Spencer F. Wurst

Born: 19 Dec 1924
Enlistment date: 19 Apr 1940
Deployments: Europe 
Units: 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, F Co. 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment 82nd Airborne.
Rank: Colonel
Specializations:
Qualifications: Combat Infantryman Badge
Decorations:  Silver Star, Bronze Star, Purple Heart with One Oak Leave Cluster, Combat Infantry Badge, Parachute Wings with 3 Combat Jump Stars, ETO Campaign Ribbon with 6 Bronze Campaign Stars and 1 Invasion Arrowhead, Presidential Unit Citation with One Gold Cluster, Dutch Orange Lanyard 2 Awards, France Fourageres 3 Awards, Belgium Fourageres Award
Service Awards:
1. Good Conduct Medal
2. NG Achievement Medal
3. American Defense Service Medal
4. American campaign Medal
5. Occupation Campaign Medal
6. National Defense Service Medal
7. Armed Forces Reserve, Army with Hour Glass
8. Victory Medal WWII
9. NATO Medal
10. Ten Pennsylvania State Service Awards
11. New York State decoration Medal

Retired Date: April 1975

Other Information:

Colonel Spencer F. Wurst (USA, retired)
Author
Descending from the Clouds:
A Memoir of Combat with the 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82d Airborne Division

Spencer Wurst lied about his age and joined the National Guard at age 15 in Erie, Pennsylvania on April 19, 1940. After mobilization, he quit school at 16 and trained with the 112th Infantry, the 28th Division, before transferring to the newly formed parachute infantry. In 1941, he participated in the famous 1st Army maneuvers in North and South Carolina, and he was on a truck with other solders returning from maneuvers to Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in Pennsylvania when the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced. He spent time at Camps Livingston and Beauregard in Louisiana, and then trained in the newly formed Parachute School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was stationed in the infamous "Frying Pan" area.
By age 17, Wurst was proudly wearing his wings as a newly qualified paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division. He writes: "The training, tactics, organization and everything else that had to do with parachute troops were completely new, and the 82nd Airborne could not afford the time to perfect procedures before heading off for combat. The United States had no doctrine about airborne warfare, and the Army had never written anything about parachute operations: we wrote the book as we went along, and we added, changed, and deleted as we matured."
Wurst served in the European Theater of Operations from North Africa in 1943 through Germany in 1945. For most of this time, he was a squad leader in Company F, 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, the famous unit that liberated the first town in Normandy, France, Ste.-Mère-Eglise (portrayed in the classic film The Longest Day).
Wurst made three of the four combat jumps with the 505, earning two Purple Hearts in Normandy, the first one on D-Day in the perimeter defense of Ste.-Mère- Eglise. He won the Silver Star for his role in the battle of the highway bridge in Nijmegen, Holland, and is featured in Cornelius Ryan's famous account of the Holland Mission, A Bridge Too Far. He is one of the few surviving members of the famed 2nd Battalion, 505, led by the equally famous Col. Benjamin Vandervoort.
Col. Wurst may well be the only non-commissioned officer of the 505, and
perhaps of the entire 82nd Airborne, to recount his personal experience and development throughout the entire war. His memoir takes the reader through his time in North Africa in a “replacement packet” (or EGB), then goes to Sicily and Italy, where he made the first of his three combat jumps and received his baptism of fire in the Battle of Arnone. It then proceeds to his next two jumps, in France and Holland (described above), and his participation in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, and in "Death Valley" of the Hurtgen Forest, where the 505 PIR crossed onto German soil. In the interstices of battle, he describes daily life and training in camps in Northern Ireland, England and France.
The memoir presents strong, detailed accounts of front-line battle from the soldier's point of view. Throughout the war, Col. Wurst was either a squad sergeant or a platoon sergeant, which makes his story all the rarer, as very few men on the lines in these positions survived to tell the tale: on average, less than 20 men per company who had started with the 505 in the Frying Pan returned home.
Near the end of the war, Wurst attended Officer’s Candidate Training School in Fontainebleau, France, and graduated first in his class. After V-E Day, he elected not to
stay with the Division for occupation duty in Berlin, and was flown home on the “Green Project,” as one of the highest of the "high point" men in the 82nd Airborne.
Back in his native Erie, Wurst returned to the 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division, where he had a successful career as a platoon leader, company commander, regimental S-3 and finally, commander of the 112th Infantry, the unit he first joined as a 15 year-old boy. His 35 years of service include two years active duty as a tank company commander in one of the first four American divisions of NATO. He retired in 1975 as Colonel. Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3 for the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.
In 1990, Spencer F. Wurst was named a "distinguished member of the 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment" by the Secretary of the Army, in recognition of his "special place in regimental continuity, tradition, and esprit de corps." He was inducted into the OCS Hall of Fame at Fort Benning in 2000. In 2004, he served as President of the 112th Infantry Regiment Association. For the 60th anniversary of Market Garden, World War II magazine published his account of the battle for Hunner Park, “Against All Possible Fire” (September 2004). His memoir of his war experiences, Descending from the Clouds, was published by Casemate Publishers in 2005 to excellent reviews. It was chosen as a main selection of the Military Book Club in February 2005, and is featured in the History Book Club. In a starred review, the Library Journal calls Descending from the Clouds “a subdued yet graphic and compelling narrative” which “ranks as one of the best war memoirs written by a World War II veteran.”
Colonel Wurst’s combat decorations and awards include: Silver Star Metal; Bronze Star Metal; Purple Heart with one Oak Leaf Cluster; Europe-Africa-Middle East Metal with an Invasion Spearhead, one Silver Campaign Star (5 campaigns), and one Bronze Campaign Star for a total of Six Campaigns; Combat Infantry Badge; Parachute Wings with Three Combat Jump Stars; and Presidential Unit Citation with Cluster (two awards). He also received the following Foreign Combat unit Awards: French Fourragères (three awards); Dutch Orange Lanyards (two awards); Belgian Fourragères. During his 35 years of service from 1940 to 1975, he received Twelve Non-combat Army Service Awards and numerous Pennsylvania Army National Guard Awards.