THANKS UNCLE ROSS

Photo by Dave Polcyn, Mansfield (OH) NewsJournal

I knew my uncle Ross Cody was in the army in World War II because I have a photo of me with him in his uniform. What I didn’t know until 2004 was that he was a distinguished participant in that great war. It was then that he finally received the medals to which he was due.These included two Purple Hearts, a Combat Infantry Badge and a Silver Star.  (He is shown above with those medals in a photo taken by Dave Polcyn of the Mansfield NewsJournal in December of 2009.) When the medals finally arrived after a battle with the bureaucracy, Ross became a celebrity in the Ashland, Ohio, area where he now lives.

The article accompanying the photo, written by Ron Simon, told me more about my uncle’s service than I had known while growing up. In that article, from his interview with Ross, Simon writes this about my uncle’s service with the 101st Airborne and the Silver Star:

Somewhere near Bastogne, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge, Cody was leading a patrol across an open field when German 88 guns opened fire.

“Let’s get out of here”, he said

“We made it to a house and when I looked back I saw four of my men (he was a squad leader) still out in that field. So I went out to get them.”

Cody and three men made it back alive. One did not.

“So I guess I got that medal for being stupid,” Cody said with a wry grin.

Uncle Ross was also involved in the D-Day invasion at Normandy going across the Channel in a glider filled with explosives. His mission was to go behind enemy lines and cause enough explosions to make the Germans retreat from the beach. His military career ended with an injury from a shell blast near his fox hole at Bastogne.

In another article in the Ashland (OH) Times-Gazette, written by Jarred Opatz, Ross is quoted as saying:

“I just tried to stay alive when I was in the service. I didn’t consider that any of us guys were heroes or anything like that. You Just wanted to stay alive.”

Well, Uncle Ross, today there are many of us who consider “you guys” as heroes. That’s why we will always remember you on Veteran’s Day.

In a strange coincidence, Uncle Ross may have a connection with Yuma and the Desert Southwest where I now live. When I moved here and told him about the desert he said he remembered training in the desert somewhere. I can’t document it, but I would hazard a guess that he spent time at Camp Laguna near Yuma in land now occupied by the U. S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground.