After 60 Years, WWII Sacrifices Still Vivid For Sandy Hook Veteran

By Kaaren Valenta

World War II may have ended 60 years ago but Richard W. Andrews remembers it as if it were yesterday.

The last surviving member of his infantry unit, a prisoner of war who spent months in a German prison camp, Mr Andrews, 81, was just 18 and a new graduate of Newtown High School when he entered military service in 1942. He had spent his senior year attending classes during the day and then working the 4 pm to midnight shift at Bullards machine shop in Bridgeport, making parts for the war effort.

“I was drafted with my best friend, Henry Krohn,” Mr Andrews recalled. “We took a test for the Army Specialist Training Program. You had to score 135 to get in, and we both did. We were supposed to attend classes at the University of North Carolina, 12 hours a day, six days a week, and earn an engineering degree in two years.”

Halfway through the second semester, however, the Army closed the entire program down.

“I was eligible for the Army Air Corps so I spent four weeks taking tests in Miami, Florida, then I was sent to Alabama to be a 50-calibre machine gun instructor, although I had never fired one,” he said. “Henry Krohn became a cook and served in India. That was the Army.”

After spending some time at a military base in Arkansas, Private Andrews was sent to the 424th Infantry Regiment in the 106th Division in Indiana, the “Golden Lions,” for advanced infantry training, although, as he pointed out, he had never even had basic training. “We did 25-mile forced marches with full equipment three days a week so I was in really good shape by the time I got on the USS Acquatania on October 20, 1944, for the four-week voyage to Scotland. I was a big guy, 194 pounds,” he said. “I had always been nicknamed Porky from the first day I attended school.”

Bunks on the ship were stacked seven-high in rooms that had eight-foot ceilings. “Once you got in, you couldn’t turn over,” Mr Andrews said. “I had the misfortune of getting the bottom bunk and the six guys above me were throwing up, so I didn’t sleep there.”

From Scotland he was sent immediately to France and a few weeks later the Battle of the Bulge began in the forests of Ardennes. Regiments were spread across 27 miles of the German border.

“It was 20 below zero,” Mr Andrews recalled. “We had to dig under the snow banks to get shelter and keep warm. It was the coldest winter in Germany history.”

His six-man machine gun squad was low on ammunition — one 50-calibre machine gun with 20 rounds of ammo and one clip for each carbine. “We called for five consecutive days for more ammo but never received any,” he said. “Radio communication was kind of primitive.”

One bitterly cold night he was on the watch with another soldier, Ellis Duffey, when they heard the voices of German soldiers.

“At dawn we could see them standing huddled together on top of a ridge 50 yards away,” he said. “With one blast of the machine gun I killed at least 22. I know that because I had to remove the bodies later. As soon as our ammo gave out, we crawled away so the Germans wouldn’t know that we did the shooting.”

Before being captured, Mr Andrews was shot in the backside by a bullet that first went through another soldier, killing him. His left hand was torn up by an exploding hand grenade. Ellis Duffey also was severely wounded. “We were the only two soldiers [from our unit] who survived, along with another soldier who was killed right after the Germans captured us,” Mr Andrews said.

They were made to strip to their underwear, pick up all the bodies of the dead German soldiers, then were marched to a railroad station where they were put on cattle cars with other captured American soldiers and transported to the German prison, Stalag 12A, in Lukenwald, southeast of Berlin.

“There were 75 of us in the boxcars and we were packed in so tight that some of the guys died standing up and couldn’t fall down,” Mr Andrews said. “We were on the train for four days. The cars had open slats on the sides. My legs were frozen to the knees before the trip was over.”

Life at the prison camp was no better. “There was no food or medicine,” Mr Andrews said. “We had grass soup to eat and lived in unheated buildings. The German guards were old men, in their 60s, because the younger Germans were in combat. We had a four-hole outhouse and the first thing the Germans did was to shoot two Americans and sit their bodies in the outhouse as a scare tactic. They told us the soldiers had tried to escape, but I doubt it.”

The Germans took the American soldiers’ overcoats, and didn’t return them until April, after the winter was over.

Within weeks of arriving at the prison, Mr Andrews developed yellow jaundice and was unconscious for two days.

“A lot of what we called the old men in our group — guys in their 30s — died,” Mr Andrews said. “It was just that much difference in our ages that more of the younger guys survived. I lost 42 pounds; Duffey lost more.”

 The two soldiers were sent to a farm work camp, where Porky Andrews was sometimes able to steal a potato or a handful of the horse’s oats to eat. “The main thing we did was to cut wood,” he said. “The Germans burned wood [to power] their cars and trucks because they didn’t have fuel.”

On March 1, Mr Andrews’ mother received a Western Union telegram at her home on Berkshire Road in Sandy Hook informing her that her son was a prisoner of war in Germany. Until then, she hadn’t heard from him in months and had no idea if he was alive or dead.

On May 6 the prison camp was liberated by Russian soldiers who were allied with the United States and Great Britain in fighting the Germans.

“The Russian tank drivers were mostly women,” Mr Andrews recalled. “They would greet us by kissing their hands, then smack us hard on the side of the head.”

The ex-POWs were transported to Camp Lucky Strike in France where they received medical care, including treatment for ridding their bodies of lice and worms. “While I was there I saw Bill Shephard, the only other prisoner of war from Newtown,” Mr Andrews said. “He was blind in one eye so the Army had made him [become] a scout. That was the Army for you.”

Ellis Duffey died 11 years ago in Ohio. Bill Shephard died last year in Florida.

Pvt Andrews was awarded two Purple Hearts, the Combat Infantry Badge, European Theater Ribbon, World War II Victory Ribbon, and the POW Medal.

After the war, he returned home and married Louise Ingram, a Sandy Hook native who grew up in Southbury. She had spent the war years making ammunition in the Remington Arms plant in Bridgeport, where the temperatures were often over 100 degrees.

“We had no air conditioning, and we were expected to turn out 16,000 rounds a night,” she said. “The troops needed the ammo. We had been caught short. Everyone pitched in because all the men were overseas.”

Porky Andrews became a builder. He built the house on The Boulevard Extension where he and his wife have lived for 54 years, raising their two children. He was an owner of A&S Builders, which built more than 200 homes and both Sandy Hook firehouses before he retired.

During the past six years, Mr Andrews has visited schools in Newtown, Woodbury, and Watertown, talking to the children about his war experiences.

“The kids are very interested. They have a lot of questions. They want to know about the war, about what it was like,” he said. “It’s important to tell them. It’s important that no one should forget.”

The courage and self-sacrifice of veterans, including those currently serving in the military, will be honored in Newtown in ceremonies on Saturday, May 28, at 10 am at the VFW Hall on Tinkerfield Road. Mr Andrews will be among the speakers. The public is invited to attend. (See related article.)