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Mourning for 3 brothers killed in WW2 never ends
U.S. Army Infantrymen
By BILL WELCH
Anna Eleanor Adams sent four sons overseas during World War II. One came home alive.
Charles Adams, Donald Adams and Clarence Adams - all U.S. Army infantrymen - died in combat.
On Christmas Day 1945, Bob Adams came home, dreading it, knowing he
had survived and three of his brothers lay buried overseas.
"When I came back (to the U.S.), I didn't know whether to come home or
not," Bob said in an interview in spring 2001. "I felt so small and insignificant. I just didn't know how to face my mother.
"Here, she had four sons who were overseas. I was the only one that came back," he said, crying openly. "I had this guilt. I often said to myself 'Why
did it have to be them and not be me?' What was I going to say to my mother?"
That Christmas day, all he could choke out to her was, "Mom, I'm so sorry."
During his leave, "We tried to console each other. We went to bingo and the occasional movie and tried to erase the memories.
"I loved my mother so much - like the rest of her sons."
Don and Charles Adams
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The memories of his brothers never left Bob Adams. He has held onto their letters and the photos - snapshots in albums and framed
portraits. Those portraits top his dresser at the Pleasant Ridge Manor Nursing Home where he lives. The medals and the newspaper clippings are carefully stored in boxes.
Newspapers brought war news to
Americans' homes. And in 1944 and 1945, they shouted in bold headlines that the Allies were winning, the Axis nations were in retreat; battlefield victories were putting the war's end in sight.
The victories came with a cost, and newspapers reported that, too. Though the United States had entered the war in December 1941, it was in June 1944, that the number of
American ground troops engaged in combat jumped. They had already been fighting in Italy and on New Guinea in the Pacific. Now they were in
action on the Pacific island of Saipan and in the hedgerows of France. The casualty rate shot up, too. Almost everyday newspapers printed the faces of smiling young men in dress uniforms. Over those photos ran headlines
saying that the smiling young man had died sometime in the last few weeks or months.
On Saturday, June 2, 1945, The Erie Daily Times printed an undramatic
photograph on Page One. It was Anna Adams, widowed mother of seven sons and a daughter. She was sitting on the sofa, looking composed, though awkward, as she tried to hold all three framed portraits of her dead
sons, the smiling faces of young men.
Charles died first, on June 21, 1944, while fighting in France, 15 days after he parachuted out of the dark as part of the Allied invasion of Normandy.
Fifty-one days later, on Aug. 10, it was Donald, the oldest of the three at 26. He was killed in France, too. Then came Clarence - "Honey" was his
nickname. He had enlisted in September 1944, three months after he graduated from Academy High School and six weeks after Donald's death. He died May 21, 1945, in the jungles of Luzon, largest island of the
Philippines. He had just turned 19. It was two days after that third telegram arrived that newspaper photographer Frank Schauble showed up at the Adams house.
"LOSES THREE SONS IN WAR - Mrs. Anna Adams, 245 E. 24th, grieves over
the loss of three of her five sons who entered the armed forces within the space of a short time. In the photo (left) she is looking at the pictures of three who have been killed - Private Clarence
Adams, nineteen, last May 10 on Luzon; T-Sergt. Donald E. Adams, twenty-six, last Aug. 10, in France; and S/Sergt. Charles H. Adams, paratrooper, last June 21, in Normandy."
The third telegram reached the Adams' house at 245 E. 24th St. on the last day of May. She wasn't home when the Western Union messenger stepped onto the front porch. Other members of the family were.
"We didn't want to tell her," said Evelyn Adams Brown, who had been married to Arthur, the oldest son, since 1932. "We called a minister to the house. We all came home to be there."
It was as bad as they feared.
When the first telegram - the one for Charlie - came, "She took it well, but it was tough," Brown said. "Two months later came the news about Don. That
brought her down a lot."
Donald's death brought her to the brink of suicide. "My sister Leona pulled my mother's head out of the oven when news of Donald came," Bob said.
"She got there just in time. She came up; she smelled gas. My mother had her head in the oven."
Clarence was the youngest of the seven children. His mother had called him
"Honey Schlau," a German term of endearment. Her parents had come to the United States from Germany.
"She didn't really accept his death until they brought the body home," Brown said.
The news shocked body and soul. Family members wondered if that was what sparked the diabetes that set in about the time of Clarence's death.
