After More Than 80 Years, Wyoming Paratrooper’s WWII Purple Heart Comes Home

On Sept. 21, 1944, Pfc. Harold Roy Shelden of Douglas, Wyoming, and other members of the 82nd Airborne Division accomplished the impossible.

Their assignment was part of an audacious plan during World War II to seize bridges across the Waal River deep in Nazi-held territory so Allies could drive across the Netherlands into industrial Germany and hopefully end the war sooner than later.

It was Sept. 17, 1944, when Shelden and others in his battalion dropped out the sky. Three days later, the paratroopers sent teams in little British-supplied canvas boats to the north side of the Waal River, some using rifle butts as oars. Others stayed on the banks to prepare to assault the bridge from the Allied side. It would be a pincher attack.

Nazi resistance was fierce and members of Shelden’s company, which led the advance across the river, were sitting ducks. Yet before the day was over, the two bridges that were the Allies’ objectives were in their hands.

The next day Shelden was dead.

According to an eyewitness, Shelden was trying to report casualties of the day when he was struck by enemy fire and killed.

Nearly 80 years after the fact, Dutch dedication, a resolute volunteer and a woman representing the last connection to his Wyoming family and community have combined to ensure his legacy and sacrifice will forever be remembered in his home state.

Operation Market Garden

Operation Market Garden and the attempts to take the bridges across the Waal and Rhine rivers became some of the most notable battles in the European theater and the subject of books, articles and the movie “A Bridge Too Far.”

While Operation Market Garden failed overall, the mission freed many Dutch people who were facing starvation. The gratitude of that generation has been passed on to succeeding generations and is still shown at a cemetery where Americans who died on Dutch soil are buried.

In Plot L, Row 10, Grave 5 of the Netherlands American Cemetery is the marker for Shelden, who lies alongside more than 10,000 other soldiers, sailors and airmen from World War II.

For Scott Rayl, a Richmond, Virginia, freelance “repatriation specialist,” his encounter with Shelden’s grave in a Netherlands cemetery and the story that spun out of it became something “pure Americana” that he is not going to forget.

It’s led to a Purple Heart returning to a Shelden relative and ultimately to the community where Shelden’s father once had a homestead near Bill, Wyoming.

Remembering The Fallen

Rayl said his part of the Shelden story began sometime in fall 2021 as he was working with Dutch families, who from generation to generation continue to “adopt” the graves of U.S. soldiers at the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, Netherlands.

“The Dutch are the gold standard of remembrance, particularly as it relates to remembering fallen soldiers that weren’t even your own,” Rayl said. “I do this all over the world and I have not seen anything like what the Dutch have done. Once I realized that, I started focusing on the 10,023 soldiers there. And working with organizations like Stories Behind the Stars. They are trying to write an actual digital profile for all the fallen of World War II.”

As part of their continued remembrance and honoring the dead, the Dutch have an annual or biannual ceremony that involves putting photos of the dead on gravestones. Rayl said he was working with the Dutch family that adopted Shelden’s grave as well as others to get photos and also to possibly connect the current generations of descendants with each other.

Rayl could find no one alive in Shelden’s immediate family, but Rayl found descendants from Shelden’s ex-wife, Ruth.

Ruth Reed was born Feb. 5, 1924, in Colorado and moved to the Douglas, Wyoming, area as a young girl. Death records show her father, Ralph Glenn Reed, was killed Dec. 23, 1932, at a coal mine. She was 8 years old. Her mother remarried and then she also died on Jan. 16, 1941, when Ruth Reed was 17.

Shelden was born Sept. 2, 1918, in Douglas to LeRoy (Roy) and Pearl Shelden. His parents would divorce and in the 1940 census he is listed as being in the household of his mother and stepfather.

Wyoming Guard Beginning

Wyoming National Guard records show Shelden enlisted with the Guard’s F Troop, 115th Calvary on Jan. 10, 1941. The 22-year-old had three years of high school and had worked as a carpenter.

He enlisted as a single man. The unit was inducted into federal service on Feb. 24, 1941, and sent to Fort Lewis, Washington. Then on Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

Wyoming National Guard historian John Woodward said the unit conducted coast defense patrols from Canada to the Mexican border during 1942.

