at 4:00 a.m. and walk to a nearby farm to milk the dairy cows. After, he would hurry home to eat breakfast and go to school.

When James was twelve years old, a fourteen-year-old boy named Bill showed up from Thurmont and told James, “I’m your brother.”

James also learned that he had three sisters, that not only had he never met but didn’t even know he had.

“Two weeks later, after meeting him (Bill), my sister got killed on a farm,” James said.

James’s siblings had also been farmed out to work, as he had been. His sister, Betty, who had been sixteen years old at the time, had been working as a cook on a farm in New Market. Part of getting the cook fire ready each morning was to add coal oil to the stove.

“She got up late one morning and picked up the wrong can,” James said.

Betty picked up a can of gasoline and added it to the fire. The resulting explosion burned the girl over 80 percent of her body, killing her.

It was only at her funeral that James first met his mother, Edith Shankle. He never did meet his other sisters, Alma and Gladys.

When James finished the seventh grade—all the schooling required by the State of Maryland at the time—he wanted to go to high school. The Children’s Aid Society didn’t want to allow this, but James persevered. Finally, he was told that he could attend Walkersville High School, but he had to “earn his way.” He began doing any and all jobs that would pay him, such as setting up pens and mowing. When he turned sixteen, he got a job at a bakery in Walkersville, where he worked after school until 11:00 p.m. each evening.

By the time he turned seventeen, the United States had been fighting in World War II for nearly a year. James tried to enlist in the Navy. Since he was underage, he was told that he would need a parent, not a foster parent or guardian, to sign his enlistment form.

So, James set out to find his father, Irving Shankle. During the search, James discovered that his father was “a drunk and a criminal.”

“I found him in a bar someplace on West Patrick Street,” James said.

He told his father what he needed. The man was a WWI Veteran, so he had no problem signing the enlistment form. James then bought his father a beer and left.

While James had been working to enlist, his brother Bill had been drafted into the Army.

“I saw him off at the train station on a Sunday, and I left by bus on Monday,” James said.

He reported to Bainbridge Naval Base at Port Deposit, Maryland, in 1943. The base was on the bluffs, overlooking the Susquehanna River. Originally a boys’ school, it had become a Navy training camp only months before James had enlisted. During WWII, 244,277 recruits trained at the camp in ordnance and gunnery, seamanship, firefighting, and military orders. When it was discovered that James had lifeguard training, he was given a job of training other sailors to swim.

During his basic training, he recalled once having to jump off a 70-foot-tall tower into a pool while wearing a life vest. Another training exercise was held in a repurposed theater. A large screen was set up, and planes were projected onto it flying in different directions. Recruits got behind a special .50-cal. gun connected to the screen. They were given 1,000 shots each, and they had to see how many times they could hit the planes.

“I scored 800 and something,” James recalled.

His accurate shooting earned him his first assignment. He was sent to North Carolina to patrol the coastline in a blimp, searching for enemy submarines. When he would sight a submarine off the coast, which “looked like a big cigar underwater,” he would notify the Coast Guard. James would track the submarine until a Coast Guard ship arrived to drop depth charges on the U-boat.

Once, a U-boat surfaced, and a small boat left filled with men. “They picked the guys up when they hit the beach, and we sunk the sub,” James said.

Landing a blimp was not easy. It involved a lot of men grabbing onto cables dropped from the gondola and pulling the blimp down to the ground. During one landing, a storm was approaching and brought with it high winds. The winds made it too difficult to land, and the order was given for the men to release the cables.

One serviceman got caught in the cables, and the wind lifted him and threw him across the landing field into high-tension lines. He was electrocuted.

The accident so scared James that he decided he needed to transfer someplace else. The amphibious force had been formed and was recruiting. James didn’t realize that it was a forerunner to the Navy Seals. He and his friend just wanted out of the blimp patrol.

“We jumped out of the frying pan into the fire,” he said.

He trained in Little Creek, Virginia. At the end of his advanced training, he left Boston Harbor on a landing ship tank (LST). It was a ship built for amphibious assaults because it could carry tanks, vehicles, and cargo. It had a large door on the bow that could be lowered and used as a ramp to unload or load whatever was aboard. It was not a fast ship, though, and James traveled across the Atlantic at 6 knots, which is just under 7 mph.

His ship took part in the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. More than sixty years later, he still teared up as he told how his ship lost 110 men out of a crew of 180 to land on Omaha Beach.

Following that mission, he transferred to another LST that was tasked with delivering tanks to the French Riviera. His ship was one of three to be sent in to make a landing on the beach. The other two ships snagged on sandbars, but James’s ship not only hit the beach, when the ramp lowered, the tank was able to roll right out onto a road.

Germans, who were about 100 yards away, peppered the tank with small-weapons fire. The tank turned and went after them. A few minutes later, thirty-five Germans came back to the ship, running ahead of the tank with their hands over their heads.

James served on thirteen missions in Europe and the Mediterranean. They weren’t all troop movements. On one occasion, his ship had to deliver mules that were needed to take supplies over the Alps.

