by Frank Schroth

Herb Colcord, a WWII veteran and resident of Fuller Village, spoke at the Men’s Breakfast there yesterday morning. It was a simple story, plainly told of a man who turned 19 in a German POW camp.

Mr. Colcord used a question / answer format for his talk. He did this, he said, because “I have never been comfortable talking about myself .  .  . this is a bit difficult for me.” He spoke in a relaxed manner, delivering a compelling story, peppered with humor, made all the more powerful by his gift for understatement.

It began with his graduation from North Quincy High in 1943. The good news, according to Colcord, was that everyone at that time could get a job. The bad news? It was in the Armed Forces. He debated whether to enlist or wait to be drafted. His mother took him to see a recruiter who “laid it on pretty thick.” If he enlisted, he was told, he would have a choice about what he might want to do and where to go. His mother decided, “we should volunteer.” And in July of that year he did. He was stationed at Fort Devens as a private in the infantry. “I didn’t ask for that.” He continued, “I laid my head on the pillow and cried myself to sleep. Last time I cried for two and a half years. I couldn’t afford to.” He was a soldier in the 29th Infantry Division (Blue and Gray).

Late in the afternoon of June 6th Colcord left his ship and boarded an LCI headed for Omaha Beach as part of the Invasion of Normandy. Colcord said, “It was the worst of all beaches (of the invasion). “The beach was in chaos .  .  . the first thing we saw were the bodies.”

He briefly referenced Saving Private Ryan which opens with the invasion of Normandy. “That [film] was accurate.” (You can view the opening scene from the film here.)

After landing Mr. Colcard’s regiment pushed inland. He went out on patrol with his squad leader and four others. They came under attack. The point man was shot and killed. “‘Turn around Herb,’ the squad leader told me. Now I was the point man.” A gate which Colcord could not open separated him and the squad leader from the other 3 infantrymen. They left. “As they should have.” His squad leader was wounded.

“What do we do?” the eighteen year old Colcord asked.

“Throw out your gun Herb. They’ve got us.”

He would never see his squad leader John Spurr again. Upon returning home he would learn that Mr. Spurr had died from his wounds a few weeks after their capture.

From June 12, 1944, to April 29, 1945, Mr Colcord was a prisoner of war. He never had much to eat, but he never suffered from any physical abuse. He and the other POWs were moved frequently. He survived an Allied bombing of railroad tracks near one of the stalags he was imprisoned in and credits the Germans with his life. They ordered the work detail evacuated and huddled the prisoners into bomb shelters. They left the shelter to find their camp in flames.

Mr. Colcord would survive it all and arrived back home in September of that year.

After his talk, he offered to take questions. There really weren’t any from a room filled to capacity though someone did point out that another resident had a brother in the Coast guard who died during the invasion. This resident explained that the Coast Guard would send a chaplain to the house to notify families of servicemen and women who had been killed; “I answered the door.”

And for a brief moment there was a silent communion of memory for a period they shared and that time will never erase.

(L to R) WWII USMC veteran Joel Krensky, Fuller Village Executive Director Deborah Felton, guest speaker WWII U.S. Army POW Herbert N. Colcord, Jr., Audrey Colcord, and Herb and Audrey’s son, Herbert N. Colcord III