Editor’s Note: This is part of a series about Westmoreland County residents who have been honored as Hometown Heroes.
World War II and Korean War veteran Ross Saunders celebrated 87 Christmases before he answered the final call, dying on Dec. 26, 2011.
The most memorable of those holidays was without a doubt Christmas 1944, when Saunders escaped the fate of 763 fellow American servicemen who died when the SS Leopoldville was sunk by a German torpedo off the coast of France.
“I would say that 24 hours of my life will remain with me always,” Saunders wrote in an account of the disaster he left behind for the eight children he and his wife, Mary, raised in the Hempfield village of Bovard.
“He wrote that out for all of us so we could remember,” said Jim Saunders, an Army veteran who was the fifth born of those children. “He was dependable and honest to everybody. He was well respected and liked in the community.”
Ross Saunders was an Army staff sergeant and leader of a 12-member rifle squad that boarded the Belgian ship on Christmas Eve. They intended to sail across the English Channel to support troops fighting World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, but that trip was interrupted by the torpedo strike at about 6 p.m.
Amid the confusion, Saunders kept his cool, rounding up life jackets and marching his men to the starboard side of the ship, opposite from where it was listing. When they abandoned ship, without benefit of a lifeboat, Saunders’ leg got caught in something and he was dragged under the water, temporarily passing out.
“The next thing I knew, I was shooting upward and finally popped up about 500 yards from the ship,” he wrote. Though he didn’t know how to swim, his life jacket kept him afloat for several hours in the rapidly cooling water.
“There were a lot of troops in the water,” he said. “A lot were calm as I was, probably because we still had hope.”
He was unable to keep hold of another injured serviceman he was trying to save but eventually was rescued by a harbor boat from Cherbourg.
After a hospital stay, to recover from his leg injury, Saunders joined other remnants of his infantry division in helping to counter pockets of German resistance along the northwestern coast of France.
“He saw some action there,” his son, Jim, said. “He got injured one more time, with some shrapnel. It was minor. A medic was able to pull it out of him.”
The son of a World War I veteran, Ross Saunders left high school to join the Army midway through his senior year. He’d earned enough credits for his diploma, which his mother accepted.
After completing his service in World War II, he was reintroduced to civilian life and met his future wife. He signed up with the National Guard and served as a first lieutenant with infantry troops stationed in Germany during the Korean War.
“I think he liked being in the military,” said his son.
But continuing a military career could have meant uprooting his growing family from their beloved Bovard.
As he’d volunteered for military service, Ross Saunders joined in efforts to serve his community.
“When you talk about the greatest generation, he was patriotic and always involved in the community,” said Dan, the fourth born of his sons.
Saunders served with the local fire department, as several of his sons do, managed local Bovard baseball teams and was a member of the Hempfield Recreation Commission.
He was a founder of the St. Bede Men’s Club, a group that organized pancake breakfasts and helped to maintain the grounds of the town’s former Catholic church. The club continues to have social gatherings.
To support his large family, Saunders worked hard, including stints at a steel mill and at a railroad yard in Youngwood. He retired in 1986, as a switching technician for Bell Telephone Co.
Then he took up golfing at area courses.
“I tied him, but I never beat him,” Jim Saunders said.
A member of the Greensburg VFW post, Ross Saunders chaired the Memorial Day services for many years in Bovard.
“He kept track of everyone from town who passed away and was a veteran,” said Jim Saunders, who has inherited his father’s Memorial Day role. “Every Christmas Eve, my dad would go to Mass and light candles for all the guys who were killed on that Christmas Eve in 1944.
“He never was morbid or somber about it, but he made sure we always remembered.”