What are some of my favorite memories of my dad?
Sure, he ran the household like he ran a platoon. As a kid you definitely wanted to stay in line. If my brothers or I got called out on the carpet for anything, and if we replied to any question, “Yes, Dad,” he would correct us with, “Yes, Dad, sir.” He was definitely the boss.
But he definitely could be a lot of fun, too. He told us stories about cowboys, about a horse named “Old Paint,” from back in his cowboy days, and another story he made up called “The Little Boy Who Didn’t Like Ice Cream.” This story always included the world’s smartest elephant, who traveled around the jungle with a huge typewriter carried around by “coolies.” (Obviously the term “coolies” is not politically correct now, but things were different back then, and that’s the word Dad always used to refer to manual laborers from Asia.) People continually came up to this elephant and asked him yes or no questions. The bearers sprung into action and assembled a huge typewriter, and the elephant would type out his one word reply. Y-E-S or N-O. Then they disassembled the typewriter and continued their wild trek through the jungle. The story went on and on. We absolutely loved it. I should mention that the typewriter was a complete keyboard, despite that every question could be answered yes or no. We used to point out that this elephant did not even need a typewriter, he could just stomp a foot once for yes and twice for no, for instance. But then the whole story would have lost its appeal, Dad said with a grin.
That’s how I’d want people to remember my father, C. Carwood Lipton: A strong, capable leader who had a great sense of humor. He could really keep us all in stitches. I wish he was still with us today.
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RON SPEIRS
Interview with Marv Bethea, stepson
My stepfather, Lieutenant Ronald Speirs, was the stuff of legends. His nicknames included “Sparky,” “Bloody,” and “Killer.” The stories abound: he shot one of his own sergeants between the eyes for getting drunk; he peaceably handed out cigarettes to twenty German prisoners, then mowed them down with his submachine gun; he sprinted crosstown through a veritable shooting gallery at Foy—the Germans didn’t even shoot at him at first because they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. The really astounding story at Foy is that after he hooked up with I Company on the other side of town, now under heavy fire, he sprinted back.
Are the legends true?
The facts that have emerged in later years hopefully speak louder than the rumors. Ron led the attack and destroyed the fourth and final German artillery piece at Brécourt Manor during the Normandy invasion. Later, with Easy Company wrongly positioned and staying put as sitting ducks behind a haystack during the attack on Foy, Lieutenant Speirs was ordered to relieve Lieutenant Norman Dike of his command. Speirs, then the commander of Dog Company, ran to Dike, blurted out, “I’m taking over,” and Easy Company surged into Foy and took the town. Ron continued as the leader of Easy Company through the end of the war and ended up being company commander longer than any of his predecessors, including Dick Winters.
Of all the accounts and explanations surrounding the stories, one thing is clear about Ron: he took his responsibilities very seriously and cared deeply about the welfare of the men with whom he served. This is evidenced in the well-documented and eyewitness reports of his service during WWII.
Personally, we know there was more to Ron’s life than what we read about in Stephen Ambrose’s book or see in the HBO miniseries. What follows is the story of the real Ronald Speirs as we knew him.
How I Knew Him
After my biological father died in 1984, my mother, Elsie, met Ron Speirs at a singles’ square dance. I lived in Montana at the time, and Mom lived in California. Mom and Ron were married in November 1987 and stayed together until he died in 2007, so they had twenty good years together.
I didn’t meet Ron until the wedding. Mom said she didn’t even know he had been in the military until they had been dating for several weeks—Ron just didn’t talk about it much.
After they were married, we did not live geographically close, so I didn’t get much of a chance to know Ron until several years later when he and Mom started spending more time here in Montana. I’ve got a brother and sister and they all have kids. I’m remarried, and my wife and I have six kids between us, so there was always a bunch of children running around. I can’t overemphasize what a fantastic grandfather and great-grandfather Ron became to all our children. They’d tug on him, wanting him to take them on walks, and he was always patient and went out of his way to do whatever he could for them. Ron became grandpa to the whole crew, and he lived that role very well. It’s funny how having grandkids can really bring out the best in people.
Although our family was aware that Ron had received some medals and had quite an extensive military career, we had little knowledge of the details. We accepted his explanation of a failing memory. Throughout his extensive career in the military, he had spent time in Korea, Spandau prison, Southeast Asia, and the Pentagon, and his memories tended to blend together toward the end. For some time, we understood and honored the possibility that many of his experiences during WWII were buried forever in his subconscious.
Although aware of the book Band of Brothers, our family did not pay much attention to the HBO production until Ron and Mom travelled to France for the premiere in June 2001. I had read parts of the book previously and remember being concerned about how Ron was portrayed and about how some of his alleged actions would be interpreted and portrayed in the series. When asked how he felt about this concern, Ron replied, “I’m eighty-one years old, what can they do to me now?”
He wouldn’t have gone to that big shindig in France, except that Mom told him she was going to go whether he went or not. A tremendous photograph is often seen on WWII forums online of him and Dick Winters embracing with their yellow jackets on—that’s the first time they had seen each other in more than fifty-five years since the war. The shot was captured at this event in France.
