About Weston Lewis Emery

The ordinary men of the US Army in one rifle company in Northeast Europe were good soldiers who helped win the war. Many of them were killed in action, taken prisoner, wounded, or sick.

Years later at a division reunion a number of these survivors tried to recall some of their WW II encounters. No two were the same. One of them, deciding to find out exactly what happened, spent four years combing the National Archives, obtaining daily morning reports, and seeking valid memories from living comrades. The resulting book is dynamic and accurate. The activities of every day are given. Every man is mentioned, some many times, and nearly all of the surviving families are mentioned.

Weston Lewis Emery, a rifleman and radioman for the Captain, never missed a day of duty.

He wrote the book.

Weston Lewis Emery

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Weston Lewis Emery was born January 7, 1924 in Gardiner, Maine. He attended grammar school there, and attended High School in Winter Park, Florida, where his family resided during winters.

Emery was called for military service in 1943 and sent to officers training school. After a year the officer schools were closed, and Emery was trained as a rifleman in the 12th Armored Division which was sent to France and Germany. The division was committed to action on December 7, 1944. Emery was twenty years old.

Weston Emery became the Company Commander's radioman for most of the last six months of the war in Europe. He was always with the appropriate radio linking the captain to his men and to battalion headquarters. His first captain was wounded in action on the fifth day of combat; his second captain was killed in action on the second month; and his third captain made it to the end. Emery was one of thirty-eight original line men in the division who never missed a day of duty (out of 532 men). Company strength was 251.

After the war, in November 1945, Emery entered Rollins College (where for two years he was coxswain of Rollins' Varsity crew) and received his BA in English. He pursued graduate studies at Boston University for two years, and studied French in Grenoble, France.

After working in the private sector, he joined a Washington consulting firm to work in Vientiane with the government of Laos for two years. Emery then joined the Agency for International Development and was posted in Tunisia, Honduras, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Washington, DC, the latter with the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. In 1986, he retired after 31 years with the Foreign Service.

Emery has three children, speaks French and Spanish.