He was part of a mission to deliver supplies to a station in Italy, where PT boats were repaired. He only found out afterward that his ship was the fifth to attempt the mission, but he could believe it. U-boats torpedoed the other four ships. However, James’s captain had removed everything from the boat that he could so that it sat higher in the water.

James was manning a 20-mm. gun during the mission; he saw torpedoes glide toward the boat only to pass beneath it because it was sitting too high in the water for the torpedoes to hit.

They were also lucky because there was a dense fog that they could hide in so that U-boat periscopes couldn’t see the ship.

On his last mission in the Mediterranean, his ship was severely damaged. It was sent back across the Atlantic as part of a 300-ship convoy. His ship only had one working engine and screw, though, and it limped across the Atlantic at a snail’s pace, unable to keep up with the convoy.

They eventually made it to Norfolk Naval Base, only to be hit by a Liberty ship while they were at anchor. The crash damaged the ship’s magazine, and James and his fellow crewmates had to dump their munitions rather than chance fire setting off an explosion. Then the shipyard refused to repair the ship, telling the captain that the ship had to go to New Orleans for repairs.

James did get a thirty-day leave in New Orleans, and he returned home for a visit. When his leave ended, he was assigned to a different ship and sent through the Panama Canal to San Diego, California.

From there, his ship began traveling to various ports: Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Russia, Alaska, and Iwo Jima.

He took part in one of the later landings to wrest control of the island from the Japanese. He could see the pillboxes where the Japanese holed up and fired on the Marines.

“I don’t think they would have taken that island if it wasn’t for flamethrowers,” James said. The flames could penetrate where bullets couldn’t and forced the Japanese into the open, or they died in the pillboxes.

One night, the Japanese launched an air raid. Five planes tried to sink James’s ship. Four were shot down, but the fifth did a lot of damage. That attack also injured James, who was manning a 20-mm gun. The concussive force of an explosion threw him face first into a bulkhead. He had broken ribs and shoulders, but he also needed to have his nose rebuilt. Unfortunately, the ship’s doctor didn’t have any anesthetic. James had to endure the 15-minute procedure in excruciating pain, being held down by other sailors.

After Iwo Jima, his ship was sent to Saipan to prepare for the expected invasion of Japan. It was a scary time. James could tell by the training exercises, “When we hit the beach, we were probably never getting off.”

However, on August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. When word reached the sailors at Saipan, “You could have heard a pin drop,” James said. “All day long, nobody was talking.”

After the war, he went back to work in Woodsboro, learning to be a Mason, but it didn’t interest him. He used the G.I. Bill to attend York Technical Institute and study electronics. However, he couldn’t find work in his field at first and had to take a job at a sawmill.

He married June Bostian in 1951, and they were together for fifty-six years.

James eventually found work at Fort Detrick as an engineer and worked there for more than thirty years until he retired in 1987.

James died at age 83 on June 24, 2009. He is buried in Rocky Hill Cemetery.

Note: This spotlight is based on an oral history collected by members of the Frederick County Veterans History Project. The group is interested in interviewing any local Veteran for inclusion in the Library of Congress Veteran History Project. If you would like to volunteer to help or know a Veteran who could be interviewed, contract Priscilla Rall at priscillarall@gmail.com or 301-271-2868.

James Shankle, 1943

James Shankle, 2006

Veteran Receives Long Overdue Commendation

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James Rada, Jr.

Harry English put his life on the line just to join the U.S. Army, and because he did, many other men survived World War II.

English, a Hagerstown native, liked to spend his summers by himself on a small island in the Potomac River.

“All I had was a knife, a hatchet, and a .22,” he said. He would take some produce from a nearby farmer’s farm, with the farmer’s permission, and he would fish.

When war broke out, English knew it was his patriotic duty to join the military. He and a friend rode with English’s father to Baltimore when English was only eighteen.

English went to enlist in the Merchant Marines. During the physical, the doctor had him jump up and down. Then the doctor listened to his heart.

“He told me to lay down and lay still until my father came,” English said. “He said I had a bad heart and excitement would kill me.”

He thought that was a bunch of bunk and tried enlisting in the Army, Navy, and Coast Guard. They all turned him down because he supposedly had a bad heart.

With no other choice, English returned to school only to receive a draft notice in April 1944. He reported to Camp Meade, thinking that he would just be sent home. Instead, he became a soldier.

“They never said a word about my problem,” said English.

He went through sixteen weeks of infiltration training in South Carolina, and was then sent to Camp McCoy in Wisconsin. A doctor at the camp discovered English’s supposed heart condition and wanted to give him a discharge. “I told him, ‘The Army trained me, and the government spent a lot of money on me. My unit needs me. What difference does it make whether I die here or over there?’”

His argument was convincing, and he was sent to fight in Europe.

