The Wells brothers (l to r) Irvin, Bob, and Ray Wells
Listening to the coverage of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, I started wondering about ancestors who’d fought in World War II. Though I have not yet found any that landed at Normandy, two of grandma’s cousins, Irvin and Raymond Wells, were part of the first Allied landing the European mainland—Operation Avalanche at Salerno, Italy—nine months before D-Day. And their younger brother Robert—Bob Wells—served in the US Navy in the South Pacific.
The Wells brothers were the children of Robert Augustus & Bessie Mae (Green) Wells. Bessie was the fraternal twin of Jesse Ray Green, grandma’s father—our great-grandfather. This makes the Wells brothers our 1st cousins 2x removed. You may have met Ray and his wife Joyce in Colorado—he worked for the US Mint when we were kids, and we’d visit with them every time grandma came to town.
I knew cousin Ray had been in the war, but nothing beyond that. Brother Joe sent me a link to an interview Ray had done with the Northern Colorado Veterans History Project in 2008, but because it is nearly two hours long, I’d put off watching it until last Thursday.
Don’t make the same mistake I did—watch this interview. The best way to describe it is understated, as he calmly recounts his service. Ray tells how he joined the Texas National Guard in 1939 “on a lark” when he was 16 years old (he lied to recruiters), and his brother Irvin joined the same unit a few months later. That division was federalized to became the core of the US Army’s 36th Infantry Division, which was the main US fighting group at Salerno, Italy. The British and Canadians were also part of the 170,000-troop landing force.
After
coming ashore on September 9, 1943, the Allies fought to establish a foothold
around Naples. Ray was wounded at the Battle
of Altavilla a few days later, then “escaped” from the army hospital to
return to his unit. In mid-December Ray and Irvin fought at the Battle of San
Pietro, a fight that was documented in real time by filmmaker John Huston.
Ray’s heroic effort during that battle earned him the Bronze Star and the
Silver Star. (I have not yet uncovered the story of what he did.) Here is
Huston’s film:
The Allies fought on and on as they moved up the Italian peninsula. On January 20–22, 1944, Irvin Wells was shot in the ankle and captured at the Battle of Rapido River—an Allied military disaster. This was the opening fight in the Battle of Monte Cassino, a brutal four-month siege around the mountaintop fortress/abbey where the Germans had holed up.
The Monte Cassino Abbey and village
of Cassino after the battle—how did anyone survive?
Ray Wells was hit by a shell during a nighttime attack during the siege, an injury that took him out of the war, though he wouldn’t return to the states for another five months. Meanwhile, Irvin Wells was being held as a POW in Stalag-344 near Łambinowice, Poland. Irvin Wells was part of a prisoner exchange in early 1945. I do not have any further information on his service.
British and Allied surgical patients at Stalag-344, February 1944. Could Irvin Wells be one of the men shown?
I have even less info on Bob Wells’s service in the South Pacific. According to his obituary, “he joined the US Navy Armed Guards in 1943 and served on the USS Corvallis, USS Whiteriver, and USS Bucknell from 1943 to 1945 as a gunner.” Bob may have been destined for the navy—in these two childhood photos of the brothers (one with their mother Bessie), he’s the one in the sailor suit.
Irvin Elmer Wells died on April 18, 2007, in Arlington, Texas, at the age of 86.
Raymond Charles Wells died in Greeley, Colorado, on October 16, 2016, age 94. He is interred at Arlington National Cemetery (Section 57, Site 2159, not far from the entrance).
Robert Joseph Wells died on May 8, 2020, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, likely from Covid. He was 95.
UPDATE June 2026:
In 1945 Hollywood came out with a dramatization of the invasion of Italy, A Walk in the Sun:
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