The following profile of Lt. James A. Duncan of Madison, Wis., and his experiences losing a leg in combat in Europe and surviving as an invalid prisoner of waris special on-line only profile added to the 14 featured in the printed The Hero Next Doortm Returns.
DEDICATION
This additional chapter of the Hero Next Door Returns by Kristin Gilpatrick is dedicated to the men and women of every American family who have gallantly and quietly served this country during its greatest times of turmoil and served their communities and families well ever since.
It is also dedicated to the parents of Jim Duncan, Landon A. and Cora Y. and to his seven brothers and sisters Allan, Margaret, Louise, Myrthene, Paul, Francis and Thurman, who so diligently followed his military experience and attempted to contact him while he was a prisoner of war. Recognition is given as well to his two uncles who served in France in W.W.I, Sam Young and John Flinchum, as well as his wife Janet and children Carol and James.
WOUNDED SURVIVOR
JAMES A. DUNCAN
Madison, Wis.
"War is hell," they say. And, as much as any combat veteran, Lt. James A. Duncan of Madison, Wis., is familiar the hell that war is. Within just a few snowy moments Duncan came to know the nightmare of being seriously wounded in combat and the purgatory of fighting captors and his own mind to survive as a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany.
"Hell is hell no matter where you find itin the snow or in the sand, in a five minute fire fight or a three-day battle. And, even if you live through the hell you find like I did, you can move beyond it but you can never completely escape it."
Duncan's journey to hell and back began in the paradise of home on the North Carolina tobacco farm his father Landon, mother Cora and seven siblings tenant farmed. Though the hard work and hard times of a Depression-era farm served him well, Duncan knew early on he didn't want to be a farmer.
"One of my obsessions was to get a college education. I graduated from Kernersville, NC High School in 1936. Realizing that if I received a college education, it would be necessary for me to earn it, I assisted my father with the farming operation while my younger brothers continued their schooling for three years after my graduation."
He finally earned enough to enter High Point College in High Point, N.C., for one year and then continued until 1943 at North Carolina State College in Raleigh. It was at Raleigh that Duncan joined the ROTC program in part to help pay for college. When he joined Duncan knew the ROTC required participants to eventually serve sometime in the regular military and he was prepared to serve it, assuming that service would come after his college diploma. However, World War II soon got too hot to ignore, and by the spring of 1943, the entire ROTC reservist class was ordered in to the Army with training at Camp Woltern, Texas and OCS training at Ft. Benning, Ga. Duncan's college degree would have to wait again.
Duncan was commissioned a second lieutenant following training because of his ROTC experience and soon entered what he calls "the W.W.II pipeline."
"World War II was heating up by the time I was in my early 20s, and we had to consider that military was going to be a necessary part of our responsibility. We knew what we had to do. In August of 1944, the World War II pipeline started moving for me. I was pushed all along that pipeline from September to December 1944, spending a few weeks at Ft. Jackson, S.C., before moving to Camp Miles Standish in New York and then loading on the USS UNITED STATES for a trip to Europe as a replacement officer.
The trip was not without peril but not without worry as Duncan fought seasickness and his own concern about German submarines waiting to strike from beneath the waves. The troops arrived safely in England however and went by train the boat and train again to catch up the American troops pushing their way toward Germany.
"We went to the area where the D-Day troops landed six months before first and then we were put on the troop train, The 40 & 8, and went east around Paris to somewhere in Belgium. I remember the city of Warem where we were held over a few days while the pipeline caught up to us. In Warem on our own, I hooked up with another Americans and were guests of a family with a barbershop that kept us for three or four days. They could speak some English. That place is a nice memory from the war."
'CANNON FODDER'
Duncan arrived in combat somewhere between France and Belgium at the tail end of the bloody Battle of the Bulge. The Bulge had just been stabilized and U.S. Army units were preparing for the push into Germany and the final months of the European conflict.
"I came into the 1st Infantry Division as a 81mm mortar platoon leader in December 1944. We were holding the north shoulder of the Battle of the Bulge and that's where quite a battle was taking place. They would say the young green privates held that shoulder with bazookas and that's exactly what stopped the bulge. And, that's about the time I arrived there.
