One last honor

Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News

Published March 10, 2007 at midnight

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Felix Sparks, retired brigadier general of the Colorado National Guard, is nearing 90 years old, and his health is deteriorating rapidly. But before he dies, his buddies want to give the "soldier's soldier" a final tribute: the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest medal, next to the Medal of Honor, for saving three wounded GIs during World War II.

Hidden in the freezing, snowy thicket of the French forest, the SS machine gunner stood in a foxhole with his finger on the trigger.

From the hatch of a war-beaten tank, Lt. Col. Felix Sparks looked out into the trees, near what was left of his battalion, knowing he was already in the sights of a gun.

Sparks surveyed the forest and figured that was where he would die.

In the past 19 months, the 27-year-old had slogged his way through the bloody battles in the torturous caves of Anzio, Italy - where he was one of only two men in his company to survive. He had already earned a Silver Star for bravery and two Purple Hearts after being shot through the stomach and having his liver lacerated by shrapnel. Since landing in North Africa nearly two years earlier, he had bonded with a group of farm boys from Colorado, and watched most of them perish.

Then in January 1945, he found himself near a place called Reipertswiller, in a battle most Americans would never hear about, as the Germans struggled to earn a small victory after their defeat in the Battle of the Bulge.

Even after months of continuous combat, the fighting in the forest was like nothing Sparks had ever seen. Searing shrapnel rained from tree bursts - scattering branches, stumps and jagged hunks of metal as both sides hurled artillery. He requested permission to withdraw his troops to save their lives, but the request was denied. His unit was trapped in the forest, nearly surrounded.

On Jan. 18, Sparks opened the hatch of his tank and saw two wounded American GIs lying less than 100 yards away. He knew the Germans were within easy firing range, and if he left the tank, he would be a clear target.

Sparks had seen enough.

He climbed out of the tank and headed for the wounded men. His only weapon - a .45-caliber pistol - remained holstered.

Camouflaged within the trees, the German machine gunner with the telltale SS lightning bolts on his collar was ready to fire.

"Wait," his squad leader told him in German, as he eyed Sparks through his binoculars. "Let's see what he's up to."

As the Germans watched, Sparks ran to one of the wounded soldiers and began dragging him back to the tank.

Two of his soldiers also climbed from the tank and helped him bring the wounded man onto the bow.

Then Sparks left for the next man, whose leg had been shattered by a machine-gun round, and dragged him to the tank, where they made him a splint out of tree branches, a rifle and a machine-gun belt.

"Can I come out?" another GI yelled.

"Make a break for it," Sparks shouted back.

After dragging the last man to the tank, Sparks climbed inside and backed it down to the forward command post, delivering the three wounded men to medics and providing cover for other soldiers who followed under the protection of the tanks.

It was his only success at Reipertswiller.

In three days of fighting, 158 enlisted soldiers were killed, including six officers. Three hundred men were wounded and 426 were captured - the worst battle of the war for the Colorado-based 157th Infantry Regiment.

For much of the rest of his life, Sparks would wonder about what happened on that hill, how he lost nearly an entire battalion, and why no bullet ever found him.

"Why?" he would ask himself. "Why didn't they shoot me?"

More than five decades later, he has finally found an answer.

'Surprised I'm still alive'

At 89 years old, Brig. Gen. Felix Sparks, once again, has seen enough.

"It's hell lying here in bed all the time," he said from the modest Lakewood home he's owned for the past 50 years. "This is my life now - not much of one."

For the most part, those sentiments fill his days - everything but his mind is frail. His once-bellowing voice now wavers from bulldog jowls that shake when he's angry. His bulbous nose is framed by long ears and wisps of gray hair.

For the past several months, he has spent nearly all his time in bed, wrapped in flannel sheets, wearing blue pinstripe pajamas, waiting for the end.

"Most of my men are dead now," he said. "I'm surprised I'm still alive."

He may be the only one. As everyone who knows him is well aware, Felix Sparks is somewhat of an expert on cheating death.

After the battle of Reipertswiller, Sparks' war was hardly over. He battled all the way to the Dachau concentration camp, where he was one of the first Americans to see the horrors that existed there. After surviving more than 500 days of combat, he would later return to Colorado to personally console the families of his men - and promise them he would not forget.

