'He deserves special recognition': WWII vet honored in Somerset on 100th birthday
SOMERSET — It was on his 18th birthday, 82 years ago, that Curt Shaw knew military service was imminent. He and a friend heard on the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
Three years later, the Carver native served in one of the deadliest battles in world military history, the Battle of Bulge. He survived. An estimated 8,600 U.S./British force members did not.
On this past Thursday, Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day, Shaw turned 100. A resident at Clifton Assisted Living Community on Wilbur Avenue, he was honored with a military-seasoned birthday party in the Clifton first-floor function room.
Somerset Veterans Service Officer Joshua Rancourt presented Shaw, a U.S. Army veteran, with a certificate, a challenge coin and an American flag. “He deserves special recognition,” Rancourt said.
Wearing a World War II baseball cap, Shaw, just before his party began, recalled the Battle of the Bulge, Germany's last major campaign on the Western Front in WWII. The five-week battle lasted from December of 1944 to January 28, 1945, and was fought in the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg.
The Allies costly victory threw Germany into retreat for the rest of the war.
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Shaw was a medic in the 150th Combat Battalion of Engineers, the battalion well known in military history for building the Bailey Bridges which facilitated moving Allied vehicles, as large as tanks, across rivers. “We had a great outfit,” Shaw said on Thursday.
As a medic, Shaw's work during the Battle of the Bulge was almost non-stop. The fighting was ferocious. The Bulge was the largest and deadliest battle fought by the U.S. in WWII and third deadliest in American history.
“The Germans, they were good; they were tough,” Shaw said. “But the Germans, they obeyed the rules of war. If they got a prisoner, they kept him. They didn't shoot him or anything. The Germans were good. They were fair. But they had to be out there to win.”
Total U.S./British Bulge casualties have been estimated to be as high as 83,000-plus.
“We would patch up the wound, and if they got bad, we'd send the men back to the hospital, if they got hit too bad,” said Shaw, who reached the rank of sergeant.
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Post military, Shaw had a career as a data processor with General Electric. He and his first wife, Jeannette, had five children — Candace, Priscilla, Bill and twins John and Lisa. Jeannette died in 1967. In 1970, Shaw married his current wife Frances. Fifty-three years into their marriage, they're happy residents at Clifton.
Over the eight decades since the end of WWII, Shaw said the 150th Combat Battalion of Engineers has held about 50 reunions. “We'd get together every year. And we finally decided,” he said with a laugh, “that if it wasn't for our outfit, we would have lost the war.”
Shaw was presented with a congratulatory letter signed by President Joe Biden.
Also on hand to honor Shaw on Thursday were Glenn Doup, representing American Legion Post 228; local VFW Commander David Aubry; Emile Lamontagne of the Marine Corps League; Clifton resident and U.S. Marine Corps veteran Shaun Fitzpatrick; and state Rep. Patricia Haddad.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Somerset centenarian recalls experience at Battle of the Bulge
