Ritchie Boy Authorized Bronze Star Sixty Years Late (4 DEC 2007)

Photo By Erin Thompson | Sgt. (Ret.) Hans Spear (right) with Maj. Gen. John M. Custer, commander of the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence, at Spear's Bronze Star ceremony, 27 February 2008.  

UNITED STATES

12.01.2023

Story by Erin Thompson 

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Erin E. Thompson, USAICoE Staff Historian

RITCHIE BOY AUTHORIZED BRONZE STAR SIXTY YEARS LATE
On 4 December 2007, the Army Board of Correction of Military Records (ABCMR) submitted its recommendation that Sgt. (Ret.) Hans N. Spear, a Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) agent during World War II, should be awarded the Bronze Star. The board cited several incidents of antisemitism in earlier refusals to recognize Spear’s work sixty years earlier.

Hans N. Spear was born to Jewish parents in Germany on 2 December 1918. As antisemitism increased in Germany during the 1930s, Spear and his family fled to America. Spear enlisted in the U.S. Army in August 1943. Despite being classified an “Enemy Alien” by the U.S. government, Spear attended basic training with the Medical Corps before being transferred to the Military Intelligence Training Center (MITC) at Camp Ritchie, Maryland, to train as an investigator. Sergeant Spear was one of many Jewish immigrants, nicknamed the Ritchie Boys, who trained as CIC interpreters and interrogators at the MITC.

Sergeant Spear served with the 30th CIC Detachment assigned to the 30th Infantry Division from D-Day through to the end of the war. In June 1945, despite having the necessary points to earn an honorable discharge, Spear was ordered to remain in Europe while the rest of his unit returned home. As a special agent with the CIC and being a German linguist, Spear was assigned to the American occupation force in southern Germany to assist in the denazification process and to interrogate German prisoners of war and suspected sympathizers. Six months after the rest of his unit returned home, Sergeant Spear was honorably discharged on 24 December 1945.

In June 1945, all men assigned to the 30th CIC Detachment, except Spear and one other Jewish immigrant, received Bronze Stars for their service “supervising interrogation under fire.” As the only German speaker with the unit, Spear had led most of those interrogations. He later wrote he and the other agent “did not feel discriminated [against] at the time, being conscious that we were just the ‘Enemy Aliens’.” This, however, was the first of many discriminatory instances keeping Spear from being duly recognized.

In the early 2000s, Spear’s case was put before the ABCMR by a representative of the National Counter Intelligence Corps Association, Duval A. Edwards, and U.S. Senator John McCain. The ABCMR’s initial investigation determined Spear’s actions were not “meritorious enough” to warrant the Bronze Star. Later appeals to the Army also failed, with the Army claiming to have lost Spear’s military records and that no proof his unit received Bronze Stars in June 1945 existed. Both claims were provably false. In one last petition to the ABCMR in July 2007, Spear wrote:

Permit me to say that I am not bitter against my country which saved [my] life when I was escaping the murderer in Germany—I don’t honor him with a name…If my country were to need me, I would present myself in ten minutes, but I hate people who practice Antisemitism and other discrimination against honorable citizens, among them I proudly belong.
Finally, on 4 December 2007, the ABCMR voted to award Sergeant (Ret.) Hans Spear with the Bronze Star for his service with the 30th CIC Detachment. In its official recommendation to the Department of the Army, the board stated Spear’s belief antisemitism played a role in the denial of his Bronze Star “was carefully considered and found to be with merit.” Eighty-eight-year-old Hans Spear finally received his Bronze Star at a special ceremony at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, on 27 February 2008.

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• Date Taken: 12.01.2023
• Date Posted: 12.01.2023 15:03
• Story ID: 458913
• Location: US