He was a conscientious objector at first, but Eddie Wagner changed his mind after Pearl Harbor—and ended

up becoming a war hero.

THE RELUCTANTSOLDIER

On the day before he died, Eddie Wagner wrote an encourag-ing letter to a friend back at Penn State. “I have developed anear for the whine of artillery,” he wrote, “when to dive for thisfoxhole of mine, and when to take it easy since I know it’ssomebody else who is catching the hell.” That was June 27,

1944. At that point, the 25-year-old lieutenant from Harrisburg, Pa., threeyears removed from his graduation from Penn State, had already spentthree weeks in the thick of the Allied invasion of Normandy, half of thattime behind German lines. Back on June 6, hours before the main D-Day

By Walton R. Collins

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assault force stormed the beaches, a misplacedparachute drop had deposited his paratroop regi-ment far from the 5,000-ship Allied armada poisedoff Normandy’s beaches.

On June 28, Harry Edward Wagner’s ear forartillery failed him, and he was killed in action. Hebecame another fatality in a unit that lost as much astwo-thirds of its personnel in the weeks after D-Day.

Sixteen years later, the University honored hismemory when it dedicated the Wagner Building asthe new home of ROTC training facilities. The ironyof that dedication was largely lost on the attendees,but not on his closest friends: They rememberedthat Wagner ’41 Lib began his college years as aconscientious objector.

In the end, though, Wagner was not a reluctant sol-dier. And he knew exactly what his odds were on June6, 1944, when he stepped out of a lumbering twin-engine C-47 transport plane at approximately 2:30 inthe morning and plunged into the dark unknown.

“I jumped last man in my plane,” he wrote in thatfinal letter. “I wouldn’t be far wrong, I know, if I saidthat I dropped farther from the planned Drop Zone,and farther inside enemy positions, than anyparachutist in either of the Airborne Divisions theU.S. Army announced using on D-Day.” It took morethan a week of hiding, hiking, and fighting before hemade it back to American lines—and his appoint-ment with death.

Few Americans born later than 1930 recallthat many members of “the greatest genera-tion” were firmly isolationist in the yearsbefore America entered World War II. Hitlerwas simply a guy who made the trains run

and built autobahns and helped the German peopleput behind them the humiliation of World War I andthe punitive peace that followed it.

What’s more, according to classmate and closefriend Adam “Bud” Smyser ’41 Com, Eddie Wagner“hated the very idea of war.” In a 1991 article in Town& Gown magazine, 10 years before his own death,Smyser wrote: “Even after Hitler triggered WorldWar II with his invasion of Poland … we hopedAmerica could stay out of it.”

Wagner couldn’t stay out of it, though he tried.Soon after he got his diploma in January 1941, fivemonths ahead of the rest of his class, the draft

caught up with him despite his attempts to be classi-fied as a conscientious objector. Protestants couldn’tqualify as conscientious objectors, the draft boardresponded; only Quakers could. That spring he wasordered to report for his pre-induction physical,even though he was still on the Penn State campustaking graduate courses.

“We gathered in the Lion’s Paw room in Old Mainthe night before the induction physical, determined torender Eddie unfit to pass it,” wrote Smyser, referringto the secret campus society they both belonged to.His friends kept him awake all night with cup aftercup of coffee. They made him run up and down stairsand around the outside of Old Main until dawn.“Finally,” according to Smyser’s memoir, “he headedoff to the physical exam with what we hoped would besuch a degree of exhaustion that he wouldn’t pass it.”

It didn’t work. Wagner was inducted and tappedfor Officer Candidate School. He won his second lieu-tenant’s bars and then—“out of sheer boredom,” hetold a friend—he volunteered for the paratroops.

Then came Pearl Harbor. “December 7 changed the thinking of all of us,”

wrote Smyser. “Instead of trying any longer to keepAmerica uninvolved, we … set out to demolish Hitler,Mussolini, and Tojo.” T

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� UNLIKELY HERO: As an under-graduate, Eddie Wagner was PhiBeta Kappa and president of theInterfraternity Council. Likemany Americans, he initiallyopposed American involvementin World War II, but Pearl Harborchanged his opinion. Today theROTC building at University Parkhonors his memory.

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The Lion’s Paw group was a tight-knit bandof top students. One of its members wasDonald Davis ’42 Com, who now splits hisresidence between Martha’s Vineyard andHobe Sound, Fla. Davis remembers Wagner

as more mature and sophisticated than his peers. “Hewas like an adult among kids,” Davis recalled recently.“We often had breakfast together on Sundays—waf-fles and link sausages. I was a year behind him and Iwas flattered with the relationship.”

Wagner certainly fit the definition of a Big Man onCampus. Tall for the times at just under six feet, slen-der, and sandy-haired, he was Phi Beta Kappa and hebelonged to Skull and Bones, Blue Key, the Phi EtaSigma and Pi Gamma Mu honor societies, the profes-sional fraternity Delta Sigma Pi, All-College Cabinet,and Student Union Board. He served as president ofPhi Delta Theta social fraternity and of the University’sInterfraternity Council, as well as putting in three yearsas assistant manager of the football and track teams.