A Texas native raised in Arizona, Sparks admired Colorado before he saw it. During the war, he reveled in his soldiers' descriptions of their hometowns, the mountains - and their fortitude. In adopting their home as his own, he would become a Colorado icon.

After the war, he entered the University of Colorado, earned a law degree and, at 38, was appointed as the youngest member of the Colorado Supreme Court. He went on to serve on the Colorado Water Conservation Board and continued in the Colorado National Guard until retiring as a brigadier general in 1977.

To the aging men in the 157th, however, the general remains "a soldier's soldier" - one of the few commanders who led from the front. And by forming the 157th Infantry Association, he kept their history alive.

Before he dies, his men say, Felix Sparks deserves one more honor - one that remains mired in red tape in Washington, D.C. - 62 years overdue.

Their salvation may come in the unlikeliest of eyewitnesses: The man with the binoculars in the SS uniform.

Haunted by the battle

The citation for the Distinguished Service Cross reads, in part, "Colonel Sparks' gallantry, courage, fortitude, initiative and complete devotion to the men under his command reflect the finest traditions of the United States Army and merit highest commendation."

Despite the recommendation, Sparks never received the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest military award next to the Medal of Honor.

To him, it doesn't matter.

"Medals, what are they?" he asked. "I don't need any more."

For decades after the war, Sparks never displayed his military honors. Only recently, his wife searched around in his dresser drawers until she found them.

Today, they are mounted in his home near a plaque that he says is just as important as any battlefield recognition - one that recognizes the woman who has supported him for the past 65 years - a plaque dedicated to Mary Sparks that reads, "Behind every great man there is a great woman."

He looked over at the tiny, soft-spoken, white-haired woman who stands half his height, but who he says has just as much strength - a woman whose care, along with that of his son, Scott, has allowed him to stay at home while he remains mostly immobile.

"She had a baby the day after I left (for the war). I didn't see him until he was 2 1/2 years old," Sparks said. "I wouldn't be here without her."

In his home, he keeps a replica of the logo of the 157th Regiment, and the motto the unit has carried since the Spanish-American War: "Eager for Duty."

When he looks back at his own war, he still remembers the names of the men he lost in battle and all their hometowns. Of all the battles, though, he says he will never shake what he calls the "stupidity" that was the Battle of Reipertswiller.

At the beginning of the battle, Sparks was directed to take a hill, along with three other battalions. The 157th was the only one to reach its objective, leaving the men exposed.

"I requested permission to withdraw," Sparks said. "Through the radio, the transmission came back that the commanding general said, 'No, that would demonstrate weakness in the face of the enemy.' "

From his bedside, those bulldog jowls shook again.

"It would show weakness?" he nearly shouted. "Jesus Christ! We WERE weak!"

He looked away.

"I lost so damn many men. I lost the whole battalion. I never really have gotten over it," he said. "I never should have been in that position. It was a complete failure - well, except for those three men I got out."

When he later met the general who refused to let him withdraw, Sparks, as usual, said exactly what he thought.

"I said, 'If I was in that position again, I would have disobeyed your orders and withdrawn anyway,' " he said.

He paused, then chuckled.

"Well, I made an enemy there," he said. "Generals aren't the types to take an insult from a lieutenant colonel."

Later, that same general denied the recommendation for the Distinguished Service Cross - a decision Sparks' men and some military historians say was politically motivated retribution.

Instead, the medal for Sparks was downgraded to a Silver Star.

The argument over the medal didn't haunt Sparks as much as the battle itself, and that day at the end, when the Germans didn't kill him.

"They never fired on me. Not a round. Not a ROUND," he said.

"Why?"

Enemy in awe

For more than five decades, the answer remained concealed in a handwritten journal, carried by a man who would never again don his uniform - a man who could not tell his own son about his role in the war.

The man had first written his journal in a U.S. prisoner-of-war camp. The memoir begins with his life in Germany and how he joined the Waffen-SS, Hitler's elite German combat force, and how he spent most of his time on the Russian front.

The journal remained concealed until 2002, when, through a connection with a military historian, his words were published in the book, Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience By A Soldier of the Waffen-SS.