For the next two years, he traveled with Gen. George Patton’s Army and fought the Germans in the Battle of Bulge, as well as other battles. He drove Jeeps and cooked for his unit. He chauffeured the soldiers who were tasked with setting up the telephone communications.

During one battle, English volunteered to go into enemy territory with a chaplain to pick up wounded prisoners, no matter which side they fought on. He didn’t see it as doing anything special, but the chaplain put in for him to receive a medal for his actions.

He never received it because his unit moved around so much. He didn’t even realize he had been recommended for commendation.

He said his scariest moment in the war was when he realized that someone was shooting at him with a 20-mm gun. One shell flattened the spare tire on his Jeep, and shrapnel raked across his knuckles.

“I just kept thinking, ‘Man, that was close,’” recalled English.

By the time the American crossed the Rhine River in Germany, it was obvious the war was over, although there was no official word. German soldiers were laying down their weapons and surrendering.

Even after the war had ended, English stayed on to the help with the Nuremberg Trials. He drove vehicles for officers and lawyers. He heard parts of the trials that were broadcasted, and he saw Hermann Goering being led in for his trial.

Throughout the war, his heart never gave him any trouble.

Once he came home, English went on with his life. He married and worked thirty-seven years on the railroad. After his retirement, he and his wife moved to Florida, but later returned because they wanted to be able to watch their grandchildren and great-grandchildren grow up. English now lives in Sabillasville with his granddaughter Ann Seiss and her family.

Having earned it seventy-four years earlier, he finally received his Bronze Star Medal in July 2018 during a special ceremony at the Thurmont AMVETS. Maryland U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin pinned the medal on English’s sports coat.

It was a long overdue honor for the ninety-two-year-old Veteran, and one that he was able to share with his family and fellow Veterans.

Harry English is shown with his Bronze Star Medal in July.

Harry is pictured with his Jeep during WWII.

Our Neighborhood Veterans

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The Reason I Write About Veterans and Why They Mean So Much to Me

This month’s column was originally featured in the February 2013 issue of The Catoctin Banner.

 

The picture to the right is me at a young age, posing with my grandfather, Harry Wantz, who is making sure the rifle and I’m holding didn’t fall over. This picture was taken in 1945, while World War II was still being fought. My father, James A. Houck Sr., was somewhere in Germany, serving our country. I hadn’t met him yet, because he was deployed before I was born. I was three years old when I finally got to meet Dad. My mother, her siblings (there were thirteen of them), and her parents told me about Dad and showed me pictures of him. I was told that when he stepped off of the train, I recognized him and ran straight to him.

When I was about three-and-a-half years old, my grandfather Wantz went for a walk in the woods behind his house—as he often did—and sat down on a rock and passed away. This was very hard on me, as he was like a father to me the first three years of my life. He was the one who gave me horsey rides and got down on the floor and played with me, and now he would no longer be in my life. Granddaddy was a railroad mechanic for the railroad that ran through Emmitsburg. Now Granddaddy was gone, and my grandmother Annie (I called her Nanny) was left to raise my aunts and uncles alone. Her son (my uncle), John Joseph Wantz, was in the army, and since he was the oldest, he felt it was his job to now help Nanny raise the family. He asked for a hardship discharge and received one, and he came home to help support his mother and the family. He did a great job of helping the family survive, and the rest of the siblings and their spouses pitched in and helped where they could.

The Korean War broke out around 1951, and two of my uncles—David Bernard Wantz and James Edward Wantz—were old enough and were drafted into the Army to fight in the Korean War. I can still remember my uncle Ed—he was the baby of the family and twelve years older than me—inviting Mom, Dad, Nanny, and me to Fort Indiantown Gap, where he was taking basic training, to watch him graduate. While we were there, he took me to the firing range and let me shoot a rifle. He then treated us to a movie at their post movie theater. That visit made quite an impression on me, and I thought that when I was old enough, I was going to join the army. I had quite a few uncles on my grandmother’s side of the family (Eylers) that gave service to their country in the armed services, and I would enjoy listening to their experiences while serving. I was full of questions; some would provide me with answers, and some did not want to talk about it, and I respected that also. The men on the Houck, Blessing, Grabel, and Frounfelter sides served in the armed services, too. I had plenty of family members to keep me excited about serving our country. I wanted a good education, so I stayed in school until I graduated. I was going to enlist after graduation, but the draft was still in and they called me. So instead of enlisting, I accepted the draft. The day came for my physical exam, and I was on a bus to Fort Hollabird. That day, I came back with probably the biggest disappointment of my life. I was classified 1-Y (in case of emergency only). I asked why, and they said due to high blood pressure. I waited a few months and then tried to enlist, because I was told that even though I was turned down by the draft physical, if I enlisted, they would take me. Well, they didn’t, and that was another great disappointment to me. My brother, Robert Dennis Houck, was drafted into the Army about four or five years later, and served. I have nephews, great nephews, and even a granddaughter who served, or are serving, our country in the military. I now serve the best way I know how: by honoring our military Veterans in print, and by having the privilege of interviewing our armed service heroes and informing our community about their lives. I belong to several Veteran organizations (Sons of AMVETS, Sons of the American Legion, and VFW Auxiliary), and participate in every function for honoring Veterans that I am able to attend. Folks, I hope you enjoy the articles I write about Veterans, as much as I enjoy writing them. I plan to write Veteran stories until I am too senile to control my thoughts (I have been told by a few that I’m already there). I have received a lot of positive feedback about my column, and I appreciate it. So, if you should have any comments (pro or con), send them to The Catoctin Banner, and they will see that I receive them.

