This Military Service Page was created/owned by
MAJ Mark E Cooper
to remember
Seitz, Richard Joe (Dangerous Dick), LTG.
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Contact Info
Home Town Leavenworth
Last Address Junction City, KS
Date of Passing Jun 08, 2013
Location of Interment Fort Riley Post Cemetery (VLM) - Fort Riley, Kansas
His nephew, John Seitz , confirmed that Richard Seitz died Saturday morning at his home in Junction City.
Richard Seitz was a native of Leavenworth, Kansas, but had been a resident of Junction City since 1975 after retiring from active duty service in the military. John Seitz noted his uncle was active in the Boy Scouts, the Armed Services YMCA, served as a former president of the local AUSA chapter, and was also involved with the Saint Xavier church activities, and in Republican Party politics. “He’s been involved in everything that involves soldiers and helping soldiers do better, and their families.”
Richard Seitz commanded the Second Battalion of the 517th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War Two. His selection for that command made him one of the youngest infantry battalion commanders during World War II at three days shy of his 25th birthday. In march 1967 Seitz was promoted to major general and a month later assumed command of the 82nd Airborne Division at Ft. Bragg. In May 1973 he was promoted to Lt. General, and his final assignment returned him to the Airborne as the commanding general of the XVIII Airborne Corps and Ft. Bragg.
The new Seitz Elementary School at Ft. Riley was named after Richard Seitz in 2012. His nephew stated, “He used to say, there’s a whole list, a long list of people who were more deserving of that. For my money there wasn’t anybody more deserving. He just did things for soldiers and their families, and the community.”
Richard Seitz is survived by four children: Rick Seitz, Judge Patricia Seitz, Dr. Catherine Seitz, and Dr. Victoria Seitz. Funeral Services will be handled by Penwell-Gabel Funeral Homes & Crematory.
Other Comments:
In Memory of Lt. GEN Richard J. Seitz
1918 - 2013
Lt. General Richard J. Seitz, age 95, completed a storied life on June 8, 2013 after suffering congestive heart failure. Born in Leavenworth, KS Feb. 18, 1918, he grew up in that city and then attended Kansas State University where in 1939 as a junior he began dating his first wife, Bettie Jean Merrill, a freshman. That same year Dick, foreseeing WWII looming on the horizon, accepted a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant in the US Army. Once in the Army he went through the sixth jump school class the Army ever had thus becoming one of its first paratroopers.
With the advent of the war, Dick rose rapidly until at the age of only 25 in March 1942, as a Major, he was given command of the 2nd Battalion of the 517th Parachute Infantry Regimental Combat Team. Thereafter, he was promoted to Lt. Colonel and, as the Army’s youngest battalion commander, led his battalion throughout its historic combat operations in Europe with the personal radio call sign of “Dangerous Dick.”
The 517th was flung into combat at Anzio at the time of the breakout from that beachhead followed by fighting up the Italian Peninsula. They then made the combat jump into the southern invasion of France at 4AM, Aug.15, 1944 as the airborne element of Operation Dragoon with its subsequent heavy combat in the French Maritime Alps. Finally, put in reserve in Northeastern France in December 1944, Dick was drawing up Paris leave rosters for his men when Hitler launched the Battle of the Bulge.
At that point, Dick’s 2nd Battalion was married with a Regiment of the 7th Armored Division to form what became known as Task Force Seitz. It was pushed in to plug the gaps on the north slope of the Bulge every time the Germans tried to make a breakout. In doing so, his battalion went from 691 men to 380 through combat losses in some of the worst fighting of WWII. The battalion went on from the Bulge to see even further bloody combat in the subsequent battles of the Huertigen Forrest.
Before shipping out to Europe, Dick and Bettie continued to see each other whenever they had a chance to do so. In 1942, after graduating from Kansas State, Bettie joined the Red Cross and was subsequently sent to England in late 1943 to support the bomber groups of the Army Air Corp’s 8th Air Force. In the fall of 1944, she was moved to Holland to run an Army rest and rehabilitation center. There in January 1945, she read in Stars and Stripes that Task Force Seitz was heavily engaged in the fighting around St. Vith. By herself, she drove from Holland to the front in Belgium and managed to find the Regimental HQ of the 517th. But they would not allow her to go on to the very front lines where Dick was. However, this put them back in personal touch which led to their marriage in June 1945 in Joigny, France with one Red Cross bridesmaid and 1800 paratroopers in attendance in one of the greatest love stories of WWII.
Dick ended the war with the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and the Purple Heart plus what he most treasured besides his Parachute Wings, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. Thereafter, during his lifelong Army career including nearly 37 years of active duty he also received numerous other decorations and awards including the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit and the French Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor. Along with these awards, his commands included the 2nd Airborne Battle Group, 503rd Infantry Regiment and the 82nd Airborne Division, which he led into Detroit and Washington, DC in 1967 to quell those cities’ riots. He also commanded the XVIII Airborne Corps and was Chief of Staff US Army Vietnam in 1965 through 1967 under General Westmoreland. As a Portuguese speaker he served two tours in Brazil, the last as Chief of the Joint US/Brazilian Military Commission and one year in Iran as a military advisor. He likewise served in Japan with the occupation forces immediately after World War II.
