Shadows Reel (Joe Pickett #22)(37)
Dick Kizer was born September 3, 1921, in Medicine Bow, Wyoming, to a pioneering ranch family. The Kizer family moved to Casper in 1930 and later to their sheep ranch east of Saddlestring in 1938. Kizer graduated from Saddlestring High School in 1940.
In 1941, 20-year-old Kizer joined the U.S. Army and was assigned to Easy Company of the 2nd Battalion, the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, under Major Dick Winters. As one of the “Band of Brothers,” Kizer landed in Europe during the invasion of Normandy and remained with the unit all the way through the Battle of the Bulge and beyond. Easy Company was the first American contingent to reach “The Eagle’s Nest”—Hitler’s Alpine retreat of Berchtesgaden. He was one of two Wyoming soldiers to stay with Easy Company throughout the war.
After World War II, Kizer returned to the valley and married Lorena “Dottie” Neil. He worked as a ranch foreman, a roofing contractor, a school janitor, and a fishing guide. Dick enjoyed hunting, fishing, camping, and attending rodeos.
Dick Kizer was preceded in death by Dottie. They had one son, Wilbur “Bert” Kizer, also of Saddlestring.
Bingo.
Marybeth sat back in her chair, her head spinning.
She leaned over her keyboard and keyed “Easy Company” and “WWII” into the search engine and was suddenly awash with items pertaining to the “Band of Brothers,” “Major Dick Winters,” “Stephen Ambrose,” and scores of other hits. What interested her most was the shoulder insignia of Easy Company.
It was the same patch Joe had photographed on the army uniform.
She sipped her tea and tried to imagine what it must have been like for a local ranch boy who had probably never traveled out of state in his young life, much less internationally, to be sent to Europe to storm the beaches of Normandy and then push through France, Holland, Belgium, and into the heart of Nazi Germany. The things he must have seen and experienced!
And then to return home after the war to be a . . . school janitor.
It boggled her mind. But his service and exploits must have impressed his son, she thought. Bert kept his father’s military uniform and souvenirs close to him. Although Marybeth knew nothing about Dick Kizer, she imagined him to be similar to older men she’d met who survived World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. They kept to themselves, spoke very little about their experiences during the war, and went on with life.
She contrasted that to the self-aggrandizing photo album of Julius Streicher and thought, Thank God the good guys won.
* * *
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The reference in the obituary to another Wyoming resident in Easy Company intrigued her. Always the least-populated state in the nation, Wyoming had only 250,000 residents in 1940. That two of them were in one of the most storied units of World War II was a remarkable coincidence.
After checking the internal temperature of the turkey, she returned to her laptop and did a new search using the words “Band of Brothers,” “Wyoming soldier,” and “Major Dick Winters.”
No mentions of Dick Kizer came up, but there were plenty of quotes from Major Winters and many more items about the Band of Brothers television miniseries and the book by historian Stephen Ambrose.
A photo of Major Winters showed him to be a strikingly handsome and masculine man. After the original Band of Brothers book and series came out, he’d apparently written a book of his own titled Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters.
She did a new search, this time using the words “Band of Brothers,” “WWII,” “Easy Company,” “Dick Kizer,” and “Wyoming.”
Again, nothing with Kizer’s name appeared, but another highlighted name came up several times. The name was Alton More.
She continued down this rabbit hole until she found several quotes from both Ambrose’s book and Winters’s memoir. They were in regard to the fact that Alton More was one of the very first soldiers to enter Hitler’s Alpine Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden in 1944.
According to Ambrose, American soldiers looted the Nazi sanctuary room by room, scooping up everything they could find. Alton More located two of Adolf Hitler’s personal photo albums and pilfered them. The albums were reportedly filled with original photos of the famous politicians of Europe who had been guests of the Führer. When a superior officer learned of the find, he ordered More to hand over the albums, and later a high-ranking French officer demanded the same thing. Winters, who had commanded More across all of Europe, blocked the orders. He told More he could keep what he’d found.
According to Winters in his memoir, he protected More and his loot from being confiscated by French, Russian, and British high command. Since More was his personal driver, the two of them concocted a scheme in which More could keep the albums hidden out of sight in a secret compartment in Winters’s Jeep until he could smuggle them back to the States.
Winters himself was proud of what he’d liberated, and wrote, “We walked into the main dining room where we encountered one very brave waiter . . . Today we are still using the silverware from the Berchtesgaden Hof in our homes.”
Marybeth dug deeper.
Alton More, like Dick Kizer, returned to Wyoming immediately after the war. More went back to his hometown of Casper, where he married and went to work as a traveling salesman for Folger’s Coffee. As word got out that he had in his possession two of Hitler’s photo albums, he was approached by both private collectors and the German government to sell them. Before he could decide what to do with the albums, More was killed in 1958 when his car hit a horse seventeen miles outside of Casper. He was thirty-eight years old.