Richard Scheerer was born in December 1915 and grew up in Kansas City [Annotator's Note: Kansas City, Missouri]. His father opened a meat market after he completed grade school. There were not many cars there at the time. One day Scheerer was riding his bicycle and was nearly hit by a car. They usually played in the street. Scheerer worked in his father's market peeling onions and cleaning potatoes. It was a different time. Back then they did not have to worry about locking their doors. Scheerer went to high school in Kansas City. He was not big enough to play varsity sports. They had some literary societies that were to help students further their academics and Scheerer played football there. One of his classmates became mayor of Kansas City. Scheerer graduated from high school in 1933 then went to work in his father's grocery store and stayed there until 1941 when he was inducted into the Army. He spent eight years working at the store then put four years in the Army. He was discharged from the Army in 1945. Scheerer was married for six months before he went overseas. He enjoyed his time in the service until he got married.

Richard Scheerer was on the streets of Little Rock when he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He was already in the service by that time. He had entered service in February [Annotator's Note: February 1941] and the attack on Pearl Harbor was the following December. Scheerer was on leave when the attack occurred. When the attack happened, the MPs [Annotator's Note: military police] went through the city ordering all military personnel to return to their bases. It was quite a shock but he did not dwell on it. Within a week of the attack they were on trains heading for the West Coast. At the time, Scheerer was in the 35th Division which was a training division. They arrived in San Francisco and were sent to Fort Ord. They had to unlock the doors to the fort and get the place cleaned up. They slept in animal stalls. From the window they could see the lines of soldiers boarding ships to head out to the Pacific. Scheerer wondered if they would go too but they did not. From there they were sent down the coast to San Luis Obispo, then to Bakersfield, and San Diego. There they learned that volunteers were needed for OCS [Annotator's Note: officer candidate school]. Scheerer originally wanted to go into the air force but his eyesight was too bad so applied for OCS. He was accepted and sent by train back across the country to Georgia. Scheerer spent most of the trip to Georgia in a box car. He graduated OCS and was sent to Camp Atterbury where he joined the 83rd Infantry Division. Scheerer had been in Company H, 2nd Battalion, 140th Infantry [Annotator's Note: the 140th Infantry Regiment (Separate) was not assigned to a division during the time Scheerer was assigned to it]. Now he was in Company H, 2nd Battalion, 83rd Division [Annotator's Note: Company H, 2nd Battalion, 331st Infantry Regiment, 83rd Infantry Division]. Scheerer joined the 83rd Infantry Division as part of a cadre of new officers sent there to train new incoming soldiers. As a private, Scheerer had served in a machine gun section. Now, as an officer, he found himself back in a machine gun unit. The men in the outfit came from the East Coast. They began training and after a few months they were moved to Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky. Scheerer was originally assigned to the 1st Platoon. Shortly before going overseas they got replacements and, as senior line officer, he was responsible for assigning these new men to platoons. After issuing these assignments he was transferred to 2nd Platoon.

Richard Scheerer was sent to New York where he boarded a ship bound for England. They were escorted by the battleship Texas [Annotator's Note: USS Texas (BB-35)]. The troopship Scheerer went overseas aboard was the America. The swells were so bad that when the troopship dipped into a swell they would completely lose sight of the battleship. It was quite an experience for a kid from Missouri. They went ashore in Liverpool and pitched tents in the countryside nearby and began training. This was in April 1944. One time, they went on maneuvers in Wales. After a while they were taken to Southampton where they embarked on ships to cross the Channel into France. The weather in England was very damp. They did not associate much with the locals. While on the dock in Southampton, one of Scheerer's squad leaders got confused and loaded one of Scheerer's four machine guns. He then fired a burst of machine gun fire over Southampton. After that, Scheerer had to take him away and does not know whatever happened to him. They crossed the Channel and landed about ten days after D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day was 6 June 1944 and Scheerer landed around 16 June].

Richard Scheerer does not recall hearing any news about D-Day prior to crossing the Channel. The first night he sat offshore there were streaks of light and planes flying overhead. The Allies had air superiority and all of the planes overhead were friendly. The next day they climbed down Jacob's ladders and got into landing craft which took them to shore. After going ashore they were taken by trucks to an area near Isigny. They passed through Carentan and during the trip Scheerer saw airplanes in the ditches alongside the road. They were taken to an orchard where they spent the night. The next day they went into the positions they would occupy. They relieved the 101st Airborne Division. They walked from the orchard to the positions on the front lines. Scheerer and the other officers all went with the battalion commander they were relieving and he showed them the positions. As they passed the different positions, Scheerer's battalion commander put the men where he wanted them. They stayed there for several days. That is where Scheerer met Robert Cole [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant Colonel Robert G. Cole was the commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Cole was killed in action on 18 September 1944 in Holland during Operation Market Garden and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions there.]. Cole was the typical warrior. He was a West Point graduate and stood over six feet tall. Cole led a bayonet charge during the Normandy campaign. The charge was successful. It scared the hell out of the Germans. Scheerer's unit was armed with water cooled .30 caliber machine guns mounted on pedestals on their jeeps. Once they went into their positions they remained there until 4 July [Annotator's Note: 4 July 1944] when they launched an offensive.

