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Ewing Ray "Pete" McClelland |
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Ewing Ray "Pete"
McClelland was born on September 9, 1915 in Fayette County, Pennsylvania.
He attended a civilian training camp at sixteen, receiving a certificate
and being recommended for advanced training. Pete worked in the Western
Pennsylvania coal mines to pay for two years of college at Berkeley,
California. . On December 15, 1940, Pete eloped with Marianna Wright to be
married at Hurricane, West Virginia. In 1941, when the war began raging in
Europe, he left college and enlisted in the Army well before the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor. He was commissioned second lieutenant and trained
in Camp Lee, Virginia, Camp Pickett, Virginia, Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and
Fort Bragg, North Carolina. In February of 1942, they had a son and in
October of 1943, a set of twins, a boy and a girl. Leaving for overseas in
October, 1944, with the 589th Field Artillery Battalion, 106th Division,
the 28-year-old officer saw action briefly in France, Belgium, and Germany
before getting caught in the stunning capture of two whole battalions at
the Battle of the Bulge on December 17th. He and his fellow soldiers
marched several miles along muddy roads to the already overcrowded Stalag
12A at Limburg, Germany. A War Department Battle Casualty Report cited his
place of death as Stalag 12A, due to an Allied air attack on December
23rd, 1944. Along with thousands of American dead, he was quickly buried
in Diez, Germany. Later their remains were disinterred and placed in the
American Cemetery in The Netherlands, near where they had fallen. To commemorate my father and to explain my journey of learning about his life and death, I have written a memoir entitled Soldier's Son, published by the University Press of Mississippi. http://home.olemiss.edu/~wgbwm/biodad.html
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Page last revised 12/01/2006 |
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Back home in Pennsylvania, his young widow and three small children
survived him. Too young to have lasting recollections, Ben McClelland,
the soldier's son who was just beyond infancy, became one of the war's
fatherless innocents for whom the memories of others would form the
paternal image. As the boy evolved into manhood, he reflected on how
strange it was to grow up without this parent. In this narrative, a
work of analysis as well as an odyssey into family heritage, the son
undertakes a compelling search to find this man he could not remember.
Through sentiment and nostalgia he depicts the innocence of childhood
and recalls the many people who furnished impressions of his father.
Old photographs, intimate letters, and interviews with the memory
keepers and the storytellers in his extended family were resources
from which the author recreated a time and a place and a person. This
reconstruction resurrects a father vital in life and passion, a man
chronicled in humorous family tales, realized among vivid small-town
characters, and seen against the contrast of social changes of the
l960s. The search for his father consumed most of a lifetime. As Ben
McClelland was approaching the age of sixty, he had recovered this
lost, never-before-realized identity. But to complete the circle of
his quest, he undertook one thing more, the emotional pilgrimage to
his father's grave in Europe. Although many other memoirs detail the
experience of the soldier on the fronts of battle, this one brings an
understanding of his sacrifice in wartime, of the resounding meaning
of his death for his country and for his family, and of a son's
profound yearning for answers that fulfill.