By KIRBY ROSS
Phillips County Review
PHILLIPSBURG — Question: What do the below well-known Phillips County names have in common?
Merklein
Troyer
Blackburn
Robinson
Parker
Boyd
Jennings
Elliott
Kemper
Morgan
Answer: These local families have all lost loved ones in the fight against Nazism.
Less than two weeks ago Nazi protesters descended upon Charlottesville, Va. They participated in torchlight marches straight out of 1938 Berlin, shouted Nazi slogans, and predicted, on camera, that nearby anti-Nazi protesters would be hurt or killed.
Their predictions turned out to be true when one of the Nazis got behind the wheel of a Dodge Charger and plowed almost a block through a mass of human bodies. The Nazi then put his vehicle into reverse and drove over the broken bodies of the injured as he attempted his getaway.
In 2017 it seems more than a little breathtaking that we are having a debate regarding whether or not Nazism should be a part of our political discourse, and whether or not Nazis have “very fine people” within their ranks.
Our president spoke those words last week — that there were very fine people who were marching with the Nazis at Charlottesville.
This comment by the president, as well as other comments, resulted in a firestorm of criticism from hundreds of Republican and Democratic lawmakers across the nation, as well as scores of conservative, liberal, and centrist media outlets. So many business leaders resigned from the president’s White House advisory boards because of the comments regarding Nazis that the president had to shut down several of the councils altogether.
The highest ranking members of the U.S. Armed Forces — the Joint Chiefs of Staff — also weighed in and issued rebukes of the controversial statements concerning Nazis.
U.S. Senator Jerry Moran, a native son of Plainville, spoke out with moral clarity very early in the discussion while others were either still silent or were equivocating.
“White supremacy, bigotry and racism have absolutely no place in our society, and no one — especially the president of the United States — should ever tolerate it. We must all come together as a country and denounce this hatred to the fullest extent,” Moran said.
Moran knows of what he speaks — his father, Raymond Edwin Moran, was an active participant in the fight against Nazism, seeing action against it in North Africa and Italy during World War II.
Out here in the heartland, discussions about Nazism can seem a little abstract, as can, sadly, the loss of life 1,200 miles away in Charlottesville, Va.
What is not abstract is the fact that around two dozen local Phillips County men have given their lives in opposition to Nazism.
It has been my honor for the past several years to have been working closely with Dean Buchner of Phillipsburg, identifying and putting together biographical profiles of all of those from Phillips County whom were killed in the service of their country during World War II.
Dean is now in his 90s, and is a combat veteran of the war himself. It is not uncommon to see him walking the sidewalks of Phillipsburg, heading up town for coffee.
Dean hasn’t allowed me to tell his own story, feeling that it will distract from the stories of the sacrifice of the others we are hard at work on — some of whom he personally knew as a teen and who went off to war and never came home.
Dean was in the thick of the fight against Nazism as an enlisted soldier in a WWII tank destroyer unit. By thick of it, I mean slugging it out in tank battles against Nazi Panzers as close as 75 yards away.
Anyone of a certain age who doesn’t know someone who fought in World War II has to have been living in a cave. I myself had two fairly close relatives involved.
The first was Jim Claggett, my mother’s second cousin. He was older than her and would carry her piggyback across rain-swollen gullies when, as children, they walked to the Jaybird Country Schoolhouse southeast of Kirwin.
Later on, with the war raging all over the world, Jim was in the 11th grade attending Kirwin High School when he dropped out, enlisted at age 17 and went off to fight Nazis. He returned several years later, and resumed his schooling. I sometimes wonder what the Kirwin schoolboys, probably not even shaving yet, thought about sitting next to this grizzled veteran of the war against Hitler.
Then there was my uncle, John H. Ross, my grandfather’s half-brother. Born in Oklahoma in 1918, his father died 11 years later after which John came of age as a dust bowl Okie during the hardscrabble years of the Great Depression, boxing and hobo-ing on freight trains as he moved around the country struggling to earn money to survive the hard times.
