by Alex Kershaw
Sparks now encountered an enemy just as determined and canny as any he had faced in Europe—the NRA. “They figure everybody should be carrying a gun,” he declared. As he tried to rally support for a change in gun laws, he discovered that the NRA had secured the backing of politicians in Colorado and across America. Sparks decided to do some lobbying of his own. He was a former Colorado State Supreme Court justice. He had commanded the Army National Guard in Colorado. After reestablishing the Colorado National Guard in the forties, Sparks had continued his service, returning to active duty in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis and becoming commanding general for ten years before retiring as a brigadier general in 1977.
Eventually, the governor of Colorado, Roy Romer, agreed to a special session of the legislature, which would only consider what the governor placed on the call—legislation that Sparks had written banning handgun possession for minors. Sparks believed that “religion has been responsible for more deaths than any other factor in history.” He had not seen much evidence of God at work during the war. Nevertheless, he organized a prayer vigil the night before the legislature met to vote on his proposed law. He also called for a rally on the steps of the capitol the day of the vote. Among those who attended was permanently disabled Jim Brady, the press secretary who had been wounded by a handgun during the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981. Sparks’s followers turned out in force and crowded into the capitol’s galleries. The “goddamn NRA” had relentlessly fought Sparks and his efforts “every step of the way” and had given money to no fewer than thirty-five Colorado legislators. But Sparks’s proposed law passed all the same, such was the public mood and outcry over children killing other children with guns. The law banned anyone under the age of eighteen from carrying a handgun. It remains on the books to this day. Before it was passed, a sixth grader could walk into a classroom with a handgun in a backpack and nobody could do anything about it.
“We rolled right over that NRA,” said a victorious Sparks. “They didn’t know what hit them.”
As Sparks left the capitol in Denver to go celebrate victory in his last battle, a woman called out to him: “Mr. Sparks.”
Sparks turned to her.
“I have two teenage boys,” said the woman. “I’ve been up here just watching. I know some of the things you’ve done, but I think this might be the most important job you’ve had.”
“It’s not finished yet,” he answered. “Just call me Felix.”
Sparks’s efforts and those of many others across the United States saw a steady decline in teenage homicide from handguns through the nineties. But Saturday night specials and other cheap handguns were no longer the only threats. Six years later, on April 20, 1999, between 11 A.M. and noon, just a few miles from where Lee Pumroy was gunned down, teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold used pump-action shotguns and submachine guns, more powerful than those used by Sparks and his men in combat, to slaughter thirteen classmates and injure twenty-four others at Columbine High School. Sparks’s calls for far stricter gun laws had been tragically vindicated.
To the end of his life, Sparks would continue to decry the easy access to guns in America, which have claimed more lives than all the wars fought by Americans throughout the nation’s history. More young Americans had died from gun violence in the year his grandson was shot than had died under his command throughout the Second World War—when death was a daily occurrence. “We’ve got nuts and plenty of weapons,” said Sparks. “This business of letting everybody carry a concealed weapon is a form of insanity.”
DENVER, COLORADO, 2001
THE DISPLAY SHOWED a green helmet and his lucky Colt .45 pistol, with its cold blue glint of steel. The gun was the same one Sparks had fired to stop the killing of SS men in Dachau. Standing near the display was a German-born Jew, seventy-seven-year-old Jack Goldman. He could still vividly remember April 29, 1945, when Felix Sparks and his men had arrived just in time to save him. After migrating to the United States and serving in Korea, he had settled in Denver. In 2001, to mark the dedication of Colorado’s Centennial National Guard Armory, named in Sparks’s honor, he was finally able to look his liberator in the eye and tell him what he thought of him in public, before his family and peers.
Goldman stood at a rostrum and looked over at eighty-four-year-old Felix Sparks with his heavy jowls, thinning hair, and weak heart.
“Thank you very much.”
