TOMBSTONE TUESDAY: Leo L. Westerholm (1922-2012)

Fortitude. In today’s world, the word fortitude, and its definition, seem lost in the pages of Webster’s dictionary. It is a word that most of us own but seldom use, especially when we need it the most. History tells us many stories of those who came before us, and the fortitude that they had, and displayed throughout their lives. Their fortitude has directly affected the lives of us all. How blessed we truly are that they forged the way, and how equally blessed we are to have known just one of them. Not so long ago, the people of Calhoun County had one such man that walked among us. His name was Leo Westerholm. 

Leo Lyder Westerholm was born on February 7, 1922, a few miles south of El Campo in the Danish Community of Danevang. He was the third of five sons born to Danish immigrants Peter and Astrid Westerholm. His mother was a homemaker, and his father a cotton farmer. Along with his brothers he worked on the farm when he was not attending school. He graduated from high school at El Campo and then attended college at Texas A&I University in Kingsville, TX. 

Leo was working toward a degree in teaching, hoping to share his love of agriculture to future generations. However, his real aspiration was to be, as Leo said it, “a horse doctor.” To help pay his way through college, he took a job at Harrel Drug Co. in Kingsville.

Leo’s younger brothers were twins. They went down to Kingsville A&I in the fall of 1941 to earn degrees as well. On December 7th, 1941, in Hawaii, Japan attacked the American Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, in what became known as the “Day that lived in infamy.” That day changed not only life in our nation, but life in the world as the United States entered WWII. It also changed the life of Leo Westerholm who at just 19 years of age, was drafted into service.

Leo’s boss was head of the local draft board, and he ask if he could get his brothers settled into school and take just one more semester of school. He did get to settle his brothers into A&I, but he wouldn’t be able to finish another semester, so he did not enroll. Instead, Leo was allowed to go home and spend time with his folks until he was called to begin the enlistment process.

It was Thanksgiving Day when they arrived at the base in San Antonio. He would tell the story of getting selected along with several other fellows to follow a Sargent who gave them their uniforms and took them down to the mess hall. “They sat us down and fed us a great meal. They asked us if we had plenty to eat to which we said, yes. Then they told us good, because you have KP for the next 24 hours.”  He said that mess hall ran 24 hours a day, everyday. He had never seen so much food as he saw in San Antonio. Next, they were taken to Brooks Military Base where they were processed. 

Word going around was that they were going to be sent to Camp Orr on the West Coast. At that base, the men went through 6 weeks of training and were then shipped out to battle the Japanese. Privates got paid $50, and Leo said he looked up and saw a sign that said, “Join the Paratroopers and make double the pay.”  The double pay was appealing, and, in the paratroopers, he would be dropped in lieu of marching in. So that is what he chose.

Upon being processed into the paratroopers, he found himself selected by the sergeant to be a medic. Leo told him “I don’t want to be a medic,” to which he heard the reply of “it is nonnegotiable.” So, Leo served his country in the Medical Detachment of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion, I Company, First Platoon of the 101st Airborne Division. 

Talking about his first jump he told the story of being hooked up, standing at the door of the plane, looking down at the quilted pattern of the earth below, and second guessing that decision to get paid twice the salary. Leo said he honestly couldn’t remember if he jumped on his own or if he felt a shove from the back…but out, he went. They would jump two at a time, one to the left and one to the right. Once he found himself falling through the air, he described how amazed he was at how quiet, and peaceful it was. He said that he could talk to and hear his fellow soldier as clearly as if they were sitting in a room just talking. After that first jump, he was fine.

As a medic he carried medical supplies that were normally found in any first aid kit. There were bandages, calamine lotion, band aids, things for patching up blisters, poison ivy, insect bites, and the like. He also carried things that would help with different gasses, irritants, and field dress a wound until a medical unit could takeover. The other thing that he carried was morphine, which speaks to the severity of some of the injuries that he could easily find himself dealing with. It was no doubt a reminder that someone’s life depended on that first station of care that he gave to them. I cannot think of how difficult that would be for me, I faint at the sight of blood. With the extremely limited amount of medical training that medics received, that had to add a weight of responsibility, that was as heavy as his own pack that weighed his shoulders down. 

