The crucible of war

Still inspired by Ken Burns' "The War," we've done more sleuthing about Uncle Ed's World War II experiences. It's become clear that he was there for almost every major operation in Europe, the likes of which we middle-aged cousins have, thankfully, never seen. The old book pictured above is a rough soldiers' account of the history of Ed's 329th Infantry Regiment. The photo glued to the front of it was taken after the war; the photo posted below before the war. In the book we found tucked this letter written by Ed's old fishing buddy Don Mueller of Dressen, Wis. It read:

March 30, 2002

Dear friends and family of Ed Sprick,

As we all know, Ed never said much about his experiences during World War II. The only two comments I can remember were, "I got to see Paris from the back of an ambulance" and some talk about walking across Europe.

One time we were deer hunting south of Lake City and several of us met up in the woods. Ed had a habit of placing his shotgun butt on the ground and putting his hand over the muzzle while he stood and talked. A stranger came up and commented about this unsafe act. Ed's comment about carrying his rifle across Europe ended that debate.

When questioned about the war, Ed would tell his family that it was "in the book." Finally, after all these years, I borrowed the book from Elmer. I would like to make some comments in it.

Ed was an Army staff sergeant in World War II. I was an Army staff sergeant in Vietnam. The 12th Infantry of the Fourth Division relieved Ed's unit a couple of times in Europe. I was assigned to the 12th Infantry in Vietnam. How I wish Ed and I had known that when he was alive.

In Ed's photo album there is a small photo [above, on the book cover] of Ed in a plain uniform, wearing no stripes or ribbons except for a long rectangular rifle with a blue background. That is the Army Combat Infantryman's Badge (CIB).

For those who have been in combat, that picture is worth a thousand words. The CIB is awarded to soldiers who have been infantrymen in a combat zone for at least six months. Truck drivers, cooks, clerks, etc. cannot receive the CIB. In Vietnam, I was assigned to an artillery unit of the 12th Infantry. No artilleryman could receive the CIB. We tried hard to find a way to earn it. Our jobs might have been dangerous, but they were not infantry.

Several years ago, I wrote to the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and asked him how he could wear the CIB. He was an Army general who had always been in the artillery. He wrote back and said Congress had passed a special bill authorizing advisers in Vietnam to receive the CIB. Yeah -- right. But that four-star general knew the real significance of the CIB.

Many times I have seen civilians in church or at events where a suit and tie were worn. On their lapel would be a miniature CIB. Nothing else had to be said.

On the back of the photo, Ed had written: "July 28, 1945, Swezel, Germany. To Elmer from the Sarge." Ed knew the significance of the Combat Infantryman's Badge, and it shows in that picture.

Don Mueller

We think we see a subtle difference between Ed's expression on the photo of him with the Combat Infantryman's Badge on the book, taken after he was fought across Europe and was wounded (click on it to make it bigger), and the one below it, taken on Sept. 8, 1942, before he shipped out. The war surely was the defining experience of his life. (And we thought it was his taking us all fishing!)

Uncle Joe thinks that Ed would have enjoyed the scrapblog history entries, but liked the fishing photos even more. In honor of his wonderful postwar self, we're posting again one of our fav Ed photos, Ed in a tree, below.

"The War" and our very own Ed

The scrapblog editor and her senior executive associate research director, Uncle Elmer Sprick, watched all seven episodes of Ken Burns' "The War" on PBS, and pronounced it darn good. The scrapblog editor kept thinking she saw her dad and the uncles in various grainy segments. In the harrowing Hurtgen Forest episode (those are American GIs in a snowy foxhole in the Hurtgen, above), there was one blurry guy we are SURE was Ed. That led us to dig up Joe's ode to Ed in the family history book "An Even Dozen." Here it is:

By ELMER (JOE) SPRICK

What was history's greatest military operation? It was the Allied forces' landing on the coast of France on June 6, 1944, marking the beginning of the end of the Nazi war machine that had enslaved much of Europe. Books have been written and movies made about it, graphically documenting the horrors of war. Brother Ed was a part of the invasion force as an infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army.

