Edward “Ed” Lecius was born Edward Lyszczas in Nashua, NH, on April 19, 1919. He attended Nashua schools, graduating from the Nashua High School class of 1937. He liked to play football during his high school years, which would serve him well later in life. He then went on to attend the University of New Hampshire, where he studied broadcast journalism. He graduated just in time to help Uncle Sam defeat the Nazis in Europe.

Lecius enlisted in the Army on May 27, 1942, and departed the US from Camp Myles Standish in Boston, MA. Like many veterans, he spoke little of his service. However, what he did leave behind was a long letter. In its typewritten form, it is 14 pages of single-space type, or about 7,000 words. In its original handwritten form, it was produced on a sheet of newsprint paper, about 3 feet long, so big that it had to be shipped from Europe to Nashua in a wooden box! The letter is dated June 7, 1945, a few weeks after the end of hostilities in Europe, and seems to be a summary of his entire tour beginning in 1942. One would assume that he would have sent other letters home over three years, but this is the only one that survived and thus, is the primary information source for this piece.

Lecius shipped out on March 24, 1944, though none of the men were sure where they were going. Lecius wrote, “The boys are in good spirits, but you can bet all of us were having plenty of silent thoughts as we were about the head off into unknown adventures, far across the sea.” They sailed on the SS Alexandria, which Lecius called “a converted German vessel.”

(Author’s Note: The statement about a “converted German vessel” seemed odd to me so I did some research. Wikipedia notes that there were very few captured German ships that were refitted for use by the US Navy. Mostly, they were stripped of their hardware so the design could be studied, or they were used for target practice training. Looking further, the only other use of the ship name “Alexandria” during WWII was the USS Alexandria, a Tacoma-class frigate built between 1943 and not placed into service until March 11, 1945. This leads me to believe that, despite the scarce use of captured German ships for US Navy use, Lecius could be correct.)

Lecius continues his missive about the trip to Europe: “The first couple of days I found my stomach rolling with the ship as we plowed ahead in convoy formation. Many hardened souls and braggarts also succumbed after their first trip to the mess hall, for one glance out the porthole, at the mountainous waves took away all appetite, and then some.” Lecius told the same story as had been told countless times about the trip to Europe, they were packed like sardines, few spots to sleep, and the only diversion was a card game, or “shooting craps.” Lecius noted, “In my case, those games were very costly.” The highlight of his trip was finding a Nashua High classmate who was part of the resident medical team on board the ship. Lecius wrote about his friend, “He had comfortable quarters with a fresh-water shower that I got to take advantage of.”

Finally, the Irish coastline loomed in the distance. The ship continued south to Liverpool, England, where, after waiting in the harbor at anchor for two days, they disembarked. They were shuttled to a suburb called Hayton, where they occupied a number of homes taken over by the US Army. They had sleeping quarters, but no food. A British unit shared what food they could, which consisted of “…a slice of bread, a spoonful of soup, and dirty water called coffee.” Close to their encampment was an orphanage full of dirty children, clothed in rags, and barefoot. “Lecius noted, “The sight of them was pitiful. Our candy and gum rations were distributed quickly, and we wished more were available.”

Next, they were loaded on a troop train and sent to Bristol, England to a “wealthy residential district.” The troops were billeted as guests with local families. Lecius and his platoon sergeant shared a guest room with the Hadley family. He noted that the room was even outfitted with a radio and a maid to “make the beds and clean up our mess, only a soldier could leave – but we did our best to keep it neat.” Mr. Hadley was a WWI veteran and is now the successful owner of a brewery. Lecius continues, “His product, George’s Beer, was served up to our room on warm nights, while on rainy or chilly days, a pot of tea and cakes were always a treat!” He continues, “Their two children were Stuart, 16, who was away at school, and Ann, 14, a cute blond girl who spent most of her time with her pony. Our evenings were spent answering questions about life in the US, and they certainly were interested in places like New York and Hollywood.” Lecius spent several weeks in Bristol, including some time in a hospital, “suffering a case of the grippe” better known today as the flu. 

One night, near the end of May 1944, Lecius and his “bunk-mate” got to experience their first air raid. Lecius describes it, “That air-raid woke me and my buddy up about 4 a.m., and the feeling was brand new. Gazing out of the window, we looked up into a sky full of ack-ack fire and searchlights. The wailing siren added music to the barking guns. Searchlights crisscrossed the paths of the bombers and the underbelly of the planes, with their German markings, could be visibly noted. The earth shook as the first load landed close by. A shower of flak sprinkled on the roof and tapped the windowpanes we were so foolishly looking out of.” The Hadleys invited the men to join them in their basement bomb shelter, which they declined. Scared as they were, they were fascinated by their first taste of war. Lecius noted, “We were joking all the while, though we knew down deep, it was no joke.” The next morning, they discovered that five German planes had been shot down and there was one civilian casualty. Most of the bombs struck harmlessly in the surrounding fields.

