Local veteran gets hero’s treatment on recent Honor Flight

When you are young, there is a lot of mystery surrounding your future. What will happen? Where will you go? What will you see? Who will you meet? For Richard Scherer, the unexpected places he went during his 81 years of life are not something he would have come up with while growing up in rural Greenwood. His life’s journey has taken him far from home and back again while serving his country, with the final part of this remarkable journey recently taking him to Washington D.C. for an experience he will never forget.

The lifelong native of Greenwood and current Spencer resident traveled to the United States Capitol alongside his eldest son, Tom, as one of the veterans on the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight held on April 23. The trip to see the Capitol and the many memorials across the city built to honor the country’s veterans was an experience unlike anything Richard had seen before, and the amount of people out in force to show their gratitude that day was a moving experience.

“The whole thing was spectacular,” said Richard. “I couldn’t imagine going through life without being able to see it. It was overwhelming how much people appreciated our service. If there are any veterans out there that ever get a chance to (go on the Honor Flight), jump at it, it is something you will never forget.”

Richard served during the Vietnam era, from 1960-63. At the time, he said the draft was still going on, and after graduating from Greenwood High School in 1959, the prospect of joining the U.S. Army was an attractive one.

“The draft was on then,” he said. “We got out of high school, and we didn’t have a girlfriend yet or a job. Two of my buddies signed up with me and we did basics together in Fort Riley, Kansas.”

After basic training, Richard said he and his buddies were separated when they continued their training in other parts of the U.S. He went to Georgia first, and then was sent to Germany. Air travel was not common in those days, he said, so he and thousands of soldiers like him had to brave 11 days at sea aboard the USNS Upshur. It was not a very pleasant experience.

“It took 11 days to get over there,” he said. “After I retired, we went on a cruise and that was a very different experience (than sailing on the USNS Upshur). We stopped at every port while on the cruise. On the Upshur, it was a long time before you saw land. There were quite a few days you would stay down below deck because of the rough seas. It was quite a ride. Some of those days, you would be laying in your bunk and suddenly you would be tossed right to the next bunk. There was a lot of seasickness. We were glad to get on land after a while of being on that boat.”

The soldiers landed in Copenhagen, Denmark to be sent off to their respective bases and begin their tour of service. Richard was sent by train first to Frankfurt, Germany, and then off to the Turley Barracks in Mannheim, Germany -- which Richard said had been used by Germany as the barracks to one of their Panzer units prior to the U.S. occupation of Germany during the Cold War.

“I don’t remember how many of us were on that ship, but there were quite a few of us and we all went in different directions,” he said. “We landed in Copenhagen and took a train down to Frankfurt. We were separated

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO again there. I spent two and a half years in Germany. Turley Barracks, Mannheim, Germany, that was my address.”

While in the city of inventions, Richard spent his days as a member of the maintenance crew in the 51st Transportation Company. It was his job to keep their 5-ton tractor trailers in decent shape so supplies could be shipped to the other U.S. bases scattered across Germany.

“It was all about shipping supplies all over Germany,” he said. “I was in maintenance so I didn’t get on the road much. I drove a wrecker every once in a while. There were three transportation companies stationed where I was so there were a lot of trucks going to different places. They could be out for weeks at a time, just like shipping things here.

“We used five ton tractor trailers, It was all pure hand and foot work, but they needed to get new brakes and new tires every once in a while because they were on the road constantly. There were no computers then, it was by gas and by gosh.”

Even though Richard did not get to travel all across Germany, he said there were many opportunities for the men to get away to see the sights of Mannheim and interact with the locals. For the latter part, he said they often brought one of the members of their company who was a native German speaker to translate for them.

“The city was pretty much built back up (from World War II damage), you could still see a few spots that were bombed, but they did a good job of building everything back up again,” he said. “Other than that, the people were real friendly and nice even though not a lot of them spoke English. There were a lot of German-descent boys in our company, there was one who was from North Dakota who had to learn how to speak English at a young age. He was a native German speaker. He often translated for us when we went out into the town.”

For much of his time in the service, Richard said it was a quiet affair. He was able to come home a couple times, the first in 1961 when he met his future wife, Patricia, also a Greenwood native. They kept up a letter correspondence throughout the next year as their relationship blossomed. In the fall of 1962, Richard said she had planned to make the trip over to Germany to see him, but that is when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred.

“I came back home on leave in 1961, the first year I was over there and I got to know her then,” he said. “We got engaged while I was over there and at one point she had wanted to come over but because of the Crisis she was not allowed to come. We were on high alert during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Russians were trying to put their missiles in Cuba, but there was no action over here. They sent in a bunch of trucks to take to the dry docks in France and in Copenhagen and there were struggles to keep the roads open, but it was not too serious of a point.”