There is a small book that one might read every Veterans Day. It is not available in the local library, as it was published in Wolfenbuttel, Germany, in July 1945, shortly after the end of World War II. The book, a history of the U.S. Army's 329th Infantry Regiment, was called "Buckshot." Page 147 is one of many pages listing the names of men killed or wounded in action at Normandy between June 6 and July 23, 1944. The name of Staff Sgt. Edward Sprick appears on that page. [Note from scrapblog editor: This book is probably "329 Buckshot Infantry Regiment," a history of the regiment edited by Daniel P. O'Connor and published in 1945 in Germany.]

That June, I had just completed my junior year of high school in Lake City, Minn. Two classmates and I were on our way from Lake City to the St. Joe National Forest in the panhandle of northern Idaho to work in remote 50-man forestry camps. Most older able-bodied men were in military service, so fighting forest fires and forest diseases had to be done by those under draft age, prisoners of war and Mexican nationals.

There was only one radio in our camp and no newspapers, so we knew very little about what was going on in the rest of the world. It was August before a letter came from my sister Anna telling me that Ed had been wounded in action in France and was hospitalized in England. By the time his V-mail letter arrived in Minnesota from England, he was back in action, fighting his way across Europe, enduring among other things the bitter cold and bloodstained snows of the Hurtgen Forest.

Ed never talked much about his war experiences. When asked, he would say, "It's all in the book." The book he was referring to was "Buckshot," which traced the history of his 329th Infantry [part of the 83rd Division? we're researching that] from the beaches of Normandy to the outskirts of Berlin. The 329th fought across France, Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany. Along the way, they faced bombs, tanks, mortars, rifle fire, minefields, booby-trapped pine trees, mud, hunger and deathly cold, sleepless nights. They also faced the sight and smell of corpses.

The 329th Infantry took every fortified objective in its path, often using "breast fire" formation, and always at great cost of human life. Those who survived each battle were reminded by their commanding officer that they were indebted to those who had died. "It is a debt we can never repay," he told them.

Ed was a survivor.

Years later, he spent many enjoyable days during his retirement from the Swift meatpacking plant in South St. Paul fishing Lake Pepin and the Zumbro River. When I retired in 1983, Ed's health was failing. Rheumatoid arthritis caused him a lot of pain. He survived several difficult surgeries, but in the end, lung cancer killed him.

"Any day you can fish is a good day," he used to say. It was my pleasure to take him fishing often during his last two years of sunrises. His former fishing partners were some of the best, frequently visiting with him on the days he was not able to fish. Also, little kids in the neighborhood came to visit him almost daily. They knew Ed was a soft touch with a kind heart, and he would give them gum and candy, or ice cream on a hot summer's day.

Ed died at his home on a cold Sunday morning, Jan. 20, 1985. He was 74. As we were preparing for his funeral, a 6-year-old neighbor girl came to me and asked, "Will you take me to Ed's funeral?" She sat next to Mavis and me in a packed church, paying her final tearful tribute and sharing our sense of great loss.

Several years after Ed's death, a Memorial Day story appeared in the local newspaper. The last paragraph read: "A visitor at Ed Sprick's final resting place paid eloquent respects by placing a beautiful fishing jig on his modest headstone. An old friend and fishing partner remember that 'we have a debt we can never repay.'"

Here is Ed's service record, as recorded in his own hand in his World War II scrapbook:

1942
April 10: Drafted, Fort Snelling, Minnesota. Medics, Camp Robinson, Arkansas.
July: Station hospital, Camp Campbell, Kentucky.
October: Transferred to Co. K., 329th Infantry, 3rd Battalion, 83rd Division. Camp Atterbury, Ind.

