POLAND — A young soldier from Lewiston who died in battle during World War II has become the subject of history lessons for eighth-graders in Erica Swenson’s class at Bruce Whittier Middle School — and soon history classes across the country.

U.S. Army Pvt. Stanley Clark is buried in a military cemetery in the Netherlands.

From their classroom last week, eighth-graders shared what they’ve learned about Clark, who was killed days before he would have turned 20. Clark was one of 12 children and worked at the W.S. Libbey textile mill before enlisting in the Army.

“He grew up with many brothers and sisters,” Amber Lauze, 14, said. “He lived across from the hospital. He had five brothers in the military before he joined.”

After training in Louisiana, Clark was among the waves of soldiers who stormed Utah Beach on D-Day, said Isaac Ouellette, 13. After fighting a month in France, “he transferred to the 401st Glider Division,” Ouellette said.

The gliders, called “flying coffins,” were engineless vessels propelled from planes to get supplies behind enemy lines. “What he did was awesome, but wicked, wicked dangerous,” Lauze said. “I applaud him.”

Ouellette said he wonders what was going through Clark’s his mind while climbing into a glider. Being a glider rider “sounds scary. You could get knocked down so fast.”

The eighth-graders’ teacher, Erica Swenson, 37, says she’s completely immersing her students in World War II and that she’s obsessive about the war’s history.

As a girl, she was influenced by two grandfathers who served and survived the war. One was a pilot shot down over Italy, the other laid communication lines at the front.

Earlier this year, Swenson applied to be one of 18 teachers across the nation who would travel to Europe, visiting and researching World War II battle sites and cemeteries, then incorporate that knowledge in lesson plans for teachers across the country.

The education project is sponsored by National History Day and the American Battle Monuments Commission. The commission was formed to help survivors mourn at cemeteries abroad.

“Now it’s finding ways to keep this history alive,” Swenson said. “They wanted to have teachers to be involved. We are the memory keepers.”

Swenson was the only teacher from Maine chosen.

In July, she and the other teachers will spend two weeks following the course of the northern invasion, visiting Normandy and other sites of D-Day, seeing battle sites and cemeteries in several countries where American soldiers are buried, including Clark’s grave in the Netherlands.

Grandfather inspired love of history

Swenson is ecstatic about the experience. She wishes her grandfathers were still alive.

“It breaks my heart I can’t talk to them about it anymore,” she said.

Both had different war experiences, she said. The pilot, Fred Ritger, talked about the war often. “My other grandfather did not talk about it. It was a taboo topic.”

Grandfather George Swenson was an infantryman who laid down cables on the front lines in Italy. He saw too much violence, Swenson said.

“He told me he was so war-weary at the end, he saw this German guy run over by a tank in the middle of the road. He felt nothing. … He really had some demons he dealt with his whole life.”

Grandfather Ritger “was shot out of the sky” and went down with six other men over northern Italy. Of the three survivors, two were captured by the Germans and remained POWs for the duration of the war.

“My grandfather parachuted out and was able to hide his parachute,” she said. He connected with Italian resistance fighters who kept him safe.

Ritger talked to his granddaughter about the war often.

“He’s the one who got me interested in history,” Swenson said. “He told me about hiding in the bushes, hiding under the floorboards of the barn while German soldiers were looking for him. He had all these fantastic stories.”

She grew up thinking the war had a happy ending, that the United States was destined to win.

But as she got older and did more research, including watching Ken Burns’ documentary, “I realized it was not a walk in the park for the Americans. We lost more than 400,000 soldiers.” Families were forever torn apart by the war, “like the Clark family,” she said.

Dutch adopt U.S. soldiers’ graves

Swenson’s assignment in the National History Day project is to find a fallen soldier buried in the American Netherlands Cemetery and tell his story.

“I didn’t know there were American cemeteries in Europe, other than the white crosses in France.” She learned that in the Netherlands, “100 percent of the graves of American soldiers have been adopted by Dutch people” passionate about keeping the soldiers’ memories alive.

The Dutch man who adopted Clark’s grave is Nowy van Hedel, 30. “He’s done extensive research on Clark,” and has created a YouTube video and Facebook page devoted to Clark.

She’ll meet van Hedel when she visits the Netherlands cemetery this summer. With his help, Swenson will create a profile of Clark that will be shared online this fall with teachers across the country.

Through Stanley Clark, she wants students “to see the individual in war, to understand it’s more complicated” than dates or who won.

Learning about Pvt. Clark “makes it real. It makes people understand the complexity, remember that real lives were involved in this, and connect with one of those lives.”

bwashuk@sunjournal.com

Who was Pvt. Stanley Clark?

By Erica Swenson

Stanley Victory Clark was born in 1924, the son of Flora and George Clark, one of 12 children. He lived with his family in downtown Lewiston. He had seven brothers, Percy, Allen, Harold, Hazen, John, Ralph and Gerald; and four sisters, Alma, Mildred, Ernestine and Evelyn. His parents immigrated to Maine from English-speaking Canada in the early 1900s. His mother stayed home to care for the family. His father worked in a paper mill and later a shoe factory.

When each child in the family completed the eighth grade, he or she would typically leave school to work in a local textile mill to help support the family. Stanley Clark attended high school in Lewiston, leaving his sophomore year to take over his brother Gerald’s job at the Libbey Mill.

Eager to join the war, Clark enlisted in 1943. Five of his older brothers were already serving. When he joined the Army, his family set a local record with six sons in the military. The Lewiston Legion Post honored Stanley’s parents with a special reception dinner.

He eventually joined the 401st Glider Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, a new and daring all-volunteer organization where troops dropped from the sky behind enemy lines in gliders. The engine-less gliders often carried 15 men and supplies. Not for the faint-hearted, glider troops sometimes called the vessels “Flying Coffins” or “Tow Targets.” The gliders were pulled and released from transport planes, often at night. Men in the gliders had no parachutes, were crammed together with heavy equipment, including a Jeep. Once a glider began its descent, there was no going back.

Clark and other members of the 401st played a role in D-Day in the Uncle Red sector of Utah Beach with the 4th Infantry Division. Their mission was to link up with paratroopers who had landed earlier in the day. Once off the beach, the regiment suffered heavy losses. After 33 days fighting in France, Clark was sent to England to recuperate, then started glider training.

In September of 1944, Clark and the 401st GIR returned to combat as part of the largest airborne operation of the war: Operation Market Garden. Troops planned to drop behind enemy lines to secure a 65-mile highway from Belgium to the north of the Sigfried Line, hoping to bring armored units into the industrial center of Germany.

Clark arrived in the Netherlands as one of 933 gliders. Americans soon captured three major bridges. But the operation began to fall apart when British paratroopers met more resistance than expected and were unable to meet up with the Americans, leaving the troops behind enemy lines for weeks fighting with dwindling supplies and cut off from communication.

Early on Oct. 9, Clark’s company awoke to a barrage of mortar and artillery fire. They fought off two tanks that broke through their line and lost seven enlisted men. Clark was among those killed in action. He was days away from turning 20 years old.

His mother learned of his death by telegram on Oct. 16. He received a Purple Heart posthumously for his service and was buried in the American Netherlands Cemetery in Margraten in 1948. He’s buried at Plot G, Row 2, Grave 15.

In the early 2000s, a Dutch man named Nowy van Hedel adopted Clark’s grave; van Hedel continues to honor the grave and Clark’s service.

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