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Courage Under Fire

By Patrick Sammon

Tens of thousands heroes of history gathered in Washington, DC on Memorial Day weekend 2004 for the dedication of a long overdue memorial to the 16 million Americans who fought in World War II.  These brave men came from small towns and big cities, from industrial centers and farming communities, from mountain hamlets and ocean villages.  From every ethnic background and religion, they represented the tapestry of America—united together, under one flag in defense of liberty and democracy. 

Our nation built this new memorial for men like 82 year-old Rupert Starr.  With his  last name Starr, his college fraternity brothers nicknamed him Twink—He grew up in Mount Sterling, Ohio—a farm community not far from Columbus.  He joined the ROTC in 1940 while a student at Ohio University.  After graduation he enlisted in the Army, training first in Georgia then Tennessee.  When his unit shipped out for Europe in the spring of 1944, Twink didn't think much about the possibility of death, "I was ready to go and win the war."  He was more concerned about how he would perform in combat than whether he would survive combat.

Fighting for Freedom

Twink was 21 years-old when his unit left for England in April 1944.  The tide of war had already turned in the Allies favor.  Twink was still training with his units when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944.  His training continued in England throughout the summer.  It included one session on what to do if captured.  Name, rank, and serial number was all they could give out.  They also were trained about how to try an escape.

Twink's unit arrived on the battle lines in December 1944.  He was a second Lieutenant in the 422nd regiment of the 106th infantry division.  His college education allowed him to serve as the regiment's personnel officer.  He eventually became a liaison officer from the regiment to his division. 

The war's end seemed to be in sight.  Throughout the summer and fall of 1944, the Allies made slow and steady progress marching east across Europe.  Twink's unit was based in St. Vith, Belgium, not far from the border with Luxemburg.   This wooded and mountainous area was the first place, "green" troops were brought to get acclimated to combat.  Normally, a division would be responsible for guarding a three mile stretch of the front lines.  Instead, Twink's division was stretched thin over 27 miles of mountainous territory.  Two regiments of five thousand men each protected the line. 

Twink's unit got to the line on December 10, 1944, less than a week before the Germans would begin their last great offensive of World War II.  On the morning of the December 16th, Twink was stationed at division headquarters about 15 miles off the front.  Starr was woken up early on that cold and cloudy morning.  Headquarters had lost contact with Twink's regiment.  The Germans had started their huge offensive; what later came to be called the Battle of the Bulge.  The general wanted Twink to get in a jeep and drive toward the line to see what was going on.  Driving to the unit, Twink faced fire from German 88's, but he and his driver eventually made it to the regiment.  He saw German soldiers in all directions.  When Twink reached Regimental Headquarters, he learned that the German soldiers had simply gone around Twink's unit, both North and South.  That meant his unit was cut-off from getting any reinforcements.

The German strategy was to cut the American units in half from north and south and reach the huge supply depots in Liege, Belgium.  It would offer the Germans much needed fuel, food, and ammunition.  With Twink's regiment cut off from the division, supplies quickly would run low.  By the evening of December 16th, the unit's strategy was to the slow the German onslaught as much as possible.  Fog throughout the day gave the Germans a huge advantage because their advancing Panzer division didn't have to worry about bombing from Allied planes.

On the 18th, the division's two regiments, totaling 10,000 men made plans to counterattack toward St. Vith so they could get back with the rest of the unit.  At nightfall on the 18th, the Colonel called a meeting of all regimental officers to discuss attack plans for the next day.  They had no contact with division headquarters so they needed to get news back to the division about the planned attack.  "He asked for volunteers to go through the line to inform the division of what was happening.  No one said anything, so I volunteered.  I felt it was my duty," said Starr.

He asked for an intelligence sergeant to join him.  At 9pm, they set off walking toward enemy lines through two feet of snow.  They navigated through woods and fields and along roadways and ditches when possible—trying to avoid German soldiers at all costs.  They traveled by night, while staying out of sight during the day.  They traveled three days with a canteen of water, a C-ration, and three chocolate bars.  While Twink continued on this mission, the rest of his unit quickly got overrun and then surrendered.