For a period John called Phillips County home, living with his older brother, Lyle T. Ross, my grandfather, on the family farm along the banks of Bow Creek. When the war started John went out and enlisted so he could fight Nazis, and soon became a pilot. His own story was unheralded within the Ross family. What little that made its way to the light of day during family gatherings was that John flew P-38 Lightnings and had once been shot down over the English Channel. Declared Missing In Action, he spent 24 hours in the frigid waters of the North Sea before being fished out by a British rescue boat, the captain of which took the sweater off his own back and gave it to John to help warm him up.
Uncle John died in 2013 at the age of 95. Upon his death, I found out he was highly decorated, earning 11 medals flying 96 missions with the 8th Air Force against Nazi Germany, and that he had been shot down by the Nazis not once, but three times. I also discovered he was awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses, and that the book “Eyes of the Eighth: A Story of the 7th Photographic Reconnaissance Group, 1942-1945” credits his photo-recon missions as being integral to the Allied victory over the Nazis during the Battle of the Bulge.
——————-
In the course of my work with Dean Buchner, we believe we have identified most of Phillips County’s World War II dead. There were a lot of them. Since this article today is about Nazis and the evils of Nazism, for purposes of it, I am narrowing our list down to those who lost their lives in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of War fighting Nazis. A number of other Phillips County residents were killed in the Pacific Theater, but that story will have to wait for another time.
Among those who died in the fight against Nazism were Paul Merklein and Eldon Blackburn. Very familiar names, given that family members who we know today in 2017 were named after them and live and work among us.
There was also Edsel Stuckman who fought Nazism. Edsel was a medic, and had a single-minded purpose of getting to and aiding his buddies who were wounded in battle — so said an article published when he was killed.
Edsel was the only child of Hugh and Alta Stuckman of Kirwin. His death was a lonely one with no American seeing it happen. He was found afterwards and it was surmised a sniper got him. Nineteen years later his elderly parents made a pilgrimage to the distant European graveyard he now rests in to visit him one last time before their own deaths.
Lorain Westenhaver of Phillips County chose to fight Nazis by volunteering for the 502nd PIR, 101st Airborne Division (of ‘Band of Brothers’ fame). He was killed three days after Christmas during the Battle of the Bulge. Phillips County’s George C. Dawes, a tank crewman, was killed during that same battle a few weeks later.
John Boyd and James Elliott died in battle in the Mediterranean Theater fighting Nazism.
Merle Robinson was killed in Italy in 1945, around the same time Ray Troyer, a tanker, also was. Their deaths followed that of Francis L. Kemper, who served in a medical unit and was killed in Italy in 1943.
Lawrence Jennings died of wounds fighting Nazism in the German Fatherland just 10 days before the end of the war. Eldon Blackburn was killed in Germany two weeks earlier.
Floyd Parker lost his life in North Africa. Karl Scanlon, Ray Starr and Wayne Matthies died in France. All from Phillips County, all perished fighting Nazism.
Walter Merklein was killed in Italy in May 1944, 10 weeks before his cousin, Paul Merklein, lost his life in France.
Phillips County’s John Van Der Hyde has a grave marker in Belgium near to where he fell. Lawrence Morgan died with the eight other members of his bomber crew while flying over Belgium. He has markers both there and in Fairview Cemetery in Phillipsburg and was the brother of the founders of Phillips County’s Morgan Foundation Charitable Trust.
The battle against Nazism was waged fiercely back in the 1930s and 1940s. A number of Phillips County men, with many, many years of their lives yet ahead of them, died in order to halt it. Now, in 2017, over seven decades later, the cause against which they sacrificed their lives is rearing its ugly head once again.
Rearing its ugly head not in Europe, but right here on the streets of America.
Kirby Ross, [email protected], is editor of the Phillips County Review. Republished with permission.