High honor for local veteran
Warren Fisher recognized for role liberating France during WWII
GWYNEDD >> Warren Fisher’s memory of the Battle of Colmar is vivid. The French have not forgotten, either.
Wednesday, Fisher received the Légion d’honneur, the highest award established by France, for his service during World War II, particularly during the Battle of Colmar Pocket — Dec. 15, 1944, to Feb. 19, 1945 — to push the German Army out of the Alsace city of Colmar.
A member of the 28th Division — the Pennsylvania Division — of the U.S. Army 109th Infantry, the 91-year-old Foulkeways at Gwynedd resident recalled July 27 that the objective was to push the German Army from Colmar to the Rhine.
After the Battle of the Bulge, Fisher said, the 28th Division pushed the Germans to the plain of Colmar.
“We had a huge battle,” he said. “It was so cold the rifles wouldn’t work, so we took aircraft artillery and made it horizontal and used it like a machine gun.”
The unusual thing, he recalled, was that a German general declared Colmar an open city, “so we went right through the city and resumed battle on the other side, so the city was not destroyed, and we pushed them to the Rhine.”
The only thing he could imagine, Fisher said, was that the German general thought Germany would win the war, and “he maybe thought Colmar would become a German city.”
The 28th Division, which was under the leadership of French General Charles de Gaulle during those battles in France, received the Croix de Guerre, the highest French military medal, for its service, but not the individual soldiers, he said.
Michael Scullin, the honorary counsel of France in Philadelphia and Wilmington, presented the French medal of honor to Fisher during a ceremony at Foulkeways July 27.
The Légion d’honneur “recognizes all the personal sacrifices you made in the liberation of France and Europe,” Scullin said. “France knows and will always remember the price paid there.”
The awarding of the medal serves as Fisher’s “induction as a knight in the Legion of Honor,” Scullin said.
State Rep. Kate Harper, R-61, who attended the ceremony and pinned the medal on Fisher, read a history of the service by the 28th Division during the Battle of the Bulge and ensuing battles, noting its reputation as a fierce fighting unit earned it the nickname “the Bloody Bucket Division.”
At one point “outnumbered, overrun and cut off … outstanding acts of bravery became routine,” she said. “The Keystone [Division] men smashed through the enemy and lived up to
“[The Légion d’honneur] recognizes all the personal sacrifices you made in the liberation of France and Europe. France knows and will always remember the price paid there.” — Michael Scullin, the honorary counsel of France in Philadelphia and Wilmington
its slogan ‘28th roll on.’”
Fisher, who had also earned three Combat Stars and the Combat Infantryman Badge, served as an infantryman, intelligence observer and sharpshooter during the war.
A “[U.S.] State Department brat,” Fisher was born in Germany in 1925 while his father was a diplomat in the American Embassy. His family left a year later, went to Belgrade, then Athens and the Hague and eventually
to Canada, coming back to the United States when he was 11, he said.
Drafted in 1944 at the age of 18, Fisher went to training in Louisiana and at age 19 was among 15,000 soldiers sent to fight in Europe, crossing on the Queen Elizabeth, which, he said, was the fastest ship. It took six days, as the ship had to zigzag its way across the ocean to avoid German submarines, he said.
Though not part of the landing at Normandy, Fisher, a private first class, served as an infantryman in the Battle of the Bulge and then in the intelligence battalion, returning to the states on Aug. 6, 1945, the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
After his honorable discharge, Fisher earned a degree in chemical engineering and worked for FMC in Philadelphia for a total of 44 years and holds three patents.
“It is a great honor,” he said, glancing down at the medal pinned to his jacket.
Asked how he could recall the war so vividly after more than 70 years, he responded, “There was all this artillery — shells 24 hours a day. It was constant.
“It’s hard to forget.”