During his march through enemy lines, Twink says he was "beyond being scared.  You're just numb.  You were busy thinking of how you were going to keep from getting captured or shot."

By the afternoon of December 21st, Twink and his fellow solider were starving.  They went toward one farmhouse, but jumped under some rhubarb plants when they saw a German solider leaving the farmhouse.

They left the farm quickly, then "all of a sudden all hell broke loose.  The Germans were coming down hill from us under full attack.  And we were right in the middle between the Germans and the Americans," said Starr.

Twink and the other solider ran toward the American lines, through a grove of little trees.  "I'm 5'7" and the evergreen tops were about 5 foot.  And they were being clipped off as fast as could be from all the shrapnel from the guns.  And the next thing I knew I was flat on my back.  The round missed me except for the concussion, which threw me on my back."

When Twink made it into an open field, he realized the Americans were waiting in the woods through the field.  "So we stopped and said a little prayer and the sergeant followed me across the open (field).  Then all the firing started.  And we turned around real quick and I stumbled and bullets going between my fingers." 

When Twink reached a small barbed wire fence, "a bullet hit the barbed wire right in front of my eyes."  They had to keep going because the Germans quickly closed in behind them.  They waited in some bushes until dusk to continue moving toward the American line. "We were walking, crouching over to the American line.  And all of a sudden they started in again firing at us.  We started yelling, don't shoot, threw down our guns, and raised our hands – 'don't shoot, we're Americans.'"

English speaking German soldiers had been infiltrating American units, so a soldier came out and demanded to know the baseball team in Chicago, making sure we were American. "Of course I knew the Cubs.  But I said don't ask me any more.  I'm not much on baseball," continued Starr.

Once safely in the lines with 7th Armored Division, a lieutenant came up to Twink asking, "What are you doing alive?  I had five riflemen firing at you two guys, and however they missed, I don't know.  We were firing at you point blank twice and missed."

Prisoner of War

The next day, the 7th Armored Division also became surrounded, so a few soldiers joined Twink in the early morning light to sneak back through the German lines.  Eventually, he ran into a senior officer from his old unit.  He told Twink he was going to surrender his group.  But Twink kept moving with two other men because he didn't want to surrender.  Later in the day, he came down toward a highway that was covered with German soldiers.  Then behind him, more German soldiers came up cleaning out the woods of Americans.  "It was either die of surrender."  So Twink Starr became a prisoner of war. "What I was thinking in my mind, how damned mad I was.  I felt guilty.  I felt like I should die.  Die or keep fighting.  But I lived to fight again."

The Germans marched Starr and 200 other prisoners for six or seven days with almost no food East back across the Rhine River.  When they marched through German villages, the people yelled curses and spit on them.  They also faced the threat of air raids from Allied planes diving into Germany.  As they crossed the Rhine near Cologne, a B-29 raid began.  Twink says, "It was terrible.  The battle was unbelievable.  The flying fortresses were aflame and careening and crashing and the bombs were tremendous, and we were in the middle of it."  Twink starts to cry as he recalls the horror.  "It was terrible.  Crashing planes and the noise was terrible.  And all the death that was going on was awful."

By Christmas, less than ten days after the German offensive started, the tide had turned back toward the Americans.  The Allied forces had stopped the German advance, and then started decimating the German units that had shown themselves.

Eventually, Twink and the other prisoners of war were jammed into boxcars.  Twink remembers as many as 80 or 90 men in the wooden cars designed to hold 50 people.  "There were so many you had to stand.  And if someone died they stood up standing."  Four days in the boxcars with no food or water.  The men survived by drinking melted snow, which caused diarrhea.   Along the way they also had to worry about strafing from Allied planes.  The Allied pilots didn't know they were firing on their own men.

After four days, the train finally stopped.  Starr says, "They opened the doors and took out the shit and the dead people."  The men ended up in a POW camp—Stalag 4B, an old girls school near Limburg, Southwest of Berlin.