God Bless America, God Bless the American Veteran, and God Bless You.

Looking Back

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by James Rada, Jr.

1965 — Training the Unemployed from the Catoctin Mountaintop

Catoctin Mountain can boast a lot of interesting history from Camp David to the Blue Blazes Still raid. From an Office of Strategic Services training camp during World War II to Camp Misty Mount for children.

“Also on the Government side is the ‘mother’ camp of President Johnson’s Poverty Program,” the Frederick Post reported in 1965.

President Johnson had been the Texas director of the National Youth Administration. It was a New Deal program under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, similar in objective to the Job Corps. Johnson convinced Congress it could work again, according to Barbara Kirkconnell in Catoctin Mountain Park, An Administrative History.

The camp, called Camp Round Meadow, opened in January 1965 and served as the place to train people who would be sent out across the country to depressed areas to open and operate other similar camps.

At the camp, 75 people were hired and trained on how to run a poverty training camp. “While these people are being instructed, some 20 persons accepted as trainees by the new program, will be working in the area,” Kirkconnell wrote.

Consideration of using the park for such a site began in May 1964. Federal government officials visited the park and inspected possible sites for the camp. Within a month, the government began converting the 60-acre Central Garage Unit Area in the country’s first Job Corps Center, according to Kirkconnell.

Besides building the camp, officials met with residents of Thurmont, Hagerstown, and other communities where the camp attendees might spend their off hours. They wanted to make sure that there would be a good relationship between the camp and towns.

“Thurmont merchants were wooed by an expected $200,000 in revenue from supplies, equipment and food sold to the camp for the program,” Kirkconnell wrote.

Camp officials spoke at civic meetings and invited officials and organizations out to tour the camp.

“On January 15, 1965, 85 young men between the ages of 16 and 21 arrived at Catoctin MP to inaugurate the job Corps Program at a site ‘largely unimproved’ since the CCC left in 1941,” Kirkconnell wrote.

The Jobs Corps Center was dedicated on February 27.

The center got off to a rocky start, with staffing problems and too many visiting dignitaries, not only from the federal government but also foreign governments, such as Japan, Canada, British Guinea, England, Israel, the Philippines, and the Ivory Coast.

“Continual recruitment brought a total of 157 recruits into the program but 57 left before the end of June.  The bleak winter contributed to homesickness; stark conditions of the camp without indoor recreation facilities and high expectations added to the general ‘depressive atmosphere,’” Kirkconnell wrote.

Camp Director C. A. Maxey blamed the high drop-out rate on the recruits who had “temperamental and emotional problems in boys who had known little but failure,” according to a Baltimore Sun article.

The boys had been recruited from families earning less than $3,000 a year (around $23,000 today) and had an average of a ninth grade education. At the camp, they earned $32 a month plus $50, which was put in a bank account for them. “If they made a family allotment of $25 from the $50, the government matched it with another $25,” Kirkconnell wrote.

The program included a half day of work and a half day of education in the winter. The work time increased and the education time decreased as the weather warmed up. The work consisted of park projects, such as building trails, picnic tables, and needed buildings. They also did work improving the Gettysburg Battlefield.

As they mastered basic skills, they were given more-complex work.

“A sign construction program teaching printing, mechanical drawing, hand routing, measurement skills, painting, and organizational skills produced 225 signs for Catoctin, Greenbelt, Cunningham Falls State Park and Antietam Parks in Fiscal Year 1965-1966,” Kirkconnell wrote.

They also performed work in the surrounding community, such as building a ball field and picnic pavilions for Thurmont parks.

By 1966, things were running far more smoothly. By the end of eighteen months of operation, 439 men had been recruited to the camp. And 102 had transferred out, 165 had resigned, 24 graduated, 16 went back to school or jobs, leaving 111 Corpsmen in camp at the end of June 1966, according to Kirkconnell.

By that time, it became an election year issue. Congress criticized the program and cut funding. Discipline was a problem and so were community relations.

The Job Corps Center finally closed in May 1969.

Never Forgetting the Service of Our Veterans

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James Rada, Jr.

It is estimated that more than 1,100 World War II Veterans die each day. The United States and Frederick County is quickly losing its “greatest generation.”

The Frederick County Veterans History Project is working to make sure those important histories are not lost. Working with the Library of Congress, these county volunteers have set out to record interviews on DVD with every Veteran they can find in the county. Their primary focus is WWII Veterans, but they are also interviewing any Veteran who is willing to share his or her story.