He took his IFC duties seriously. In October 1940he called a meeting of all fraternity presidents to dis-cuss ways to pay for $42 worth of damages done tostreet signs in a pajama parade at the Pi KappaAlpha house. He is quoted in a Collegian story ashoping that those houses “whose members wereresponsible” would volunteer to help pay for thedamage—in spite of the fact that at an earlier meet-ing, the 14 house presidents in attendance insistednone of their members took part in the parade.

He could also be hard-nosed when it was called for.In a pronouncement later that month, he warned thatviolations of the Interfraternity Council dating codewould not be tolerated. The ultimate penalty would bea semester’s withdrawal of social privileges, and hepromised to “do our utmost to enforce the code.”

Contemporaries have memories of him that some-times verge on awe. William “Pappy” Bartholomew’41 Agr, for instance, wrote about him in a 1991 letterto Town & Gown that was full of words like integrity,intelligence, and loyalty. And one of Wagner’s room-mates, Charles “Matt” Mattern ’42 Lib, who died in1996, remembered Wagner in a 1991 letter simply as

“the brightest, kindest, most considerate and givingperson I’ve ever known.”

Wagner apparently had an adventurous side. JackBrand ’41 Lib, a Lion’s Paw member in 1941 whonow lives in Sun City Center, Fla., recalls that, notlong before Wagner reported for service, he thoughtit would be fun if all the members of Lion’s Paw tooka midnight swim in the women’s pool in AthertonHall. They could storm that fortress, he said, byentering through a ventilation tunnel. But his pals,wary of the consequences if they were caught, werenot quite so adventurous and the idea was scrapped.

Wagner’s adventurous streak shows inhis attitude toward paratroopertraining. In a letter to Mattern in1942 from Fort Benning, Ga., wherehe was training for jump school, he

wrote: “The boys run eight or 10 miles a day and submittheir Spartan bodies to the roughest sort of calisthenicsuntil they can do the mile in 5:15. From here they moveon to the tower jumping, which according to almostuniversal opinion is more fearsome than plane jump-ing. Here, too, occur most of the accidents. A friend ofmine cracked his leg bones from ankle to hip comingoff the towers…. Hell, Matt, it’s a great outfit.” Thoseeight- to 10-mile runs often took place before breakfastand were capped by a dozen pull-ups. More than 50percent of the trainees dropped out of the program.Wagner not only survived but earned an acceleratedpromotion to first lieutenant in March of ’42.

December of 1943, when America was beginning togear up for the European Theatre invasion, foundWagner in Northern Ireland with the 507th ParachuteInfantry Regiment. During a Christmas-day bicycletrip through the Irish countryside he was struck byhow familiar the surroundings felt. “Except for a fewsmall differences,” he wrote in a letter dated Jan. 1,1944, “I could have been going through a part of Penn-sylvania.” He added that he preferred Northern Ireland“to any station I had in the States…. Perhaps it’sbecause they speak the same language here that they

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do in Harrisburg.” There is also a hint of wonder infinding himself a soldier in a foreign land: “Trite buttrue it is to say that it hardly seems possible that I grad-uated three years ago this month.”

The 507th was next deployed to a camp in theEnglish Midlands, although wartime censorshipprohibited Wagner from saying precisely where.“My locale,” he wrote in a February letter to campus,“is somewhere in England, which doesn’t mean adamn thing to you, means nothing to me either, andallows no room for conversational topics except theweather, about which all I’ll say is that it isn’t as badas Northern Ireland.”

In a letter written in mid-May of 1944, six weeksbefore his death, he expressed surprise that, in spiteof the wartime rationing, “many articles I thoughtwould be unavailable for purchase in stores are com-paratively plentiful.” He reveled at having discovered“a place with a decent glass of beer,” but added: “Itwould be nice to be able to spend about a week ofnights back at Doggie’s and Boalsburg and the out-door parties at Whipples, just as it would be a wel-come change to just be lazy as hell for about a week.”

By early June, three million troops weremassed in England, awaiting what Win-ston Churchill called the most complicatedand difficult military operation everattempted. June 5 was the original “go”

date for Operation Overlord—the code name for theNormandy invasion—but an unpredicted stormforced a 24-hour delay. And so, around 2:00 a.m. onJune 6, Allied paratroopers began landing on theCherbourg peninsula. The 507th regiment of the82nd Airborne Division was in the vanguard, and Lt.Eddie Wagner was one of the regiment’s 2,004 men.Things did not go well.

Bad luck struck twice. First, the C-47s carrying the507th encountered low clouds and thick fog soon aftercrossing the English Channel. Heavy anti-aircraft fireforced the planes to take evasive action, and eventrained pathfinders had trouble finding and markingthe drop zones. Secondly, Allied intelligence was notaware that German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’sNormandy defense preparations included floodingportions of the peninsula by diverting water from theDouve and Merderet rivers. Not only did many troopsland far from their targets, but they were fooled by tall

grass that made the flooded areas appear to be just afew inches deep; in fact, canals running through themarshes were as deep as five feet. Forced to free them-selves from entangling chutes while struggling with 70pounds of body gear, some paratroopers drowned.