The camp essentially was run by Canadian and British troops who had been held for four years since the Dieppe raid.  Upon arriving at Stalag 4B, Starr received a white ceramic German Army cup.  60 years later, Starr still uses the large cup as a shaving mug—a daily reminder of what he endured.  The Germans filled it with water once each day to be used for washing, shaving, or drinking.  The prisoners got one meal a day—a tiny piece of meat with a wedge of potato.

After a week, Starr and the other officers were sent to another prison camp by boxcars.  He was sent with 50 other officers to Auflag 64Z, a prison camp in Posnon, Poland.  The Americans joined 110 Italian generals, five admirals, and a field marshal.  Germany had taken the top officers prisoner after the Italians capitulated.   Starr and the other men survived on a ration of turnip soup and a third of a loaf of bread—made mostly from sawdust.  They got weaker by the day.

Over the next ten days, Russian troops continued advancing into Poland so all the prisoners were marched back toward Germany, with temperatures 30 below zero.

Starr says, "We were wearing two pairs of GI pants and three shirts and maybe a field jacket, not much, not much warm clothes."

The first night the men slept in a farmer's barn.  The German soldiers let them use farmer's gun to kill a deer, but they kept walking.  Along the way, they struggled to deal with the cold. "It was cold and you had to pee and I tell you -- I picked up a little mitten somewhere and I'd take the mitten off to unbutton my pants and, my fingers were so stiff I couldn't get the buttons out.  So I finally realized that I had to leave the buttons open in order to take a leak because I couldn't open them." With a laugh, Starr says, "I'm the only one I know that walked across Europe with his fly open."

After the prisoners arrived in Wugarten, a small German farm town of 600 people, the German guards abandoned the prisoners.  The next evening, Russian soldiers arrived in the small town.   Starr and his fellow prisoners weren't free yet.  They spent the next six weeks under the control of the Russian soldiers.

Finally, the Russians put the men aboard trucks for a ride through Warsaw to a rail head.  They again boarded boxcars for a meandering trip through the Ukraine.  The conditions were better than Starr's last train trip. "The boxcars had shelves with straw, and we had a pot belly stove, and we were issued a bowl of barley soup that we could hardly eat—not enough beef in it to make it flavorful.  We got a half a loaf of bread apiece each day, most of which we burned to keep warm."

The prisoners finally ended up in Odessa on the Black Sea.  They were put in an empty building—the Italian summer embassy.  That's when Twink met his first Americans.  The U.S. diplomatic mission came down from Moscow to get the prisoners.

Freedom!

He knew freedom was near when he saw a sailor walking toward him wearing his crispy white uniform.  Twink immediately thought, "Thank God for the USA!"  All the prisoners received a whole box of Hershey Almond Bars.  With a laugh, Twink remembers, "I ate 11 Hershey Almond Bars as fast as I could."

Finally in early April 1945, weeks before Germany's surrender, Twink headed home for America.  Leaving Russia on a ship with an American flag gave Twink an amazing sense of pride.  With tears in his eyes, Twink says, "I've flown one (an American flag) everyday since. You can't go to a football game and see the flag raised without choking up."

The ship left Russia on the Black Sea and ended up in Naples, Italy.  After being greeted by the American Ambassador to Italy, Starr and the other prisoners set sail for home.  During the two-week journey, they received news of the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The ship arrived in Boston Harbor on April 20, 1945.  Starr remembers, "We were exuberant."  Film crews and photographers greeted the ship.  "Coming back to the states was fantastic!"

The first thing Twink did was call his Mother.  She finally knew her son was alive.  He had been listed as Missing in Action for four months.  He still has the Army telegram that his mother received.  Many people in his hometown thought he was dead, but his Mother never lost faith.  Starr spent a couple months in an Army hospital at Camp Wheeler, Georgia regaining the strength he lost during his long months in captivity.

