By Stephen Smoot
What forms do heroism take?
Some heroes take to the fields, the air, or the oceans to fight for their country and freedom.
Some heroes enter law enforcement, protecting the community from those who would steal, do violence, or worse.
Some heroes passionately devote themselves to a cause of justice and see it through.
And some other heroes treat life as an adventure to be enjoyed, thrills to feel and share in stories and pictures with others, inspiring all through their example.
In a century of life and service, Paul Frederick McCue has done all of the above. He explained that “I’ve always been active in things.”
Mr. Paul, as his friends know him, led a life that never strayed far from the 20th century history in which he lived. As a small child, he experienced quite a dark introduction to that history. Five years after his May 1926 birth came the most chilling news a community could learn. In Quiet Dell, Harry Powers had transformed a typical rural farm into a deadly destination for women that he lured to the area from New England.
McCue’s family got to the farm before the media and he saw with his own eyes the corpses emerging from the cold earth.
Those eyes, 99 years young until his May birthday, still burn with the fierce spark that has driven McCue all his life, whatever his activity or his vocation. As his expansive memory accesses more and more of the mental archives of his past, McCue becomes more animated, not less, with passion and energy more that of a man in his 20s than one looking back at a storied life and also ahead at whatever new adventure awaits.
McCue defines his life at its foundation by his military service in the Second World War, proudly announcing “I joined the Navy. I was not drafted.”
As per usual in his life, McCue went straight to the heart of the action. He served on a landing ship, tank, a warship specifically designed to take troops, vehicles, supplies, and anything else necessary straight to the shoreline. LSTs performed admirably, especially on gradually sloped beaches garrisoned by inexperienced or otherwise inadequate forces.
He got a front row seat to one of the most heroic efforts of the late war of men putting their lives on the line for their comrades. As McCue later described in an interview, his ship, the LST 719, “I remember very distinctly we were somewhere near San Pedro Bay,” he explained, then added that “while in the edge of a convoy, we were getting ready to make an invasion, I was on watch at the time on the starboard side in a gun tub.”
McCue had orders to observe, listen, and report “anything I could see.” Then “all of a sudden, I heard an explosion coming from the opposite side of me, the port side.” Five destroyer escorts, including USS Renshaw, guarded the landing craft and their complement of men from Japanese attack as they steamed in.
An explosion struck the Renshaw as she lagged and covered the port side aft of LST 719, meaning the left side of the ship towards the rear of it. “I saw a bunch of water and steam and the depth charges all peel off the ship that got hit,” he described. Though the ship’s crew quickly patched the hole sufficiently to remain seaworthy, the Renshaw lost 19 killed in action and had 20 wounded.
As McCue would later have revealed to him in declassified documents discovered by an LST 719 engine room shipmate and shared with him seven years after the incident, the ship did not just get hit. “The Renshaw saved my life.”
“We kept on going,” he stated, then went on to say “I didn’t know much about what happened until later on.”
What McCue could not see directly from his starboard post was that a midget submarine had launched a torpedo at LST 719. Renshaw’s captain, as McCue shared, had to have both informed the LST 719 of the torpedo and also given the order to speed up and intercept. Renshaw took the torpedo meant for LST 719. He stated in the interview almost nine years ago that “I might not be here today if it weren’t for that destroyer.”
McCue described his training for service on the ship as less typical for the Navy and closer to that of the Marine Corps, since ships and crews could potentially steam directly into the thick of a fight.
In 1946, McCue received his honorable discharge and opened the next phase of his life. “When I got out, I had a lot of hobbies, but not a job at the time.” Like many World War II veterans returning to civilian life after service in the war and a childhood in the Great Depression, he joined the industrial workforce and also endeavored to explore the nation for whose freedom he fought. McCue worked for 26 years at Pittsburgh Plate and Glass in Clarksburg, which had gotten attention early in the war from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. She investigated the union-supported firing of Jehovah’s Witnesses from the factory in December 1941.
