• WW2 Paratrooper Richard Weaver, Part 1: From Gettysburg to The Battle of the Bulge

  • Jun 20 2024
  • Length: 22 mins
  • Podcast

WW2 Paratrooper Richard Weaver, Part 1: From Gettysburg to The Battle of the Bulge

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  • The local draft board told Richard Weaver it might be six or seven months before he was inducted to serve in World War II, but the 18-year-old enlisted right away along with his buddies from Delone Catholic High School. Weaver, now 98, who grew up and still resides in Bonneauville, was the star of this past weekend’s annual meeting of the Scions of the 17th Airborne. The organization was founded by family members and descendants of the men who served in the famed division. The 17th fought in the Battle of the Bulge and its members landed by parachute and unpowered glider in Operation Varsity, the largest airborne assault in history. Weaver is one of 23 known living veterans of the division, said his son-in-law Dennis Neal, who is chair of the Scions Membership and Marketing Committee. Operation Varsity was essentially “the end of the war” for the Germans, Weaver said Friday, 78 years to the day after it happened. The engine-less gliders, whose landings he described as “a controlled crash,” were not the soldiers’ favored option. “I’m not flying in one of those,” Weaver had said at the time, but his captain thought otherwise. “I could have had my ticket punched 20 times in one day, but I’m still here,” Weaver said of his three years of service in Europe. Weaver recounted numerous memories of the time when he and his compatriots “kept taking town after town back from the Germans.” Weaver, a technical sergeant attached to the division’s headquarters, once found himself among several officers at Haltern, Germany, including Maj. Gen. William Miley, the airborne strategy innovator who led the 17th. The general was on the phone. He hung up and said, “Gentlemen, I think we’d better go in the basement now.” Within moments, a shell destroyed the back half of the building, he said. The next shell took out some trees and a couple of jeeps. The next “hit right where we were standing five minutes before. I’ve never heard such a noise in my life,” Weaver said. “I never thanked my general for saving my life” until last fall, when Weaver made it a point to visit Miley’s grave in Mississippi. Weaver’s story about Miley was recounted during a ceremony to dedicate a memorial to the general at the U.S. Army Airborne & Special Operations Museum in Fayetteville, N.C., said the Scions’ secretary, Ed Siergiej. Weaver visited the grave with Neal and his daughter, Eileen Neal, who live near the site. Eileen is one of the 11 children Weaver had with his wife Jeanne. She wrote in his high school yearbook that she hoped to marry and have a dozen children. “I told her I was the man for the job,” he said. The couple also reared two foster children. “When you’ve got so many, what’s a couple more?” Weaver said. Weaver supported the family by working as a plasterer. He worked in many local homes, including that of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower. Weaver said he has attended four reunions, including one in Belgium and Germany, hosted by the Scions, who work to preserve and honor the memory of the 17th’s contributions to Allied victory.
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