DETROIT LAKES
— He may not be able to see or hear very well these days, but that doesn’t mean James Ramstad’s mind has lost any of the sharpness that made him one of Detroit Lakes’ top attorneys, right up until his retirement in the early 2000’s.
Ramstad, at 102 years old — he will turn 103 in December — still has remarkable recall of his years serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, more than 80 years ago … up to and including the day he first tried to enlist.
“I was drafted in October of 1942,” he said. “It was my sophomore year at the University of Minnesota. So I went and took my physical exam to get in the army … I failed.”
Ramstad had a hernia, which led to his status being deemed “4F” — in other words, he was disqualified from serving due to a physical limitation.
“I could have finished at the university and got a job,” he said. “But I didn’t want to be the only one from Long Prairie (his hometown) that wasn’t in the service.”
So rather than accept the disqualification, Ramstad had surgery to repair the hernia, and went back a year later to try again. This time, he passed the exam without issue, and was formally drafted into the U.S. Army in October 1943.
World War II veteran Jim Ramstad, 101, of Detroit Lakes, drew a particularly long and loud standing ovation from the crowd as he walked across the floor of the Lakeshirts Fieldhouse at Detroit Lakes High School to take his place of honor for Veterans Day festivities on Monday, Nov. 11, 2024.
Vicki Gerdes / Detroit Lakes Tribune
He completed signal corps basic training in Missouri that fall, but didn’t get shipped overseas until the following spring.
“We were in Camp Reynolds, Pennsylvania,” he said. “From there we were shipped to Fort Dix, New Jersey, just for overnight, then we got on a ship and they sent us to England. I think it must have been April 1944.
Ramstad wound up at Oulton Park, near Liverpool, England, where he and his fellow American soldiers were stationed for a few weeks before being sent to France — and the heart of the action.
Longtime Detroit Lakes resident Jim Ramstad was honored by his fellow members of the DL Noon Rotary Club at a past meeting. Ramstad took the microphone to entertain the packed room with some anecdotes from his 60 years with the club, which he joined on April 1, 1956.
Detroit Lakes Tribune file photo
“This was in June, right after D-Day,” he recalled. “The ship we were on was a former Belgian passenger liner, called the Leopoldville. It could hold about 800 troops.”
While on the ship, Ramstad did a little exploring, and found a placard that said the ship had been manufactured in Hoboken, New Jersey. The ship landed at Omaha Beach — site of the Normandy invasion.
“The beach was secure at that time,” he said. “June 6 was D-Day, and we were there sometime after that, because all that was left on the beach was wrecked vehicles … I didn’t see any dead bodies at all.”
Jim Ramstad took part in a Veteran’s Honor Flight to Washington, D.C., in 2019.
Contributed / Karen Skoyles
Ramstad was part of a group called “infantry replacements,” to be sent wherever needed.
“We dug our foxholes in Normandy, right where we were,” he said. “The (front) line was pretty static at that time.
“I don’t know how many weeks we were on the ground there in Normandy, in the hedge rows, but sometime in July, probably, we joined the 3rd Army. When we landed, we were part of the 1st Army, but after that they switched us to the 3rd … General (George) Patton was running the 3rd Army at that time.”
His group crossed the French countryside “on the back of ammunition trucks,” Ramstad said. “They carried bombs and shells, and we would climb up in the morning and stay on top of that truck during the day. At night they’d get us off and we’d sleep in the ditch.”
World War II veteran Jim Ramstad of Detroit Lakes, 100 years young, was honored with a standing ovation by the crowd gathered at Detroit Lakes High School’s Lakeshirts Fieldhouse for a Veteran’s Day program on Friday, Nov. 10, 2023.
Contributed / Edward Gehrke
Eventually, they ended up in a small town about 30 miles from Paris, called Pithiviers, and from there made their way to northern France. “I slept on the ground all summer long there,” Ramstad said. “And then in September, I joined the 69th Signal Battalion, attached to the 20th Corps (one of two corps attached to the 3rd Army).”
Ramstad served under General Walton Walker, a friend of Patton’s; his signal battalion was tasked with providing communications for the corps, so he worked the switchboards, which were located inside an old schoolhouse at Thionville.
“We could listen in (on corps communications,” he said. “Sometimes General Walker would say, ‘Give me General Patton, and we’d switch him in. If we wanted to, we could listen in.”
One night, Ramstad recalled Patton asking him to patch him through to the 28th Division — something he couldn’t do, because there weren’t any wires set up to do so. Patton then demanded to speak to the wire chief, who essentially told him the same thing — so he just hung up.
As the German front started to fall, their troops began to advance rapidly, Ramstad recalled, so they ended up stationed in an East German town called Gotha.
“While we were there, we got word of the first German concentration camp that the U.S. had overrun, in a little town called Ohrdruf,” he said. “A group of about 30 or 40 of us went over to the concentration camp, and the Germans had just left.