“We interview any Veteran,” said Priscilla Rall, director of the Frederick County Veterans History Project. “It doesn’t matter whether they were stateside, in the Cold War, anywhere.”

The group of volunteers was founded in April 2003 and, at this time, has interviewed more than three hundred twenty-five of Frederick County’s Veterans. Members currently meet bi-monthly in Rall’s Rocky Ridge home.

While there are committees with other organizations, such as the DAR, that also conduct interviews, Rall said, “To my knowledge, we are the only organization formed in the country just to do Veterans History Project interviews.”

The National Veterans History Project was formed in 2000 as part of the Library of Congress American Folklife Center. The goal of the project is to collect, preserve, and make accessible as many personal accounts from Veterans as possible so that their first-hand knowledge is available to future generations.

Rall, who has conducted more than one hundred interviews, said that her most-interesting interview was when she sat down with Howard Baugh, who flew one hundred thirty-five missions with the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American military pilots in the armed forces.

“The white corps had a limit on the number of missions they would fly before they went home,” Rall said. “The Tuskegee Airmen didn’t have a limit and so they flew a lot of missions.”

Rall said that she was also very impressed with the Veterans who fought in the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.

The Frederick County group is always looking for the names of Veterans who are willing to share their stories. A volunteer will schedule a time to sit down with the Veteran and record the interview on a DVD. Copies of the interview are then sent to the Library of Congress’ Veteran History Project, the Maryland Room in the C. Burr Artz Library, and to the Veteran who granted the interview. A copy is also kept with the group.

“These Veterans have opened their hearts to us, usually painfully,” Rall said. “We should continue to give them our thanks and gratitude.”

The Frederick County Veterans History Project is always seeking volunteers to help conduct interviews, as well as the names of Veterans who would be willing to share their stories.

To help out, call Rall at 301-271-2868 or e-mail her at priscillarall@gmail.com

Holocaust Survivor Shares His Story with Catoctin Students

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James Rada, Jr.

As an eighty-five-year-old man, it wouldn’t seem that Mark Strauss would be able to relate to modern teenagers. However, when he recently sat down before a group of students at Catoctin High School, Strauss didn’t tell them about his adulthood. He took them all the way back to 1941, when he was just a boy of eleven, living in Lvov, Poland.

“I was hunted to be killed, and almost my entire family and community were,” said Strauss.

He lived in a small three-room apartment with his parents and grandparents. When World War II started, his town came under control of the Soviet Union; however, in 1941, Germany attacked the Soviet Union and took control of Poland.

Strauss watched the German army roll into his town in their tanks and troop transports. The soldiers were all in high spirits, which shouldn’t be surprising since they were winning the war.

Yet, the next day, problems began. Strauss was walking on the street when he saw a mob of people attack a man and beat him to death.

“Two thousand people, mostly men, were killed in the next couple days,” recalled Strauss. “My uncle went for a walk on the street and never came back. Temples were torched, sometimes with people inside.”

These people were Jews, who made up about one-fifth of the town’s population. The Jewish community lived in fear as soldiers began going door to door, looking for Jewish citizens. Even if a Jewish family lied and said that they weren’t Jewish, there was always the possibility a neighbor would turn them in.

Jews were taken from their homes to be interrogated or simply shot on the street. Others were loaded into a truck and taken to a mass grave outside of the town, where they were shot.

“In one year’s time, almost all the Jews in my town had been murdered,” Strauss said. “My family—thirty to forty people—were killed, except for me and my parents.”

Strauss would hide himself from people to avoid the Nazis on the streets. His grandparents weren’t so lucky. He saw them being taken away, presumably to be killed, since he never saw them again.

Eventually Strauss’s luck ran out when a group of soldiers and local police broke into his family’s apartment. Strauss was there with his mother. His father was working at his job. The local policemen ransacked the apartment, looking for money.

“I was scared, because I knew I was going to die,” Strauss said.

Strauss and his mother probably would have been killed if one of the soldiers hadn’t found a picture of Strauss’s father in his Polish army uniform. The sight of the soldier in the picture changed the man’s mind about what he was doing, and he ordered his men to leave.

The remaining Jews in Lvov were eventually forced into a Jewish ghetto, an area of the city that was far too small a space, even for the few remaining Jews. Strauss and his parents had to share a room with twenty people. There was no greenery, no place to go to the bathroom, and little food and water.

A Catholic woman eventually wound up hiding Strauss in a 10 x 12 room for a year and a half.

“I was in jail, but a jail where you fear you could be executed every day and not just wait out your time,” said Strauss.

A jail it may have been, but it allowed him to survive, as the few remaining Jews in Lvov were killed or died from starvation. He still had little food, but at least he had a certain degree of safety. Strauss said he appreciated the family’s bravery in hiding him since he knew that they could have been killed for hiding him.

