A Company of Heroes (32 page)

From recollections that other veterans have told me, things went even beyond that. This sergeant either drew on Ron, or started to draw on him, so Ron had no choice but to fire his weapon and kill him. This one individual was putting many lives at risk. You have to make a split-second decision, and Ron did.

Regarding the rumor of Ron shooting prisoners on D-day, that story is perhaps the most apocryphal, for no eyewitnesses have ever stepped forward to confirm the event. But how many other incidences like that actually happened? You can imagine that the men jumped right into the middle of hostile territory. Once they caught enemy soldiers, their unofficial orders were to take no prisoners, so what do you do with them? You can’t bring them with you because you’re in the midst of battle. Do you turn them loose so they can turn around and kill you? I hate to think what I would have done in that situation. My guess is that, if that’s what happened, then that’s what Ron did—he had a strong commitment to following orders. He thought, somebody’s got to do this, and I’m in charge, so I’ve got to do it.

How should Ron Speirs be remembered? Toward the end of the war, Ron wrote Forrest Guth a lengthy letter on June 11, 1945, after Guth had won a lottery to be sent home to the States. This to me indicates how much he cared for each of his men individually. It’s four pages long, full of chatty news, and doesn’t say much other than, “You’re not missing anything.”

Guth wrote to Ron on June 11, 2006, the exact date sixty-one years later. Arguably the best line from Guth’s letter refers to the original letter sent by Ron. “The letter helped me to endure the loneliness of not being with my old friends,” wrote Guth.

The last years of Ron’s life were extremely difficult, to see this man who had been such a warrior and leader of men deteriorate like he did. I don’t know if he was ever formally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, but my biological father died of Alzheimer’s, and I’m pretty sure that’s what Ron had, too. To see his deterioration was extremely painful for the whole family. We were pretty much on call 24-7 in the last days until he passed.

Ron will be remembered by many people for his actual as well as his rumored deeds during WWII.

To our family, he will simply be remembered as a loving husband, father, stepdad, grandfather, and great-grandfather. We miss him greatly.

 

 

 

My great-uncle, William Stanton Evans, wasn’t liked very much when he was in the Army. I realize that from what I’ve read, and also from what’s been said about him. Even my grandmother admitted that his personality could be grating at times.

Still, he was family. He was
our
family. And he had people who loved him—namely us. He was the brother of my grandfather, Larry Evans. My dad was born a couple of months after D-day and was named Stanton in his honor.

I never met my great-uncle, as he was gone long before I was born, but I’ve felt a strange kinship with him over the years. I grew up hearing stories about him, about how he was an accountant who worked at the Houston Ship Channel before the war and could have been deferred from active duty if he had wanted out. My grandmother said he volunteered for the service so his brothers, who had children, might not have to go to war. I knew he was a paratrooper in WWII and was killed on D-day when the plane he was in was shot down, but I never knew that he was part of an elite group of soldiers until the movie
Band of Brothers
came out.

A while back it dawned on me that if I ever wanted to know more about my great-uncle, there was no time to lose. Today’s veterans aren’t getting any younger. I knew very little about military history, but began looking for information about him in earnest. I talked with family members, pored through pictures and journals, contacted other Easy Company members who knew him, and tracked down various archival documents from courthouses, university records, and the military.

This is what I found.

William Stanton Evans was born July 16, 1910, in San Antonio, Texas, the fourth of nine children (six boys and three girls). While the family usually called him Stanton, he preferred to be called Bill, which is how he was known in the Army. I call him Stanton throughout this essay to reflect the name he was most called by family members.

His parents, Thomas (Tim) Evans and Grace Purcell, were Irish Catholics who spent much of their childhoods in Mexico, since both their fathers were construction engineers for railroads being built from Texas into Mexico. His parents met in San Antonio and married in Monterrey, Mexico, in 1905. After they married, the family lived in Mexico City and San Antonio and often traveled between the locations. All the children, including Stanton, were born in San Antonio, except the youngest.

Tim, their father, was well educated and a stern father. His daughter Margie described him as “intellectual, a good speaker, proud of his family, very religious, impatient, and unforgiving.” She described her mother as “loving, kind, generous, and patient.” Margie was twelve years younger than Stanton and remembers him as a big brother she could go to. “He was handsome, always warm, and encouraged you to do what you wanted to do in life,” she said. After high school Margie joined a convent and became a Dominican nun.

Mike Evans, Stanton’s nephew, interviewed Stanton’s brother, Walter, in the 1980s, who recounted some colorful stories of the Evans family early years:

Stanton was ten years old in 1920 when the family moved to Houston. By then, his father had been hired to establish the Foreign Trade Department for the Houston Chamber of Commerce. His father eventually served as consul to nine Latin American countries and was instrumental in making Houston a major port. They were one of the first families to settle in the city of Southside Place, an enclave then on the western outskirts, but now close to downtown Houston. Tim was its first mayor, and served three terms.

In Houston, Stanton and his brothers often played at a neighborhood park. It had a big pool, tennis courts, and lots of room for ball games. The family ate dinner together every night, and table manners were stressed. After dinner, dishes, and homework, the children were permitted to relax in the living room with their parents. They were a close-knit family, and remained so even as the children grew up.

