At War in Europe

New

Book

by James Megellas

’42 Details World War II

The 62 years that have passed since James Megellas graduated from Ripon College have been anything but dull for the class of 1942 math major. How many other people alive today can say they didn’t just read a book about the Battle of the Bulge but wrote one? And fought that very battle? Or that they liberated a Nazi prison camp? Or that Robert Redford played them in a movie? Or that President John F. Kennedy gave them a job? Or that they raised their children in nations embroiled with unrest and with round-the-clock security and bullet-proof cars?

One person comes to mind. James Megellas, a firstgeneration Greek born in Fond du Lac, Wis., has worn a slew of hats in his life. He’s been an iceblock delivery man, bartender, novelty businessowner, postmaster, city council president, paratrooper, developing nation diplomat and adjunct professor, to name a few.

“I have never regretted anything I haven’t done, because what I have done has been so fulfilling,” Megellas says. “I’ve always looked forward, never back.”

And now he’s an author. Megellas has plenty to look forward to.

Ballantine Books, a division of Random House of New York, published his memoir, All the Way to Berlin: A Paratrooper at War in Europe. It hit shelves in spring and has sent the 86-year-old on a nationwide book signing and speaking tour.

The 309-page hardcover chronicles his experiences as a paratrooper with the 82d Airborne Division in the United States Army Reserve. Its pages burst with the words and stories of more than a dozen fellow paratroopers who served alongside him.

It details life behind the scenes as well as on the front lines of battles such as Anzio in Italy, Operation Market Garden and Nijmegen in Holland. He feels his up-close experiences and those of his comrades make his book stand out on the book shelves.

“In recent years, World War II has come under close scrutiny by the public, and there have been many military books written on it,” Megellas says. “But most of those books were written by authors — Stephen Ambrose for example. While they are good, they aren’t the same as mine; mine is written firsthand by people who were there. There’s nothing else like it out there.”

Megellas returned to his hometown of Fond du Lac in May for a celebration and “the mother of all book signings,” which included his fellow 82d Airborne paratroopers. In September, he had a book signing at the College.

All the Way to Berlin tells of men jumping out of burning planes into lonely swamps in foreign lands with nothing but the clothes on their backs and of being forced to see their fellow crews bombed before their eyes. It tells of a young Megellas suited up with almost his body weight worth of equipment strapped on him and of weeks without a shower

Life as a hero didn’t always feel heroic. In the 1977 British-made movie, “A Bridge Too Far,” based on a book by the same name by author Cornelius Ryan, actor Robert Redford played the role of 1st Lt. James Megellas. It detailed the failed September 1944 allied air drop behind German lines in Nijmegen, Holland.

“The last Holland bridge battle was one of the epic battles and one of the largest airborne invasions ever made,” he says in a 1994 interview with The Reporter of Fond du Lac, near the 50th anniversary of the battle. “It was a failure. The invasion was ill-advised, poorly planned. They didn’t monitor the German’s movements closely enough. We were like ducks in a shooting gallery.”

More than half of his two companies died in that battle after being shot while crossing the Maas River. Mortar sank a boat, only yards away from Megellas, which was carrying the other half of his platoon. Megellas had to watch them die. He retaliated by killing four Germans and taking three prisoners. He managed to rescue a wounded Allied soldier by carrying him in one arm and firing his submachine gun with the other. The act garnered him a Distinguished Service Cross from the U.S. Army, but Megellas knows he’d rather have his comrades alive.

In Operation Market Garden’s first nine days, the number of Allied forces killed, wounded and missing amounted to more than 17,000. That’s more casualties sustained than in the invasion of Normandy.

In chapter 16 of his book, titled “Hitler’s Last Gasp,” Megellas describes what he saw when he entered a concentration camp barracks:

“…about 200 twisted, nude bodies of skin and bone, piled four to five feet high. Individual forms … almost indistin- guishable. There could not have been a body of more than 60 pounds; most were much less. In one corner of the building was a pile of ragged, filthy striped clothes, apparently taken off the bodies for reissue to the next victims.”

(And in another building nearby): “Inside were inmates, still alive, some just barely. Most were lying on the dirt floor or propped against the sides of the building too weak to get up. With sunken eyes and skin taut, they looked like living skeletons. …”

It was a turning point for Megellas and his colleagues, he says in the book.

“It was not until our men witnessed this that we fully realized what we had been fighting for. The destruction of the monstrosity the Nazis had created was the cause greater than ourselves that we had often alluded to but never fully understood. It was a defining moment in our lives: who we were, what we believed in and what we stood for.”

For such feats and countless others, Megellas received more than 10 medals for his service during World War II, including the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars

(one with Oak Leaf Cluster), two Purple Hearts (he was injured twice), two Bronze Stars and a U.S. Presidential citation. The governments of Belgium and Holland also honored him. By various accounts, he was among the most decorated World War II veterans in Wisconsin and the country.

But Megellas not only emerged from World War II with hero status for liberating a Nazi prison camp and other deeds, he went on to lead a life of danger, travel and adventure — doing more in one lifetime than several people combined.

In his civilian career, Megellas served at the level of an ambassador, appointed by President Kennedy, as director of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program. He helped stabilize and revitalize places such as Yemen, Vietnam and Panama, where he also lived for most of the 1960s and ’70s.

Megellas met Kennedy in 1960 while campaigning for a Democratic seat in the Sixth Congressional District of Wisconsin. Kennedy was in Wisconsin campaigning for president, and the two shared podiums and shook hands for three days, all the while swapping military-service stories. Although Megellas didn’t win his seat, Kennedy did, and a year later, Kennedy offered Megellas a job in his cabinet.

In Taiz, Yemen, with USAID, Megellas oversaw road construction, water and sanitation systems, irrigation dams with the aim of helping the former Soviet bloc country live independently, without help from former communist China and the former U.S.S.R.

In a July 1962 letter to The Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter, Megellas described Yemen as “no doubt one of the most backward countries in the world, in its natural, primitive state” and compared it to “a 15th century society.”

At the time, only one in five Yemeni people could read or write, and one out of two children died before their first birthday from poor sanitation and hygiene, he said in his letter.

Megellas served in Yemen for two years, after which he went to Panama for four years and then, in 1968, to Vietnam, all with USAID. While in Vietnam, his wife, Carole, and their two sons, Stephen and James “Jimmer,” lived in Manila, in the Philippines, because families of USAID personnel weren’t allowed to live in Vietnam.

In 1975, he and his family went to Colombia with a similar peacekeeping governmental group, Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) where he served as director in Bogotá.

In Bogotá, due to crime and governmental instability, Megellas’ family had round-the-clock security guards. They were chauffeured around in bullet-proof cars by drivers espe- cially trained to elude road blocks.

Carole says it was tough at times knowing her sons didn’t grow up the same way they might have had they grown up in the United States, but she has no regrets. “I wouldn’t trade a minute of our experiences,” she adds.

Later, after retiring from the U.S. government in the late 1970s, Megellas served as a business consultant for major U.S. companies in Latin America. Even in retirement years later, he kept active as an adjunct instructor of international business development at Florida Institute of Technology.

Megellas credits his solid Ripon education for giving him the boost he needed career-wise and throughout his life. “I felt going to Ripon during the Depression and having a college degree has meant a great deal in my life,” he says. “It opened doors for me that would not otherwise have opened.” r

Lee Reinsch