TD’s Fairclo spent years unearthing the truth about his father, the quiet hero
Larry Fairclo, a retired teacher from The Dalles Middle school, displays a “True Comic” written about his father’s US Army service on Mt. Lungo, Italy. Fairclo, overtime was able to piece together his father’s experiences in World War II. This comic ran in the Chicago Tribune in 1944.
By Tom Peterson
Larry Fairclo, a former The Dalles Middle School teacher, grew up on a ranch near Klamath Falls working 100 horses with his father, Bud Fairclo.
Larry’s home burned when he was eight and with it most of the history of his father's service in the US Army.
His mother, Erma, tossed Bud’s Service Album out of the window. That and his dog tags were the only items to survive, Fairclo said.
As Fairclo grew older, friends of his father would tell him to ask his dad about his service. And as the years wore on, Fairclo began to come into a full understanding of what his dad had been through, the medals he earned.
These items from Bud Fairclo’s military career were the only items saved after a fire burned his home in the early 1960s. All of his medals were lost in the blaze.
It’s one hell of a story- and not one to be glamorized, Fairclo said. His dad, who died in 1997, was a buckaroo raised in Dairy Oregon east of Klamath Falls. He rode horses, including bareback bronc rides in the 1930s until he came to his senses. He had endured -44° temperatures while camped out near Clear Lake. He endured much as a youth but what of his service?
Larry Fairclo recounted a single conversation with his father about his Bronze Star Medal.
Bud Fairclo had crawled to a live machine gun outpost behind a rock outcropping in Italy, and he lobbed a grenade inside.
He killed one German with the blast, and he jumped up with his rifle and advanced behind the rock. “He came eyeball-to-eyeball with a German standing in position,” Larry Fairclo said, recounting the story. “The German soldier was holding his intestines in his hand and he slowly fell over and died.”
“That’s the last thing I remember about war,” Bud told his son, Larry.
Larry Fairclo has spent years putting together Veteran programs at the Middle School, teaching kids about what it meant to sacrifice for our country, knowing of the horrors that soldiers bring home with them.
“I have talked with people who were in the service, and they will say, “Oh, I was just a cook,’” he said. “But those people are part of the whole because you can’t have one without the other. Everybody has to do their job.”
At parades or events honoring Veterans, Fairclo said he stands and puts hand over heart to honor those that have served. He said that was the respect he was attempting to instill in his students.
Fairclo had multiple stories about his father, noting his medals were eventually replaced in 2002 through the help of the U.S. Rep Greg Walden and Oregon State Sen.Ted Ferrioli.
Fairclo also has a comic strip. It’s called True Comics - and it actually tells the story of his father in one specific fight in Italy. It was printed by The Chicago Tribune on Nov. 20, 1944.
This is that story.
Carrol Elbert “Bud” Fairclo, Tech Sergeant with the US Army, Third Division, 15th Infantry, L Company circa 1943. The Distinguished Service Cross hangs from his uniform.
Seventy-five years ago, Carrol Elbert “Bud” Fairclo, of Dairy Oregon, was at the base of Mt. Lungo, 100 miles southeast of Rome, Italy.
He was a Tech Sergeant with the US Army, Third Division, 15th Infantry, L Company.
Germans had taken the high ground on Mt. Lungo, protecting themselves in small rock and mortar houses called pillboxes with openings for machine gun barrels, mortars, and rifles. The Germans were dropping hand grenades over the top ledge, practically into the faces of advancing troops while pouring down heavy volleys of small arms and mortar fire.
It was Nov. 9, 1943, and World War II was raging.
Adolf Hitler had been elected by the German people to the chancellor in 1933, and emerged as a dictator with an ideology that Germans and the Aryan nation was a separate and superior group deserving the land and wealth of others to greater increase their own population. Their means of achieving those goals was through genocide and the invasion, attack and oppression of neighboring countries.
And now Bud Fairclo, ripped from Oregon, stood looking up a hill in Italy, ordered to seek out those pillboxes with Germans firing machine guns upon them.
Fairclo with other infantrymen crawled up the hill some 75 yards ahead of his company. He discovered three pillboxes manned by Germans. He crept up on the first hold and drew his M1 rifle, surprising them and taking all four captives without firing his weapon. They took the four Germans to his company lower on the hill. Fairclo had also seen two more of the other fortifications sending out a storm of bullets and mortars.
He returned with grenades, and a life or death chance of getting the toss right.
He crawled to within 25 feet of the second pillbox and threw a grenade underhand into it, killing the three Germans inside.
Here is a photo of Mt. Lungo, Italy, some 100 miles southeast of Rome. US Army Sergeant Bud Fairclo lay in a pillbox in this rugged terrain for 18 hours trying to avoid discovery by the Germans.
And the Germans in the third pillbox seeing the explosion and carnage, abandoned their site, leaving behind a heavy machine gun.
Fairclo now had a vantage point from a rock ledge and began firing on the Germans from above with his rifle. He also discovered three more pillboxes.
A sniper shot a bullet clean through his wrist. He ran in a zig-zag to a fourth abandoned pillbox and dove in for protection. But he was fired upon by a machine gun and the bullets ricocheted. Fairclo pulled his helmet over his face as bullets zipped by his body, nicking his neck, his trousers and three other places on his body.
When the firing stopped some minutes later. Fairclo was still alive. But neither the Germans nor the Americans thought so.
A US Scout reported him dead. And a telegram went out to his mother, stating he had been killed in the line of duty.
And Fairclo did nothing to change their minds as he waited and prayed there in that rock structure.
He could hear the Germans talking nearby.
“I was scared as hell,” Fairclo later recounted to his son, Larry. “Me and God had a good long talk..”
Eighteen hours later, the Americans discovered Fairclo in the pillbox.
And despite his wounds, he went on to man an observation post for six more hours. He directed mortar fire on the hostile gun positions he had located, knocking out two more machine guns.
For his cool nerve under fire and his great devotion to duty despite his wounds, Sergeant Fairclo was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
In the years after the war, Bud Fairclo rarely mentioned his combat, Larry said, noting he had to ask questions. Bud, rather, preferred to speak of friends, family and horses.
“I never knew anything about my dad,” Larry Fairclo said. But at a community picnic, “a buddy of his, Kenny Duncan - they used to yard sale together - told me, you know, your Dad is a war hero. You might want to talk to him about it. He was a quiet hero around Klamath Falls.”
Bud Fairclo takes a wild ride in 1939 several years before joining the US Army.
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