Frank Luke Spencer (October 31, 1919-April 23, 1943)

Company C, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division

By Judy Lindquist and Jim Stoddard

Early Life

Frank Luke Spencer was born on October 31, 1919 to William Nelson and Sarah Estelle “Sallie” (née Knowles) Spencer in Key West, Monroe County, FL. William Nelson Spencer, who went by “Nelson” throughout his adult life, was born in the Bahamas on April 15, 1880.¹ He immigrated to Key West with his parents and older brother, George, sometime between 1887 and 1900. Nelson and his family were not US citizens in 1900, but by 1920 he had become a naturalized US citizen.² Frank’s mother, Sallie, was born in Florida around 1885. Her father, Henry Knowles, was originally from the Bahamas like her husband, and immigrated to the US sometime between 1860 and 1880.³ Nelson worked as a sponge fisherman beginning at least as early as 1900, and remained in that line of work until shortly before his death nearly sixty years later.⁴ By the beginning of the twentieth century, sponging had become a lucrative industry in South Florida. At its peak, sponge fishermen in Key West alone produced an average of 2,000 tons of sponges a year.⁵ Though by 1920 Frank’s mother no longer worked outside the home, in 1910 she was employed as a leaf stripper in a cigar factory, an occupation which consisted of stripping tobacco leaves from their stems before rolling.⁶ The cigar industry flourished in Florida at this time due to an influx of immigrants from Caribbean islands with a history of cigar making. By the late nineteenth century, Key West alone had more than one hundred cigar factories.⁷

Tragically, Frank’s mother Sallie died on Oct. 3, 1928, after an illness, when he was eight years old.⁸ By the time of her death, she and her husband had had at least ten children, including Frank (born 1919), Mizpah (born 1901), Henry (born 1903), William (born 1906), Mary Theora (born 1912), Floyd (born c. 1913), Warren (born c. 1914), Everett (born 1922), Eugene (born 1923), and Roy (born 1926).⁹ Frank’s oldest brother, Henry, left school at an early age and in 1920 worked as a laborer at a Navy Yard in Key West, FL.¹⁰ Given such a large family, this might have been an indication of financial challenges and difficulties providing for everyone. These challenges for the Spencer family continued throughout the 1930s. The economic hardships of the Great Depression, which began after the stock market crashed in October 1929, along with Sallie’s death in 1928, affected the entire family. In 1920, the Spencers owned their home at 306 Caroline St., in the center of the historic Old Town district.¹¹ By 1930, though, Nelson Spencer lived in a rented home at 725 Caroline St. with his new wife Lillian Charlow, whom he married in 1929; her seventeen-year-old son Woodrow; and three of his own sons, Everett, Eugene, and Warren.¹² Nelson continued to work as a sponger, as did his fifteen-year-old son Warren. Woodrow worked as a salesman for a pharmacy.¹³ Despite the economic hardships of the Depression, by 1935 the Spencers owned a new home at 306 Peacon Lane, close to the one they had previously rented.¹⁴

After losing his mother at only eight years old, which was undoubtedly the most traumatic event of his young life, Frank’s world changed dramatically. Although his father remarried just a year after Frank’s mother’s death, the new family did not keep young Frank in the home with them. By 1930, when he was eleven years old, Frank Spencer had begun to live with W. H. and I. I. Olson as their foster son. W. H. worked as a chief telegraph operator for Western Union, while I. I. took care of the home, Frank, and the couple’s infant daughter. Originally from Minnesota, the Olsons lived on William St. in Key West, which runs perpendicular to Caroline St.¹⁵ This proximity to his father and siblings meant that although Frank lived with the Olsons as their foster son, he likely still had contact with his family. In addition to Frank, the Olson family also housed a lodger, eighty-three year old English retiree Edward Byran.¹⁶ Taking on lodgers or boarders was a common occurrence throughout the 1930s during the Great Depression. Not only did it help house those in need, but it also brought in much needed extra income to a household with the available space.¹⁷

Frank no longer lived with the Olsons in 1935. He lived at 301 William Street, in a multi-unit dwelling, with his adoptive parents Thomas and Blanche Roberts, and their four children; Leonard and Dorothy Roberts; and Marius and Doris Cruz, and their two children.¹⁸ At only sixteen years old, Frank managed to remain in school rather than begin working as his older brothers had.¹⁹ He finished grammar school and then attended Key West High School in 1938, but he only completed two years before joining the workforce himself.²⁰ Though Thomas Roberts died in 1939, in 1940 Frank continued to live with his adoptive mother Blanche at the same address he lived at in 1935.²¹ Frank’s younger brother, Everett, also lived with them. Like their father, Nelson, the two worked as sponge fishermen.²²

Frank Luke Spencer WWII Draft Registration Card

Military Life

Frank registered for the drafton July 1, 1941, at twenty-one years old. At the time of his registration, he no longer worked as a sponger, but rather as a plasterer apprentice for W.P. Thurston Construction Company at the US Naval Station, Key West.²³ As the war in Europe raged and threats in the Pacific emerged, jobs like these helped the US prepare for the possibility of war. As we see on his draft card, Frank listed Blanche Roberts as his closest point of contact, rather than his father Nelson, further evidence of Frank’s close relationship to the Roberts family and, in particular, to his adoptive mother.²⁴ At the time of his registration, Frank was five feet, seven inches tall, with blond hair, blue eyes, and freckles. He weighed 117 pounds and had a scar on his forehead.²⁵