When Richard Scheerer was hit he had shell fragments in the heart sack and his left lung. They were in the hedgerows at the time and just before Scheerer was wounded he crawled up to a fresh cut on the top of one of them to look out and see if he could locate the Germans. He turned to see what his man was doing and when he saw him standing out in the open he motioned for him to get down. That is when Scheerer was hit and it was the end of the fighting for him. Scheerer was very angry when he got hit. All of the training and equipment and preparing to fight Hitler and he got hit shortly after he arrived. At least he got his men and equipment into position. His men did a hell of a job. Scheerer was hit by shrapnel from a mortar shell. He still has a few pieces in his body. It was a million dollar wound. Scheerer received good care after he was hit. He was well cared for on the battlefield and he was well cared for in the hospital later. When the mortar round went off, it knocked Scheerer back. The shrapnel that hit him was very hot. One of Scheerer's men, Corporal Spielburger [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] went to get a medic. Scheerer laid down and the next thing he knew he was being carried off the battle field to the battalion aid station. When he arrived at the aid station it was being shelled by the Germans who were using timed fuses set to go off in the air. That evening Scheerer was taken from the aid station to a field hospital where he was operated on. The next morning he was taken to the shore and put aboard a ship that took him back across the Channel to Southampton. The first hospital he was taken to was a naval hospital but nothing was done to him there.

The following day, Richard Scheerer was sent to a hospital on shore. One day Scheerer had to have his lungs aspirated. He was handed a dishpan and told to hold it. Another man in the room held his head still while the doctor went in through his back and started aspirating his left lung. The bloody water went into the dishpan which Scheerer did not like the looks of. A day or two after that, the doctors brought in a big oxygen bottle and told him they were going to aspirate his heart sack. A doctor used a needle to get the blood out of his heart sack. The skill of the doctors was fantastic. One day after that, Scheerer was moved to a hospital further inland where a doctor named Touroff [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling], who was a chest surgeon from New York, operated on him. While operating on another soldier, Touroff cut himself and ended up with gangrene. He moved Scheerer, who was an officer, onto a ward and Touroff took Scheerer's room. It was decided that they would not take any of the shrapnel out of Scheerer. It is still in him. Scheerer stayed in the hospital there for a week or two before being put on a hospital ship and returned to the United States. By the time Scheerer got the United States it had been six months since he was wounded. He was wounded on 4 July [Annotator's Note: 4 July 1944] and got back to the United States in October. He was discharged in January [Annotator's Note: January 1945]. The ship that took Scheerer back to the United States was a Liberty ship that had been converted into a hospital ship. The ship put in at Charleston, South Carolina. Then Scheerer went by train to Colorado but stopped in Kansas City to see his wife and new baby boy. Scheerer was disappointed when he got to the chest ward in Aurora, Colorado. There were doctors there who were gold bricking, just waiting to get out of the service. While Scheerer was in the hospital, Alan Ladd visited the ward. Scheerer was hospitalized from October until January with some breaks to go to Kansas City. When he had been in the hospital in England he saw a burn victim who was really a sad sight.

Richard Scheerer never wrote any of his men after he was wounded and sent home and none of his men wrote him. He did see some of his men while he was in the hospital in England. At the hospital he ran into Sergeant Laughlin [Annotator's Note: unsure of spelling] who was one of his section sergeants. Laughlin had lost a leg. Scheerer's men were in the midst of a big battle when he was evacuated. He felt bad that he was not there with them. They had trained for three and a half years and Scheerer was knocked out early in the fight. The troops Scheerer took into battle in Normandy had never faced fire before. They got their orders on the evening of the third [Annotator's Note: 3 July 1944] informing them that the assault would begin the next morning. Scheerer feels that he did not do much of a job there but his men did. The German positions were well hidden. It was hard to pick them up. Scheerer could see where the Germans were but he could not actually see them. The Germans had the advantage of having occupied the ground they were on for a long time and knew all about the terrain. Scheerer was wounded when a mortar shell hit the ground below him and the fragments came up and hit him.

Richard Scheerer never spoke much about the war after he got home. He just wanted to forget it. It was a four year period of his life that he would just as soon forget. It was just before his 90th birthday when his sons started pummeling him with questions about his service. Scheerer never went to any reunions but he did run into a member of his platoon, Bob Hamilton, down in San Antonio. Hamilton died shortly after their visit. Hamilton had been discharged after World War 2 but went back in the service and served during the Korean War too. After speaking for a while, Hamilton lost interest and Scheerer never heard from him again. Scheerer did run into a number of guys from the 140th [Annotator's Note: Scheerer had originally been assigned to Company H, 2nd Battalion, 140th Infantry Regiment (Separate)] and they visited back and forth after the war. Scheerer had a sergeant whose name was Irving Paul Rainwater, I.P. Rainwater. After the war, Scheerer's wife rented a furnished house about five blocks from his father's store. Scheerer went back to work for his father, against his wife's wishes. Scheerer's father would advertise in the East Side News. One day, the editor was in the store and kept calling Scheerer captain. Scheerer had been a first lieutenant and told the man so. The man replied that he would have become a captain had he stayed in a little longer. Scheerer later opened a meat business called Scheerer's Freezer Meats. On the east side of Kansas City is where his business was located. Most of Scheerer's business was families. He got into that business at the right time. Many of the guys coming home from the war were farm boys who were used to having their own cattle. Scheerer was a skilled meat cutter before he went into the service. One Saturday night during training at Camp Breckinridge [Annotator's Note: Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky], one of Scheerer's fellow officers, who happened to be the mess officer, was complaining about the side of beef that had been sent to him. He had been sent a hind quarter which is where the steaks are. He should have been sent a fore quarter. They went to the cooler and got the meat out and Scheerer cut them off some nice steaks. There was still plenty meat left for the stew for the men. It was the only time Scheerer had steak while he was in the Army.