In the nineties, Sparks had loudly condemned Holocaust denial. “To say it never happened,” he had stressed, “is the height of viciousness and stupidity. I’ll fight those kinds of people until my last breath.” Dachau had been “the most terrible lesson you could get in discrimination.” Ignoring hate mail, he had spoken out at Holocaust remembrance ceremonies and in synagogues, challenging deniers to tell him that what he had seen inside Dachau hadn’t happened.
“Tell that to my face,” he had declared. “I was there!”
Also present at the dedication of the armory was Colonel Van T. Barfoot, the 157th Infantry Regiment’s sole living recipient of the Medal of Honor. “There were very few officers who had the concern for his men that Colonel Sparks did,” said Barfoot. “He has shown the epitome of leadership. He has advanced America.”
Barfoot had, like Captain Anse “Eddie” Speairs, gone on to serve his country in both Korea and Vietnam. In 2009, he would make national news for refusing to take down a prominent flagpole from which he had raised Old Glory each morning outside his home in Virginia. A housing association deemed that ninety-year-old Barfoot could not fly the flag for “aesthetic reasons.” “There’s never been a day in my life,” Barfoot protested, “or a place I’ve lived in my life that you couldn’t fly the American flag.” After a national outcry, Barfoot was allowed to fly the Stars and Stripes from his flagpole once more. Until his death in 2012, he raised Old Glory every morning and then lowered the flag each evening.
Sparks’s son Kirk, who looked exactly like his father had in middle age, also spoke at the ceremony. As with all of Sparks’s children, he had followed his father’s example and served in the military.
“The most influential force in my father’s life has been the military,” Kirk said. “Dad doesn’t say much. He just goes into action.”
Sparks was deeply moved. He told some funny stories and then brought the focus back to his men.
“If you’re going to be a successful commander,” he said, “you’ve got to have good men behind you.”
SPARKS HAD NEVER received that Distinguished Service Cross in 1945 for saving some of his men. Surely, before he died, the U.S. Army could put this to rights? Following the dedication of the National Guard Armory in 2001, some of Sparks’s men campaigned to have him finally awarded the medal that General Frederick had denied him for his actions at Reipertswiller.
As a result of the campaign, Sparks learned that Johann Voss, the SS veteran who had Sparks in his sights in 1945, was still alive. He had always wondered why the SS had not killed him that afternoon as he tried to save his men. Why had Voss and his fellow machine gunners not opened fire? Sparks did not ask Voss for an answer. He did not have to: Voss told the Rocky Mountain News that it had been impossible to shoot such a courageous officer in the act of trying to save his men.
Sadly, the campaign to have Sparks’s bravery recognized did not succeed. But awards had in any case never meant much to him. “Medals, what are they?” Sparks asked. “I don’t need any more.” He did not display them in his home or wear them to reunions. It was only when Mary searched his office one day that she found a large collection tossed into the drawer of a dresser. It was as if he’d deliberately hidden them there. His most prized memento of his war years was not a medal but the felt Thunderbird shoulder patch he had worn, etched with the regiment’s motto: “Eager for Duty.”
ST. ANTHONY CENTRAL HOSPITAL, DENVER, SEPTEMBER 24, 2007
MARY SPARKS DIDN’T know if she was reaching him, if he knew what she was saying, if she was getting through.
“I love you.”
She said it over and over, but he was so far gone she could not tell if he could hear. He could not speak. The world was receding. His last words had been to ask his family if they had been happy with their lives.
She was there, at his bedside, at 1 P.M. that Monday when he died of pneumonia. He had fought hard to the last breath. It was only days before a planned reunion with his men in Colorado. On hearing of Sparks’s death, Governor Bill Ritter ordered all Colorado and U.S. flags in the state to be lowered to half-staff. Days later, at Sparks’s funeral at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in Denver, mourners included his six grandchildren. They passed a collage on a wall that showed Sparks’s life in black-and-white: from the skinny young man who had ridden the rods to find work in the Depression, to the great-grandfather of seven: a lifelong warrior who had first enlisted in 1936 and gone to war with the NRA sixty years later and won. Also on view was his lucky Colt .45 pistol, the one he had fired to stop the murder of SS men at Dachau. It still had the photographs of his wife and first child, Kirk, on its grip. There was also the insignia of the organization he had loved more than any other—the 157th Infantry Regiment.
