Bob Barrett

Fayetteville Observer, December 29, 2008

A man of vision both past and now

Published on Monday, December 29, 2008 A man of vision both past and now Roy Parker ADVERTISEMENT My dear friend Dick (Richard J.) Seitz, retired three-star general and former top man at Fort Bragg, has always been on the cutting edge. Past 90 but ever looking forward, he has been called to head his local community’s planning effort to prepare for the 21st century future of Junction City, Kan. He has lived in retirement in the community since turning over command of Fort Bragg and the 18th Corps in 1975. They have even named a street for him. Just recently, his 35-year dream of using the waste of an Army post to produce power is being realized at nearby Fort Riley, Kan., with the launching of a waste-to-energy initiative. The plan has a target date of Nov. 11, 2011, when a civilian-built facility will begin converting Fort Riley’s 25-tons-per-day waste stream to energy. He sent me a copy of the initiative timeline with a note: “Roy, after 35 years, I see light at the end of the tunnel!” I wrote about Dick Seitz last year on the day Fayetteville finally began recycling its municipal waste, because he is in a real sense the granddaddy of the story of recycling hereabouts. Seitz already was a zealot for recycling when he arrived at Fort Bragg in 1973. He pressed civilian friends to find a way to add the post’s huge waste stream to the municipal stream to produce power for both. Seitz and I took command on the same day. He as Bragg’s boss, and I as editor of the newly established morning newspaper, The Fayetteville Times. You can bet that among our first editorial stands was to back Seitz’s waste-to-energy plan. Lots of folks figured him as a nut, and it was not an editorial campaign that saw fruition. Until last year. Thirty-five years is a long time to wait to see your vision realized. But at long last, Dick Seitz is the fellow with the double brass ring for a solid vision. Sixty-four years ago, on a snow-swept battleground in Belgium, 28-year-old Seitz, then a lieutenant colonel commanding the Second Battalion of the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment, found himself on another cutting edge. It was in the waist-deep snow and freezing weather of a Belgian winter, the winter of that famous World War II struggle, the Battle of the Bulge. He was called to spearhead a mid-January drive to recapture the vital town of St. Vith as Allied forces moved to eliminate the Bulge. And Seitz’s paratroopers were in a unique role as the cutting edge of a mission assigned to a whole combat command of the 7th Armored Division. Lined up behind Seitz’s paratroopers were scores of tanks, waiting for the signal that the paratroopers had cleared the way. The commander of the tank force, Col. Bill Triplett, had decided that the preliminaries should be left to the paratroopers, to clear the patchwork of small forests and open terrain, to shatter German defenses that could stop his tanks from ambush and otherwise. He called on the paratroopers and gave them some additional combat heft to augment their typical small-arms weaponry. Seitz headed a “Task Force Seitz” built around his battalion of airborne infantry and a company of 7th Armored tanks, equipped with some half-tracks, a detachment of engineers, and some self-propelled anti-tank guns. In twin attacks on two days, one after dark and the other in late evening, Seitz sent the Germans reeling back to the village of Hunnange, which was the gateway to St. Vith. In both attacks, paratroopers had to cross long stretches of open ground. With all guns blazing and with a massive artillery support fire, they locked up the crossroads village and waited in broad daylight for the huge armored assault that came behind them headed for the next stop, St. Vith. Seitz later recalled the moment when the armor rolled past, accompanied by “photographers and all the newspaper people with 18th Airborne Corps.” The battered battalion, which lost more than 400 of the original 600 who entered Belgium only four weeks earlier, won acclaim for its grueling feat in the freezing evenings of a Belgian January. Seitz and his men were nominated for a Presidential Unit Citation, but in the confused business of the Bulge, the award was never made. Col. Triplett, who assigned Seitz the spearhead mission, wrote to airborne historians: “I was and still am impressed by the quiet courage and capable, uncomplaining performance of Seitz and his crew.” The bulge was a German penetration of Allied lines along the border between Hitler’s Germany and Belgium. Germans stormed out of the winter cold on Dec. 16, 1944, pouring in everything they had left in a desperate attempt to knock U.S. and British forces all the way back to the port city of Antwerp. Paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions rode trucks to draw defensive positions on the “shoulders” of the bulge in their lines, the 82nd on the north around St. Vith, and troopers of the 101st sited on the town of Bastogne in the south. Bastogne held. St. Vith, defended by the 7th Armored, fell to the Germans. The 517th PIR was thrown into the airborne mix along with several other formerly unattached units. The previous big mission of the regiment had been five months earlier, when it assaulted the sunny southern coast of France. By the time of its spearhead mission, Seitz’s battered battalion had lost half its men during earlier struggles in the snow. Dick Seitz went on to a 35-year airborne career that included service in Korea, command of the 82nd Airborne Division during the Vietnam War and his pinnacle command at Fort Bragg in 1973. He has never lost his love of airborne soldiers. He signs every Christmas card with: “airborne!” And he has never lost his propensity to get out there on the cutting edge. Roy Parker can receive messages at roypark2@aol.com or 486-3585.