Curtis Bernard Beville (July 30, 1919-May 31, 1944)

Company F, 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division, US Army

By John Barton and Oliver Brown

Early Life

Curtis Bernard Beville was born in Center Hill, Sumter County, FL on July 30, 1919, on his parents' first wedding anniversary.¹ Curtis’s father, John Beville, was born September 27, 1887, and his mother, Lena Currington, on September 29, 1896.² Curtis was the first of three children, and his parents’ only son. He had two younger sisters, Marjorie (1924) and Viola (1926).³

John’s ancestors had lived in North America since before the American Revolution. His great-great-grandfather, Robert Beville, served as a Private in the Georgia Line, a formation of infantry regiments from Georgia that constituted part of the Continental Army.⁴ The Beville family remained in Georgia throughout the first half of the nineteenth century and settled in central Florida sometime before 1860.⁵ This relocation mid-century may have owed to the recently-fought Seminole Wars. The Seminole Wars, three violent conflicts fought between the US military and Seminole Tribes in Florida between the 1810s and 1850s, resulted in the forced removal of thousands of Seminoles to territory west of the Mississippi River. Some Seminole warriors continued to resist, going deeper into the Everglades. The removal of so many Seminoles facilitated white control and opened more of the peninsula to white agricultural settlement. Along with farming came the expansion of slavery.⁶ The Bevilles owned enslaved people during this period, and by the Civil War had accumulated significant wealth.⁷ In 1860, Granville Beville, John’s grandfather, owned thirty-one enslaved people, all of whom contributed to his personal estate valued at more than $18,000 at the time ($700,000 in today’s currency).⁸

In 1870, following the abolition of slavery, Granville Beville’s personal estate value dropped to $4,000, though the family maintained local political influence in the area.⁹ Thomas Beville, John’s father, served as a county commissioner for Sumter County, FL in the early twentieth century.¹⁰ During this time, however, tragedy struck the family. Before his marriage to Curtis’ mother Lena, John had been married once before to Margaret Harder, the daughter of German immigrants Bruno and Frances Harder.¹¹ John and Margaret married on March 1, 1908.¹² A year later, in 1909, John murdered Margaret’s parents following a domestic dispute.¹³ According to contemporary newspaper reports, Margaret’s parents did not approve of their daughter’s marriage to John and tried to convince her to leave her husband. In early September 1909, while Margaret stayed with her parents at their home in Sumterville, FL, John traveled to the Harder home and demanded Margaret return with him. An argument ensued, and John shot the couple, killing them both while Margaret remained in the home.¹⁴ Criminally tried for each murder separately in 1910, a jury acquitted John for the killing of Bruno Harder, agreeing with his claim of self-defense, but found him guilty of third-degree murder for the killing of Frances Harder. Judge W.S. Bullock sentenced John to ten years in prison.¹⁵ Although a witness to the killings, Margaret refused to testify against her husband in court, for which she spent a month in jail for contempt.¹⁶ John appealed his conviction, and in June 1911, just one year after his sentencing, the Florida Supreme Court overturned the ruling on the grounds of jury mismanagement.¹⁷ John Beville became a free man. By 1917, John and Margaret had divorced.¹⁸

On June 5, 1917, two months after the US officially entered the First World War, John Beville registered for the draft, though he never served.¹⁹ By 1920, the newly married Beville family had an infant son and lived on a farm they owned. John worked as a truck farmer– someone who lives near a town and farms exclusively to sell to the people in town. Lena took care of the home, her three children, and worked hard on their family farm.²⁰ Following prosperity in the early years of their marriage, the Great Depression, which began after the stock market collapsed in October 1929, greatly affected the Beville family. Though they owned their own farm in 1920, they rented a home on Venable St. in Center Hill, FL by 1930.²¹ John worked as a fruit and vegetable packer to support his family.²² On March 20, 1931, in the midst of the Depression, John passed away from a heart attack following a brief illness at the age of forty-three.²³ Six years later, on November 14, 1937, Curtis’s mother Lena remarried to H.N. Redding, a farmer from Sumter County, FL.²⁴

1941 Marriage Record for Curtis Beville and Dorothy Mildred Landen

Curtis completed at least two years of high school by 1940, an accomplishment for a student during the Great Depression.²⁵ By the time he turned twenty-one, Curtis had gotten a job working for the Seaboard Air Line Railway, an important railway that ran throughout the southeastern US in the first half of the twentieth century.²⁶ On September 16, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Service Act into law, which instituted the first peacetime draft in US history.²⁷ Curtis registered for the draft in Bushnell, FL on October 16, 1940.²⁸ Around this time, Curtis met Dorothy Mildred Landen, a stenographer from Suwannee County, FL, and applied for a marriage license on September 6, 1941.²⁹ Exactly one month later, on October 6, Reverend J.M. Smiley married the couple in Live Oak, FL, as indicated in the marriage record here.³⁰

Military Service

Shortly after Curtis and Dorothy married, Curtis entered the US Army. Curtis enlisted at Camp Blanding in Starke, FL on October 17, 1941.³¹ During Curtis’ first few months in the Army, Japan attacked the US at Pearl Harbor. A day after this attack, on December 8, 1941, the US officially entered World War II. Over the next two years, Curtis continued to train as the Army grew to face a two-front war. In December 1943, Curtis traveled home to visit his family before deploying overseas. Two months later, in February 1944, Curtis left the US for the European Theater as part of the 45th Infantry Division (ID), nicknamed the “Thunderbirds.”³² Curtis joined Company F, 179th Infantry Regiment, 45th ID. As part of the 5th US Army, the 45th ID sailed from Virginia to North Africa in June 1943 to prepare for the invasion of Sicily and the Italian Peninsula.³³