Much as she hurt, Anna Adams became instrumental in founding the Erie
chapter of the Gold Star Mothers, an organization for the mothers of servicemen killed in the war. She became the chapter's first president. The chapter was named the Adams Chapter in honor of her three sons. The work
with the Gold Star Mothers kept her busy and helped her deal with the tragedy, Brown said. She was among those after the war to break ground for the new Veterans Administration hospital on East 38th Street.
In August 1948, the bodies of the three brothers were brought home from the military cemeteries in France and the Philippines to be buried in Erie Cemetery.
Waiting at Union Depot for the train to bring the first two sons home was one of the worst experiences in Brown's life. "My blood pressure went up. I
was pregnant with our youngest child then. It was just so terrible. And then to see the military escorts that had to stay with the caskets, that made it tougher.
"I didn't go to the station when the third one came."
Once all three caskets had arrived, they were arranged at Burton Funeral Home in a U shape, each with a photo of the young man resting on top. So
many people came to pay their respects that it was a continuous line, recalled Brown's daughter, Trudy Henderson. People could only file by in a steady stream; they had no time to talk with the Adams family. The funeral
at Salem Evangelical Church, West 11th and Myrtle streets, was jammed, too. Not a seat was left open.
The three brothers were buried in Erie Cemetery on August 13, 1948. Salutes were fired and Taps was played.
"To this day, I can't hear Taps without it getting to me," Brown said, tears gathering in her eyes.
It was the first time her other daughter, Arlene Salorino, saw her father cry.
Anna Adams lasted another 16 months, but diabetes claimed her life on Dec. 24, 1949.
When the World War II Memorial bearing the names of Erie County's war
dead was dedicated on Veterans Day 2000, Evelyn Brown, her daughters and other family members were there. They saw the names inscribed on the polished black granite, heard the speeches, and heard a bugler play Taps.
Family tradition
Military service was the norm for the Adams boys. Bob Adams, the third oldest of the six brothers, said all but Clarence had entered the
Pennsylvania Army National Guard in their teens. They had been members of Company G, 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. The family album in Bob Adams' room holds dozens of photos of the brothers in their
pre-war, National Guard uniforms.
"Army life was so different (than their experience with the National Guard) during the war," Bob Adams said. "They more or less give you the
fundamentals. You had to respond in national emergencies. My brother Harold responded in 1936 for the flood in Johnstown. The Guard was called
out during strikes. They said we were strikebreakers but that was a myth; we didn't do that at all."
The other, older, brothers were Harold, Arthur and Richard. Only Arthur
didn't serve in the Army during the war. He received a deferment because of his defense work at Weil-McLain and a problem with his legs. Harold was discharged after a year because of a medical condition.
Richard and Bob both served through the war. Richard remained in the United States.
Bob was so eager at age 16 to enlist in 1929 that he lied, saying he was 18.
By 1940, he had left the Guard. He was married, the divorced father of a little girl, and an employee at Weil-McClain.
"When the National Guard was nationalized (on Feb. 17, 1941), they had to
stay at the Armory (at East 6th and Parade Streets)," Bob Adams said. "It was declared an Army post. There was a thousand of them staying there.
The entire battalion. They took their meals there and everything else."
Then 28 years old, Bob Adams made a decision. By this time the 28th
Infantry Division had left Pennsylvania and was participating in the Army's major peacetime maneuvers in Louisiana.
"I signed my voluntary induction papers. I had it in my mind that my brothers
were in there and I better be too. I was working at Bay City Forge on W. 18th Street. I was a setup man. I was declared essential. I didn't have to go.
"I went to work at 7 one morning. I had my hand on the door handle and something just struck me. I let go the door handle and made an about face. I said 'I won't go to work this morning.
I'll do something else.' I went to Draft Board Number 5 at 10th and Holland. They were closed. I took a walk to the dock and walked back and enlisted."
He was treated like any other recruit and went into training with other enlistees and draftees. He arranged for his mother and sister-in-law to care for his daughter Marjorie.
The two sergeants
Charles and Donald Adams were called to active duty in February 1941 when National Guard units across the nation were activated. War was still over the horizon for the United States, but the world war already raging was
considered a national emergency.
Early in the war, the call went out for volunteers for paratrooper training. Charles went for it and made it. "I don't know why Charlie became a
paratrooper," Bob Adams said. "He liked heights, I guess."
After training, and after working as a paratroop instructor in the U.S., he
went to England as part of the Headquarters Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. The two brothers met up while in England. Charles arrived at Donald's camp, announcing his arrival by whistling the Academy
school song outside Donald's tent. By this time, Donald was a sergeant in Company B, but still with the 112th Regiment.
Don had attended two military academies after graduation from Academy,
thanks in part to a football scholarship. "He was a great football player at Academy."
All the brothers were close, Bob Adams said, but Don and Charlie were the
closest. Their letters home had digs about the other, but always concern for their welfare. "Those two palled around. They were the same age and all.
They were both engaged, too. Don was engaged to a girl named Leona. They were really in love. They were going to get married when he got home. The same with Charlie."
Charlie's fiancée, Pearl, had given him a red badge of Jesus revealing his Sacred Heart, a badge common among Catholics. "He had that on when he
was killed," Bob Adams said. "I don't know how he was killed. Maybe it's best."
However Charlie died it happened only days before the 101st Airborne
Division was pulled out of combat in Normandy and returned to England. The 101st had been holding the American left flank at the town of Carentan,
which had been captured after fierce fighting in mid-June. The American paratroopers held the way open for the VII Corps to advance up the Cherbourg Peninsula. The fighting was steady, often against the
Wehrmacht's 6th Parachute Division
The 28th Division was in England when the Allies invaded France. It entered combat in late July as the American and British armies were breaking
through the German lines, ending the stalemate that had existed since just after D-Day. The Germans were in retreat through most of August. On Aug.
10, the division, including the 112th Regiment encountered tough resistance as it tried to take the town of Gathemo. It was one of the key points the Germans needed to hold open a line of retreat from inside the Falaise
Pocket, which was being pushed on all sides by the Allies. Company B was in the thick of the fight for Gathemo, which was taken. At one point, command of the company passed to Don Adams, his brother said. For that
Sgt. Don Adams would posthumously win the Bronze Star for valor. Details are unclear, but apparently he was killed by enemy mortar or artillery fire.
Two Erie men - Auggie Allessie and Hank Tautman - told Anna Adams they were with him when Donald died.
Six weeks after Donald's death, Clarence enlisted. It was not so much to
avenge the deaths of his brothers, said Evelyn Brown, but to do his duty. He didn't have to. A serviceman could claim a deferment if two brothers had already died in the service.
Anna Adams went to the Red Cross after Donald's death to try to get Bob Adams home from Europe. Nothing came of her efforts.
Death on Luzon
In spring 1945, Clarence was on Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. Though the major cities were under American control, Gen. Douglas MacArthur was determined to clear the islands of all Japanese. The jungle
campaign dragged on. Luzon was declared under American control at the end of May, but the fighting against some 50,000 Japanese that retreated to
the jungles and mountains of the interior continued until war's end. At first, Clarence Adams was at a "Repple Depple," assigned to a replacement
depot, waiting for a unit that needed him to fill an open spot. His letters home had a recurring theme: Send mail. He wanted to hear from home.
By mid-April, he had been assigned to the 128th Infantry Regiment, 32nd Infantry Division. As a replacement, the young Adams was in an exposed position. He had little time to form bonds with the men already in the unit,
and he had no combat experience. The 32nd had been in weeks of heavy fighting along the Villa Verde Trail. It was exhausting, brutal work in rain and
fog. Fighting would revolve around villages of fewer than 10 huts. On May 10, 1945, his platoon went on patrol. According to the widow of an Erie man
in the same battalion, Charles Crockett, while Clarence Adams was on patrol, Crockett went to headquarters to get word to the commanding officer
that Adams had already lost two brothers in combat and ought to be eligible for rear echelon duties.
While on that patrol, enemy machine gun fire cut Clarence down, killing him.
For Bob Adams, in Europe where the fighting had ended, the news was devastating.
"They sent me a telegram. And there I was. I thought I had seen enough and
now one more brother was gone. I thought of my mother. How's she taking it? What's she doing? I didn't know what to do.
"They left me all alone. The captain came in. Then the chaplain came in. He
asked to talk to me," he said, sniffing. "I thought I would be going home. But it was not to be. I would not go home."
