Richard W. Scheerer was born on December18, 1915 in Kansas City, Missouri. Richard currently lives in Kansas City, Missouri.
It was July 4, 1944, and the explosions 29-year-old Dick Scheerer heard all around him were not those of neighborhood children shooting off fireworks to celebrate America’s independence.
Richard W. Scheerer was in France less than a month following D-Day. He arrived 10 days after the invasion of June 6, 1944, to take over the positions of those who fought so hard to gain ground on the shores of Normandy. Richard W. "Dick" Scheerer, then 1st Lieutenant, was Platoon Leader in Company H, 2nd Battalion, 331st Infantry Regiment, 83rd Infantry Division. Company H was a Heavy Weapons company. The 2nd Platoon consisted of 4 squads each with a Browning .30 caliber water-cooled machine gun. Dick Scheerer and his men pressed inland and settled in a rural area before entering combat. From June 27 to July 4, 1944, they were under constant artillery fire from the Germans.
Dick remember the first night they were there in foxholes and all night they were dropping mortar shells on them. All he could do was pray. His unit was positioned to start a major offensive, one that was to coincide with the Fourth of July. Dick’s duty as an officer was to run his team manning the machine guns for the offensive.
According to his son Larry Scheerer’s account of his father’s war experience, Dick’s unit occupied a marshy area less than 100 yards from the Germans. His platoon was to provide machine gun support to the Rifle E Company which suffered terrible casualties the morning of July 4, 1944.
On the morning of the July 4 offensive, Dick Scheerer was watching an Allied artillery barrage directed at the Germans with the captain of the Rifle E Company. He remembered seeing a German mortar barrage coming into his position. Just then he noticed a fellow officer standing up, “sticking out like a sore thumb.”
The last thing he remembers is turning around to motion for the man to get down when he was hit. “To this day he hates the Fourth of July fireworks,” he said. “I just get jumpy.”
He was wounded southwest of Carentan on the first day of the 83rd Division offensive 4 July, 1944, hit with a mortar shell and suffered serious chest wounds.
Morning Report of July 4, 1944 lists 0-1297958, Scheerer Richard W., 1st Lt. as SWA (Seriously Wounded in Action) transferred to 128th Evacuation Hospital Cir 69 Hq ETOUSA dated June 13,1944.
The next day he was transported to an Army hospital in England. He was operated on there and most of his shrapnel was removed, most… because he still carry fragments in his left lung and in his heart sack. It’s miraculous.
At the time his brand new wife Teresa didn’t really know how wounded Richard was. He’d only been married a year, really less than a year, when he was shipped back to the States from the Army hospital in England. He was released from medical care in December 1944 but was not expected to survive. Teresa and Richard were expecting their first child at the time, the first of seven. In fact, the first time Richard saw his oldest son, Rick, he was just passing through Kansas City on his way to a military hospital in Colorado. They met under the clock at Union Station and saw him for 20 minutes. It was January 1945 when Richard Scheerer was officially discharged.
He had a wife and a new baby, so he chose to go home. Instead, he went back to Kansas City and helped his father run his grocery store and meat market. Later he started his own meat business in Kansas City. And although his business was and current residence is in Kansas City.
All in all the Scheerer’s have seven children, 18 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren and he and Teresa couldn’t be prouder.
And Richard W. Scheerer isn’t the only combat veteran in his family, his son Larry Scheerer, who took such an interest in his father’s military career served overseas in Vietnam and Larry’s son, James, has most recently served in Afghanistan. Larry is so interested in what his father did, but really, Richard is more interested in what Larry did, calling his son and grandson real heroes.
Richard said that he didn’t do anything special in the Army, matter of factly, just doing what he was told.
Lt. Scheerer never really said much about his combat experience until his 90th birthday when Larry started asking his father about it. "It’s a dirty business," Scheerer explained about war. "You’d just as soon forget it."
But as for that old war wound, Scheerer said the shrapnel still sitting inside him has never given him any problems. In fact, he’s lived a long and vibrant life.
Richard Scheerer 100, passed away September 15, 2016, from complications following surgery. Click here to read his obituary
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Lieutenant Richard W. Scheerer and his wife Theresa almost 70 years ago and Dick Scheerer again today (2011). Right we see his WW2 dress uniform proudly displaying the Combat Infantryman Badge. |