"I was a replacement second lieutenantthe cannon fodder of WW II. I was assigned to Company H Mortar Platoon. When I joined a unit with Dom Butchenbach they looked at me like who's this new kid? What's he doing scouting and patrolling? I was a green 2nd lieutenant who didn't know too much what to do but did as best he could to do what we were supposed to."
"The unit I joined was involved in scouting and patrolling activity on the north shoulder of the Bulge. The distance between our front line and German headquarters was about 1,200 yards and I would take patrols of five or six infantrymen into the No Man's Land in between to scout for our mortars."
Duncan had only led a few patrols when the second lieutenant found the place he'd later know as hell, somewhere in a Belgium forest on Jan. 9, 1945.
"Sometimes there are incidents in our lives that we do not discusstoo personal, too tragic or not interesting at the time. Some parts of my military experience are in that category, and this day is one of them. It's not say I have ever forgotten that day, it's just something that I've never talked about."
"I was assigned to take five riflemen to go into this No Mans Land and go into this old farmhouse in the pines and spot mortar fires. We were trying to put mortars into the German headquarters. Well, we got into the house and began to communicate with the mortar squad some 3,200 yards back. My radioman was carrying a SCR300 aerial and was spotted. He got hit and had to pull out before we got in the house, though he made it out. However, that meant communication was bad for us and that was our real downfall
My sergeant next to me was from Tennessee. He and I went into the building.
Then, the Germans found us and started shooting. We did get out of the farmhouse but we went out the wrong door, the back door and both stepped on landmines."
Duncan's Silver Star accommodation for valor tells it slightly differently, explaining that he and his sergeant purposely went out of the house that direction to distract the Germans so the five infantrymen could escape. It reads as follows:
For gallantry in action in the vicinity of Bullingen, Belgium, 9 January 1945. Given the hazardous mission of destroying several houses used by the Germans as observation posts, Lieutenant Duncan fearlessly led a patrol across coverless terrain, directed accurate mortar fire and destroyed one of the structures. Disregarding an intense machine-gun and tank barrage, he bravely remained at an exposed vantage point and skillfully covered his patrol's withdrawal. As a result of his gallant deeds, Lieutenant Duncan has been reported missing in action.
While they escaped, Duncan and his sergeant rolled and howled in the snow turning red from their blood.
"My mine gave me a left leg, below-the-knee amputation. There I was wallowing around in the snow, and I looked to see that my sergeant friend had lost his leg below the knee too. In the meantime, the Germans were shooting at us and shot him. They didn't kill him though because the bullet lodged in the fat of his neck. Somehow, I didn't get hit, though they kept shooting. The Germans had seen us in the house and waited until we went out of the house to shoot. They waited as they saw us lose our legs and struggle in the snow and then started shooting at us.
"In the meantime, our troops were putting in artillery fire in that area and mostly hitting the pine trees around us. The only good thing about that day was that I saw the men that had been with me had already reached the safety of the woods by the time I could see where they were."
Seriously wounded, with his leg gone and the Germans closing in, Duncan could do little more than accept whichever cards fate would deal. "I knew I had reached the end of my combat career and I just laid there and prayed. I wasn't in as much pain as you might imagine; an amputation is not real painful when it's sudden like that.
"Finally, the Germans picked us up and put me on a ladder as a stretcher and took me to company headquarters (the one we had been trying to hit). The captain questioned me about our mission and activity. Each side already knew as much about the other anyway so I said, "you know about as much as I do so I don't need to say much else.'"
The Germans put the two wounded prisoners in a straw pile overnight, doing little to treat their wounds or protect them from winter's frigid winds. "They just wrapped our wounds with paper-type wrapping. My left leg had been amputated but it wasn't really bleeding because it sort of took on a cauterized condition when it was wrapped so tight. In addition, my right leg had a compound fracture at the ankle.
"Laying there in that barn hurt as I was I remember thinking 'I've lost my leg and I'm a prisoner of war' ... But then, I eventually concluded 'I'll just have to take this as best I can and use what I've got left to keep going.'
