Carroll County Times Thursday, November 11, 2010, Page A9

LOCAL

Uncovering the past

Class encourages resident to research his father’s military history
BY CARRIE ANN KNAUER
TIMES STAFF WRITER
Before this fall, John “Jack” Nor-
ris IV, 74, didn’t know much about
his father’s service in World War I
beyond the fact that he had served
in France and had been a captain.
Norris had not been close with
his father, John Byrd Norris III,
who was known throughout his life
as Junior, who died in 1975. He
probably wouldn’t have thought
much about his father’s military
service if it hadn’t been for a class
he took this fall at Carroll Commu-
nity College.
It was two of his classmates, Kyle
Merson and Taylor Howard, who
first inspired him to research his
father’s military experiences.
The two were giving a presenta-
tion in the class “The Great War
and 20-Year Truce,” Norris said,
and brought in some maps from
World War II that traced a rela-
tive’s experiences.
Their enthusiasm triggered a de-
sire for Norris to know where his
own father had served overseas
during the war.
“I said ‘I have an obligation to my
children to put something together
about my father,’” Norris said.
One of Norris’ first steps was to
contact the National Personnel
Records Center in St. Louis, only to
find out that his father’s military
records were destroyed in a 1973
fire.
Norris started searching his fa-
ther’s name with all kinds of com-
binations of military terms on the
“I said ‘I have an obligation
to my children to put
something together
about my father.’ ”
Norris, in Jack Norris
his uniform On his research of his father’s history
Internet, and through a stroke of
luck he found his father’s complete
service record and his 1917 draft
registration card through the web-
site www.ancestry.com.
“I was just lucky to plug in the
right thing,” Norris said.
By contacting his deceased sis-
ter’s son, Dennis Dunn, he was also
able to find pictures from a family
photo album of his father in uni-
form.
His nephew’s wife, Diane Dunn,
also uncovered a photo of his fa-
ther with two other servicemen,
complete with his father’s unit
written on the back.
Encouraged by his professor,
Robert Young, Norris collected
copies of all the documents and
photos of his father that he found
and combined them with his notes
from the class about the causes be-
hind World War I and made a 47-
page booklet.
Norris said he is giving a copy of
the booklet to Young, the Maryland
Historical Society, the Historical
Society of Carroll County and rel-
atives.
“I’ve put a lot of time into this,”
Norris said, and he doesn’t want
the information he learned to be
lost or forgotten again.
Young said he was encouraged to
see Norris and many of the stu-
dents get so into the class. People
were inspired to look in their attics
or ask their parents for information
about relatives who served in
World War I, he said, and then
share their stories with the rest of
the class.
“This has been maybe the most
amazing class I’ve had here,”
Young said of his students. “It’s just
been great for all of us.”
In addition to the booklet Norris
prepared about his father, he pre-
pared one of his own military ca-
reer between 1958 and 1966, he
said.
“I think it is a catharsis, I think
it’s more of a relief because I really
felt guilty not passing on my fa-
ther’s legacy to the next genera-
tion,” Norris said. “The most
important thing is I’ve given some-
thing to my children.” SUBMITTED PHOTO
Jack Norris’ father, J. Byrd Norris Jr., is shown with
Reach staff writer Carrie Ann Catherine Norris in 1919. A Carroll Community College
Knauer at 410- 857-7874 or carrie. class inspired Jack Norris to uncover his father’s experi-
knauer@carrollcountytimes.com. ences during World War I.