He also set out to explore, scaling and repelling off of Seneca Rocks before safety upgrades and warnings were installed to protect tourists from their own overexuberance, later taking his son on motorcycle expeditions deep into the United States and Mexico. McCue also explored the depths of uncharted caves, such as Hellhole in Pendleton County. On one long cross country trek, the motorcycle broke down in Kentucky, leaving the two having to hitchhike back home.
“I had a lot of hobbies,” stated McCue. On his farm in Doddridge County he raised goats and chickens. He also had a lifelong love of history and enjoyed casting a line into a good trout stream from time to time.
A man of action cannot steer clear of it for too long. McCue, at first when he was off shift at the glass plant, was hired as a Harrison County constable. “I had no training,” he stated, then added “but I was very dedicated.”
Constables served in West Virginia law under a broader category of “conservator of the peace” and worked under the authority of the county court and with justices of the peace. By the late 1970s, the West Virginia State Legislature transformed justice of the peace courts into magistrate judgeships. Constables were added to the sheriff’s department as deputies.
Constables served as law enforcement officers the same as sheriff’s deputies and local and state police. McCue remembered that at times, the job could get harrowing and dangerous. “I was very dedicated,” he said, “I took a lot of classes as a constable” and “I did a lot of things. Some of those classes that involved medical crosstraining led to qualification to serve on an ambulance as well.
McCue carried a police radio and answered calls on duty as often as possible. One came over and described a dangerous chase starting in Anmoore. As he assisted in trying to track down and halt the offender, McCue noticed the faint glow of taillights off the road on a curve. Those turned out to belong to a Phillippi police officer that “no one had any idea he had gone over.”
Action can take a number of forms. When McCue heard the story of heroism not only forgotten, but actively covered up, his sense of duty awakened a passion for the heroes known as the Wereth 11.
During the coldest months of the war, the winter of 1944-45, Germany launched a last-ditch effort to regain momentum and drive American, British, and allied forces into the English Channel. A massive offensive across the front temporarily threw the Allies into disarray, disorganization, and, in some cases, partial retreats.
The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion was by then a tough group of battle hardened soldiers in support of the 101st Airborne. It also happened to be a black unit in the era before President Harry S. Truman ordered the armed forces desegregated. Eleven soldiers from that unit got separated from their unit and wandered into the town of Wereth.
There a kind family offered them shelter, but not long after, German SS troops entered the town to search for the men. Knowing that their presence meant certain torture and death to the local family, the soldiers set out into the night, only to meet capture and that same fate.
Their mutilated bodies were not found until the snow melted. Their story remained untold for decades, perhaps in part because of the same Cold War reconciliation movement that inspired the plot of the film Judgment at Nuremberg.
McCue heard the story from friends that he had met who hailed from Piedmont, in Mineral County. Piedmont was home to Staff Sergeant Aubrey Stewart, one of the Wereth 11. He had enlisted despite being older than the ages being actively drafter. Stewart saw his friends enter the service and his own personal sense of duty and country served as a strong call to serve.
Kip Price from Piedmont was one of the men who shared their heroism with McCue. He remembered that “he got a kick out of my license plate that said ‘Wereth 11’ and asked about it.” Price explained that “he was so excited to learn because he was over there too. He had never heard about them.”
McCue worked with Kip Price and Asa Davison from Fairmont to bring the story into public attention. Their efforts were picked up by United States Senator Joe Manchin, who introduced a congressional resolution to honor their service.
“He was with me when Senator Manchin got Resolution 99 passed” that honored the Wereth 11 officially on the floor of the United States Congress. McCue also made the trip to Piedmont to celebrate the commemoration of the memorial sign for Stewart at the town line.
Efforts went into getting McCue his own commemorative sign for a bridge in Harrison County, but state law mandates that the recipient have passed prior to the honor. He got one anyway, a replica made that will likely look much like the one in his nursing home room currently. Honors have come, however. He has been honored by the United States and Philippine governments, as well as by a proclamation from the Harrison County Commission.
With 100 years behind, McCue is not ready for rest and recuperation. He continues to share the stories of the heroism of the USS Renshaw in the Pacific and also that of the Wereth 11 in Europe. Anyone who drops by will get a welcome, a big smile, and a gripping story from some point in his incredible life.