"I never gave up that I would not get out of that snow, would not get out of that barn, would survive being a prisoner. The day I left to go overseas, I went to my father who was sick and I said that no matter what happened I would be back. And, when I was laying there in the snow that's all I could think abouthome and that I would get back there someday, somehow. I kept that same thought every day as I lay in bed for six months as a prisoner of war."
ROCKY RAILS
The next day a German train took Duncan and several other prisonersalong with German soldiers going east to St. Vivth (GERMANY?). After several days, the train finally stopped in Prague and Duncan was taken to a hospital. By this time, the Germans had set his right ankle in a soft cast.
"However, I had contracted frostbite from exposure and eventually lost all the toes on my right leg. When we got to the hospital, an old German doctor took one look at my right leg and said, 'we'll take that off tomorrow.' Fortunately, 'tomorrow' never came. The next day we were loaded on another train going west. In the meantime, I was getting sick as a dog and the pain was starting to get to me. We had no pain medication; in fact, we had nothing to eat or drink the whole trip."
The trip was filled with other perils as well.
"One experience in those travels as a guest of the Germany Army was both tragic and humorous. The US Air Corps was strafing and bombing the rail yards in January 1945. A train in the yard at St. Vivth Germany was loading POWs. I was being carried on a stretcher by German medical personnel. As we were being strafed, the Germans dropped me on the ground and ran for coverleaving me there to be strafed by our own P-51 fighters."
STALAG 17
Duncan's situation hardly improved for the next five months at the train's final destinationthe STALAG 17B prison camp in Kregm, Austria, on the Danube River, Duncan was not
"We were put in a 30-35 patient medical area with medical personnel from North Africa, Italy, Poland. The doctor at Stalag 17B was from Poland and had a brother practicing in the U.S. They did what they could for me but didn't have any medicines, though they did have some instruments. I received a cast on my leg Jan. 30, 1945 and had a toe operation April 13 and the cast came off May 4. I never left the bed they put me on when I arrived until after Germany surrendered May 7, 1945.
"Though we had no pain medication for any of that, we had our own determination and the other POWs there to support you. The man who looked after me the most was a Russian. He worked like an aide. He would lift me, move me around, and wash me. I still have scars from lying in bed too long but they did the best they could."
The Russian wasn't the only friend from far off places Duncan met as a POW. "The camp was totally international; there were just 12 Americans. That was my first real contact with people from many different countries. My experience with those people played out, I believe, later in life because I became responsible for a lot of girls and boys foreign exchange programs.
One group of people Duncan never saw were the Jews being slaughtered by Nazis in the infamous death camps. "We heard a lot about what they were doing to the Jews but I didn't see any from my perspective on the bed. I know only about how they treated us and the other prisoners. Russian prisoners, I believe, had it worse than we did."
Regardless of where they were from, prisoners of war shared many miseries in common. "As bad as you had it, there was always somebody that had it worse so there wasn't much point in complaining. There were some pretty beat up boys in that ward. There were some fighter plane pilots that walked for miles and miles and were frostbitten so bad their feet were cut off at the heels and they were walking on crutches."
Nazi "hospitality" did nothing to help matters. The Germans' treatment of the POWs was minimal at best. And, by the time Duncan arrived at the camp, the Germans were more concerned with their own survival than with the POWs. "They never really showed themselves at the camp except for as guards and administration. It was heavily guarded and very secure, but it was late in the war and I imagine all men were needed on the lines so we didn't see a lot of other German personnel, which was fine with us."
The prisoners didn't see a lot of food either. "They'd give us that gruel twice a day, the recipe for which I can still remember. It's basically an equal mixture of nothing. Food, and the lack of it, was constantly on our minds, so much so that most our conversation centered around food and then home and then sex, in that orderand discussions of sex took place only when we had full stomachs enough to enjoy the conversation. It was a complete reversal of our typical 20-year-old male conversation."
Duncan is convinced, however, that what came to the POWs in small packages is what spared their lives.
"The International Red Cross at times was able to send food packages which had the basicsbread and meatsand that was enough to help supplement the POW gruel and sustain us a little longer. I for one know I would not be here if not for those food packages."