On or about the morning of May 25, Lecius and his platoon sergeant were awoken by a tapping on their window at 3 a.m. It was their lieutenant telling them to pack up… their outfit was moving out in an hour. They tried not to wake their hosts, the Hadleys, but a few moments later they appeared in the guest-room doorway. Lecius wrote, “It was like leaving home. The Hadleys tried to conceal their feelings, and you know the English are very emotionally stable, but we could tell it in their eyes.”

The men boarded a troop train, later stopping at a marshaling yard. The men were fenced-in, “cut off from the rest of the world.” There were no leave-passes – the men were not even allowed to write home, and very few letters from home made it into the compound. Time was spent playing baseball, watching movies, and eating three times a day. More and more men poured into the marshalling area. It was getting progressively more crowded, and still, none of them was quite sure what was happening. 

Finally, the time had come to move out. The men were ordered to get dressed, make sure their rifle was in good order, and that they had plenty of ammo, a gas mask, a steel helmet, a light-pack with three days’ rations, and an entrenching tool… to dig a hole. But nobody knew where they would be digging. Everyone piled into waiting trucks, was taken to a dock, and boarded their ship, the SS Charles Poston, a Liberty ship.

In the early morning of May 31, the ship raised anchor, the engines started, and the ship began to move south along the English coast. Still, nobody knew where they were headed or what they would be doing. Lecius noted, “Part of an infantry unit was onboard with us and more or less kept to themselves.” (Author’s Note: It was at this point that I realized Lecius was not an infantryman but was still unsure of his job. He doesn’t mention either in his letter. Eventually, I discovered he was part of the Quartermaster Corps.)

On the second day at sea, each man was issued 200 French francs. It was at that point that they figured that they would be going through France, but didn’t know how long they would be there. As the SS Charles Poston moved along, more and more ships joined the convoy until the ships trailed back beyond what could be seen. On June 4, the now-massive convoy turned into the English Channel. Now, their transport ship was flanked by “Navy cruisers and battle-wagons” of all types in countless numbers. There were more ships than could be counted.

Finally, on June 5th, the men were briefed on what they would be doing for the foreseeable future – they were to be part of the D-Day landing on the Normandy Coast in France, most specifically, at Utah Beach. Little did they know at the time that this would be the turning point of the European war. Lecius remembered, “First report of D-Day activity came to us over the ship’s radio, when the first landing by our paratroopers was reported. (This would have been around 12:15 a.m. on the morning of June 6, 1944) The tension increased, and as the light of day increased, the haziness of early morning lifted. The outline of land could be seen with a strained eye. Aboard the ship, the infantry boys made a check on their weapons and gear, while my group checked on all the ship’s gear to be used in the operation of unloading the supplies. Jeeps, ambulances, trucks, and artillery pieces composed most of our cargo, and all these would have to be lifted out of the holds, over the side, and into smaller landing craft to be transported to the beach.” 

(Author’s Note: The Normandy Beaches were designated as Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, and Sword. Omaha Beach was said to see the most savage fighting and the most casualties due to being heavily defended and highly fortified by the Germans with the most obstacles, natural and man-made.)

Lecius describes Utah beach on D-Day from his supply ship offshore, “Already, the noise of heavy gunfire became prominent. Offshore, our heavy battleships were sending salvo after salvo into the fortified inland positions. Our planes above kept coming in streams – diving low, unloading their bombs, then turning back to England for another load. From where we were, it was difficult to see clearly the action on the beach itself, so clouded by gun smoke and explosions that made even the use of binoculars nil. Shells were dropping into the water around us, at regular intervals, and some came dangerously close. Some vessels were not as fortunate, and men were blown into the water as direct hits were registered. Our cruisers were moving up and down the coast, guns going incessantly.”

Lecius’ supply boat finally anchored and was ready to unload when they were ordered to pull anchor and leave temporarily because German artillery was finding their range on the cargo boats. They had a good chance of being blown to bits! Three times they had to retreat and come back to avoid being hit by enemy fire. 

German aircraft flew overhead, right into the sights of American anti-aircraft guns. The guns let loose and downed two German planes. Lecius noted, “A great cheer went up from all of us, and it reminded me a great deal of a football game when a crowd released enthusiastic emotion over a good play!”

The fighting went on all day and into the night. Fires burned brightly on the beach and further inland. Tracer bullets sent streams of color across the sky. Many could be heard as they ricocheted off targets – and sometimes caused a great explosion. The men on the landing ship couldn’t tell if the explosion was something American or German.