He was home in time for Christmas 1945, then discharged from the Army soon after.  Starr felt lucky to be alive.  Almost 500 men in his division made the ultimate sacrifice fighting for freedom and democracy.  Another 3,000 were injured.  Starr has never forgotten their sacrifice.

Lessons of a Lifetime

Starr's experience as a Prisoner of War taught him important lessons about freedom.  He says some political leaders forget that freedom is for everyone.  Starr also learned some important lessons about what really matters when fighting for America.   "We weren't asked what religion we were.  We weren't asked our sexual orientation.  My sexual orientation had nothing to do with my desire to fight for my country."

Twink says no one talked about their sexual orientation but there were gay people all around his regiment headquarters.  Starr says, "It was never an issue, never a problem.  It's a question of whether or not you volunteered and how you fought."   

"One of my best friends from my hometown got in his first fight and, and went berserk and had to be evacuated.  He couldn't take it.  Any soldier that's under fire, your first concern is am I man enough to take this?  How am I going to react?  The point of it is, you react in your own fashion and it has nothing to do with rank, race, serial number or sexual orientation."

Courage matters, not sexual orientation.

After being back in the states, Starr thought his sexual orientation must be a temporary phase.  He decided to force himself to be heterosexual.  He started dating his old girlfriend from college.  They fell in love.  Starr wanted to marry her, but he knew he couldn't because he wasn't sexually interested in her, or any other woman.

Starr's experience as a POW helped him come to terms with his sexual orientation.  He says, "I grew up from a boy to a man.  And, I realized that I was a stronger person than I thought I might have been, and I overcame a number of doubts about my manhood. I had a lot of, of acceptance of the fact that there were lots of other guys that had an orientation similar to mine.  In facing death and having to make up your mind, are you going to be killed from the behind or you going to be killed from the up front?, I realized I guess I'm a pretty brave guy."

Within a few years after returning from the war, he accepted his sexual orientation.  He first went to a psychiatrist who told him he had to try harder to change.  Twink ignored the advice and finally came to accept the fact that he was gay.  It started with learning to love himself.  His faith helped him through this process. "My god is a god who is full of understanding, forgiveness, love and compassion for all people."

"I had to accept it and realize that it's not a choice, realize that you didn't bring this about.  You were born this way."

After the war, Twink finished his studies at Ohio University and then worked at Proctor and Gamble for nearly three years.  He moved to Columbus, Ohio in 1950 and soon met his partner Allan.  After Allan survived a near fatal illness in 1955, Starr decided to be more open about his feelings for him.  They bought a house together.  Starr says, "And I said, 'I'm going to live my own life.' And at that time I said to hell with it -- I'm going to live my own life.  And I'm not going to flaunt it.  I'm not going to hide from it."

Starr had a successful career in real estate.  He also served as President of the Junior Chamber of Commerce.  Eventually, he was President of the local board of realtors with 6,000 members.  He also was President of his church and the local YMCA.

Starr's life experience provides him with strong opinions about the military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy.  "Other countries have proven that it's no problem.  I think I've proven it myself.  I'm not outspoken until lately." 

The military's current exclusionary policy reminds Starr of an experience in the military.

Soon after he got his commission, he met a black soldier who had just been promoted to Lieutenant.   He had come to Camp Wheeler to get his orders.  "And I said, 'Come on, let's go to the PX and have a beer.'  And he says, 'Well, are there other blacks over there?  I said, 'Well I don't know, I haven't been there yet.'  He says, 'No, I'm sorry, I can't go with you.'  And I said, 'good heavens.'  He has been discriminated against so much and it made me feel right then, that is not right." 

Starr gets upset when he talks about the policy that forces many qualified men and women out of today's U.S. military.  "It's ridiculous.  What a waste of manpower.  What a waste of the principles of, of freedom and liberty," says Starr.  "It's about professional soldiers, and we gay people can be professional, just as courageous and just as brave and just as tough as the next guy."

Starr believes gay and lesbian Americans should be able to serve our nation, openly and honestly.  "I think there will be a time when don't ask, don't tell is gone. It would be the right thing to do."