You don’t have to know much about warfare or the history of the Second World War to know what D-Day was about. I have read and heard stories of the beaches of Normandy being so bloody that the water had turned red. However, it took me seeing a photograph of the bodies of men littered across the shores like clumps of seaweed, to bring the true calamity of it into focus. Seeing something stays with a person, and I am sure any person in service, who has seen the brutality of war are never again free from it. Leo was one such person. June 6, 1944, became forever known as D-Day. On that day Leo Westerholm paratrooped into Normandy. 

Leo and a buddy were in London visiting the family of a girl he was sweet on, and that later became his wife. They had taken a 5 lb. sack of sugar, a 5 lb. sack of cocoa, and a loin of hog meat about 2 ft. long and as big around as his leg, to her family. They had managed to take it from the base mess hall and smuggle it into her folks. In London, the rations for people were even more sparse than here in the U.S. They only got 2 ounces of meat a week, and all the milk and bread they could want. The amount of meat they received from Leo and his friend was more meat than they would get in a year. Her mother fixed a nice meal for their family, her sister and her sister’s family and for the two of us, and boy, it was good. They had taken it from the army but, as Leo put it, “we were boys, and it helped feed a family.” 

Upon returning to the base, the invasion had begun. “They told us all to pack up our gear” and then were going to go into the airport. Upon entering they were put on lock down and not allowed to talk to anyone. The one thing they knew was that something was up because they got 4 meals a day. They got to eat whatever they wanted, prepared the way they liked it, and as much as they desired, while they were there. He said they figured out they were feeding the hogs for the slaughter. They were there for about a week where they were briefed on the invasion sand-table models so that they would know, when they landed, exactly where they were. 

Most all the troops knew that the odds on being killed were high. The military had given the percentages of expected losses in the air troopers as somewhere between 60 to 80 percent. As it turned out they did better then that with only about a 15 percent loss. To imagine how it would feel, to be so young, so alone and far from home, facing the realization of dying a horrible death is unfathomable. Putting on a brave face when your heart is laying in the pit of your stomach can be both sobering and convincing. Pushing you past the fear and into the fray. 

The planes took off each pulling a glider, and the men did a lot of praying that those big birds would get off the ground and airborne. After about 3 hours of flying they started getting hit with flack. Leo could hear men yelling out that they had been hit, and he found it hard not to help them. He said that the medics were ordered not treat any wounded on the plane, just unhook them and leave them on board as they would be flown back and treated upon arrival. The medics mission was on the ground and in the field. The green light came on and out they went.

“I was deposited 10 miles, too far west, on the wrong side of the swamp, with two rivers between me and where I was supposed to be.”  He said although he wasn’t sure where he was it was not long before he figured it out. He had landed about armpit deep in a swamp with water that was around 40 degrees. He was facing about a dozen Krauts, German soldiers, with one staff sergeant that was always with a heavily armed unit. Leo said that they knew he was out there because they were shooting at him. He didn’t have any weapons, except for a couple of phosphorus grenades on him and had they gotten hit by a bullet they would have caught him on fire. He came to the realization that this was a hot situation, and he was afraid. So, he crawled up on a small levy and laid low in the grass, took the grenades out of his pocket and tossed one on either side of him. One of the German soldiers found him and all he could do was say “medic, medic.”  He was at that time taken in as prisoner of war and he would remain one until the end of the war.

It would take me several chapters to describe the conditions, treatment, and events that Leo went through while he was a prisoner of war. It would also be more than I want to reveal here about a great man and patriot like Leo Westerholm. I will however tell you where he was held captive, and the conditions that the prisoners were kept under in these camps. He spent 60 days on the road, kept in pits, while in route to Stalag XIIa -6 days, Stalag IVb until the bitter end of the war plus 50 days. In all Leo was held prisoner of war for 329 days with Germans and 50 days with the Russki.

Stalag XIIa was a German processing camp. It housed many allied troops from various countries and nationalities. It was situated in Limburg, Germany and was famous for processing many of the prisoners from conflicts like the Battle of the Bulge. Here prisoners were processed, documented, and interrogated. They only were kept here for a brief time until they were moved on to one of the German permanent labor camps. There were many men who had been marched in from great distances with little or no food and water. Many men were sick from dysentery and starvation.

