Richard Ritchie, b. 1924
Richard Ritchie was born on
23 August 1924 in Waterloo, IA, the youngest boy in a family of six children.
He attended local schools, graduating from East Waterloo High School in January
1943. After poor eyesight kept him out of the Navy, in March Richard
volunteered for the Army. Richard completed basic
training at Fort Jackson, in Columbia, SC, and received additional training as a
medic. In late 1943 he was assigned to the 423rd Regiment, 106th
Infantry Division, then stationed at Camp Atterbury, IN. This unit was shipped
to Europe in October 1944, and in December assumed positions on the front line,
in the Ardennes forest straddling the Belgian-German border. Units of the 106th
Infantry Division were among the first overrun by the German offensive that
began on 16 December 1944; along with thousands of other American troops, on 20
December Richard was captured by the Germans.
Richard
endured the next four months as a POW in Germany. He first spent several weeks
at Stalag IV-B (Mühlberg), then one month at Stalag VIII-A (Görlitz). When
advancing Russian troops got close to the camp, prisoners were evacuated;
Richard and others from Görlitz were force marched for the next fifty-four days,
ending up near the central German city of Braunschweig. Conditions steadily
worsened, and hunger and disease claimed the lives of many over these months.
His group was near Braunschweig when American troops liberated them on 13 April
1945. Richard was evacuated to hospital in France, then by ship to the US; he
spent the time until his discharge in November 1945 in various medical
facilities.
Back in
civilian life, Richard got married (1947, wife Carol), and earned a degree from
Iowa State Teachers College (now U of Northern Iowa) in 1949. He taught school
for two years (1949-51), worked for the US Air Force in Biloxi, MS as a civilian
instructor (1951-56), then relocated to the Twin Cities area and worked in the
engineering and computer business, retiring from Control Data in 1987 with
twenty-four years service. At the time of this interview Richard lived in
Plymouth, MN.
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