Many people gave eulogies to Sparks, a “giant of Colorado,” according to former governor Dick Lamm.
“When my father was in the Army,” said his son Kirk, “there was only one thing that was important to him. It wasn’t home, mom or apple pie or flag or country. He just cared about his men—keeping them alive, taking care of them.”
After the service, several of those men and other mourners gathered at the Crown Hill Cemetery in central Denver. The sun shone and the flags flapped in a brisk wind as the 101st Army Band marched ahead of Sparks’s hearse. According to tradition, a horse without a rider, carrying boots facing backward and with a saber hanging from its right side, followed the hearse to the gravesite. A Pack 75 howitzer fired eleven times. Then there was a twenty-one-gun salute and taps was played. Finally, Mary Sparks was given the flag that had draped her husband’s coffin.
Felix Sparks had never recovered from the loss of his grandson. The victory over the NRA had not dulled the pain. “[It] doesn’t bring my grandson back,” Sparks had said. “Got shot through the head. That hurt. Still hurts.” He had lived by the gun. He knew what immense damage it could do, on and off the battlefield. Given the choice of being buried with full honors in Arlington National Cemetery or in the city he had made his home, he chose a windswept graveyard where coyotes sometimes roam.
Felix Sparks lies beside his slain grandson.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
OVER THE FIVE years I have worked on this book, many people have helped me enormously. I was first able to meet with General Felix Sparks and his family thanks to the remarkable Jack Hallowell, a fine warrior, journalist, and friend. He introduced me to Sparks and many others, including Jack Goldman, one of thirty-two thousand inmates at Dachau when Sparks liberated the camp. This book is dedicated to Jack Hallowell, a true Thunderbird.
In Vermont, I owe a great debt to Amy Watson, who transcribed dozens of hours of videotaped interviews and, more than anyone, watched the men in this book unburden themselves. In Denver, Dave Schmidt, erstwhile historian for the Colorado National Guard, was most generous in handing over hours of interviews and other materials. Jeffrey Hilton was also most helpful and also conducted several hours of interviews that I have drawn on.
The amazing Rick Crandall in Denver first introduced me to Regis University’s Professor Dan Clayton, director of the Center for the Study of War Experience, who conducted several lengthy interviews with Felix Sparks, which were absolutely essential to this book. I can never thank Rick or Dan enough for their wonderful support and generosity. Dan has done more to promote a true understanding of the war than any other scholar in the United States. Phil Stinemates of Omni Services was also very considerate in granting permission to use his recordings of Sparks. Nate Matlock at Regis also helped me interview several veterans in Denver, and provided several recordings of Sparks, and I am most grateful to him for all his help, friendship, and support as well as comments on the manuscript.
Historian Colonel Hugh Foster was just as considerate, and I am very grateful to him for all his many years of work with the regiment, a group of men very close to his heart. He kindly answered countless queries and contacted many men and proved a formidable fact-checker. If there are any mistakes in the book, they are entirely my fault and not his. I am indebted to him also for putting me in touch with Johann Voss, who answered many questions with grace and eloquence. I would also like to thank Jim Sheeler for all his sterling work on the regiment over the years. The Thunderbirds could not have found a better journalist to commemorate the finest.
Lynn Bush was also most helpful, providing liaison, great company, and a tremendous amount of information over several years. I will always cherish our time with Jack Hallowell. Thanks also to the best chronicler of the 45th Infantry Division, Flint Whitlock, in Denver. Two other invaluable guides were Mike Gonzales and Allen M. Beckett at the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma.
The National World War II Museum’s Seth Paridon was also enormously generous with his time. I am also grateful for the support of the museum’s Nick Mueller, as well as Keith Huxen, Stephen Watson, Tommy Lofton, Larry Decuers, Jeremy Collins, and others. I would also like to thank Karen Jensen and Gene Santoro at World War II magazine.
The Colorado National Guard’s Robert W. Redding, commander of the 157th Infantry Regiment, was most helpful and supportive, as were Jean Schjodt and others in Denver, such as Steve Judish, Marie Valenzuela, and Kris Johnson. Chris Miskimon provided valuable help and great company. The ace researcher Dave Kerr sent many documents and photos from the National Archives, many of which I have used. David Israel kindly provided photographs of Sparks at Dachau. Congressman Ed Perlmutter, who has served Coloradans with great distinction and was a good friend of Felix Sparks, was also most helpful. I am also grateful to Bill Holden and Vincent Cookingham.
I would also like to thank the following veterans of the 157th Infantry Regiment, many of whom spoke to me at length: Cranston Rogers, Vinnie Stigliani, Warren Wall, Joe Early, Adam Przychocki, Vincent Presutti, Les Alexander, Dan Dougherty, Bill Lyford, Edward Peppler, Bernie Kaczorowski, Van T. Barfoot, Karl Mann, who welcomed me to his home, Guy Prestia, John Piazza, George Courlas, Bill O’Neill, Ed Speairs, Joe Medina, Rex Raney, Don Thompson, Clarence Schmitt, and Oren Scott.
I am also indebted to the Sparks family—particularly Felix Sparks’s son Kirk, wife Mary, brother Earl, and grandson Blair, and several other relatives and grandchildren who kindly sent me a few photographs.
Yet again, I owe a massive debt to the amazing and gracious staff in the Sawyer Library at Williams College, who provided me yet again with a home to write another book, in particular David Pilachowski.
I am also grateful to my incisive and endlessly patient editor, Charlie Conrad, his assistant Miriam Chotiner-Gardner, and many others at Crown Publishers in New York. They are all consummate professionals.
John Snowdon again provided wonderful help and company, and took fantastic portraits. Thanks also to Rob Kraitt in London and Liza Wachter in Los Angeles for all the great years of collaboration.
This book would not have been possible without my friend/agent/fellow author, Jim Hornfischer, the best in the business.
My wonderfully talented wife, Robin, who read the manuscript at a critical stage, and photo-researcher/filmmaker son, Felix, again provided all the support one could possibly want. I am also grateful to my family on both sides of the Atlantic.
NOTES
PROLOGUE—THE GRAVES
1 They lay beneath perfect: Felix Sparks, 157th Infantry Regiment Association newsletter, September 1, 1989.
2 They had died near: Buechner, Sparks: The Combat Diary of a Battalion Commander (Rifle) WWII, p. 81.
3 Seventy-two thousand men: Ibid., p. 94.
4 It was hard to: F
elix Sparks, interview with author.
5 Every time, they had: Felix Sparks, Regis University interview.
6 It was this spirit: Felix Sparks, Regis University lecture, “Stories from Wartime.”
7 The American soldiers under: Ibid.
8 His great grandfather had: Felix Sparks, Regis University interview.
9 On the German border: Ibid.
10 His men’s foxholes were: Rocky Mountain News, March 10, 2007.
11 He had never gotten: Ibid.
12 Thirty platoon leaders: Karl Mann, written report on World War II provided to the author, p. 14.
13 Why hadn’t it been: Felix Sparks, Regis University lecture.
14 Events that day: Felix Sparks, interviewed by James Strong, The Liberation of KZ Dachau, documentary, 1990.
15 The rumors festered still: David Israel, interview with author.
16 The cost had been: Buechner, Sparks, p. 94.
PART ONE—THE DUST BOWL
CHAPTER ONE—THE WEST
1 He pulled on his: Felix Sparks, Regis University lecture.
2 But none of it: Earl Sparks, interview with author.
3 His mother was a: Felix Sparks, Colorado National Guard oral history.
4 His passion was military: Blair Lee Sparks, interview with author.
5 He hoped someday: Earl Sparks, interview with author.