Across Europe
Bob Adams arrived in Scotland in December 1944 aboard the luxury liner Queen Mary, one of roughly 15,000 soldiers to be crammed on the speedy ship. After a short time in Scotland and England, he and other replacements
were taken by LST to Le Havre, France, and from there trucked toward the front. As someone who had first learned his soldier's trade as a member of
the 28th Division, Army National Guard, Adams was on his way to that division as a replacement. This time, he would serve with the 110th Regiment, not the 112th. He joined Company A and would serve as a line
infantryman - trained in rifle, BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) and mortar.
"When they interviewed me, I said I'm back home again," he said, smiling.
He was with his old division, nicknamed the Keystone Division, but more often known as the "Bloody Bucket" or "Bloody Patch" for the blood-red
patch its soldiers wore on their shoulders. "I didn't know a lot of them, but I got acquainted."
The 28th Division, including the 110th Regiment, had been hit hard during
the early part of the Battle of the Bulge, which raged from Dec. 16, 1944, until the end of January. The replacements were badly needed.
The winter weather was some of the worst Europe had experienced in many years. "They gave us white capes, white camouflage to put on our helmet
and white sleeves to put on our rifles. Then they sent us to Bastogne."
There, Adams saw his first dead German. "He looked like he had been
there for days. He had a grenade in his hand, a potato masher, like he was ready to throw and someone got him when he was ready to throw. I remember that vividly. There were other things I saw. They didn't look too
good to me."
Contact with German soldiers stirred emotions in Adams. They would stay with him through the next five months of action, and on through the occupation of Germany.
Sitting now at a table in the Pleasant Ridge Manor common area, he was asked if he held feelings of anger toward the Germans. "Yeah, I did," he
said. "I had this feeling that maybe the next one got one of my brothers, or maybe this one, or him.
"It was tough for me, knowing that two of my brothers were killed in
Normandy and here I was facing the same enemy. It gave me an awful queasy feeling ... maybe ... hate."
With the end of the Battle of the Bulge, the 28th was trucked south to
Alsace-Lorraine on Jan. 31. They disembarked during a blinding snowstorm at Means Aux Ste. Marie. The next day the U.S. Seventh Army and the French First Army opened an offensive to reduce a smaller bulge known as
the Colmar Pocket. Adams knows the disembarking point was Means Aux Ste. Marie because he still knows nearly all the lines of a poem that recounts the movements and actions of the 28th Division during the war. At
times while he is interviewed, he broke into the poem to make sure he has his timeline right.
"It was cold, below zero," he said. "The night before we advanced we were
in an abandoned house. We were praying. We didn't know what we were getting into."
Snow and ice were so deep when the soldiers awoke that they had to shovel
their way up the mountainside to get to their positions, lugging their machine guns and other weapons as they dug their way. The 109th Regiment made the attack and took Colmar, while the 110th secured its
flank. While it did, Adams learned about life in a slit trench, a hole dug into the frozen ground in a rectangular shape several feet deep. "It was just high
enough so we could peek over the top. We were growing beards after a while and the icicles would hang from them. We'd just pull them off and suck on them.
"We had to have sanitary arrangements while we were dug in. We built a long trench, but we never used it much because of enemy fire. We had to do
the next best thing - use our helmets, then wash them out with snow and throw them over the bank. And when your bowels had to move, it was an
awful story. It was like living in slime. You'd throw it over the bank, and make sure it didn't leave any marks. One way was to cover it with branches."
The four men got to know each other pretty well. Adams recalls them as Tom Dickson of North Carolina, Art Kelly of Wyoming and John, an Italian-American from Massachusetts.)
Close to the end of the war, the four were taken off the front line and sent to France to be trained for intelligence gathering - to be spies.
"We had a choice whether we would or not, and none of us wanted to. They took us all the way back behind lines to ask us and we didn't want to. The war was winding down and we didn't want to take that chance.
"Art Kelly was always homesick for the range. Whenever we were on a truck singing someplace. He wanted me to sing 'Somewhere in Wyoming.' I'd sing
it and everyone would join in. I'd say, 'This ain't Wyoming.'"
The liberators
After three days on the line at Colmar, the 110th was relieved by French
units. The French were marching up the mountainside as the Americans made their way down. Feeling grateful at being relieved, Adams said "Merci
beaucous" to one of the French soldiers. The soldier replied in perfect English to Adams: "No. Thank you, American soldier." They grasped hands and continued on their way.
