Stalin, Roosevelt, Churchill, and a Boy from Benwood
In observance of Veterans Day, November 11, 2015, we remember the amazing World War II experiences of a local man, Andrew “Pepper” Kramer, the brother of Dr. Mike Medovic’s mother. The family was from Benwood, and Andrew’s two brothers also served in Second World War, one at Omaha Beach and another with the Air Force in the South Pacific.
Sometimes we are in the right place in the right time, often through no action of our own, and we find ourselves in the middle of something much bigger than we could ever imagine. That was probably the case for Andrew, who took some very special pictures of three of the giants of modern history.
Andrew was a military policeman (or MP) in the U.S. Army, and found himself at Yalta in the Russian Crimea, providing security for some very important people: Joseph Stalin of Russia; Winston Churchill of Great Britain; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt of the United States. The picture he took of the three seated leaders mirrors those found in history books.
Andrew took a series of pictures of FDR, around the time of the Yalta Conference, inspecting and addressing the troops from his jeep that are also worthy of the history books.
The Yalta Conference was very controversial because some felt FDR had given too much away to the Russians, but there were mitigating circumstances, such as that fact that the Russians had been bled white fighting the Germans and thus were entitled to generous recompense. Plus the Russian army, by virtue of its victories, occupied a great deal of territory and it would be almost impossible to roll back the boundaries. In addition, the President was not in good health and some feel this may have factored into the outcome. It was a long trip for Roosevelt and the tense meetings from February 4th to the 11th, possibly played a part in his death only two months later on April 12th, 1945.
Whatever the controversy, the Yalta Conference was pivotal for several reasons. Among other things, it set up the framework for the United Nations and laid out the four-nation occupation of post-war Germany by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union.
To participate in “Memories in Hand,” the Ohio County Public Library’s tribute to our veterans and a part of the Wheeling Memory Project, see our previous post.