The book details battle after battle, until, on Page 188, the SS officer recounts an amazing scene from the forests of Reipertswiller:

"Suddenly, the turret of the second tank opened and out jumped a single man. Watching through my binoculars, I thought him to be an officer. Ignoring the danger he was exposing himself to, he hurried over to the hollow where the infantry squad was trapped, helped some wounded men to reach the tank and loaded them on the deck, one after the other. Stunned, we followed this extraordinary rescue action without firing a single shot. The officer jumped back into the tank, spun around on his tracks, and dashed back to the rear. Those of us witnessing the scene, whether nearby or more distant, instinctively felt there was no honor to be won by firing on this death-defying act of comradeship."

In the book, the German soldier says he joined the SS to battle Bolshevism and had no knowledge of the atrocities committed by some who wore the uniform - atrocities that, in the Nuremberg trials, would brand the Waffen-SS as a "criminal organization."

Though the man claims he knew about the concentration camps, he writes that he did not know about the exterminations of the Jewish people. Still, he wrestles in his mind about whether he should have been able to make the connection after seeing hollow-eyed prisoners at a railway station - an image he says still haunts him. If the common soldier knew of the atrocities inside the camps, he maintains, they never would have given their lives for Hitler.

In a telephone interview from his home in Germany, the man who uses the pen name Johann Voss - he refuses to allow his -real name to be published for fear of retribution - said he still remembers the scene at Reipertswiller.

"My (machine gunner) had his finger on the trigger. But both of us said, 'Wait a minute, wait a minute, let's see what happens.' We were very much astonished," Voss said. "One could see he was up to something, and we didn't know what. Instead of just gunning him down, we were curious what was going on there.

"When we saw these wounded dragged from that hollow and put on the deck of the tank, it was out of the question to open fire on these people struggling for life."

For those trying to secure Sparks with evidence to reinstate the Distinguished Service Cross, the words of the enemy were just the ammunition they needed.

Death of a medic

Inside the Sparks home in Lakewood, Maj. Gen. Mason Whitney shook the hand of the man whose footsteps he followed.

"How are you doing, general?" asked Whitney, adjutant general of the Colorado National Guard, on a recent visit.

"Not too good," Sparks replied.

"You look pretty well," said Whitney, who is also about to retire from the Guard.

"I might look pretty well, but I can't walk," Sparks said.

"Well, it's overrated," Whitney said.

Sparks, who commanded the Colorado National Guard from 1969 until 1977, is credited with energizing it with a sense of leadership and history. In 2001, the Guard dedicated its armory in his honor, creating a museum filled with artifacts from the 157th Regiment.

"That's where (new soldiers) receive their initial briefings," Whitney said. "When I talk to them about some of the things they're becoming a part of, I tell them about the heritage."

Whitney and his staff - including public affairs officer Lt. Col. Barbara Wickham - have played a key role in assembling a request that would reconsider the Distinguished Service Cross for Sparks.

"It may not mean very much in terms of having another award to put on a uniform or put in a shadowbox," Whitney said. "But people should be recognized for the deeds that they do. It should have been done in the first place."

Sparks shook his head.

"As far as bravery is concerned, I had just lost all my men. I didn't care if I got killed or not," he said. "It was an act of either extreme bravery or extreme ignorance. God, I was tired. Lack of sleep really got me."

Still, as he looks back at the Germans who never fired on him, he can't forget the day they did.

It was in Italy, he said, as Sparks and his men sought protection behind a stone wall. The Germans attacked, and Sparks' men shot a German captain, but the man did not die. Instead, he lay on the ground, moaning.

"My medic, Jack Turner from Lamar, he said, 'I want to go get him,' " Sparks remembered. "I said, 'No you're not! No you don't!' "

The German continued to moan. Eventually, Sparks drifted off to sleep. When he awoke, he saw Turner scrambling over to help the German captain.

"He had the Red Cross armband on, and just as he got near that injured German, they gunned him down. They cut him in half with machine-gun fire. I never will forget that. They killed him," Sparks said. "I don't know why he went out there. I don't know why they shot him. Jack Turner. Killed him deader than hell."

Sparks eyes glistened, as close as he comes to tears.

"I went down to see his folks down in Lamar after the war," he said.

"He was a good man."

The two generals sat quietly for a minute.

"Something I often wondered about in the war," Sparks said. "When I was a company commander or a battalion commander and we'd been ordered to attack, each time we made an attack, a lot of the soldiers would know they would be killed. But, by God, they would go. I told them to go and they went.

"They just went. Into death. The American soldier."

Whitney, a Vietnam veteran, nodded at the general.

