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Remember...Sherman Avery Spaulding
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Sherman Avery Spaulding was born at Webb, Wayne County, West Virginia, on October 30, 1925, to Samuel Jackson Spaulding and Susan ("Susie") Evans Spaulding. Based on 1930 and 1940 Federal Census data and family trees recorded on Ancestry.com, Sherman was one of ten children. His siblings included Thurmond, Jane (probably Nancy Jane), Amos, Ida, Mae (Rosa Mae), Neal, Corilla, Mina (spelled "Mima" in some family trees), and Ivory (also known as "Ivy"). Research provided few details of the early life of Sherman Spaulding. 1940 census data indicate that he was living in Lincoln, Wayne County, and the highest grade of school he had completed was fourth grade (elementary school). Both the 1930 and 1940 census would appear to place his birth in 1927, although his draft card and other documents state he was born in 1925.
When he registered for the draft on October 30, 1943, presumably because it was on that date he turned 18, Sherman stated that he was employed by the N. & W. Railroad Company at Portsmouth, Ohio. Interestingly, he indicated that the person who would always know his address was his father, Samuel, of Webb, West Virginia. But Samuel was not among those enumerated in the Spaulding household in 1940, perhaps because he was working away from home. This is just one of several puzzling facts about Sherman's life that has not been resolved. Just two months later, on December 22, 1943, he enlisted in the U. S. Army at Huntington, West Virginia. At his enlistment, he indicated that he had completed grammar school and was employed in "unskilled transportation occupations," which appears to confirm his employment with N. & W. The Norfolk and Western Railway's primary enterprise was the movement of coal through the Appalachian region, although it also carried passengers. Portsmouth to Cincinnati was one of its major routes; employment there meant that Sherman Spaulding could remain close to home.
Not branched at the time of his enlistment, Sherman, known to his close associates as "Avery," was assigned a role as an infantryman and trained with the 262nd Infantry Regiment, 66th Infantry Division ("Black Panther" Division). The movement of the 66th after leaving the States is chronicled in several places. According to one account,
. . . the three regiments of the 66th Division, commanded by Maj. Gen. H. F. Kramer, Lincoln, Nebr., had sailed from New York harbor on Nov. 15, 1944, aboard the Army transport George Washington, and the Navy transport George O. Squier. They had disembarked at Southampton and Plymouth, England, Nov. 26 and were billeted in barracks and towns in the vicinity of Dorchester, Dorset County.The balance of the division left the States Dec. 1, arriving in England on the Brittanic 12 days later. The time in England was spent filling shortages in equipment and preparing for combat. Vigorous last minute training was conducted for small units.
This was the final step in one and one-half years of training. Activated at Camp Blanding, Fla., April 15, 1943, with a cadre of officers and NCOs from the 89th Inf. Div., the Black Panthers spent three months in individual training before moving to Camp Joseph T. Robinson, Ark., for unit exercises. There, under XXI Corps, Fourth Army, it completed division problems, including rigorous "D Series," and transferred approximately 5000 fully-trained men to ports of embarkation as overseas reinforcements.
Camp Rucker, Ala., was the next stop for the division. There, personnel underwent further specialized training including small-unit infantry-tank tactics. Seven thousand reinforcements from ASTP training centers, Army Air Forces and the AAA Command were brought into the division. Sailing orders came in October and the division moved to Camp Shanks and Camp Hamilton outside New York City to prepare for embarkation. ("66th: The Story of the 66th Infantry Division," in G. I. Stories booklets, Lone Sentry website, accessed 17 March 2023, https://www.lonesentry.com/gi_stories_booklets/66thinfantry/index.html.)
It would appear that Avery was not present for the Division's initial training, not having enlisted until December 1943; he would have joined his unit somewhere mid-training. Unfortunately, Pfc. Spaulding would ultimately succumb to the fate of the many U.S. soldiers who were casualties aboard the ill-fated ship, the SS Leopoldville. He was killed on Christmas Eve 1944, when the SS Leopoldville was sunk off the coast of France by a German U-boat (U-486).
A detailed account of the sinking of the troop transport Leopoldville is told in Part 9 of The Sea Hunters: True Adventures with Famous Shipwrecks (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003, 2nd ed., pp. 305-325). Adventure novelist Clive Cussler and his co-author Craig Dirgo write compellingly about the tragedy as they weave a tale of fact and supposition about the events that led to the loss of the ship. It is a story of an operation gone wrong, fraught with disorganization, miscommunication, confusion, and chaos. Intended to reinforce troops exhausted by and decimated in the Battle of the Bulge, the 262nd and 264th Regiments of the U.S. Infantry finally received orders on December 23 to move out from Southampton, England, to Cherbourg, France. The Leopoldville and another troop transport, the Cheshire, began boarding at 0200 hours on the 24th.
