Category: The Ritchie Boys
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An African-American Ritchie Boy – William Warfield
If you have ever heard a recording of William Warfield singing “Ol’ Man River,” from the musical Showboat by Jerome Kern, you will not have forgotten his deep, rich, bass-baritone voice. Warfield’s emotional rendering of this song about the hardship and despair of black laborers in the late nineteenth century makes my heart ache every time I…
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In Remembrance of Pearl Harbor
Today is the 73rd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. At 8:00 am on the morning of December 7th 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise military strike against the US Pacific Fleet anchored in the sheltered harbor near Honolulu. Just as we today can easily remember the morning of September…
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Born in the USA – A Ritchie Boy
Not all the Ritchie Boys were Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany. Many were second generation German, Italian, Russian, or Polish, even Japanese. Others where highly ranked language students pulled from advanced college classes. The common thread was fluency in a language spoken by the enemy. A self-described troglodyte, Burton Hastings is one of these American-born…
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Visiting Camp Ritchie
June 2012. We are again surrounded by Ritchie Boys. Bob and I sit in the auditorium of the U.S. Navy Memorial Heritage Center in Washington, DC. The men we are here to honor enter the theater and find seats. Many walk with the aid of a cane or leaning on the arm of a friend…
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An Honest Man
Ernest Wachtel is a man who sees the importance of sharing his experiences. However, when I first spoke to him on the telephone in 2009, I noticed a certain reticence to open up. As I explained my project to him, there was silence on the other end of the line. Finally he said, “I’ll tell…
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Secret Heroes
I arrived at the Detroit airport on a hot and humid afternoon in July 2011, but I wasn’t there to sightsee or to wander the asphalt streets of a city in the throes of financial decline and economic desperation. I was on my way to meet Ritchie Boys. I would be part of a reunion…
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The General
“Call me GG,” he said. “That’s what my friends call me.” GG, a retired army general and a Ritchie Boy, was the executive director of the local United Way in Sierra Vista, Arizona and he had arranged for us to meet in their comfortable conference room. While my daughter, Erin, was setting up her camera…
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Finding The Ritchie Boys
Somewhere in the middle of a day of taping Herman’s memories in 1991, he mentioned his special training. “They sent me to the Army Intelligence Center,” he told me. “That was in Camp Ritchie, Maryland. And I took the course and graduated from the Army Intelligence Corps. We were trained in interrogation, espionage, and counter-espionage.”…