Lyme Resident Keeps Uncle’s Wartime Memory Alive at Memorial Day Ceremony

LYME, CT – Massachusetts native Col. Richard W. Ellison was captured twice by the Germans during World War II. He fought in Korea. He died in Vietnam.  

On this Memorial Day, in the meeting room of the Lyme Town Hall while rain soaked the Veterans Memorial outside, resident Jim Beers remembered his uncle by introducing a letter written by Ellison’s boyhood friend.

The letter, sent to Ellison’s parents on Feb. 24, 1945 – just over two months’ shy of the Germans’ unconditional surrender – was an effort by U.S. Navy Ensign Ray Aldrich to comfort them after learning Ellison was missing in action. 

From a cargo ship in the South Pacific, Aldrich predicted “a judgment day” was near. 

“This day, when it comes, is not going to bring back lives that have been lost, it is not going to mend broken bodies, and twisted minds, it’s not going to soothe the hearts of those who are at loss,” he wrote. “But it’s going to make a good and safe place for a new generation.” 

The brief ceremony, held by the Lyme Veterans Committee, drew just over 30 people. It included a moment of silence for Warren Crook and Frederick Czikowsky, the two Lyme service members killed during WWII, and for more than 20 residents who died in other military conflicts. A recording of taps played on a speaker. 

Afterward, Beers and his partner, Shelley Bailey, said the letter was among more than 200 missives found in the barn of Ellison’s brother. 

“Uncle Dick was killed when I was nine,” Beers said. “So I never really got to know him. But I read these 200-something letters and, for the first time, I felt like I knew my Uncle Dick.” 

Beers said early letters showed his uncle was, like many young men, “itching to get to the front.” But pages scribbled from a French village under artillery fire suggested the young soldier had begun to ask himself why he’d been so eager to see combat. 

“Shortly after that, he was captured,” Beers said. 

He recounted Ellison’s imprisonment in early 1945 at a camp in Hammelburg, Germany, the same place where Gen. George Patton’s son-in-law was being held. When Patton launched a risky raid about 30 miles behind enemy lines to rescue prisoners, the chaos created an opportunity for Ellison and another prisoner to escape.

The two men were able to obtain enemy uniforms and make it to the front lines separating the German and Allied armies. But when they got to a German sentry who wanted to know which company they were with, Ellison’s German-speaking companion answered with a letter designation common in the American military – not the numbered designation used by the Germans. 

“That gave them away,” Beers said. 

It was late April. Ellison spent the remaining weeks of the war in solitary confinement until the Germans surrendered on May 8. 

Bailey, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1982-90, said remembrances like Monday morning’s ceremony are crucial to keeping memories alive. 

“We are getting to that point where people are forgetting all these stories,” she said.  

Beers, describing himself as an amateur historian, said he prefers to remember. 

“I had relatives that fought on both sides in the Civil War. And I had relatives that fought on both sides in the Revolutionary War,” he said. “History is never pretty or clean or easy.” 

Editor’s Note: This article was updated to correct the name of Jim Beers.