“ My lover’s dead- not on a battlefield or bed
But somewhere deep inside
Where I can’t or even wouldn’t dare to go.”
I wrote that in the fall of 1946 when my husband, Captain Ralph C. Fox 0548 711 had been back from the European
Theater for a few months.
He was recommended for the
Distinguished Service Cross but grabbed the Silver Star for the points that might have let him come home and see his new baby
girl, Paige, before going to Japan
where in all likelihood he would have died. But VJ intervened.
Ralph and I were
students at the University of Nebraska.
We fell in love on the day of Pearl Harbor. All able-bodied young men the UNL were in ROTC –
headed for officers training at Fort Benning.
Despite horrible scars and fragile skin on his legs as the result of an explosion where he worked as a teenager, Ralph wanted
to be in a machine gun company. I learned with him to put a 30-caliber machine gun together in the dark, and encouraged him
in his training. We married at 19 and 21 on May
8th 1943.
In May 1944 I got my degree
and Ralph his commission. By D- Day June
6 1944 we were with Co. D, 276th regiment, 70th Division in Camp Adair,
Oregon. Roses everywhere and grand people
many couples with whom we become friends. In September 1944 we all trekked to
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and on an early Thanksgiving the whole 70th
entrained for Boston and Europe leaving lots of bawling
wives behind.
The photographer,
R. Wayne Anderson, my friend and boss, took me to pick up a duffle bag and put me on the bus to Iowa,
a dreary trip. Newly pregnant I went home to teach school, give birth. Ralph was worried sick and so was I.
After landing wet at Versailles
The 70th (Company D) went right into the bulge, meeting, not the old men and little boys expected by General Eisenhower,
but well rested, well trained SS – Nordwind, fresh from training in Norway. That was when Ralph got his baptism by fire and lost many of his and my good friends
in Wingen, France. “Hulet and Gerlach” died at their machine gun. An
SS prisoner of war laughed at their bodies and Ralph came within a second of blowing his head off. Subsequently he wished he had and was glad he didn’t.
I often say, “You’d
think” but that isn’t always the way it goes. As the division melted away after VE day by injury, death and design,
Ralph became extremely nervous, depressed and despondent. Cleaning his carbine for the last time he was unconcerned when it
discharged and the bullet creased his forehead.
Plans to get home faded and
died at VJ. He sat in a sandy, miserable tent city near Antwerp until General
Mark Clark chose him to go with him to Linz Austria
in July of 1945 to direct a camp containing 5,000 survivors of the Holocaust and many SS prisoners.
That was Kleinmunchen. A 24 –year old Captain brought to his knees physically, mentally, spiritually
was undertaking a job of giant proportions.
Lieutenants: Meagher, Swingle,
Krasnoff, and Schram joined the team. They had no model, no blueprint, no professional staff plus a real lack of provisions
and resources.
No shoes for children hurt
Ralph dreadfully.
A sea captain, Zeno Zankai
stepped forward with his knowledge of 7-10 languages. Lola and Louis Lauritsen, opera singers from Hungary bolstered morale
at entertainments, Their ballerina nieces, Aronka and Mary Voros whose husbands had been killed by the Russians, did what
they could although Mary’s baby, Mary Barbara, (named for Ralph’s mother and me) was stillborn.
Ralph officiated at a simple
but appropriate funeral.
After 10 months he had bonded
with “his people”. News of his leaving was bittersweet. He wanted to bring the Lauretsens family, Zeno, a 12-year-old
boy and a little yellow sheltie dog home with him. A government letter said,
“Immigration was closed.”
Em Ral Kempf of maple
grove Minnesota (3750 Lawndale Ln. apt. 107
Plymouth, MN 55446-2969) served
in a similar camp nearer Linz. General Mark Clark preferred that area. It was
quieter. He deserved some rest.
Ralph’s homecoming
was somber- no welcoming parades (May 1946), scarce housing, a worn out wife. At 22, I was a mess, even jealous that he cared
about his friends in Austria.
He mailed them “Tide,” food and clothing.
After getting his degree
in journalism, Ralph had a distinguished career – 10 years as a hard drinking photojournalist at a good newspaper, the
Lincoln Journal Star. His team won a Pulitzer Prize and then he was fired. A society editor raised in him a similar rage,
as had the SS who laughed at his friend’s bodies. She also barely escaped.
In 1958, after a solid year
of drinking, Ralph embraced recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous with the same enthusiasm as he had his recovery from burns,
his military service, his stint in Kleinmunchen and his career in journalism. Now making a living as a photographer he became
aware of the many Veterans wandering the street in the grip of alcoholism. Besides alcohol they were being given inappropriate
anti psychotic and sedative drugs, aversion treatment and otherwise mistreated by ill informed professionals.
Ralph bought house after
house, in our middleclass neighborhood surrounding our home. He finally had 65
beds for men and women. He and his own children his son Kevin Fox, his daughter Paige and her husband Ronald Namuth worked
side by side to change the face of alcoholism in Lincoln, Nebraska,
indeed nation wide. His creed was kindness, good nutrition, education and of
course the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Houses of Hope continue on
– 44 years. His family has moved on to concentrate their efforts at the
Antlers Treatment Center
(2101 Sheridan Blvd Lincoln NE 68502
(402) 434-3965 www.antlerscenter.com), a family oriented treatment facility, which incorporates the principals
of love, compassion, and integrity that Ralph lived by.
The Other day
I found a scrap of paper- a receipt “Received on October 15th,
1945, from Lt. Ralph C. Fox, 500 Nederland SS troops. Amersfort
Holland. Transporting these ragged wretches was an awful task and a dangerous one. The SS still had supporters in Germany,
bitter enemies in Holland, many were shot as they staggered off the train.
“Ralph
C. Fox, 0548711, First Lieutenant, Company D, 276th Infantry, at Wingen,
France, on 4
January, 1945. When an enemy force in overwhelming numbers
overran a rifle company supported by a heavy machinegun section under his command, Lieut. Fox directed the fire of his section
in a gallant effort to hold back the assault. Moving back and forth between the
two guns, and constantly exposed to fire, he inspired his men to withstand three fanatical attacks by the enemy. Hopelessly outnumbered, and with one of his gun crews separated from him by enemy infiltration, Lieut.
Fox led the remaining crew through the attackers who had all but surrounded him. For
a mile and a half, he fought a rear guard action. Setting up the heavy machine guns every 30 yards to hold back the advancing
foe. Under his direction, his crew knocked out an enemy machine gun and inflicted
heavy casualties on the assaulting troops. Covering the withdrawal of the remaining
five members of his crew with his carbine, Lieut. Fox killed four more of the enemy at point blank range. His gallant action held back a strong enemy assault long enough to permit the remainder of his battalion
to reorganize a defense and ultimately to drive the enemy back to it’s previous position.”
Ralph’s son, daughter
and grandchildren keep the citation of Ralph’s nomination for the distinguished Service Cross before them as a reminder
not only what he did to secure their freedom and safety but what he did to champion the human rights and dignity of all people.
Ralph died peacefully on
November 17, 1998 in his own bed.
He was exhausted and needed rest.
Ralph’s family wants
to hear from anyone in the 70th who remembers Kleinmunchen or the battle of Forbach, which claimed many, lives
and was a turning point in the Bulge.
E-mail address is antlerscenter@yahoo.com
