News-Info-Alerts

Re: 56 Years Later, Ex-POW Gets Medals

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: April 07, 2002

"Hospitalized vet gets medals 56 years later

by Donna Smith Oak Ridger staff
Gilbert Spears enlisted in the Army when he was 15. He was seriously wounded in Austria four years later, held in a German prisoner of war camp for four months, and honorably discharged nearly a year later.

On Tuesday, the 78-year-old Anderson County man received his medals for courageous service -- approximately 56 years later -- in his room at Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge, where he is hospitalized for illness.

U.S. Congressman Zach Wamp's Oak Ridge field representative Linda Ponce presented the medals on behalf of Wamp, and the nation, with Spears' family close at hand.

Susan Haigler, the Third District Republican's press secretary, explained Wednesday that relatives had contacted Wamp's office staff about the medals he'd never received. The staff was in the process of obtaining the medals when the family called to say Spears was very ill. They expedited the process and rushed the medals to Ponce so she could present them to Spears.

The medals presented Tuesday are a Purple Heart, a Prisoner of War Medal, a European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal with three Bronze Stars, an American Defense Service Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a WWII Victory Medal, a Good Conduct Medal, and an Honorable Service Lapel Button for WWII.

Spears' son, Gary, said Thursday that the only medal his father had received prior to Tuesday was one Purple Heart.

Gilbert Spears enlisted in the Army on Aug. 29, 1940, at the age of 15 and 1/2. He fought in battles in North Africa, Italy, France, Belgium and Germany before he was seriously wounded in Austria on Dec. 31, 1944.

He and other soldiers were captured by the Germans, Gary Spears said, and two of his fellow soldiers carried Gilbert Spears to the German POW camp because he couldn't walk. A U.S. soldier who spoke German later told him that the German soldiers had planned to leave him to die in the snow before his comrades helped him to camp.

Gary said his father talked a little about the POW camp, saying that he was treated fairly well, that food was scarce, but the prisoners had as much to eat as the German soldiers did.

Spears and the other POWs stayed in the camp until April 31,1945, when the camp was liberated. The injured Spears was taken to a field hospital in Paris and later sent on to hospitals in New York, New Jersey, Nashville, North Carolina and Memphis.

Corporal Spears, who had served in the 66th Armored Regiment, 760th Tank Battalion, the 601 Tank Destroyer Battalion, and the 106 Reconnaissance Calvary Squadron, was honorably discharged from the Army on Feb. 22, 1946. He came back home to Briceville in May, living there until the early 1990s, when he moved to the Medford community near Lake City.

Gary said his father never talked much about the war. He said his father regretted having to leave the Army, because he'd planned on having a career with the military.

"It really bothered him. ... I think it still bothers him," the son said.

He worked for TVA and held other jobs throughout the years, the son said. The leg wounded during WWII has plagued Spears throughout his life, Gary said, with doctors wanting to amputate it several times.

Gilbert Spears and his wife, Mildred, have been married for 56 years, and they have seven children -- Joyce, Carol, Kathy, Gary, Mike, Scott and Jim. They have a gaggle of grandkids -- about 14 grandchildren and one great-grandchild -- or "that's close enough," Gary joked.

"We're losing over 1,000 World War II veterans a year in America," Congressman Wamp said Thursday. He said it was a privilege to honor and offer assistance to someone with "service as distinguished as Mr. Spears'

"He is one of the great Americans known as the Greatest Generation," he said. Wamp applauded the fact that Mildred and Gilbert Spears had been married for a number of years, like many others of this Greatest Generation, a term coined by author/journalist Tom Brokaw in his popular book.

"He's the kind of person our country should look up to," Wamp said.

©The Oak Ridger "