Strauss and the other Jews in Lvov were liberated by the Soviet Army in 1944. He moved to New York in 1947. He worked at MIT and became a painter and author. He also shares his story with groups like the students at Catoctin High School so that they can better understand what it was like during the Holocaust, and that something like that never happens again.

Holocaust articleHolocaust Survivor, Mark Strauss, speaks with students at Catoctin High School about his personal experience and what it was like at that time in history.

 

 

Photo by James Rada, Jr.

 

 

our neighborhood veterans

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by Jim Houck, Jr.

PRIVATE JOSEPH CONROY JOY

U.S. ARMY

joseh joy_2Born in 1927, at home in Emmitsburg to Gertrude and Hubert Joy, was a baby boy they named Joseph (Joe). Joe was one of eleven children: Bobby, Johnny, Kenny, Donald, Mike, Gloria, Patrick, Delores, Jerry, and Rosemary (passed away at three days old). Joe went to school at Saint Euphemia’s in Emmitsburg; he quit school at the age of fifteen and moved to Baltimore, Maryland. He went to work as a painter’s helper at S&A Williams, a painting contractor. He worked for them for about five years, when he decided to go work for his father, who went into business for himself. Joe liked to hunt and would make trips to Emmitsburg, where he would hunt rabbits, pheasants, and squirrel. He said he was not much of a deer hunter and has never killed one. He said he remembers his first automobile was a 1950 Pontiac. He stated that he doesn’t know how many cars he has had, but he’s still driving the one he bought in 1992, and at his present age of eighty-eight, he plans on driving as long as he is able.

Joe was drafted for the army in 1951 at the age of twenty-four. He was sent to Fort Ord Army Base in California within a couple of days after reporting to Camp Meade. He said it was a long ride, and refers to it as a slow boat to China. He was sent to Camp Cook, a couple hundred miles down the road, after his basic training at Fort Ord and spent an entire year in California. He then received orders that he was being shipped overseas from fort Monmouth, New Jersey. He was in New Jersey for three or four days before being put on a ship to Bremerhaven, Germany. Joe said he was asked where he would like to go in Germany, and he said Berlin because his brother was stationed there. They then explained to Joe that they don’t just send someone where they want to go, but just thought they would ask. Then they further explained that they were already planning to send some men to Berlin, so Joe was sent there. He was sent to Berlin for a year; in 1953, his time was up.

Joe was a tower guard for a month at Spandau Prison, where World War II war criminals, Albert Speer, Erich Raeder, Karl Donitz, and Rudolf Hess, were held. While in the tower, He said he saw the prisoners walking around in the yard when they were exercising, but they had German speaking guards that were inside with them. There were seven towers where they watched to prevent escapes from happening. Joe said they had spotlights at night that kept the walls and grounds lit up so they could see all movement. They also did a roving patrol to check the wall; Joe said he did not like that duty. Even though there was no war on, there was always the chance of being mistaken for a prisoner and being shot. Joe was fortunate enough to see his brother (Kenny) while in Berlin, and was very glad they found each other four thousand miles from home.

The prison was torn down in 1987, after the last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, died, so as not to become a shrine for Neo-Nazi’s. It was later rebuilt as a shopping center.

Joe came back to Baltimore after being honorably discharged from the army, and he went back to work painting for his father.

joseh joy_0001-1Joe met Betty Ruth Luster, who lived across the street from where he was residing in Baltimore, and they later were married. Betty and Joe had three children: two girls and one boy—Karen, Kathy, and Steve. They raised their family in southwest Baltimore, close to St. Agnes Hospital. Betty passed away at the age of seventy-three from cancer while they were living in a basement apartment at their daughter’s house. Their daughter was a nurse and was helping to take care of Betty. Joe’s daughter was murdered by a male friend of hers, and Betty died about three months later. The house was sold, and Joe went to live with his son, Steve, for three months; Steve’s house wasn’t large enough to accommodate everyone. Joe has resided (for the past six years) in that area at an apartment complex run by Catholic charities, called DePaul House.

When Joe was young, he was an amateur boxer, with the nickname of “Canvas Kid.” He said he had ten fights and won half of them boxing at the YMCA. He played for the town baseball team of Emmitsburg. But the sport that he was really good at and stuck with was duckpin bowling. Joe bowled on a bowling league for eighteen years, and carried a high average for duckpin bowling. He said he taught his son, Steve, to bowl duckpins, and Steve carried a higher average than Joe. Joe said he bowled for over forty years all together, including ten years for the American Legion in Baltimore.

I received a phone call from Gloria Joy Bauerline one evening telling me her brother Joe was going to be in town for the VFW meeting, being held at Kump’s Dam Park (owned by VFW Post 6658 ). She asked me if I would like to talk to him and interview him. I did not hesitate, and told her I would be honored to both talk to and interview him.

I am so glad that Gloria called me. I found him to be a very interesting man, and I enjoyed every minute of my interview with him. Thank you, Gloria, and thank you, Joe. I am so proud to have met you.

God Bless the United States of America, God Bless the United States Veteran, and God Bless You.