1943
July-August: Maneuvers in Tennessee.
September: Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky.

1944
March: Camp Shanks, New York.
April 6: Sailed from New York on Samaria for England.
April 19: Landed at Liverpool, England. stationed at Wrexham, Wales.
June 18: Plymouth, England.
June 19: Sailed for Omaha Beach, France.
July 4: Went into action in France.
July 6: Wounded.
July 12: Flown to England in a C 47. Hospitalized in 186th General Hospital until Sept. 5.
October: Landed at Omaha Beach en route to old outfit.
Oct. 17: Wounded at Birgel, Germany.
1945
About Jan. 14: Got trench foot. One week in a Paris hospital. Back to England by boat. At 67th General Hospital.
March: Discharged from hospital. [Illegible] near Birmingham, England. One week's leave there.
April 25: Went from Southhampton, England, to Le Havre, France.
May: Got back to old outfit at Braunschweig, Germany.
June: Frauenau, Germany.
August: Maneuvers (Jap tactics) at [illegible; Graf--- something]. Back to Frauenau.
Sept. 10: Transferred to 8th Armoured Division. Went to Pilsen, Czechoslovakia.
Sept. 17: Camp Oklahoma, France. Five weeks later at Le Havre. One week at Camp Philip Morris.
Nov. 4: Left for the States.
Nov. 12: Landed at Boston, Mass., at Camp Miles Standish.
Nov. 15: Left for Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.
Nov. 18: Discharged honorably from U.S. Army at Camp McCoy. Arrived at 201 N. Washington St., Lake City, Minn., a tired but happy civilian. Amen.

ADDENDUM

The web is a wonderful thing if you love history. The scrapblog editor just found this information about Ed's 329th Infantry and where it went and what it did. Sounds like the worst, and we mean the WORST EVER, summer and Christmas spent in Europe:

THE 329th INFANTRY IN ACTION

NORMANDY, June 23-Aug. 2, 1944

The 329th Infantry landed in France on D + 17 (June 23, 1944) and moved to an assembly area northwest of Bricqueville. On June 28, the 83rd Division relieved the 101st Airborne Division south of Carentan, and for a week the regiment was in division reserve with the 1st Bn protecting the city of Carentan. On July 4, the big attack jumped off. The 2nd Bn (the only element of the regiment in the initial attack) tried to cross the swamp southwest of Carentan, but met heavy resistance from German paratroops and was unable to gain a foothold on the opposite bank. On the following day, the 3rd Bn, followed by the 1st, drove 2,500 meters through hedgerow defenses to Culot, and although heavily counterattacked by SS troops, held their positions. From then until the great breakthrough of July 25, the fiercest fighting of the war took place, consisting of numerous assaults on fortified hedgerow positions. The Nazis' 17th SS Division opposing them was decimated. On July 26-27, following the withdrawing enemy, the regiment crossed the Taute River and reached Fougeres. where it went into an assembly area.

Towns captured: Culot and approximately 1000 hedgerows. Prisoners of war captured: 106.

ST. MALO, Aug. 3-18, 1944

On Aug. 3, the 329th moved by motor to Pontorson and on the 4th began the drive north to capture the fortress of St. Malo. After a hard fight by the 2nd Bn at Chateauneuf, the town was taken and the regiment drove on to engage the fortified belt around the city of St. Malo. Thence followed an attack on the fortified positions that resulted in the entry into St. Servan, a suburb of St. Malo, on Aug. 9. The 2nd Bn was detached from the regiment at this time, and in a brilliantly executed attack seized the heavily fortified Pte. de la Varde, east of St. Malo, and captured 197 prisoners of war. They then proceeded to capture the fort of Grand Bey. In the meantime, the city of St. Servan having fallen, the regiment laid siege to the Citadel, which after several assaults and heavy bombardment capitulated on Aug. 17, when Col. Von Aulock and a garrison of 596 surrendered.

Towns captured: Dolet, Chateauneuf, Chateau Malo, St. Jouan, St. Suliac, St. Pere, St. Anne, La Beurelais, La Balue, La Motte, St. Servan, Citadel of St. Servan, Fort de la Varde, Grand Bey. Prisoners of war captured: 3,203.

LOIRE, Aug. 19-Sept. 23, 1944

On Aug. 19, the 329th moved to the city of Angers, charged with the defense of the city and the north bank of the Loire. By Aug. 27, the sector of defense for the regiment had stretched to 130 miles from a point west of Angers to Orleans. The main activity during the period was patrol incursions from south of the river. On Aug. 30, the enemy forces south of the Loire began a general withdrawal to the east. On Sept. 8, the I&R Platoon received information that a column of 20,000 Germans wished to surrender to American troops. Negotiations followed, and on Sept 16-17, Gen. Elster and 19,854 German troops laid down their arms on the south bank of the Loire at Beaugency and became prisoners of war.

Town captured: Pont Dece. Towns entered by patrols: Tours, Nevers, Romcrantin, Chateauroux, Chatellerault, Bourges and many smaller towns south of Loire. Prisoners of war captured: 20,058.