The Evans boys were all athletes. Stanton was a skilled diver and swimmer, and taught diving and swimming at the neighborhood pool when he was older. Melba Evans, who married one of Stanton’s brothers, remembered the fun times they all had going to dinner, or just staying in, playing cards and shooting the bull.

Stanton and his five brothers all went to St. Thomas, a Catholic high school in Houston, where he was on the football team. I talked to the archivist at St. Thomas, who confirmed that Stanton graduated in 1928. The archivist sent me copies of some of his report cards, and I’d say my great-uncle was not a scholar. He also needed to take summer school to graduate. He and his brother Walter were a year apart in age, but for some reason, they were in the same class at St. Thomas. Stanton’s first job as a young man was delivering milk.

Records show a one-year gap between high school graduation and Stanton’s enrollment in Texas A&M University, known then as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. The A&M Office of Admissions and Records confirmed that he attended from July 18, 1929, to June 20, 1930, with a major in petroleum production engineering. I asked them to double-check the major, because it was Stanton’s brother Walter who later worked in the petro-chemical industry. They confirmed that Walter’s major was liberal arts and that he attended from 1928-1929. I think perhaps the records may have been mixed up somehow, but that’s what they sent.

Stanton’s attendance at A&M counted as prior military service, giving him the experience to become a first sergeant right after enlisting in 1942.

After college, he worked for Harris County in the purchasing department, where he worked for most of the 1930s. He was listed as such in at least two of the city directories. His sister-in-law, Melba Evans, remembered him later being a CPA for Harris County. She said that when war first broke out, he got a job with the Houston Shipbuilding Company doing accounting work.

Documents from the Harris County District Court show that Stanton married LaVon Ruth Hyett on June 20, 1935, in Houston. She was born January 5, 1915, and lived in the same area of Houston as he did. Her family was listed in the 1930 census in West University, which is the neighborhood next to Southside Place.

Apparently LaVon was not well-liked by the Evans family, but Margie, Stanton’s sister, doesn’t remember why. We have a family photograph from 1938 that includes Stanton and LaVon together. Stanton and LaVon had no children, and their divorce was finalized on June 11, 1940. I received copies of the divorce papers, and suffice to say, it was pretty messy. I don’t think it would serve much purpose to air Stanton’s dirty laundry after so many years, and I wouldn’t want to hurt any of our or LaVon’s family. The Texas Death Index and Social Security Death Index show that LaVon later remarried a man by the last name of Montgomery. She died August 15, 1987, in Houston.

My dad mentioned that Stanton was considered something of a “roustabout,” and often got into fights at bars. Stanton’s brother Walter recounted to his daughter, Ann, that if you went to a bar and a fight broke out, go look for Stanton and get him out, because he probably started it. Stanton’s dental records note that he was missing eight teeth on the left side of his face, which might make sense if he was in a lot of fights with right-handed guys.

My grandmother, Melba Evans, and Stanton’s niece, Mary Carroll Rigoni (whose sixteenth birthday was on D-day), both confirmed that Stanton decided to join the Army because his younger brothers had joined, and he wasn’t going to stay home while they were fighting in the war. He was working for the Todd Houston Shipbuilding Corporation (its proper name) in 1941-1942, and was eligible for a deferment from military service, since they were building Liberty ships, vital to the war effort. He was older when he enlisted—thirty-two.

Melba added that Stanton also volunteered for the Army because he was single and didn’t want his brothers who had children to be among those drafted. She said he was a brilliant man and very partial to his nieces and nephews. She called him “a tough little guy.” (The Evans boys were all kind of short; Stanton’s enlistment record lists him as five-foot-seven). Melba said that he looked forward to finishing his Army service and going back to work at the Harris County courthouse and a normal life.

His sister Margie noted that before being shipped out Stanton made a point of visiting everyone in his family, including his sister Genevieve and her family in Illinois. Margie said the visits were very important to him. Genevieve’s daughter, Mary, said that they have old home movies of that visit. When Stanton arrived, he was all taped up from a recent bar-room brawl. She remembers him watering the cabbage in their victory garden with his drink.

Stephen Ambrose writes about how Sergeant William Stanton Evans was one of the first NCOs to come up through the ranks while the men were still training at Camp Toccoa. You had to be tough and a capable leader to make it as an NCO, so I know my great-uncle had a lot of the right stuff in him. He was considered a favorite of the controversial Captain Herbert Sobel, which might have made the men not like him much, and Ambrose notes that “Sobel and Evans played men off against one another, granting a privilege here, denying one there.”
³²
Once, Sobel and my great-uncle snuck through the company of men as they slept, stealing their rifles to teach them a lesson. They called the company together the next morning, but to their great embarrassment, they had gotten lost and collected rifles from Fox Company instead. Another time, he and Sobel inspected the barracks, looking for contraband, which didn’t help make friends. My great-uncle refused to participate in the NCO mutiny against Sobel.

Some men from the company apparently did like and respect him. Winters writes how Sergeant Leo Boyle married a girl while in Aldbourne, and my great-uncle served as his best man.
³³
Marci Carson wrote to say she found my great-uncle’s name in the journal of her father-in-law, Sergeant Gordon Carson, listed as one of his buddies.