The History Behind the Doughboy

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This article includes excerpts from Karen Gardner’s article in a 1991 Frederick Post titled The History Behind the Doughboy and Joan Bittner Fry’s research in her compilation of local history titled, Did You Know? published in 2013.

A doughboy is the popular name for a World War I foot soldier. A statue commemorating the doughboy and called the Doughboy is located on West Main Street in Emmitsburg. One can’t help but feel pride and sorrow when noticing a statue that commemorates sacrifices in war. Emmitsburg’s Doughboy was created by E. M. Viquesney, a French sculptor who lived in Spencer, Indiana, to honor Veterans and casualties of World War I.  Visquesney was, perhaps, the most popular Doughboy designer. It is interesting to know that not only are there other Doughboy statues around the nation, but that Emmitsburg’s Doughboy statue has an identical twin.

In her book, Did You Know?, Joan Bittner Fry said, “…supposedly, there are seven Doughboys in Maryland. They are made of copper, bronze, granite, or marble. Emmitsburg’s Doughboy statue’s twin is located in Crisfield, Maryland. Other Doughboys in Maryland are located in Funkstown, Elkton, and Williamsport. After research, Joan could only account for five.

In her article, The History Behind the Doughboy that was published in the Frederick Post in 1991, Karen Gardner references the late T. Perry Wesley of Spencer, Indiana who set out to remind people of the importance of these doughboy statues and located 110 of them around the nation but also indicated that he believed that several hundred actually exist.

Joseph Boys, who published an article about the Emmitsburg Doughboy statue in 1981, said, ‘There’s one in practically every small town.’ The statue stands on the lawn of the Emmit House, once a hotel that frequently hosted Maryland governors, but is now an apartment house. It was erected in 1927. The Emmitsburg monument was in its heyday before World War II. Since then, other monuments at the town’s American Legion have gotten considerably more attention, Mr. Boyle said.

Emmitsburg’s Doughboy is walking between tree stumps, left boot firmly on the ground, right toe touching the ground, and the rest of the boot upraised in a marching pose. The right arm is raised, holding a hand grenade, and the left hand clutches a rifle with bayonet pointed horizontally.

Other doughboy statues are missing the tree stumps, and often have the right foot in the air, held aloft by a bar.

For more information, Joan Bittner Fry’s books of local and regional history are available by calling her at 301-241-3295 or emailing jofry241@yahoo.com.

An Honor Roll at the Emmitsburg Doughboy, * indicates killed in action:

Adelsberter, Joseph Dwen, Althoff, C. Raymond, Alvey, James McSherry, Annan, Louis L., Annan, Samuel McNair, *Bentzel, Arthur H., Barrick, Moffis, Baumgardner, Raymond, Baumgardner, Clarence, Beatty, Albert, Bishop, James Lloyd, Bowling, J. William, Brown, D. Irwin, Brown, Ward, Butler, Charles E., Byard, James A., Byard, Sidney C., Byers, Harry Bryan, Cadle, W. R., Click, Earl Norman, Cool, John, Coombs, C.C., Coyle, Edward J., Damuth, Lester, L., Coyle, Edward J., Damuth, Lester L.,  Dodd, Rev. Francis J., Duffy, William H., Eckenrode, Henry B., Jr., Eichelberger, Charles D., *Elder, Francis X., Eyler, Cleo M., Eyler, Roy, Felix, Joseph Webb, Ferguson, Russell David, Fitez, Robert Glenn, Florence, George, Florence, Vincent, Fox, Leslie, Frailey, Clarence G., Frailey, Thomas J., Frailey, William A., Galt, Sterling, Jr., Gelwicks, Albert, *Gelwicks, Charles, F., Gelwicks, Lillian, Gelwicks, Roy, Gelwicks, William R., Gillelan, Charles D., Gillelan, Rhoda H., Glacken, Joseph J., Glonneger, John R., Gruber, Charles, Hahn, Charles A., *Hahn , Martin Luther, Harbaugh, Charles E., Harbaugh, Charles L., Hartdagen, LeRoy, Harting, John Mark, Hays, James T., Hobbs, John, Hoke, Clarence, Houser, Jacob W., Kelley, Luther, Kerrigan, J. Ware, Kerrigan, Robert V., Knight, Harry, Kreitz, Allen A., Kreitz, John C., Kreitz, Joseph W., Kugler, Martin L., Kump, Charles Wm., Liday, Edgar R., Malloy Arthur, Marshall, Thomas, Martin, Maurice C., McCullough, Richard, McNair, Charles A., Miller, William, Moser, Allen E., Moser, Maurice H., Moser, Roy Jacob, Myers, Clarence, O’Donoghue, D. Allen, O’Donoghue, John A., O’Donoghue, Sidney E., Ohler, Charles F. Ohler, Glenn E., *Ohler, Vernon Ross, Ott, George L., Pittinger, Harvey, *Reifsnider, Robert B., Rauth, Carl M., Rauth, John W., Rosensteel, Allen C., Rosensteel, John H., Rowe, Charles J., *Rowe, Francis Edward, Ryder, Gerald N., *Schley, Reading J., Sanders, J. Basil, Saylor, Roy W., Schildt, Elvin R., Sebold, Felix B., Saffer, J. Albert, Sellers, Charles E., Sellers, Robert R., Seltzer, Earnest T., Seltzer, James E., Sharrer, Charles L., Sherff, William C., Shuff, Joseph, Staker, Arthur, Sterbinsky, William, Stinson, O.H., Stokes, Arthur M., Stokes, Charles K., Stokes, George H., Stone, David E., Stoner, Louis H., Topper, Benjamin M., Topper, Francis S., Topper, Joseph M., Troxell, Charles, Turner, Joseph M., Valentine, Harry E., Valentine, Robert, Wagerman, George, Walter, John W., Warthen, Henry W., Weant, Frank W., Wetzel, John S.