After the HBO premiere, Ron seemed to be more open to sharing some of his recollections. Shortly after Mom and Ron returned, our oldest daughter’s wedding was held, and her new brother-in-law was soon heading out to West Point as a new cadet. The brother-in-law was very interested in meeting Ron, so Ron agreed to visit with him. I asked if I could tape the discussion, and Ron hesitantly agreed. During this one-hour conversation, I learned more about Ron’s career than I had in the previous fourteen years. He seemed willing to share with this young man, about to embark on a military career, some of the details of his experiences, even ones we previously thought were lost to a failing memory.
The Life of Ronald Speirs
That said, we don’t know much about his earlier years. We know he was born in Scotland on April 20, 1920, the same birth date as Hitler, which he joked about. His father was a Scottish engineer who immigrated to the US with his family during the Great Depression in search of employment. Ron grew up in Boston and took close order drill during high school, attended Citizens Military Training Camps during summer vacations, and graduated from high school in 1938.
He was initially drafted, but deferred involvement for two months to finish extension courses, then went into active duty at Camp Shelby, Mississippi. He volunteered for the Airborne and was sent to Camp Toccoa and soon became a platoon leader for D Company.
While the regiment was stationed in England just prior to the Normandy invasion, Ron was sent to Winchester to set up a camp for an infantry division coming from Africa. There, he met an English widow, a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British army. They married and had a son together, or perhaps vice versa. Several places in the miniseries he’s shown looting German silverware and valuables to send back for his wife and baby.
The woman’s husband had been reported dead. Actually, he had been in a POW camp and showed up alive toward the end of the war. That obviously put everybody in a very difficult situation. The decision was made for the woma
n to stay with her first husband. We don’t know who made the decision—the woman, Ron, or all of them in conjunction. Ron never talked much about that, though he recognized the boy as his son and kept in contact with him from then onward. We have a letter from Ron to Dick Winters in the early 1990s where he wrote:My son Robert, born in England during the war, is now an infantry major with the Royal Green Jackets Regiment. His English mother died some years ago. Last summer I visited Robert at his 200-year-old house in England. His three beautiful children are my pride and joy.
Ron was married several more times throughout his life, although I’m not quite sure how many times before he married my mother. She was his last wife.
We’ve asked him about the wartime valuables he looted, if his first wife kept them or what exactly was the arrangement, and Ron said, “Well, I don’t know where any of that stuff is, because I certainly didn’t bring home any of it with me.” Yes, he came home with a few smaller souvenirs—a Luger, a few coins, or whatever—but certainly no booty. No one knows what happened to that.
Ron had jumped into Normandy with D Company, where his platoon suffered high causalities. He was wounded in the face and knee by a German potato masher hand grenade, evacuated to a hospital, then rejoined his unit in England just prior to the Holland jump.
In Holland, Ron was the battalion S-2 Intelligence officer for Colonel Robert Strayer. While on reconnaissance, Ron paddled across the Neder Rhine alone at night. The enemy opened fire on him and he dove into the water with a German bullet in his butt. He finished recrossing the river by swimming and was found bleeding and exhausted on the south shore. In spite of his wound, he brought back critical information and later received the Silver Star for that adventure. He was evacuated by hospital train to England for recovery. I remember him talking about that. “Of all the places to get wounded, that was the best place to get shot,” he said.
He rejoined the 506th in France just prior to the Battle of the Bulge. He wrote Ambrose a letter about the experience in Bastogne, pragmatically describing being in foxholes with German corpses nearby:There had been an attack through the trees before we arrived and they caught a number of Germans. The bodies were frozen, so there was no stench. I turned one over, an artillery forward observer, and found an excellent pair of binoculars around his neck. The trees in the Ardennes are planted in rows, so in one direction the visibility was good, while in the other direction, there was a blank wall of trees.
We had one firefight where a platoon sergeant was killed next to me—not sure if he was in D or E Co. I had just knelt down with Smith standing next to me when a German machine gun cut loose. It sprayed directly over my head, catching Smith in the chest. He fell in my arms, but was dead. There was nothing I could do for him.
A letter Ron wrote to Dick Winters in 1998 discussed the same incident:For some reason I knelt down at the instant the German machine gun opened up, cutting across the chest of my platoon sergeant standing beside me. He fell in my arms without a word, probably feeling nothing. Those are the guys I think about 50 years later—why them and not me?
He wrote Ambrose about a poignant incident that happened in Belgium:There was German artillery shelling—close enough to make us look for shelter. It was a stone farmhouse and looked pretty solid. To our surprise, when three or four of us got into the cellar, a whole Belgian family was there. They didn’t seem too alarmed, so we stayed for perhaps an hour or two. With my poor French, the conversation was limited, but there was a lot of smiling and sharing of American candy and rations with the children. I have often wondered what happened to them.
After the war, Ron stayed in the service. He joined the 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team in Korea where he commanded a rifle company for the combat parachute jump at Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.
Later, at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he served as military secretary to the 18th Airborne Corps Commander Major General Joseph Cleland.