Eddie Wagner’s “stick” of paratroopers toucheddown in a flooded area 20 miles from its assigneddrop zone west of the village of Ste. Mère Eglise. Inthe letter he sent the day before his death, he wroteabout the experience:

“It is a novel sensation to land on enemy territoryvia parachute, but going out the door held none of itsusual terrors. There are too many other things youcan sweat out without even thinking about your exitfrom the plane or the opening shock (of theparachute deploying). On landing I was so dammed[sic] scared I cut myself out of my harness with mytrench knife, just as almost everyone else did, andcontrived to cut myself up a little too.”

Wagner and nine comrades set off in what theyhoped was the direction of the unit’s assembly point.They quickly realized they were nowhere near wherethey were supposed to be, and at daylight theydecided to lie low until dark and try to make sense oftheir maps. “By evening,” Wagner wrote, “I had cometo the conclusion I didn’t know a dammed thingabout map reading.”

That night the unit encountered some French civil-ians and, “by means of bastard French and sign lan- ©

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� RESTING IN PEACE: Wagnerdied in action in France, 22days after parachuting intoNormandy during the D-Dayinvasion. He is buried in thefamed American militarycemetery near Omaha Beach.

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guage, discovered we weren’t even on the map.” Sothey stripped themselves to basic necessities andmoved at night through swamp water that was some-times up to their necks. They had no idea if they weregoing in the right direction.

They were gradually joined by other soldiers whowere equally lost. “At one time,” Wagner wrote, “weconsisted of parachutists and glider infantrymen,glider pilots, two men from the 29th Division whowere cut off from their outfit … and an RAAF bom-bardier who had bailed out of a Lancaster [a Britishbomber plane] when it was hit by flak.” The groupnumbered 160 by some accounts, 182 by others, bythe time it reached the village of Graignes, 18 milesinside German-held territory. The ranking officerdecided they should dig in, organize defensive posi-tions, and hope for relief from American assaulttroops moving inland from Utah Beach.

For five days the group held its own against patrolsfrom a German Panzer Grenadier division in thevicinity. The people of Graignes, led by the mayor andtwo Catholic priests, welcomed the soldiers as libera-tors and helped out by retrieving scattered supply andweapons bundles, scouting German troop locations,and caring for the wounded. A French-Canadiantrooper who was fluent in French translated. In addi-tion to skirmishing with German patrols, the groupdestroyed a bridge north of Graignes to interrupt oneGerman route to the fighting.

Luck ran out on Sunday, June 11, when the Ger-mans mounted an all-day assault on the village. Thefirst wave of mechanized infantry arrived while mostof the villagers, and many Americans, were gatheredin the church for Mass. The soldiers ran from thebuilding, grabbed their weapons, and repulsed theattack. Two more waves battered Graignes, and thefinal attack in the afternoon destroyed the church.

Those Americans who were not severely injuredfled that night in small groups through the canalsand swamps, led by French guides. After overrunningGraignes, the Germans burned most of the village.They shot and killed 13 American troops who were

too ill to flee, along with 44 villagers, the two priests,and a pair of elderly French women who had beencaring for the wounded. Wagner eventually joined upwith his regiment, which was resupplied and thrownback into the fight to push German forces out of Nor-mandy and seal off the peninsula.

In his final letter back home, he wrote appreciative-ly of the help the beleaguered Americans received.After leaving Graignes, he wrote, “we were fed only bythe efforts of two civilian Spaniards who attachedthemselves to us, acted as liaison with the French, andprocured milk, potatoes, beans, and butter for us.”

The day after writing that letter, Eddie Wagner’s ownluck ran out. On June 28 he was in charge of his battal-ion command post when it was hit by German shells.He was cut down by exploding shrapnel, and died.

His parents chose to have him buried in France,and he now rests in the American military cemeterynear Omaha Beach: Plot C, Row 23, Grave 23.

Back at Penn State, a plaque with his likeness ismounted in the lobby of the building that bears hisname. The historical record does not show why, of the377 Penn State graduates killed in World War II, hewas chosen to be so prominently memorialized atUniversity Park. Certainly he was one of the brightest,best known, and most popular Penn Staters of his era,a top student and a natural leader. General HapFrank ’24 Lib, in his address at the Wagner Buildingdedication ceremony in 1960, said, “We ask ourselveswhy one, with all this promise, could not be spared.”In the end, the lobby plaque offers the simplest coda.In the gray, impersonal prose typical of such monu-ments, it says of the one-time conscientious objector:“His short life exemplifies the well-rounded youngAmerican citizen soldier…. His life ended while hewas serving his country.”

Walton Collins was editor of Notre Dame magazine for 12 years

before retiring in 1995. He now is a freelance writer in South Bend,

Ind., and teaches journalism at Notre Dame. He is indebted to Col.

Thomas C. Fosnacht ’70 Lib of Palmyra, Pa., for some of the infor-

mation in this article.

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