In July 1943, the Allies first penetrated Western Europe through Italy via an Allied amphibious landing on Sicily. While the Allies took the island relatively quickly, progress up the boot of Italy slowed in the early months of 1944. The Allies bashed against the German Army’s heavily fortified Gustav Line, which stretched across the Italian peninsula and barred movement toward Rome.³⁴ To reach Rome, the Allies sought a way around the Gustav Line. On January 22, the Allies landed troops at Anzio, a beachhead on the west coast of Italy eighty miles behind the Gustav Line with direct access to Rome. The Allies fought violently to hold and break out of the Anzio beachhead for the next five months.³⁵

These conditions persisted when Curtis and his fellow replacements arrived in Italy in early 1944.³⁶ During a period of heavy fighting at Anzio from February 12-19, 1944, the 179th Infantry Regiment lost over half of its men and officers as casualties.³⁷ Curtis and his comrades in the 179th faced brutal conditions along the front, including entrenched foxhole fighting. As the Allies fought to break out of Anzio, the 179th Infantry rotated its battalions frequently, sending men to the front for eight days and allowing them four days of rest in the rear. Replacements, both battle-hardened soldiers and new recruits, continued to arrive throughout the late winter and spring of 1944.³⁸

On May 7, the Army initiated a full-scale offensive to end the stalemate after four months of fighting. Commanding officers tasked the 179th Infantry Regiment with holding their position against an expected German counter-attack after the Allied offensive started. On May 26, after the German lines began to crumble, Curtis and the 179th joined the general Allied advance. The leading elements of the 179th sustained heavy casualties on May 28 as they faced German opposition. Through intense fighting, the 179th managed to overwhelm the Germans and enveloped their positions. Curtis and his comrades in Company F, located in the lead battalion, faced strong resistance but captured the village of Colle Cavalieri in late May. The Germans threw everything they had at the 179th, but could not stop the advance. On May 31, the Germans launched a final counterattack against the entrenched 179th, deploying artillery and mortar fire.³⁹ Though the 179th’s defenses held, during this bloody fighting fragments from an artillery shell wounded Curtis in the leg.⁴⁰ Curtis Bernard Beville succumbed to his injuries and died on May 31, 1944, at just twenty-four years old.⁴¹

Legacy

Curtis’ comrades initially interred him with his fellow fallen soldiers in the Nettuno Cemetery, Italy, just south of Rome (what became the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery).⁴² His unit continued to fight back against the Axis forces until the Germans retreated in early June, 1944. The 179th Infantry Regiment and the rest of the “Thunderbirds” then traveled across the Tiber River to Rome to aid in the liberation of the city. After arriving in North Africa in June 1943, the regiment had 236 days of action in Italy and 129 days of rest. With Rome liberated from Axis control, the 45th ID trained for the massive amphibious landing in southern France, codenamed Operation Dragoon. The 179th Infantry landed on La Nartelle beach, about eighty miles east of Marseille, France in August 1944.⁴³ Once out of the south of France, it went on to take part in the Ardennes and Rhineland Campaigns.⁴⁴ When Germany surrendered to the Allies in May 1945, the “Thunderbirds,” began their preparations to join the Pacific Theater, though the war ended on September 2, 1945, before they could redeploy.⁴⁵

The War Department informed Curtis’ mother, Lena, of her son’s death in June 1944.⁴⁶ Curtis posthumously earned the Bronze Star, awarded “for heroism in action against the enemy which cost him his life.” Dorothy, Curtis’ widow, received the medal through the mail at her residence in the Florida state capital of Tallahassee. The announcement appeared in the paper on July 30, 1944, which would have been Curtis’ twenty-fifth birthday.⁴⁷ Just like his fellow soldiers, Curtis remains lauded for his service to his country and the ultimate sacrifice he made to the Allied cause. Following the war, the US government instituted the Return of World War II Dead Program. This program allowed the families of Veterans killed overseas to repatriate their loved one’s remains to the US, if they wished, so they could rest closer to home.⁴⁸ In 1948, Curtis’ widow, Dorothy, as his next of kin, decided to bring her husband back to Florida. Curtis Bernard Beville now rests among his fellow Veterans in St. Augustine National Cemetery, Section D, Plot 178.⁴⁹

1950 Census for Curtis’s sister Marjorie, and nephew named after him

In November 1945, Curtis’ sister Betty married a Veteran, Asa Varner, in his home state of Alabama.⁵⁰ Curtis’ other sister, Marjorie, married Sandford Bohanan, a farmer from Jacksonville, in April 1943.⁵¹ They had a daughter, Sandra, born in 1944, and in 1948 had a son whom they named Curtis Bernard, after Marjorie’s beloved brother, as noted on the 1950 US Federal Census. By 1950, Marjorie had separated from her husband and lived with her mother, Lena, and her two children in Bradenton, FL.⁵² In the years after the war, Curtis’ widow, Dorothy, remarried to Reid C. Poindexter, a Florida Highway Patrol officer, and in 1950 lived with him in Leon County, FL.⁵³ Reid died in 1973, at the age of sixty-five.⁵⁴ Nine years later, on Christmas Day 1982, Dorothy, twice widowed, passed away at the age of sixty.⁵⁵ Just a few years later, on December 18, 1984, Curtis’ mother passed away at the age of eighty-eight, leaving behind her two daughters, four grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren.⁵⁶ Curtis’ memory continues to live on through the legacies of the people he left behind. His sisters, mother, Army comrades, and his nephew, named for him, all play a part in making sure that the memory of Curtis and his heroic actions never fade away.

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