James “Maggie” Megellas

Born March 11, 1917, to Greek immigrant parents in a house of seven children, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression to put money in the family. Pearl Harbor fell in the middle of his senior year at Ripon College. He took a commission through ROTC in May 1942, volunteered for the new airborne, and spent twenty-nine months in Europe with H Company, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment—Anzio, the Waal crossing, and the Battle of the Bulge.

On January 28, 1945, after a ten-mile march through two-foot snow, a Mark V Panther tank swung on his platoon outside Herresbach, Belgium. Megellas ran at it, jammed one grenade to stop the tank, climbed on, and dropped a second inside. None of his men died. His commander recommended him for the Medal of Honor but omitted the tank action; he received a Silver Star instead, adding to a Distinguished Service Cross, another Silver Star, two Bronze Stars with V device, and two Purple Hearts. General James Gavin later chose him to accept the Netherlands’ Military Order of William Orange Lanyard for the whole division. In a letter to his sister after Herresbach he wrote that he had killed twenty-eight Germans that night—his own voice, later printed in the Journal Sentinel.

He came home, served as president of the Fond du Lac city council, lost two races for Congress, befriended John F. Kennedy, and spent State Department years as a USAID mission director. He married Carole Laehn of Fond du Lac, Miss Ripon 1960, on May 9, 1962. Congress named the Fond du Lac post office for him. A Bridge Too Far killed a character based on him; he outlived the scene by seventy-five years. He died in Colleyville, Texas, on April 2, 2020, at 103.