World War Two Veteran Speaks to FAU Students

            By Prof. Doug McGetchin

 

            Mr. Reg Shepherd was able to pass on the legacy of a life rich with memories to a classroom of students at Florida Atlantic University’s MacArthur Campus in Jupiter on March 14, 2007.  The venue was a history class on the Second World War.

 

            Mr. Shepherd gave a moving overview of his time as a British soldier during the Second World War in North Africa, his capture at Tobruk, and his time as an Italian and then German Prisoner of War (POW).  He pointed out how he actually benefited from his time as a prisoner, as he got to practice art and learned how to do drama, interests he pursued after the war.

 

            The classroom visit was a moving and memorable event for the students, instructor, and guests. Mr. Shepherd brought a picture album, and with the technology available in the classroom we were able to project images from his youth onto a screen, including tourist photos of Egypt during the war, pictures as a Prisoner of War, and production photos of dramas after the war.

 

            His voice faltered a little when he related how as the Germans captured the fortress of Tobruk, they threw grenades into caves where fellow British soldiers were hiding.  Rather than risk being killed, Mr. Shepherd and the other soldiers decided to give up.

 

            Mr. Shepherd surprised us by also talking about the sympathetic feelings he had for Germans and Italian enemies, and that these feelings were also present on the Axis side during the war.  The German POW camp commander had been a prisoner of the British during the First World War, and had grown fond of the British in their captivity, so he was also favorably predisposed to his British prisoners during the Second World War.  When the train carrying the prisoners went through Italy, the local Italian people waved to the British soldiers.  As the train stopped, they ran up to the train and gave the British prisoners food.

 

            While they were prisoners, their hunger caused them to take chances, risking German punishment.  While working for the railroads, they would “accidentally” drop boxes containing food shipments, and then distribute the contents among the fellow prisoners. While working for the German mail service, they did what amounted to sabotage of the German war effort.  They would secretly open a letter with a candy bar in it, eat the contents, and then reseal the letter and send it on its way.  The cost to German troop morale caused by the missing chocolate must have been considerable.

 

            Mr. Shepherd seemed to shine the most when he talked about his theatrical experiences both in prison camp and after the war. He took his place at center stage and boldly delivered a theatrical speech, evoking spontaneous applause.  He still knew his lines well.

 

            The students asked many questions of Mr. Shepherd, about the guards, the food, what the hardest part was about being a prisoner.  One student asked what the scariest moment was, and he surprisingly said when the Allies bombed, because one never knew where the bombs would land exactly.

 

Mr. Shepherd’s wife Pat and son Brad were there for his talk as well.  Towards the end of the class Pat related her experiences under German bombing attack during the Blitz on London early in the war.  One of the students in the class later interviewed her for the term paper she was writing on women’s experiences in the war.

 

I found out about Mr. Shepherd when my wife Joy read the local North Palm Beach Heights newspaper and said, “You’ve got to read this,” all about this fascinating man who was in North Africa during the Second World War and then was a Prisoner Of War of the Germans. 

 

            I thought Mr. Shepherd would be a great person to talk to my Second World War class, as I had invited veteran guest speakers before when I was teaching a similar class in San Diego at the University of California, San Diego.  I had arranged for two former POWs to come to the classroom to tell about their wartime experiences. 

 

One, held by the Nazis, was a Jewish American POW who was trying desperately to hide his Jewish identity.  The other was captured on the fortress of Corregidor in the Philippines and held by the Japanese for three and a half years under brutal conditions.  When I introduced him to the class, I said he had been a prisoner for three years.  He corrected me: “Three and a half.”  When starving and abused, a half year is an eternity that one remembers significantly. 

 

That class in San Diego was riveting; the students were very attentive and asked thoughtful questions.  It was exciting as a professor to be able to bring history alive in that way for my students.  It meant so much for the veterans and their wives as well.  So I was looking forward to another fruitful interaction with Mr. Shepherd, and was not disappointed. As an instructor, I am deeply grateful that the Shepherd family agreed to speak to my class.

 

The students at FAU also commented about how special it was to be able to talk with someone who was actually there during the events they are reading about and studying.  About Mr. Shepherd’s visit, one FAU student said, “It will stay with me always.”

 

I would like to make a larger point here to all our elderly veterans and their families.  Their sacrifices and stories will stay with us only as long as we keep their memory alive by recording it for future generations.  These veterans, these valuable eyewitnesses with their living statements, are passing away all too quickly.  It is my hope and request to anyone reading this article that veterans (and civilians) who lived through difficult times in the past, who have not yet joined their comrades on the other side of the veil of life, work now to speak with their family and, better yet, write their memoirs.  Work to create historical records so that future generations will know what happened to them. 

 

One of the texts I use for my class is Pulitzer Prize-winning Studs Terkel’s “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II (New York: The New Press, 1997).  It is full of fascinating, distressing, and even funny eyewitness accounts by participants, and not just soldiers, but war workers, women, people of color, interned Japanese-Americans, and so on.  These firsthand accounts of the past are vital to understanding what happened.  I encourage you to write your own memoir or help a loved one put together theirs. 

 

Start this process today.  If these elderly guardians of our human past modestly say that what they did was not very important, remind them that historians are interested in much more than the actions of generals and politicians.  The life and experiences of average people is important and studied seriously by social and cultural historians.  Leave a record not only for one’s personal family, but for the larger human family to which we all belong.