Veteran out to southern France for

From Page A1
His life changed the mo-
ment he stepped onto the
beach.
“Before I went overseas, I
was a rifleman,” Kirk said.
“When I landed on Anzio
beachhead, because the
fighting was so severe, they
took away my rifle and I be-
came a medic.”
No longer carrying a
weapon, Kirk was armed
with a medic bag and issued
a helmet and arm band with
red crosses on them. The
first 32 days Kirk was on
Anzio beachhead were
spent on the frontline. It
was at the four-month Bat-
tle of Anzio where he would
see many of the things that
would give him nightmares
more than 60 years later.
When Kirk heard the cries
for a medic from wounded
soldiers, he ran to their aid,
doing whatever he could to
patch the wound and stop
the bleeding. Kirk said he
learned as the battle pro-
gressed.
“If a guy was shot and was
in pain, he didn’t care if you
had experience, so long as
you knew how to give him a
morphine shot, bandage him
and get him out of there,”
Kirk said.
After weeks on the front
line, Kirk said, everyone
would be brought back to
the harbor, about 10 miles
away, for hot food and
showers. Unfortunately, a
Nazi railroad gun, nick-
named “Anzio Annie” by the
soldiers, shelled the harbor
nightly.
The wounds from the
shells of Anzio Annie, as
well as grenades and mortar
rounds from German
troops, Kirk said, were the
toughest to treat.
“You go up to get a guy
and he’s laying there with
half his guts … that’s what
gets you,” he said. “Being
shot in the arm or leg or
wherever, you could handle
that. But the other [stuff]
was rough.”
Kirk said he insulated
himself to deal with the
Operation Anvil, later re-
named Operation Dragoon,
in mid-August 1944. Kirk
said they met little resist-
ance until their third week
in southern France.
They continued to ad-
vance, but became sur-
rounded by German forces,
he said. A superior, Kirk
said, told the men to dig fox-
holes after midnight Sept.
12. Fighting continued in the
morning, with Germans fir-
ing at anyone popping their
heads out of the foxholes.
“I don’t think I ever
hugged the ground any
closer so that I could crawl
from foxhole to foxhole and
attend to the wounded,”
Kirk said. “After a while we
knew we couldn’t go any-
where so we surrendered.”
Kirk and the remaining 30
or so men were taken as
POWs.
Prisoner of war
“We were figuring we
were all going to get shot,”
Kirk said.
Instead of executions,
Kirk said the men were
marched to a farm house to
stay the night. The next day
they were put on a railroad
car. Kirk and the rest of the
men were taken to Limburg,
Germany, which served as a
staging area for POWs.
At Limburg, Kirk lost his
name and became 88085,
which would be his serial
number for the German
guards. He would only be
addressed by his number.
The first night in Limburg,
Allied forces bombed the
town, turning most of it into
rubble. The POWs were
forced to clean up the town
their military’s bombers had
just destroyed. People living
in Limburg spat on the sol-
diers, Kirk said.
“You couldn’t blame the
average citizen for spitting Kirk said he planned to
on you,” he said. “It was wait and hope for a quick
Dow ntow n W estm inster
CarrollCounty’s Best
your bom-
bers that
brought
down their
homes.”
The troops
were trans-
ported by
railroad car
KIRK again, this
time to
Muhlberg,
Germany. The prison camp
had four barracks, each
holding 400 men, Kirk said.
The servicemen being held
prisoner at the camp were
from the United States,
Great Britain and South
Africa, to name a few places.
When entering the camp,
servicemen were given a
blank book provided by the
American Red Cross. In that
book, which he still has
today, he kept a journal of
everything that happened.
As a medic, Kirk was not
allowed to perform physical
labor. So while other ser-
vicemen worked during the
day, Kirk stayed back at the
camp and bartered with
guards for extra bread for
the guys returning. Kirk said
he used chocolate and ciga-
rettes from care packages to
get extra food.
The prisoners’ meals con-
sisted of hard bread, pota-
toes, rutabaga and horse
meat. For the most part,
prisoners got along with the
guards. Physical abuse was
reserved for those who did-
n’t do what they were told.
Kirk said he never consid-
ered escaping because the
treatment wasn’t too bad at
the camp. While some es-
caped successfully, those
who were unsuccessful
were tied to the prison’s
fence for days without food,
water or protection from the
elements.
Liberation
end to the war. But before it
ended, Kirk said the POWs
had to survive a brutal win-
ter. Kirk said his boots had
become unwearable from
the conditions.
The Germans gave Kirk a
wooden panel cut in the
shape of a boot sole covered
in cloth.
He was forced to spend
the winter with the panel
tied to his feet with spare
rags. What resulted was se-
vere frostbite that was
treated only after the camp
was liberated.
The soldiers got care
packages from the Red
Cross during the holidays
and they killed time by
playing cards. Kirk said he
made a lot of lifelong
friendships with the sol-
diers in the prison camp.
“It was rough, but we
made the best out of the sit-
uation,” Kirk said.
Two days before the camp
was liberated, Kirk said the
men heard rumors of it. The
German guards left and the
camp was liberated on April
29, 1945, by the U.S. Army
2nd Armored Division.
In all, Kirk was a POW for
seven and a half months. He
was 21 years old when the
camp was liberated.
The solders were given a
feast, as well as new uni-
forms and hot showers. Kirk
said the Army bread tasted
as sweet as Angel Food cake.
Kirk was treated for his
frostbite and transported
back to the United States
with a 65- day leave. He
spent the time with his fam-
ily in Maryland and began
dating the woman who
would later become his
wife, Goldie.
After leave, Kirk was put
up in a fancy Miami hotel
with other former POWs for
a month. He was later sta-
tioned in Louisiana with a
surprising assignment:
guarding German POWs
that were performing work
duty in the U.S.
“I figured here I was, liv-
ing on bread and potatoes
behind barbed wire while
the German POWs come
over to the USA and they
live in nice barracks with
hot and cold water and good
food,” Kirk laughed. “Why
would they want to escape?”
Discharge
After his discharge, Kirk
married Goldie in June
1946. Together, they had
two sons and a daughter.
Following his service, Kirk
said he took a number of
odd jobs.
“After the war, I was like a
lot of soldiers, I couldn’t
keep a job,” Kirk said. “It
wasn’t because I didn’t
want to provide for my
family, I just couldn’t find
myself.”
Kirk finally settled down
and took a job at a food and
vending company, which he
held until he retired in 1988.
Kirk said that his service in
World War II remained al-
most entirely unknown to
his family, as he didn’t
know what to say or how to
say it.
“I’ve had nightmares all
my life and had trouble
sleeping and I don’t watch
[war] movies for that pur-
pose, but there’s still things
that happen that trigger …
that brings everything
back,” Kirk said.
In the 1940s and ’50s,
there wasn’t much known
about post- traumatic stress
disorder. The best cure,
Kirk felt at the time, was to
not talk about it.
But that all changed when
Kirk found out about a
POW support group at a
VA hospital five years ago.
He attended the support
group and found that other
people had similar experi-
ences that they could all re-
late to. He attended another
VA hospital for additional
POW counseling sessions.
The sessions helped a lot,
Kirk said
Opening up about his ex-
periences has enabled him
to speak to his grandson’s
class and tell other people
his story. Today, for Veter-
ans Day, Kirk will be speak-
ing at a celebration for his
daughter-in-law’s company.
Reach staff writer Chris-
tian Alexandersen at 410-
857-7873 or christian.alex
andersen@carrollcounty
times.com.

Shopping Secret
death day to day. When you
see so much of it, he said, it
becomes a part of your day.
After four months, the
American troops advanced
and pushed the Germans
back. By the end of the bat- Ca ll
Tw o Hea d ed
tle, about 7,000 Allied troops
were dead and 36,000 were
tod a y Phea s a ntTa vern
wounded or missing. to
B a rD rink Spec ia ls
Southern France a d ve r tis e
Su n. -Ho s pita lity N ight-
After the Americans
pushed through the German y ou r B ring Yo u rServic e Ind u s try
Pa y Chec k Stu b a nd
bu s in e s s
lines, Rome was liberated.
Kirk was given a 10- day get2 5 % o ff B a rB ill
pass, which he spent visiting
the sites in Rome and sailing (410)857-5581 M o n. -Ha ppy Ho u rAll N ite
on the Mediterranean Sea Tu es . -1/2 Off B o ttled W ine
with other servicemen in
Naples. The small time or W ed . -Ho u s e PintN ite
(410)875-5448
away from war was divine,
4 W es tM a in St., W es tm ins ter
Kirk said. 410-876-0101
402667

But Kirk and the rest of 410-876-0320

400249

the men were soon shipped 400150