One time, those packages also held a key ingredient in prisoner survival something to take your mind of where you were and how bad it was. "The Red Cross gave us each a Wartime Log Book, which we circulated and took notes, exchanged recipes and addresses and drew pictures in. It was a welcome distraction."
Food and comradeship certainly went a long way in helping sustain Duncan and the other hospital-bound POWs but, Duncan is convinced, his own mind played the biggest role in his survival.
"Survival has as much to do with your mental state as anything and that's why I came out of it I guess. What I learned as a POW first of all is how important determination is. You've got to be determined to follow your goalsyour goal to live another day, your goal to get home. If you lose your determination, you lose your life."
Duncan's determination held out, and carried on for the rest of his life.
After Germany surrendered, a hospital in Linz, Austria, was notified of the POW camp and it sent ambulances to retrieve the prisoners. "We sure enjoyed that day those ambulances arrived. Everybody got drunk on potato alcohol. I didn't get drunk, though, I just got sick."
After a few days in Linz, Duncan was taken to Paris and then flown to Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.
It wasn't until he was back in the states and able enough to get word to his family that his parents even knew their son was aliveor that he'd been a prisoner of war. "I was classified as Missing in Action and the family was told that I probably killed. They even had a church service for me. Not until I got home and contacted them did they have any definite information that I was a POW. We didn't have a phone at home and I had written but they never got any of my letter. It was just terrible on my family."
Duncan spent 15 months recuperating at general hospital, spending the last few months at the hospital's Forest Glenn rehabilitation center before being retired from the service as a first lieutenant in 1946. Forest Glenn was a converted private girls' school and patient recreation was held in a Stone Castle, chapel services in the Chinese pagoda. "We all had our own bathrooms and our dining room had tablecloths and silver; it was the complete opposite of that POW camp."
The center had a few war celebrities on the grounds as well. "We saw most of the generalsTruman, Marshall, Eisenhowerbecause Walter Reed was where they got their exams. We met Black John Pershing in the last days of his life. He lived in the penthouse and, on Armistice Day 1945, he stood at attention and somebody held him at attention."
REHABILITATING LOVE
But all the famous people paled in comparison to one woman Duncan met at the center.
"I was just about ready to leave Walter Reed when I met my future wife. I was out at Forest Glenn, and she was an occupational therapist from Milwaukee living there while she worked as a civilian for the War Department at Walter Reed. Nurses lived in the Italian pavilion."
"We ate in the same mess hall and I noticed her before but we really met at a DAR tea dance. The director said they needed a couple of therapists and patients to dance together and put the two of us together. After an hour or so she walked up and said, 'I can just see you two are together to stay together; I didn't even have to work to get you two mixed.' We went out to dinner the next night and were married in 1947. They had two children Carol an American Airlines flight attendant in Dallas and Jim Jr.
Duncan wanted to be sure, however, he had a job before he had a wife. "Aug. 15, 1946, I left Walter Reed and went immediately into a job and had one until I retired. I think what saved me is that I didn't sit around wondering what I should be doing; I always had a job."
His career began with a job as an assistant to the agricultural extension service agent at the University of Maryland. After four years, Duncan took advantage of the G.I. Bill and enrolled in the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1950. He earned a doctorate and joined the staff at Virginia Polytechnic Institute Sept. 1, 1953 as a specialist in youth development and extension education.
Duncan soon returned to Wisconsin for good, however, three years later when he accepted a job in the University of Wisconsin College of Agriculture's department of agricultural and extension education in Madison in 1956.
"I spent 1956-1986 in teaching, research, extension training, international development programs and advising students at all degree levels and even spent two years in Brazil."
He's accomplished much in the lifetime he was granted by surviving WWII and hardly a day goes by that he doesn't appreciate the second chance he was givenand yet still remember the price he paid for it.
"I always think about Jan. 9, 1945. That just never leaves your mind because that's when I was hit. The memory of that is still quite vivid. I know I lost my leg that day and my troubles as a POW began, but not all of it is negative. I did live through it. And, I learned that whatever you've lost in lifeand it makes no difference where you lost it in war or in a sawmillyou always try to use what you have left to the best of your abilities. It never bothered me once I came to my senses that I lost a leg or walked on crutches. It was 'what do I do next to develop myself?'"
