FLETCHER W. HARRIS, JR.
Patriot, Chapter 1919
(ARMY, WWII, Europe)
Article April 2004
Fletcher Harris,
Jr. was born in 1923 on Galveston Island,
and is justly proud of the local area appellation, “BOI,” which stands for
“Born on the Island.” He received reserve officer training at Castle
Heights Military Academy and in August 1941 was commissioned Second
Lieutenant, Infantry, in the Army Reserve. Following that, he was a
student in the University of Tennessee, and remembers that he was in the
Sigma Chi Fraternity House when he received his orders to active duty in
April 1942.
Fletcher served one
year as an instructor at Camp Wolters, Texas. He was then assigned to the
69th Infantry Division in Mississippi where he received training
in heavy weapons and participated in the division’s winter maneuvers. In
early 1944 Fletcher was part of a levy for replacement officers needed in
England. They were sent from Hattiesburg, Mississippi to Ft Meade,
Maryland, then to Camp Miles Standish, Massachusetts, where they shipped
out with the largest convoy ever to cross the Atlantic.
The trip took 13
days. Arriving in Liverpool in April 1944,
Fletcher Harris was part
of the group designated for the “Excess Officers Pool.” He says, “As a
replacement officer, I was assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion,
115th Infantry, 29th Infantry Division. D-Day+2, June
7, 1944, found us in Normandy as replacements for the D-Day losses.”
Company B was in
continuous contact with the enemy for the next 34 days, fighting in the
hedgerow country of Normandy, until finally on July 11, 1944 Lieutenant
Harris would sustain the wound that put him out of the war for good. On
nine occasions Fletcher Harris narrowly escaped near certain death
situations—and he describes his survival as a miracle in each case. In one
instance, while moving along a hedgerow on a patrol, the Germans activated a
command detonated mine just as he came up next to it; but, it failed to go
off. On several other occasions he had come under machine gun fire or
intense small arms fire at close range, but, in each case, sometimes
inexplicably, he escaped untouched.
On July 11th,
the 29th Division was to launch a coordinated attack toward St.
Lo; but the Germans pre-empted that plan with an early morning attack of
their own. Lt. Harris’ Platoon was on the extreme right flank of the
battalion and his fighting positions were aligned along and forward of a
sunken road. German troops followed their artillery preparatory fires,
closed up to the American’s positions and entered close combat all along the
battalion line. The enemy overran the rightmost machinegun position, and
turned the gun to fire back down the sunken road as other German Infantry
began dropping concussion grenades into the road near Lt Harris’ position.
He says, “They were like big ostrich eggs. One of them hit my helmet and
rolled down by my left ear. I could hear the fuse! I grabbed it with my
right hand and as I reached to throw it back, it went off in my hand. It
took off the hand and also left me with fragmentation wounds in my nose and
one knee. I never lost consciousness, but was dazed and my helmet and rifle
were gone as I started limping along down the sunken road to seek medical
aid while clutching my right wrist with my left hand. Blood was also
flowing from the knee wound and I was aware that blood was sluicing down
into my left boot as I made my way along while
machine gun fire (from our captured gun) was kicking up all around me. I
was only about 75-80 meters from the gun when I started out and it is a
miracle that I was not hit while so exposed, until someone grabbed me and
pulled me away under cover from the machine gun fire. It was Sergeant
Spann, from a heavy weapons company that was attached to our regiment. We
had been in Castle Heights Military Academy together, but had not seen each
other since. He assisted me out of the area and across an open field with
artillery falling all around us. When we came out of that area some guys
asked, “How in the world did you ever survive crossing that field?” We made
it only by lying flat on the ground when the shells were coming in. We
arrived at the aid station, only to find that it had also been overrun.
People and bodies were everywhere.”
It was later learned
that the battalion lost 254 killed during that action. Although
Fletcher
Harris was out of the battle and under medical control, he was far from
safe. Upon arrival at the aid station, Sergeant Spann tried to get him onto
a departing ambulance, but that driver turned Fletcher away and he had to
wait for the next one available. He was the first casualty put onto the
next arriving ambulance. After 2-3 miles down the road they came upon the
wreckage of that previous vehicle. It had taken a direct hit from an
artillery shell and everyone in it had been killed. Fletcher counts that as
another miracle that he had not been on board.
After being operated
on in a field hospital in Normandy, Fletcher was flown back to England on
one of the C-47 aircraft and went into the 141st General Hospital
near Bristol. After several months there, In October 1944, he was moved by
train up to Scotland for boarding on an air ambulance back home to America.
At the last minute he was rather indelicately told that he had contracted
what might be a “terminal case of yellow jaundice” (hepatitis, believed to
have been from his blood transfusions). As a result, his name was scratched
off the list for the flight home. That plane, a Lockheed Constellation,
crashed while taking off in the fog, killing everyone on board. Fletcher
counts that as the ninth and last of the miracles that spared his life in
WWII. Fletcher survived his “yellow jaundice,” and a month later sailed
from Liverpool on the hospital ship DOGWOOD. The ship had steering
problems so severe that it slowed the vessel’s progress and the men decided
it should more appropriately have been called the DRIFTWOOD instead.
They finally arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, on November 13, 1944.
Fletcher Harris
says, “I was then sent back home to Texas, to McCloskey Hospital in
Temple. This is where I met a beautiful nurse,
Imanell Baker, and we
were married. I was medically retired on April 16, 1945 and she went with
me back to the University of Tennessee so I could finish my degree in
Mechanical Engineering. We have been blessed with three children: Vivianne,
Laura, and David.”
Fletcher returned
with his family to his home in Galveston, Texas. He followed his father in
the real estate business and served his community extensively through the
City Council, disaster relief including hurricane preparedness. He met
the challenge of only one hand by learning to use his left hand to become a
Master Pistol Class shooter, champion archer, bowling champion, expert pool
shooter, certified scuba diver, and a pilot with a special license;
therapy sessions with children who are amputees; and as a one-hand draftsman
for Union Carbide, the only one they ever hired. Fletcher passed away at the
age of 85, on Father's Day June 21, 2009 while living with his son, David, in Carrollton, Texas where
he moved following the hurricane on Galveston Island. His story was
nationalized by Greta of Fox News during that storm. Fletcher was a
long-time member of Chapter 1919 and attended the George Washington's dinner
in 2008.
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