Originally a Belgian passenger liner, the Leopoldville had been under charter to the British Admiralty since the beginning of the war. Though the Leopoldville had been retrofitted to be a troop ship, it had a tired and worn appearance to the troops. The ship was under the command of Flemish Captain Charles Limbor, who had spent a quarter century with the Belgian Lines and was considered a quiet, but competent, seaman. The Leopoldville had crossed the Channel many times and transported many troops without incident. But this crossing would be different. There was no great enthusiasm among the men for moving into the European theater; after all, it had been more than six months since D-Day, and many assumed that the action was winding down. Skipping a partially prepared Christmas dinner, they were rushed onto the boats and then had a lengthy wait before setting sail. Boarding was particularly chaotic; first, a company of paratroopers had been boarded and then taken off. Cussler calls the boarding "a further omen of the tragedy to come" (p. 307). The two regiments were mixed together, and instead of boarding by platoon, the men simply boarded in the order in which they appeared. There was no plan for providing sleeping space for the troops, despite the fact that they would be on ship for eighteen hours before disembarking. In addition, they had not been trained in how to launch the ship's lifeboats or how to wear lifejackets.
The Leopoldville had never before crossed in a zigzag fashion, but was ordered to do so this time because of known submarine activity. At about 1754 hours, the ship suffered a torpedo strike. Most of the men in the lower compartments were lost at this time, but a few escaped and made it to the upper deck. Among the survivors of the initial strike, there seemed to be little panic. But then a series of miscommunications began. Captain Limbor made the assumption they were sinking swiftly and ordered all but essential crew to abandon ship. Abandon ship they did—the American troops watched in shock as the Belgian and Congolese crew left ahead of them on the lifeboats. Cussler calls the behavior of the troops waiting on deck for rescue "one of the finest examples of discipline ever observed." He adds: "All stood in blind obedience awaiting orders that never came" (p. 322). Though rescue ships would eventually come from Cherbourg, they were in no hurry to get to the ship due to the delay in communications. And because of Christmas celebrations, the rescue ships were lightly manned. The loudspeaker was no longer working, so Captain Limbor walked around the ship giving orders to the remaining men—in French or Flemish—which added to the confusion about launching lifeboats.
Men began jumping into the icy water of the Channel in full gear; they did not know to divest themselves of their heavy clothing and gear and did not know how to activate their life jackets. Of those who did not die of hypothermia in the water, some died ashore at Cherbourg because medics overlooked signs of life. While 1,400 infantrymen had survived, nearly 800 U.S. infantry were dead.
Although the German media broadcast details of the sinking as early as January 7, 1945, a month passed before it was acknowledged in U.S. newspapers, and even then, it appears that the account was deliberately inaccurate. On January 25, the Philadelphia Inquirer Washington bureau quoted Secretary of War Henry Stimson as saying "the ship sank swiftly . . . and 248 men were killed and 517 are missing. The rest, over 1400, were saved."
We now know, of course, that the ship did not sink swiftly, and the missing men were, in fact, dead. Subsequent investigations criticized Commander John Pringle, Commander of the Brilliant, lead ship of the convoy. Pringle received an official reprimand but was allowed to continue his naval career. Captain Limbor, the only officer not to survive the sinking, went down with the Leopoldville. Investigations also faulted him and his crew: He failed to accurately assess the damage to the ship; had he done so, he would have known they were sinking slowly, not rapidly. The ship could have been towed. He could have facilitated better communication with the troops and given better instructions for using lifeboats and other equipment.
There were a number of reasons for the cover-up of the actual details of the sinking, one having to do with maintaining the morale of the troops. The silence was comparable to that which withheld details concerning the losses during the Battle of the Bulge, potentially demoralizing and embarrassing the Allied forces at the time.
Of the nearly 800 U.S. troops who perished on the Leopoldville, 493 were never recovered. Of those who were recovered, many are still interred in St. Mere Eglise or Normandy American Cemetery, even though in 1947 the United States allowed their families to bring them to the states for burial. (Summary based on Part 9 of the Cussler/Dirgo book and Tonya Allen's article "The Sinking of the SS Leopoldville," http://uboat.net/history/leopoldville.htm [accessed 11 November 2011].)
| Sometimes when an ordinary citizen passes so suddenly, as in war, we are able to construct more about his death than his life. Such is the case of Sherman Avery Spaulding. The U. S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency continues to list him as "unrecoverable," and he is memorialized on the Tablets of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery. He's also memorialized in the Webb Cemetery at Crum in Wayne County, but this memorial would appear to be a cenotaph. For his sacrifice, Pfc. Spaulding earned the Purple Heart. Based on his service record, he was also eligible to receive the World War II Victory Medal, the American Campaign Medal, the Army Presidential Citation, the Army Good Conduct Medal, and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal. |  |
Article prepared by Patricia Richards McClure
July 2023
West Virginia Archives and History welcomes any additional information that can be provided about these veterans, including photographs, family names, letters and other relevant personal history.