Frank L. Spencer joined the Army on Oct. 9, 1941, at Camp Blanding, FL.²⁶ After completing his training there, he received orders to join Company C, 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th Infantry Division (ID).²⁷ The US Army formed the 9th ID for service in World War I, but the war concluded before it deployed to Europe. After remaining demobilized for twenty-one years, the Army reactivated the division in August 1940 as the war in Europe and Asia continued to intensify. The 39th Infantry was one of three infantry regiments assigned to 9th ID. From its reactivation through November 1942, the 9th ID went through numerous training exercises in preparation for war, including ground maneuvers in North Carolina and amphibious training with the Amphibious Corps of the Atlantic Fleet.²⁸ Private Frank Spencer likely joined the unit during this training period in late-1941 or early-1942.

Beginning in February 1941, German Expeditionary Forces in Africa, known as the Afrika Korps, battled British forces in North Africa. After the British victory at El Alamein, Egypt in early November 1942, a key early turning point of the war, the Germans retreated west to Tunisia.²⁹ In that same month, US forces arrived in North Africa, much further west on beaches along the Algerian coast, in an effort to surround the Germans. The 9th ID spread its regiments across the region. It sent Frank and the 39th Infantry in at Algiers, Algeria.³⁰ So began Operation Torch, the Allied push to expel Germans out of North Africa. The struggle continued over the next few months. In February 1943, Axis forces moved east and launched an attack at the Kasserine Pass in the Atlas Mountains, in central Tunisia. Frank probably saw fighting for the first time here.³¹ At some point, he wrote home to Blanche Roberts, saying, in part, “I am seeing plenty of action now.”³²

In March 1943, the Allies continued the deadly effort to encircle and dislodge the Germans from Tunisia. On March 28, the 1st and 9th IDs moved to secure the flanks of the El Guettar Pass. When the Germans captured command elements of the 39th Infantry’s sister regiment, the 47th, Frank’s battalion arrived to help. Difficulties arose when they became lost in the maze of hills in the area. After a few days of hard fighting, the Allies took the El Guettar Pass and pushed German forces into northern Tunisia.³³

By April 23, 1943, 9th ID and their French Allies in the Corps Francs d’Afrique, or the French Africa Corps, mostly consisting of troops of color from French colonies in North and West Africa led by white officers, held a twenty-eight mile line from the Mediterranean south to the city of Sidi Nsir, located about sixty miles west of the Tunisian capital of Tunis. From that position, the 9th ID was to take the Axis-held positions around Jefna, which sat less than fifteen miles north of Sidi Nsir. The Allies believed Jefna to be one of the strongest German positions in northern Tunisia. The morning opened with intense artillery fire for the 9th Division as they worked to take enemy occupied hills in the area.³⁴ As Frank and the 39th attacked their objectives in the hills around northern Tunisia, they took many casualties. On April 23, 1943, Frank L. Spencer was killed while capturing the strategic position Hill 382 near Jefna, Tunisia.³⁵ The Allied efforts bore fruit over the next few days, and on May 1 the Germans withdrew further North; German forces surrendered to the Allies on May 13, 1943.³⁶

Legacy

When Frank died at the age of twenty-three, the woman that Frank saw as his mother, Blanche Roberts, reported his death to the Miami Herald, as seen here.³⁷ Frank became the first Army inductee from Key West, FL to die in World War II. Just after he died, in June 1943, the community of Key West held a memorial service for him at the Fleming Street Methodist Church, just two blocks from the house on Caroline St. where he lived with his parents and siblings in 1920.³⁸ So many people gathered for Frank’s memorial service that the church proved too small to accommodate everyone, and many people had to stand outside.³⁹

Frank Luke Spencer Killed in Action in North Africa

The community of Key West was eager to remember Frank both as someone who influenced many different people and families in the area, and as a symbol of their connection to the sacrifices of the war. Frank’s younger brother, Eugene, a soldier stationed in Utah, received a furlough to attend his brother’s service.⁴⁰ On January 6, 1947, Eugene and his wife, Ada, had a son. In honor of Eugene’s fallen older brother, the couple chose to name him Frank Luke Spencer.⁴¹

Due in part to overfishing, the sponging industry in Key West waned by the 1950s.⁴² In 1954, Nelson Spencer intentionally beached his sponge fishing boat, the Ella Collins, which at the time was the last vessel of the once-large Key West sponging fleet. The boat had been a fixture of the waterfront beside Caroline St. since Nelson acquired it in 1902, shortly after he moved to the US from the Bahamas.⁴³ Frank Spencer likely saw the boat frequently, and probably went on sponging expeditions aboard it as a young man.

Initially, Frank was interred in the American II Corps Cemetery in Mateur, Tunisia, near where he died. After the war the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) consolidated the cemeteries in North Africa, creating the American North Africa Cemetery in 1948.⁴⁴ The US Gold Star family program, created after World War I, allows the families of the fallen to decide to repatriate their loved ones for reburial in the US.⁴⁵ In 1949, Frank’s father, Nelson, his next of kin, chose to have his son reinterred in St. Augustine National Cemetery.⁴⁶ This meant that Frank could be nearer to the community he had been such an intimate part of in life. He rests near the water, among his fellow Veterans in Section D, Site 135.⁴⁷

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