After the Cuban Missile Crisis came and went, Richard came home a final time before his tour ended to spend Christmas with Patricia and his family. The final year passed by, and he was honorably discharged and returned home to a quiet Milwaukee airport in October of 1963. Just a few months later, on Dec. 28, 1963, he and Patricia tied the knot and have stayed by each other’s side for the past 59 years.

“It was quiet (when he came home),” he said. “You came in by yourself. I flew into Milwaukee and got a taxi to take me to my sister’s house. I came back in October and got married in December. We will have been together for 59 years this December.”

After coming home, Richard used the skills he learned in the Army to become a mechanic at a small gas station in Greenwood for a short time before taking a job at Grassland Dairy for 12 years. He transferred his skills once again to become the manager of the Cenex gas station in Greenwood for another 19 years before that closed down and he moved to driving gas trucks for another six years. It was at that point he retired, having spent a long life working in the Greenwood area and raising five sons with his wife: Tom, Terry, Tim, Dave and Dean.

“It’s been a good life,” he said. But that was not the end to Richard’s story. Over the years, while raising their children, little details came to be known about Richard’s service among the five boys. As he grew older, Tom said seeing those images in scrapbooks inspired him to join the National Guard out of high school, where he remained for the next 22 years. During that time, Tom also gained friends who volunteered their time for the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight, a connection that gave him an idea for the perfect Christmas surprise.

“I know he didn’t talk about it a lot (Richard’s time in the service), but it inspired me to join the National Guard at age 17,” Tom said. “I had seen pieces in the scrapbook about the things he had done and seen and he always had his Army hat at home. In November of 2018 I signed him up. It was supposed to be a surprise for Christmas for him, but they contacted him a couple weeks before Christmas to get his information and it caught him completely off guard.”

“I was surprised as hell,” Richard added.

Once on the list, it was a matter of waiting for his name to be selected for a flight. Tom said the general practice of Honor Flights is to make sure all veterans from World War II and Korea get a chance to go first, but in recent years more attempts have been made to have Vietnam-era veterans travel to Washington, D.C., as well. They finally got the call that Richard would be on the first Stars and Stripes Honor Flight of 2022 after nearly four years of waiting.

“I can’t say enough about what they do,” said Tom about the Stars and Stripes Honor Flight. “They had to shut everything down because of COVID but they started resuming flights in the fall of last year. This was the first flight of this year, they try to do five or six flights per year to make sure as many veterans get a chance to go as they can.”

The morning of April 23 started bright and early for all the veterans aboard the 61st Honor Flight by the Stars and Stripes. After getting cleared for flight, Richard said there were two World War II-era P51 Mustangs that took off down the runway before their plane. They landed in Baltimore where they took a bus to Washington, D.C to get a tour of some of the most important sites for our country’s veterans.

“This trip we first went to the Navy Wartime Memorial, it is a new stop for the Honor Flight,” said Tom. “From there, we went past the Capitol building down to Arlington Cemetery and after Arlington we drove down to the National Mall and got off to see the memorials there. There are two memorials that are there, one for Franklin D. Roosevelt and the other for Martin Luther King Jr., but there is only time for someone to see one of the two. We decided that we wanted to see the FDR memorial. We then got back on the bus to see the Lincoln Memorial.”

While at the Lincoln Memorial, Tom said all the veterans of the U.S. Army, including Richard, got their picture taken. The group then traveled to see the changing of the guard a the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Washington Monument. They also saw the memorials for the veterans of the Vietnam, Korean and Second World Wars, getting a final group picture at the Iwo Jima memorial. Once the tour was over, Tom said the group traveled back to the plane where the veterans got a final surprise.

“Once they started to get comfortable on the plane on the way back they had a mail call that gave each veteran a collection of letters and cards from family members and a few cards from some student organizations,” he said. “Every vet got a package of mail. I was surprised at how many things were in that package. It had been very hard to get everything put together beforehand without giving away the surprise, but it was worth it.”

When their plane touched back down on Wisconsin soil, the group was greeted by a large crowd of supporters who had come to thank them for their service. The rest of the family, too, was there among the crowds, cheering their support for Richard. It was the perfect end for a day with Dad that made Tom feel very glad to have had the opportunity to go.

“When we came into the airport there was a parade for them,” said Tom. “They were playing the bagpipes for them. They had sailors, reserve army and cub scouts there. There was a lot of fanfare. A lot of people came up to shake their hands and a couple young kids came up to shake his (Richard’s) hand. I was very proud of him that day. I’ve always been proud of him.”

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

Richard Scherer (front, third from left) with other Army veterans at the Iwo Jima Memorial during the April 23 Honor Flight in Washington, D.C.