"I think Robert E. Lee had something to say about that," he said. "Before Gettysburg, he said that being a general of an army is probably the best and worst of all things. Because you have to be willing to kill that thing that you love the most."

'This is for the regiment'

The process of the military awards board involves yet another battle - this time, through forests of paperwork.

With the new information from Voss' account, the official reconsideration application was submitted in May and has since cleared several hurdles. Still, there are several more to go, and Sparks' friends wonder if he'll last as long as the process, which could take another year.

Military historian Hugh Foster, a Vietnam veteran who was made an honorary member of the 157th Regiment, has spent much of his life since the war securing medals for service members who never received them.

For Sparks' application, Foster dug up dozens of pages from the U.S. National Archives to support the award, including statements from eyewitnesses who have since died.

It's the statement from the living eyewitness, he said, that stands out.

"I think (Voss' account) adds a lot to this," said Foster, who is writing a book about the battle of Reipertswiller. "When he first wrote this stuff down, he was in a prisoner-of-war camp, just expressing his true awe. I think it's quite significant."

The paperwork must clear investigative councils before being approved by a collection of generals, and finally approved by the secretary of the Army. The application is sponsored by the office of U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Loveland, who, according to a spokesman, soon plans to deliver the request to the top levels of the military in hopes of expediting the process.

After seeing the camaraderie at the reunions of the 157th Regiment Association - reunions made possible by Sparks - Foster says he knows who will appreciate the award the most.

"This is for the guys. Sparks couldn't care less. This is for the regiment," Foster said. "They look at him in awe - absolute awe. He's viewed as an absolute movie star."

For 86-year-old Jack Hallowell, the slowness of the process gets more difficult each time he visits his bedridden former commander.

"It's been hard on me - hard on all of us," said Hallowell, who served under Sparks in Italy and has remained his good friend. "We've missed him."

Hallowell is planning for the next reunion of the 157th - which has roughly 800 members, though only a handful are left from Colorado, since the bulk of the state's contingent was killed in Italy - and he says he has one hope when they meet again in October in Colorado Springs.

"If we can get him that medal, we can get him in a wheelchair and bring him down there," Hallowell said. "Some guys keep saying, 'This is the last reunion.' We always wonder if it's the last."

Seen enough killing

Even after his retirement, Sparks continued to fight.

In the 1990s, he made headlines after his grandson was killed in a drive-by shooting and Sparks formed an anti-handgun group and battled the National Rifle Association to push through strict gun laws for minors that remain on the books.

After the war, he decided he had seen enough killing - when his buddies would go deer hunting, he went along, but he didn't carry a rifle. He remains a critic of the war in Iraq.

Until recently, he also continued to speak out at Holocaust remembrance ceremonies, challenging deniers to tell him that what he saw inside Dachau didn't happen. "Tell that to my face," he would shout.

As for the SS soldier who spared his life, Sparks has yet to speak to Voss, but says he holds no grudges toward him - or most of the other Germans on the front.

"I never had any animosity toward the German soldiers. They were just doing their job," he said. "It's those sons of bitches like Hitler that were the problem."

Voss said he hopes Sparks receives the Distinguished Service Cross. Still, he said, he laments that the dead Germans he fought with on the front will likely remain largely forgotten.

"Our world has perished," he wrote in his memoir from the prisoner-of-war camp.

"A new world dawns, one in which our values are utterly discredited, and we will be met with hatred or distinct reserve for our past. Come on, I say, it's not without reason, let's face it! What counts is our future and what we are going to do with it. . . . Yet there can be no release from our loyalty to our dead, from our duty to stand up for them and to ensure that their remembrance and their honor will remain untarnished. They, like all the others fallen in the war or murdered through racial fanaticism, must be remembered as a solemn warning never to let it happen again. . . . The cause for which they died may have been corrupt and the symbols under which they fought may have been vile, but their profound selflessness, their loyalty to their country, and their final sacrifice possess a value of their own; it is the spirit of youth without which a nation cannot live."

In his own epilogue written to the men of the 157th in one of his newsletters - later published in the book, Sparks, by Emajean Buechner, the general offered his own summation.

"During the course of World War II, I lived through three traumatic events which still continue to haunt me - the Battle of Reipertswiller, the Battle at the Caves of Anzio and the liberation of Dachau. I know that the other soldiers of the regiment who participated in any or all of these events must have the same haunting memories. . . . I suppose that all that can be said at this point in time is that how fragile is the thread of life and how futile is the waging of war."