Just before dawn, on June 7, fighting on the beach had let-up some, and the action moved inland, and it was time to unload the ship’s cargo. By noon, June 7, the ship was unloaded, and time for the men to go ashore.

Twenty-five yards from the shore, the landing ramp was dropped, and men were ordered to disembark. Lecius remembered, “The first man stepped off, only to sink out of sight. The water was over his head! He came out quickly and started to swim. Soon, his feet struck bottom, and he started the long wade in. Gradually, we all made it safely, and we moved out of the water.”

Already, bulldozers were clearing roads on which trucks and jeeps were moving. Sections of the beach were cordoned off until engineers could remove the land mines the Germans had placed there. Once ashore the, the men went to meet the rest of their company about a mile down the shore. Incidentally, about 23,000 men landed at Utah Beach for the D-Day invasion. Of all those men and all that chaos, Lecius noted that while walking down the beach to join the rest of his company, he ran into a classmate from UNH.

(Author’s Note: Lecius made note of seeing several doodle-bug tanks all over the beach. Having never heard the term I looked it up. The doodle-bug was a small remote-controlled vehicle that looked like a bug, packed with TNT. It was a German invention that they called the Goliath. The device was intended to be dropped behind enemy lines, maneuvered by remote control near a target, and eliminate the target by blowing it up.)

Through the day, Lecius and his crew moved inland. It was their job, as the Quartermaster Corps, to unload supplies from the ships and keep them moving as the front advanced. But every square inch of beach real estate was needed to store material until it could be moved inland. They reached an area where they would bivouac for the night – a wide-open field with no cover. Now he would learn why he was issued an “entrenching tool.” He and a buddy started digging and shortly were able to “…fashion a fairly comfortable hole.” As the two men passed the night, they watched ambulances and jeeps bringing casualties from the front in “an endless procession.”

On the night of June 15th, apparently, the company was still in an open field occupying foxholes. That evening, Lecius was awoken by German planes that were right overhead! He remembered that night, “We crowded far into the corners of the hole, trying to sneak the whole of us beneath our steel helmets. And then the screech of the falling bombs! The first was close, and blasts threw us forward, and sand piled up around our hole and came sliding in on us. The silence came momentarily, our ears ringing like mad. Soon, all hell broke loose as our ack-ack guns came to life and started filling the sky. But after a few minutes, all was clear, and voices could be heard as the darkness of night erased the last flares, and it was safe to stick our heads out of our hole again.” 

Some of the men had been out at the boats that night, unloading more supplies. In the morning, two of the men returned to their foxhole only to find… a 25-foot crater… fashioned by a fairly substantial piece of ordnance. Had they been in their foxhole, they would have been blown to bits. On successive nights, American fighter aircraft patrolled the beaches, which gave the men in the fields and on the beach a better state of mind.

By June 22nd, troops on the front line were running low on ammo. So, at low tide, a ship loaded with ammo purposely ran aground on the beach, and Lecius and his crew scrambled aboard to get it unloaded. They worked all night during a constant air raid. Finally, by daybreak, the last of the ammo went ashore, and Lecius and crew were anxious to get back to their foxholes and have some breakfast and a rest. Because the tide was out and the ship was aground, many men decided to swing over the side on a rope, rather than use the awkward rope ladder. Being in a hurry, Lecius decided to use the rope as well. He wrote, “Strange, but just as I swung over the side, I had a premonition of disaster, but the next second, it was too late. Down I dropped with no stops. The rope had given way. For the next few seconds, I was lying in a Duck (wheeled amphibious landing vehicle) which was parked alongside the ship. Still conscious, the pain in my foot was such that I knew it was broken! Five minutes later, I was at the beach hospital, my leg splintered. I was moved inland for an X-ray at another hospital and then back to the beach hospital for evacuation to England.”

Lecius was escorted onto one of the ships he had probably just unloaded. The same ships that moved supplies in, moved wounded soldiers out. Lecius ended up in Bournemouth, England, a summer resort for the British where he “spent a most pleasant two months recuperating. The first two weeks were a lot of pain and sleepless nights. But after that, it was a daily routine of eating and sleeping.”

He noted that only those men who were not seriously hurt got to enjoy their time relaxing with clean sheets and quiet evenings. It was “those boys who lost limbs or sight, and even the mental cases, made one bitter at this thing called war.”

By August, 1944, Lecius graduated from bed-stay to crutches, then to hobbling about, and finally was deemed ready for return to duty. He was discharged from the hospital, and soon, Lecius was on another ship, going back to France. He noted that this time, the trip was a little more pleasant because he knew where he was going and what he would encounter. The ship landed at Omaha Beach. In his letter, he made mention of the huge cemetery with “white crosses row on row.” There was a sign there which stated, “Through this pass, the Pride of Allied Forces has marched.” He remarked sardonically, “Kind of a pep-talk for the newcomers.”