“In the center square, there were about 10 or 12 people that had been in the concentration camp. The Germans had made them kneel over and shot them through the back of the head. They were all dead, in a line there.”
Jim Ramstad, a WWII veteran, speaks to Detroit Lakes High School students as part of a Veterans Day program on Nov. 11, 2022.
Detroit Lakes Tribune file photo
Ramstad also recalled seeing the arms and legs of some dead bodies sticking out of one of the crematoriums that had been used on the prisoners.
“I just found it difficult to believe that human beings would treat other human beings that way,” he said. “People today, who talk about how the Holocaust never happened … that’s not true. I was there, and I saw it.”
But not all his memories are quite so grim, Ramstad said. Toward the end of the war, after his unit had taken over a house in a little Austrian town where they could set up communications, Ramstad was looking out the front window when he noticed a large group of men approaching.
“I thought we’d better go out and see what’s happening,” he recalled — so that’s what he did.
“It was the Hungarian Army,” he said, adding, “They tried to surrender to me, because they were desperately afraid of the Russians. They’d fought for the Germans against the Russians, and now the Russians were chasing them, so they wanted to surrender to us because then they’d be safe.”
WWII veterans who attended the 2017 Veterans Day ceremony at Detroit Lakes High School, from left to right: Jim Haney, John Downs, Jim Ramstad and Alwyn Martinson.
Detroit Lakes Tribune file photo
It wasn’t too much longer after that incident that the war was over, at least on the European front, and Ramstad was sent home. He ended up serving until January 1946 — about two and a half years.
After returning home, he ended up going to law school at the University of Minnesota. It was there that he met a man by the name of Robert Irvine.
Due to the fact that Ramstad did not have a bachelor’s degree when he first entered law school — having had his stint in business school interrupted by his military service — he learned that he would need to complete four years of law school before obtaining his degree, whereas those who did have a bachelor’s degree could complete their juris doctorate in three years.
Thus Irvine, a man whom he had entered into law school with on the same day, would be graduating one year before he would. Feeling that this was unfair, Ramstad transferred to Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, where he was allowed to obtain his law degree a year earlier, graduating in 1948.
Led by World War II veteran Jim Ramstad, 101, local military servicemen and women, past and present, were treated to their second standing ovation of the day as they filed out of the Lakeshirts Fieldhouse for the conclusion of Veterans Day festivities on Monday, Nov. 11, 2024. The celebration concluded outside the fieldhouse with a 21-gun salute from the Lake Region Veterans Color Guard.
Detroit Lakes Tribune file photo
“Bob and I both graduated at the same time, but from different law schools,” Ramstad explained in a 2016 “Friends and Neighbors” interview with the Detroit Lakes Tribune.
Having needed to borrow some money to complete his degree, Ramstad opted to join the Internal Revenue Service after graduating law school, going to work at the IRS offices in St. Cloud.
He would move on to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Chicago for a brief time before returning to his native Long Prairie to open up his own legal practice.
Then one day, his old friend Bob Irvine invited him to join his practice, and Ramstad agreed. He moved to Detroit Lakes in December of 1954, and has been a part of this community ever since.
World War II veteran Jim Ramstad watches Veteran’s Day festivities inside the Lakeshirts Fieldhouse at Detriot Lakes High School on Nov. 11, 2023.
Contributed / Edward Gehrke
It was here in Detroit Lakes that Ramstad and his wife, Beverly, raised their three children: Charles, Jan and Tara. Charles would eventually join his father’s legal practice and raise his own family in Detroit Lakes, where he still lives.
Ramstad continued to live in Detroit Lakes after Beverly passed away in 1997, though he did spend winters in Arizona for many years.
He also served with the Detroit Lakes Noon Rotary Club for more than 60 years, and on April 1, 2016 — 60 years to the day after joining the club — was honored by Detroit Lakes Mayor Matt Brenk for that service, when it was declared
Jim Ramstad Day in Detroit Lakes.
Jim Ramstad, center, with a group of fellow veterans outside Detroit Lakes High School on Nov. 11, 2023.
Contributed / Edward Gehrke
That day, after presenting some humorous anecdotes from his 60 years with the club, Ramstad summed up his service as a Rotarian by stating, “Looking back, I don’t think I was a very good Rotarian. I was not nearly as good a Rotarian as my son Charles is … the only thing I have going for me is longevity.”
Ramstad has also been honored several times for his military service: Last November, when
Detroit Lakes High School hosted its annual Veteran’s Day program,
he received a standing ovation, and will likely receive a similar accolade at this year’s program, set for Tuesday, Nov. 11, inside Lakeshirts Fieldhouse. Doors open at 10:15 a.m., with the service to start at 10:30, ending outside the fieldhouse at approximately 11:11 a.m. with the traditional 21-gun salute and playing of “Taps” by the Lake Region Veterans Color Guard.
A free will offering will also be taken during the program, with proceeds benefiting
Holbrook Farms Retreat.
