Bio: Halford, Cpl. Ira H. E.
Contact: Crystal Wendt
Email: crystal@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

Surnames: Scrap book one: by Elsa Lange Hardrath & Dorthaleen Edwards Hardrath

----Sources: Contributed by Halbert "Bud" Hardrath

SPENCER CORPORAL IS CHEF AT ANZIO

Ira Halford has helped Prepare More Than 1,000 Meals in Italy

Cpl. Ira H. E. Halford, son of Mrs. Fred Dommer, Spencer, route 1, recently helped prepare his 1,000th meal for the Third "Marne" Division now fighting on the Anzio beachhead, according to a news release from the Allied Fifth Army headquarters in Italy.

Overseas for 18 months, Cpl. Halford has been a popular chef in the field kitchen which supplies the division’s frontline riflemen with their meals, the release said. He has spent almost the entire year since the Sicilian invasion cooking within range of enemy artillery, often in muddy dugouts or shrapnel-scarred farmhouses.

Last winter, the rations he prepared were taken up the Apennie Mountains on muleback. He has served "chow" under every kind of battle conditions since the African invasion in 1942, in the heat of Tunisia, through the Sicilian campaign and up through Italy from Salerno with the Fifth Army, the news release stated.

"Overseas meals are getting better," Cpl. Halford told an Army reporter. "Recently I’ve been serving fresh meat fairly regularly, also fresh butter," On several memorable occasions, he said, the Fifth Army has brought through fresh eggs for all beachhead troops.