In 1956, Ron attended a Russian language course in Monterey, California, and was assigned to Potsdam, East Germany, as a liaison officer with the Soviet Army. He became the U.S. governor of Spandau Prison in Berlin in 1958. The prison housed Nazi war criminals including Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy in the Nazi party.
In 1962, Ron served as a training officer in Laos, Southeast Asia, on a U.S. mission with the Royal Lao Army.
His final assignment in the Army was as a plans officer in the Pentagon. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1964.
Ron didn’t talk about his experiences in Korea at all. About Berlin, he said very little. He mentioned how he met with Hess almost daily. It sounded to me like they had a mutual respect for each other, enemies of some regard. Other than that, numerous questions remain about his career. What assignments did he carry out in his position of liaison officer to the Russians? What missions was he involved in during his time in Laos? What other assignments was he involved in during his other days of service?
The explanation for why Ron hesitated to discuss these experiences is also now lost, although my guess is that it had to do with a combination of several factors: many of his experiences were quite unpleasant and painful to recall; his strict adherence to orders of confidentiality, even long after his service was completed; and certainly in his later days his memory was fading. He also didn’t understand what all the attention was about. As he said many times, he was only doing his job.
Debunking Rumors
Knowing Ron’s personality, it wouldn’t surprise me if he wasn’t liked much by the men who served under him. The veterans have told me he was certainly respected and feared, and a very strong leader. But he could be a real stickler for discipline and following orders, and I think his men probably didn’t like him much because of that.
I’ve mulled over what I know about Ron’s personality and put it through the grid of what’s known about his wartime experiences. He was tremendously conscientious about doing the right thing. That character trait guided his life more than courage. Ron has been described in battle as fearless, but I have a feeling that, although his actions proved fearless in the end, Ron might have been simply too conscientious to not follow orders. Like the incident of running across Foy and back—I believe his attitude was, “Well, somebody had to do it.” Ron couldn’t ask anybody else to do it, so he did it himself.
I believe the other trait that drove his wartime experiences was his acceptance that he was going to be killed. He understood he wasn’t going to make it out alive, but he was going to go down fighting. He recognized that, for whatever reason, God was watching out for him, and there was no way he was going to make it through unless God was protecting him. I wouldn’t say he was a Bible-thumper, but I’m quite sure he considered himself to be a Christian. Mom and Ron went to church.
In the miniseries, it shows Ron (played by Matthew Settle) talking to Albert Blithe, who had hid in a ditch because of fear. Ron says the now infamous quote about how everyone is scared, and that Blithe only hid because he still had hope. He tells Blithe that he needs to function as if he was already dead—the sooner he does, the sooner he can be an effective soldier. We don’t know if that was Ron’s actual outlook or not, but in a letter he wrote in 1992 to Winters when drafts of the original book were going back and forth, Ron wrote, “Yes, I have the book and have just finished reading it. The memories came flooding back. How did we ever make it through the war? I did not expect to survive.”
Regarding the story of Ron shooting his own man for being drunk: we have a copy of a letter Winters wrote to Ambrose in 1993 saying, “The story tellers have glamorized that tale for years.” Winters described how the sergeant in question was shot because he twice ignored a command given by Ron to halt an advance toward Ste. Côme-du-Mont. The incident took place under heavy fighting when the men were extremely exhausted. Regimental headquarters had ordered the men to halt because they were planning an extensive artillery attack on the city. The artillery attack was to be gradually adjusted in increments of one hundred yards e
very four minutes. They wanted the men to follow the attack in. Continuing forward would undoubtedly have endangered many lives. After Ron shot the sergeant, he immediately reported the incident to his company commander, Jerre S. Gross, who was unfortunately killed the next day in the assault on Ste. Côme-du-Mont. Winters wrote: Was the Sgt. belligerent to the order to halt the advance, or was he drunk / exhausted and not able to comprehend his order to halt the attack and then follow the rolling barrage?
The Sgt. ignored the order and pushed his men forward—Speirs shot him. In doing so he probably saved the lives of the rest of the squad. The squad members at that time were his witnesses.
Speirs does not deny shooting the man, but the reason goes far beyond shooting him just because he was drunk.
From recollections that other veterans have told me, things went even beyond that. This sergeant either drew on Ron, or started to draw on him, so Ron had no choice but to fire his weapon and kill him. This one individual was putting many lives at risk. You have to make a split-second decision, and Ron did.
Regarding the rumor of Ron shooting prisoners on D-day, that story is perhaps the most apocryphal, for no eyewitnesses have ever stepped forward to confirm the event. But how many other incidences like that actually happened? You can imagine that the men jumped right into the middle of hostile territory. Once they caught enemy soldiers, their unofficial orders were to take no prisoners, so what do you do with them? You can’t bring them with you because you’re in the midst of battle. Do you turn them loose so they can turn around and kill you? I hate to think what I would have done in that situation. My guess is that, if that’s what happened, then that’s what Ron did—he had a strong commitment to following orders. He thought, somebody’s got to do this, and I’m in charge, so I’ve got to do it.
A Company of Heroes Page 24