He reported to a Replacement Depot, commonly called a “Repo-Depo” a clearing house where newly arrived soldiers, and soldiers returning to duty after convalescence, were assigned as replacement soldiers to different outfits. Since he had to be on light duty for a few more weeks, Lecius spent his initial time “taking it easy.”

Then the order came to move again, and the entire outfit packed their tents and headed southeast towards Paris, stopping at a place called Etampes, just outside of Paris. Lecius got his tent squared away, but there was still a lot of commotion afoot. Lecius and a few of his friends figured that, with all the commotion and chaos, they would never be missed. So, without official passes, he and a buddy hitched a ride to Paris, where the “liberation celebration was still warm.” Lecius noted, “Every soldier there was without a pass, but as yet, there were no MP’s around, so a rollicking good time could be had.” Five days later, Lecius and his buddy returned to camp, fell into a chow line, had a meal, and pretended nothing happened. The place was still in chaos, and they were never missed.

Through September, October, and November, Lecius remained at the Replacement Depot, participating in training exercises, standing guard duty, and using passes to go to Paris. Then, all things shifted to the infamous Battle of the Bulge near Bastogne, Belgium. Lecius and a large group of men were loaded onto a train and taken to an unnamed spot to get in some infantry training. For the next two weeks, the men stood in the snow, lay in the snow, knelt in the snow, and crouched in the snow, and fired their weapons in practice. They were cold and wet for the entire period. They kept hoping that they could go to the front – figuring it couldn’t be any worse than training like this. Just as the orders came to head to the front, and the men were being loaded on another train, different orders came in for Lecius. They took away his rifle and handed him a typewriter and assigned him to “Headquarters.”

The new job provided Lecius a warmer environment, but it quickly became boring. He was put into a job called “Troop Movement.” It is unknown what this job actually entailed, but Lecius noted, “It was OK. It gave me an excellent opportunity to get around and see more of the country.”

Then, through the “help of a couple of Colonels,” Lecius was able to wrangle a desk job in Paris. For whatever reason, that never materialized. New orders took Lecius back to Germany and his original outfit, the 242nd Quartermaster Depot Company. One of his final stops in-country was Berlin. Of Berlin, he noted it was the “…Birthplace of Naziism. Not much left of it but rubble – but that goes for all the other places in Germany I’ve been to; Cologne, Frankfurt, Bonn, Coblesy, and Wurzburg. And so, that wraps up 15 months of overseas duty.”

Lecius returned to the US on November 30, 1945, and was mustered out of the Army at Fort Devens in Shirley, MA, on December 5, 1945. His final paycheck from the Army was $316.27.

Returning to Nashua, he picked up a job at the then-new WOTW radio. The station officially launched on September 13, 1947. It was described as a “community involvement” station and was on the air from 6 a.m. until sunset. He read the news and sports and hosted the station’s first radio talk show, heard Monday through Friday from 12noon to 12:30 p.m. It was called, simply enough, “Express Your Opinion.”

Lecius stayed with WOTW until about 1959, when he was offered a big step-up: a place on the board of a new radio station WSMN. Lecius started with a talk show similar to what he had done on WOTW. On WSMN it was called the “1590 Open Line.” 

Lecius married the former Margaret Hopper (1927-2000), the union producing three children. Ed Lecius Jr. graduated from Nashua High School in 1970 and by the fall of 1970, was ready to go into the broadcasting world himself. He went to work at WSMN… but there was a problem. This was radio… there was no video screen…. how were listeners going to know the difference between Ed Lecius Sr. and Ed Lecius Jr.? Simple. By reversing and adapting his first and last name, Ed Jr. became Lee Edwards! From 1970 to 1975, father and son sat “high above Holman Stadium” in the broadcast booth, calling Nashua High football games.

Being very civic-minded, Lecius was involved with the Nashua Parks Commission, Nashua Housing Authority, Board of Directors for North Little League Baseball, Director of Ward League Baseball, Member of the Daniel Webster Council Boy Scouts of America, and, at one time, President of the NH Association of Broadcasters. He was an honorary member of the NE Association of Chiefs of Police and an honorary member of the Local 789 International Association of Firefighters.

Ed Lecius passed away on April 21, 1976. He was looking forward to participating in Nashua’s Bicentennial Parade on July 4th.

Special thanks to Lecius’ daughter, Margo Lawrie, for sharing this information. 

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US Service Personnel Profiles

 By Gary Ledoux, May 5, 2026