Stalag IV-b was a labor camp. Conditions were harsh because of severe over crowding. There was malnutrition, widespread disease, and a lack of food, clothing, and bedding. Sometimes conditions varied from bad to worse as the war dragged on holding upwards of 30,000 men. This caused health issues such as diphtheria, pneumonia, tuberculosis, and typhus caused a marked rise in deaths. Western allies had poor sanitation and inadequate food supplies, and Russians were deliberately starved and put through extreme hardship. It was these conditions that Leo lived in and survived in his last year of service. 

When he came back to the United States, he brought his wife Joyce back with him, and she became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Their marriage didn’t last, and he went back to Texas A&I and finished with a degree in teaching. He moved to LaGrange where he took a job as the Ag-Teacher there. He met and married Dorothy June Edwards and they were married 56 years. Together they had two children, a son Hans Kurt and a daughter Shelia. They opened an insurance company in Port Lavaca from 1953 until he retired. 

He and June were well known and active in our community. They were both active members of the United Methodist Church. Leo served in the Local VFW Post 4403 an served in all capacities as a member of the Ex-Pow Crossroads Chapter. He was also a member of the American Legion Post 0167. He was a 60-year member of the Lion’s Club and was honored as a Melvin Jones Fellow. He earned the Grand Master’s Key 4 times and served in every capacity of the Lion’s Club.  

As a lifetime member of the Crippled Children’s Camp, he received the Jack Wiech Fellow Award and was District 254 Youth Exchange Chairman and Lion of the Year. He served as Chairman of the Calhoun County Red Cross for 10 years and he was the Republican Party Chairman of Calhoun County for 12 years. He was appointed to the Governors State Rural Medical Education Board by Governor Bill Clements and re-appointed by Governors Mark White, Ann Richard’s, and George W. Bush. He was honored as the Calhoun County Chamber of Commerce and Agriculture as “Man of the Year.” Never forgetting the heritage of his parents and their dedication to their new country, The United States of America, he was dedicated to the Danish Heritage Society and Museum in Danevang, and numerous other organizations including the Boy Scouts of America. 

Leo passed away on December 11, 2012, at age 90. He is interred at Greenlawn Garden Cemetery in Calhoun County. He was laid to rest with all the reverence and the honor that a man of his stature is due. 

Leo’s life experiences have been chronicled in books and documentaries including a three-part interview where Leo himself tells of his years in the war and as a prisoner. I watched these interviews; it was nice to get to hear his voice again as he regaled the highs and lows of his life. To watch them yourself and get a more in depth look at his time as a prisoner of war, open YouTube, and search Leo Westerholm. There is also a short interview with the film director that took him back to the very spot he was taken prisoner 55 years earlier. They are all worth watching. He was truly an amazing man. 

The one story that I would like to share here is one he talked about when he was a prisoner in the field. They were on their way to Stalag XIIa when they came upon fighting between Allied and German troops. One of the German officers came down in the pit and told Leo to come with him. Once on top a German medic pointed down to Leo’s pack and asked him if it belonged to him. Leo said yes. He told him to get it and come with him. They walked down the road a little way and down in the ditch, lined up there lay both German and American soldiers who were wounded. The German opened his pack, and he didn’t have anything to work with except some bandages, he was out of supplies. He asked Leo what the morphine was, and Leo answered, it is morphine. The German asked him how much? Leo replied 500, and that was the deal struck. They then together took care and patched up all 20 of those men, on both sides. Leo never went back down in that pit; he continued to work with the German on every batch of wounded soldiers that were brought in. Soldiers from across the world, different sides of the conflict, and across the field of battle, they worked together to aid them all.

Fortitude: courage in pain or adversity, strength of mind and spirit when facing danger with firm resolution.

You can see great fortitude, and strong character in Leo Westerholm during his years in the war and throughout his life. However, to me, nowhere it was any clearer, than in that ditch, on the side of the road, in Normandy, as he worked shoulder to shoulder with his enemy, displaying the best of the human condition as they gave aid to those boys. 

Resources

American Ex-Prisoners of War: EX-POW Biography Leo L. Westerholm 

YouTube Leo Westerholm Parts 1,2, & 3