As they advanced, Adams saw a sign posted by American forces: "We come not as conquerors but as liberators.' That made me feel so good."
As winter eased, the Allies pushed forward. Sometimes the going was easy. Sometimes the fighting was fierce.
"We were chasing the Germans. They were firing back at us. They got a
certain distance; they set up their defense. We had to go up the same hill. That was a good chance for them to knock us off. They covered that area
where we had to go up. We made a big mistake by using that way. One after another they picked us off. I saw these bodies - two piles of them. One
pile was Americans and one pile was Germans. I looked at that and I almost got sick to my stomach.
"It was getting to be night. I had a BAR and I was to go up next. Then came
my turn. Just as I got almost all the way to the top, the sergeant told me to lay down and drop my piece. I did. The Germans were just over the rise. I
stayed there. It was getting dark. They were still firing over our heads. There was some kind of rut. It was wet and cold, with ice and snow in it. We all
lay there for hours - 'til morning. There were seven of us or so....
"In the morning, they all pulled out. I remember the bodies lying there. They
were twitching - Germans and Americans. I figured I could have got hit next."
That memory is burned in Adams' mind. What he and his unit did after that is faded. "I can't recall."
When the 28th Division reached the Siegfried Line, Germany's fortified line protecting its western frontier, its troopers learned a new style of warfare -
pillbox cracking. Concrete pillboxes and blockhouses dominated much of the line. Inside were machine guns or artillery sighted in on likely avenues of
approach. To the good fortune of the "Bloody Bucket," much of the Siegfried line was manned by second-line troops, and sometimes lightly manned at that.
Adams recalled when his company got to the Siegfried Line.
"We went up a rise. I was on point, the left point. Another fella was on the
right point. We both saw it at the same time, so we both raised our rifles. That mean 'Enemy Ahead.'"
They didn't see any German soldiers. If any were there, they were inside the blockhouses and pillboxes.
Their company got orders to take the pillboxes. They went from one to another. Some were empty; some occupied.
"When we saw they were occupied, we'd throw grenades in. We'd climb a
guy's back, throw one in the window and run like hell."
They never went inside to check the occupants. "Whatever was in there got it," he chuckled.
Some Germans didn't wait for the grenades. They came out, hands raised, shouting "Kamerad!"
Despite the danger, the company lost few men.
"We were in Germany. We went through one town after another, one town after another. We were in on the kill."
Dark spirits
The next several weeks until V-E Day on May 8 were taken mainly with
keeping pressure on retreating German forces. When the end came, the 28th took up occupation duties. For four months, Adams remained with the
division. Then the division was shipped back to the United States. Adams and his buddies remained in Germany. They didn't have enough points to earn the trip home yet. They were assigned to a prisoner of war camp,
dubbed by the GIs as Camp Par o' Dice.
But before he became a prison camp guard, Bob Adams would get spirit-numbing news - his youngest brother died in the Philippines.
"They sent me a telegram. And there I was," he said, his head bowed.
"I thought I had seen enough and now one more brother was gone. I thought of my mother.
'How's she taking it? What's she doing?' I didn't know what to do. They left me all alone," he said, tears filling his eyes. "The captain came in. Then the
chaplain came in. He asked to talk to me. I thought I would be going home. But it was not to be. I would not go home."
As a camp guard, Adams discovered what hate and grief could do.
German prisoners shuffled along in the mess line. Their rations were far less than what the GIs ate. That day, Adams recalls, he had mashed potatoes and pork chops.
"It was a good meal. The Germans had their own line. They looked undernourished or something.
"I went by and a German held out his plate to me. I was just about ready to
throw away what was left from my plate. And he said 'Give me some?'
"I wouldn't do it. I still had hatred in my heart. 'Maybe you killed my brother,'
I thought. I threw it in the garbage heap right in front of him and I went like this (wiping his hands) to him. I held my knife up to him. He dropped his
eyes." Adams left it at that. Other times - seething inside - he held his knife up to German prisoners. Just held it, seething.
"It wasn't like me to do that," he said, puzzled even now at his change in spirit.
"It wasn't like me because ... I always forgave anybody that done anything
to me. I had a forgiving heart. But I didn't have a forgiving heart, because the hurt was so deep. And I thought of what they did to my mother."
Several times I did that. And then after a few weeks I started to mellow a little bit. I held that hatred until we were deactivated."back to top |
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