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Emmitsburg Doughboy Statue Postcard

61(2)

Elkton, MD Doughboy Statue Postcard

funkstown-doughboy

Funkstown, MD Doughboy Statue

Remembering Our Nation’s Veterans

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1280px-Approaching_OmahaDonald Lewis stood crammed among a group of friends and fellow soldiers, trying not to lose his balance. The landing craft they were on was pushing toward its destination on Omaha Beach at Normandy, France. A strong current threatened to pull them away from their destination.

Lewis was a long way from his hometown of Thurmont, but he, along with millions of other young men, had been drafted to serve in the armed forces during World War II. Though he had entered the army as a private, he had risen to the rank of staff sergeant.

Lewis stood at the front of the landing craft hanging onto the edge of the wall. Around him, he could hear the explosion of artillery and see the explosions on the water and beach. Things seemed a mass of confusion, but it was all part of the largest seaborne invasion ever undertaken: the coordinated D-Day attack on German forces at Normandy, France. The invasion involved 156,000 Allied troops. Amphibious landings along fifty miles of the Normandy Coast were supported by naval and air assaults.

Lewis’ job in the invasion seemed simple. He was to go ashore first and mark safe paths across the irrigation ditches that crossed the beach.

However, the landing craft couldn’t make it to the beach. It grounded on a sandbar.

Lewis and the other men were still expected to take the beach, though. The front ramp of the landing craft was lowered and Lewis ran into the water. He suddenly found himself in water over his head, weighed down by a heavy backpack.

“I just had to hold my breath and walk part of the way underwater until my head was above water,” Lewis said. Though amazingly he was not wounded during that invasion, he was later wounded in the leg during an artillery barrage. His wound was near his groin, barely missing his groin. Lewis remembers laying in a hospital in England waiting to be taken into surgery.

“A big, ol’ English nurse comes walking up and she pulls back the sheet and looks at the wound,” recalls Lewis. “Then she says to me, ‘Almost got your pride and joy, didn’t they?’”

Another time, Lewis barely escaped being killed. He and other soldiers were up in trees along a road, waiting to ambush the Germans. However, the Germans were being careful that day.

“A sniper must have spotted me up there,” Lewis said. “I knew he hit my helmet. I started down that tree as fast as I could, grabbing limbs and dropping.”

When he got to the ground, he took off his helmet and saw that there was a hole through the front of it and a matching one through the back of it. Only the fact that his helmet had been sitting high on his head saved his life.

“People wondered why I didn’t bring the helmet home as a souvenir, but I didn’t want anything to do with it,” said Lewis.

Perhaps his most-pleasant memory from the war was when he was discharged from the Army. He was in line with other soldiers being discharged after the end of the war. The soldier at the front of the line would walk up to the officer at the front of the room, receive his discharge papers, salute, and walk away.

“When I got my papers, I let out a war whoop and woke that place up,” Lewis said.

Once back in Thurmont, Lewis went to work on the family farm. He met his wife, Freda, who was a farm girl, also from Thurmont, and they married in a double ceremony with a couple they were friends with.

Donald LewisLewis also had a political career. He served two terms as Mayor of Thurmont and one term as a Frederick County Commissioner. He said a group of people tried to talk him into running for governor, but he turned them down, saying, “I’m too honest for that.”

Lewis and his wife ran a sporting goods store and greeting card store on the Thurmont square for many years. He is now ninety-six years old and still living on his own. “I want to live to be one hundred,” he said. “After that, I’ll take what I can get.”

Veterans Day is on November 11. Make sure to thank any Veterans you know for their service, and attend one of the special Veterans Day activities going on in the area.

The Germans started firing on the beach and the landing craft. Lewis focused on his job and began marking the paths where troops could cross.

“When I looked back, men were laying everywhere,” Lewis said. “Just about everyone on the boat was dead.”

After the war, when he was invited back to Normandy for the anniversary of the D-Day invasion, Lewis always turned down the invitations. Now ninety-six years old, he has never returned to Omaha Beach.

“I’ve seen all I wanted to,” he said.