LUXEMBOURG, Sept. 24-Dec. 9, 1944

Sept. 23 saw the 329th en route to the Siegfried Line northeast of Luxembourg. In the weeks that followed, the attacks on Grevenmacher (Oct. 1-5), and Echternach (Oct. 1-8) took place. German patrol activity was continuous, but no serious threats developed while the regiment held its sector of almost 25 miles of the west bank of the Moselle.

Towns captured: Oberdonven, Niederdonven, Grevenmacher, Osweiler, Berdorf, Dickweiler, Echternach. Prisoners of war captured: 211.

DUREN, Dec. 10-25, 1944

On Dec. 10, the 329th crossed the German frontier and relieved the 8th Infantry, 4th Division, in the Hurtgen Forest west of Duren. Two days later, the attack to the Roer River jumped off, and after a day of heavy fighting the enemy line was broken and the edge of the forest reached. Dec. 13-14 saw a series of brilliant attacks against the towns of Gurzenich and Birgel by 2nd and 3rd Bns respectively, and the seizure of those towns by our troops. The German counterattack on Gurzenich in Bn strength supported by six assault guns took place on Dec. 16, the day of the start of the great German counteroffensive in the Ardennes. It was successfully repulsed, and but few of the attacking troops were able to withdraw to Duren. The following day, the 1st Bn took the town of Rolsdorf and on the 18th sent the first patrol across the Roer into Duren. On the 23rd, the 329th was relieved and moved to a reserved position at Eilendorf, Germany, where it spent Christmas Day.

Towns captured: Gurzenich, Birgel, Rolsdorf. Prisoners of war captured: 1,054.

ARDENNES, Dec. 26-Jan. 22, 1944

On Dec. 26, the regiment was rushed to the vicinity of Havelange, Belgium, to assist in the containing the German breakthrough. On Dec. 28, the 329th relieved the armor in the Division sector and launched the attack which carried B Co into Rochefort. The pressure of the attack to relieve B Co, which was surrounded by Germans in the city, forced a premature withdrawal of the enemy panzer forces to the east, leaving the regiment in control of Rochefort.

Relief by British forces, movement to the east, and the drive with the 3rd Armored Division to cut off the German spearhead followed, and on Jan 9, 1945 the regiment attacked again against German tanks and in freezing cold and snow to capture Petite Langlier. A night attack on the 11th saw 2nd Bn in possession of Pont de Langlier, and a bridgehead for the armor. The attack to the east through the Bois de la Ronce resulted in the capture of Honyelez on Jan. 14 and the seizure of the high ground west of Bovigny and Courtil, which towns were occupied on Jan. 20. The Germans began a slow withdrawal to the Siegfried Line, and on Jan. 22 the 329th was relieved and pulled back to prepare for future offensive action.

Towns captured: Rochefort, Pont de Langlier, Honyelez, Bovigny, Courtil, Cierrieux, Rogery. Prisoners of war captured: 615.

Commanding officers of the 329th Infantry
Regimental commander: Col. Edwin B. Crabill
CO, 1st Battalion: Lt. Col. Tim O. Cook
CO, 2nd Battalion: Lt. Col. Granville A. Sharpe
CO, 3rd Battalion: Lt. Col. John C. Speedie

Total number of prisoners of war captured: 25,247

Campaign stars awarded: Normandy, Northern France, Germany

ENDNOTES

This was written by an Army historian before the war ended. Notice that the history is incomplete, since it does not follow the actions of the 329th all the way to the Elbe River in April and May, and the conclusion does not include the campaign stars awarded for the Ardennes and Central Europe.

In World War II, airborne and infantry divisions were made up of squads (usually nine to 12 men), with two squads to a platoon, and three or four platoons to a company. There were usually three or four companies to a battalion, three or four battalions to a regiment, three or four regiments to a division, plus attached engineers, artillery, medical and other support personnel. Allied infantry divisions were from 15,000 to 20,000 strong in the European Theater, while Allied airborne divisions were about one-half that size. Most German divisions were less than 10,000 strong. (See Stephen E. Ambrose, "D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II" (New York/London: Simon & Schuster, 1994.)

The scrapblog editor notes an important fact missing from this otherwise stellar account: Casualties. She'll try to track down the number of dead and wounded and update this soon.