Dick and Bettie retired to Junction City in 1975. Unfortunately, Bettie died of a heart attack June 1, 1978. Thereafter, Dick was blessed to marry Virginia Crane, a widow, in 1980. She also predeceased him in 2006. In retirement, Dick remained extremely active with the Army through Ft. Riley as well as in the Junction City Community and in Kansas generally. During the Iraqi and Afghanistan Wars he would go out to Ft. Riley to see off and greet the deploying and redeploying units from those fights, no matter the hour day or night. He was past Chairman of the Ft. Riley National Bank, very active with the Coronado Council of the Boy Scouts, a Trustee of St. John’s Military Academy, on the Board of the Eisenhower Presidential Library, President of the Fort Riley-Central Kansas Chapter of the Association of the U.S. Army, and Chaired Junction City’s Economic Redevelopment Study Commission among many other activities. He was also honored as an Outstanding Citizen of Kansas, received the prestigious AUSA Creighton Abrams Award, and most recently had the General Richard J. Seitz Elementary School named in his honor on the post at Ft. Riley. He felt a particular affection for the faculty and students of that school whom he visited as often as he could. The best way to describe Dick is that he lived his life “Airborne all the way!” to the very end.
He was predeceased by his parents, John Casimir and Florence M. Seitz, and seven brothers and sisters including Brigadier General Andrew Seitz (US Army ret. and former commander of Ft. Riley), Warrant Officer Edward Seitz (US Army ret.), Henry Seitz, Frances Gaddis, Helen Charles, Mary Ann Seitz and her twin Jane Marie Hardy. Dick was the fifth in this line of eight siblings.
Dick is survived by his daughters, Senior US District Court Judge Patricia Seitz of Miami, FL; Doctor Cache Steinberg (PhD) of Richmond, VA; Doctor Victoria Seitz (PhD) of San Bernardino, Calif.; son, Richard M. Seitz (USAF ret.) currently heading the US Coast Guard’s C130 aircraft acquisition program, Washington, D.C., step-daughter Nancy Crane, of St. George, KS, son-in-laws Dr. Joel Steinberg MD and Alan Greer, attorney, granddaughter Jordan Christine Seitz, a senior at Arkansas State University and various nephews and nieces including Col. John Seitz US Army(ret.), Junction City, KS and Dr. Jim Hardy Superintendent of Schools in Chanute , KS.
Cremation has taken place and A Mass of the Resurrection will be held at 9:00 a.m., Monday, July 22, 2013 at the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church with Father Al Brungardt and Father Kerry Ninemeyer concelebrating. Inurnment will follow with full military honors at Fort Riley Cemetery, Fort Riley, Kansas. A vigil service will be held at 7:00 p.m., Sunday, July 21, 2013 at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church. In lieu of flowers the family requests donations to either the LTG. Richard J. Seitz Veteran Scholarship at Kansas State University,c/o KSU Foundation, 2323 Anderson Avenue, Manhattan, KS 66502, St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, P.O. Box 399, Junction City, KS 66441, Junction City YMCA, P.O. Box 113, Junction City, KS 66441 or the Coronado Council of the Boy Scouts, P.O. Box 912, Salina, KS 67402.
WWII - European Theater of Operations/Ardennes Alsace Campaign (1944-45)/Battle of the Bulge
From Month/Year
December / 1944
To Month/Year
January / 1945
Description The Battle of the Bulge (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was a major German offensive campaign launched through the densely forested Ardennes region of Wallonia in Belgium, France and Luxembourg on the Western Front toward the end of World War II in Europe. Hitler planned the offensive with the primary goal to recapture the important harbour of Antwerp. The surprise attack caught the Allied forces completely off guard. United States forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred the highest casualties for any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany's war-making resources.
The battle was known by different names. The Germans referred to it as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein ("Operation Watch on the Rhine"), while the French named it the Bataille des Ardennes ("Battle of the Ardennes"). The Allies called it the Ardennes Counteroffensive. The phrase "Battle of the Bulge" was coined by contemporary press to describe the way the Allied front line bulged inward on wartime news maps and became the best known name for the battle.
The German offensive was supported by several subordinate operations known as Unternehmen Bodenplatte, Greif, and Währung. As well as stopping Allied transport over the channel to the harbor of Antwerp, Germany also hoped these operations would split the British and American Allied line in half, and then proceed to encircle and destroy four Allied armies, forcing the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis Powers' favor. Once that was accomplished, Hitler could fully concentrate on the eastern theatre of war.
The offensive was planned by the German forces with the utmost secrecy, minimizing radio traffic and moving troops and equipment under cover of darkness. Despite their efforts to keep it secret, the Third U.S. Army's intelligence staff predicted a major German offensive, and Ultra indicated that a "substantial and offensive" operation was expected or "in the wind", although a precise date or point of attack could not be given. Aircraft movement from the Russian Front and transport of forces by rail, both to the Ardennes, was noticed but not acted upon, according to a report later written by Peter Calvocoressi and F. L. Lucas at the codebreaking centre Bletchley Park.
Near-complete surprise was achieved by a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance. The Germans attacked a weakly defended section of the Allied line, taking advantage of heavily overcast weather conditions, which grounded the Allies' overwhelmingly superior air forces. Fierce resistance on the northern shoulder of the offensive around Elsenborn Ridge and in the south around Bastogne blocked German access to key roads to the northwest and west that they counted on for success; columns that were supposed to advance along parallel routes found themselves on the same roads. This and terrain that favored the defenders threw the German advance behind schedule and allowed the Allies to reinforce the thinly placed troops. Improved weather conditions permitted air attacks on German forces and supply lines, which sealed the failure of the offensive. In the wake of the defeat, many experienced German units were left severely depleted of men and equipment, as survivors retreated to the defenses of the Siegfried Line.
About 610,000 American forces were involved in the battle,[2] and 89,000 were casualties, including 19,000 killed. It was the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the United States in World War II.