“Quite a few of the Wyoming guys in the regiment started to transfer out to other units in 1943-1944,” Woodward said. “I think Private Shelden was probably one of them. We don’t have any idea of when he transferred.”

What is known is that on July 24, 1942, Shelden married Ruth Reed in King County, Washington, according to the marriage certificate. His mother and brother were there to witness the ceremony.

Rayl found a photo of the couple smiling and leaning their heads against each other. The marriage would not last long.

Shelden would transfer to the 504th Parachute Infantry, which would become part of the 82nd Airborne. At some point there would be a divorce, and the former Ruth Shelden, listed as Ruth Reed on her second marriage certificate, married Navy man Charles H. Mears on Jan. 31, 1944, nine months before Harold Shelden was killed.

When Harold Shelden died, the U.S. Army posthumously awarded him the Purple Heart. It was sent to his ex-wife, Ruth Mears.

Colleague Honors Him

Shelden was honored by a fellow veteran, Albert A. Tarbell of the 504th Parachute Infantry, who testified that Shelden “fought across Europe with the storied paratroopers of H Company, 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.”

“He was killed in action while reporting casualties taken by the company on a fierce day of fighting in the Netherlands. His known awards are The Purple Heart Medal, Combat Infantry Badge, Parachutist Badge, American Campaign Medal and the European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal,” Tarbell wrote.

When Rayl contacted the children of Ruth Mears about the photos, he said he learned that the family had tried to get Shelden’s Purple Heart back to his relatives in Douglas.

“This Purple Heart thing came out of left field entirely,” Rayl said. “I was just trying to find a picture of the guy and connect any family members I could find with the adoptees overseas. In that effort I found his ex-wife’s (family). Then out of nowhere, someone mentions the Purple Heart.”

That someone was Donald Mears of San Diego, California, son of Ruth.

He said he did not learn that his mother had been married to a man other than his dad until she mentioned it about 10 years before her death as the family quizzed her about her life. That’s also when Ruth’s son learned about Shelden’s Purple Heart.

“That Purple Heart, she had it all along. Who knows where it was? When she passed, I ended up with it and we started trying to get it back to family,” he said. “My wife’s father already had a Purple Heart, so we already had one here, we didn’t need two.”

Purple Heart Heads Home

At one point, Mears said he had contact with a relative and actually stopped in Douglas on a family trip to see if he could pass it on, but was not able to “reconnect.”

Then Rayl called, offering to help the Mears family find someone in Douglas, if possible, or a place the Purple Heart in a museum. The Mears family sent the medal to him.

“There were a lot of places that medal could have gone to give it special meaning,” Rayl said.

Rayl’s efforts led to contact with a Douglas-area ranching family and Beverly Reed, who recalls that the first time she saw Shelden’s name was on a board honoring fallen soldiers from the area, but she knew little more than that.

“My dad was a cousin to Harold,” she said. “Their fathers were brothers.”

She said both her grandfather and Harold’s father’s homesteaded outside unincorporated Bill, Wyoming. But her understanding was that Leroy Shelden sold his property back to the government because his boys left and he had no one to help him work it.

Memorial Wall Planned

Rayl sent Reed the Purple Heart last week and she received it March 1. The family and community plan to honor Shelden’s memory and war contribution by creating a memorial wall at the community hall in Bill.

“There was a community hall, a school, all kinds of community members back in the ’30s,” Reed said. “We are going to try and do a memorial wall in the Dry Creek Community Hall and put Harold’s Purple Heart on that wall.”

She said because the community is busy ranching in the spring, the placement will probably happen this summer.

Rayl said the satisfaction of getting the Purple Heart to the family is a project he won’t forget.

“Mr. Shelden’s (story) will always be one of the nearest and dearest. It is pure Americana. A family gracious in saving (the medal), another gracious in receiving it,” he said. “The medal itself is different because it is stamped when it is original. And the box was very different from any box I’ve ever seen. I get lightheaded just thinking about being part of such a thing.”

Investigation of the medal shows the U.S. Army misspelled Shelden’s name as “Sheldon.”

However, Shelden’s name is spelled correctly, listed in the third column on a monument next to the Waal River in Nijmegen, Netherlands. The monument honors the 49 who gave their lives trying to liberate the city.

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.