As Sparks laid on his bed, preparing for his physical therapy, he thought back to the forest.

"I've been back to that hill three or four times since," he said. "You can still see the foxholes, spent cartridges and the signs of war, but now it's a peaceful forest, just peaceful, that's all."

Now that he has the answer to his lifelong question of why the Germans allowed him to rescue his men, he doesn't hesitate when asked if the roles were reversed.

What if it were Sparks in the foxhole, and he had his finger on the trigger? What if it were a German SS officer jumping off the tank in the war-shredded forest?

"If it were me," Sparks said, "I would have shot him."

History of the 157th Infantry Regiment

1862: Colorado Volunteers help defeat Confederate soldiers at LaGlorieta Pass, near Santa Fe.

1879: 1st Colorado Infantry Battalion is born.

1898: 1st Colorado Infantry participates in amphibious assaultsnear Manila during the Spanish-American War.

1916: The 1st Colorado Infantry is sent to the border of Arizonaand Mexico, where soldiers battled Pancho Villa's troops.

1917-1918: 1st Colorado Infantry officially changes designationto 157th Infantry and is assigned to 79th Infantry Brigade, 40thInfantry Division. The 157th served in France during World War I as part of the 40th (Sunset) Division.

1940: The regiment-made up primarily of farm boys from tinytowns throughout Colorado - is folded into the 45th Infantry Division and mustered into service at Fort Sill, Okla., and later toCamp Barkley, near Abilene, Texas, to prepare for action in World War II.

1943: The 157th arrives in North Africa, and sees its first combat on the beaches of Sicily, then Salerno, where Cpl. James D. Slaton earned the regiment's first Medal of Honor by wiping out threeGerman machine gun nests with rifle fire, hand grenades and hisbayonet.

1944: The regiment suffers heavy losses in the bloody battlesat "the caves" on the beachhead of Anzio. Of all the men in E Company - most of them from Lamar - only Capt. Felix Sparks and oneotherman survived. That man was later killed in combat. The regimentbattled to Rome, then through the plains and mountains of France, on its way to Germany.

1945: The year started with the regiment's worst defeat, in abattle near the Alsace village of Reipertswiller. In April, a group led by Sparks helped liberate the concentration camp at Dachau.Munich fell the next day. In its 667 days overseas, the regiment wasin battle 511 days. During World War II, its soldiers were awardedfour Medals of Honor, 20 Distinguished Service Crosses, 376 Silver Stars, 1,054 Bronze Stars and 1,694 Purple Hearts. On Dec. 7, 1946, the 157th was deactivated from World War II.

1947: Sparks joins the Colorado National Guard as the executiveofficer of the 157th Regimental Combat Team, which soon was renamed the 157th Field Artillery Unit of the Colorado Army National Guard.

1957: Governor designates U.S. 40 through Colorado as "The 157th Infantry Highway."

1961: The 157th is reactivated under Sparks during the BerlinCrisis and sent to Fort Sill, Okla.

1968: Sparks once again takes command of the Colorado ArmyNational Guard, rising to the rank of brigadier general before retiring in 1977.

2001: In August, the Colorado Army National Guard dedicates itsnew armory in honor of Felix Sparks. Twelve days later, in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, soldiers from the 157thbegin aiding in "Operation Noble Eagle," guarding Denver International Airport and other possible targets.

2004: The last of more than 400 157th soldiers are released after a year of guarding Air Force bases and the Pueblo Chemical Depot.

2006: Soldiers from the 157th spend a month in New Orleans, helping to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina.

2007: Soldiers aid ranchers after a blizzard strands thousandsof cattle in southeastern Colorado. At the request of AdjutantGeneral Mason Whitney, a new infantry unit is expected to re-assembleas part of the Colorado Army National Guard - much to the delight of Brig. Gen. Sparks. "I went to hell and back with the infantry," he said. "It will be good to have them back home."

SOURCES: Sparks: The Combat Diary of a Battalion Commander (Rifle) WWII by Emajean Buechner (Thunderbird Press), Lt. Col. Hugh Foster (Ret), Sgt. 1st Class David Schmidt and Brig. Gen. Felix Sparks.

sheelerj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2561

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