Ambrose Kueper, the newly enlisted private on a bluff overlooking Dubuque. Kueper joined the 133rd Regiment (34th Infantry Division) of the U.S. Army, part of the Iowa National Guard, in 1941. Photo courtesy of Joe Kueper
Nov/Dec 2026 (Volume 18, Issue 6)
By Daniel Kueper
When I was 12 years old, my father gave me the Purple Heart that was posthumously awarded to my great-uncle, Ambrose Kueper, for his service in the U.S. Army during World War II. He also won the Silver Star, which was passed down to a cousin. Recently promoted to sergeant, Ambrose died on April 30, 1943, at the Battle of Hill 609 in Tunisia, the first major test of Americans in the war. Amidst the battle, he ordered all the men in his platoon to return to their base with captured prisoners, and was advancing by himself across the hill when he was cut down by a sniper. Oddly, I was most impressed when my father told me that he was the first man drafted in the war. As it turned out, this was a slight exaggeration; he was the first man selected from the Dubuque area when the draft began in October 1940, but his draft number was shared with more than 6,000 men nationwide.
Because of his honors and how he died, I always assumed that he wholly backed the war effort. Many years later, I discovered that a cousin had inherited Ambrose’s war correspondence and a trove of newspaper and magazine articles describing his service. Reading them, I was surprised to learn that before the war he opposed conscription; thought President Franklin D. Roosevelt was unwisely entangling the U.S. in the brewing conflict overseas; and after being drafted, was unhappy about Roosevelt’s decision in July 1941 to extend the term of service for drafted personnel from 12 months to 30 months.
It is not unusual for opponents of war to be transformed into ardent defenders of their country once hostilities break out. Still, I wondered if there was a clear moment when Ambrose understood that he might need to give his life for his country, and resolved to willingly make that choice. I studied the letters that he sent home, as well as the letters written to and about him. Praised as a war hero when he died, he was memorialized in local newspaper articles, and even the Saturday Evening Post. These offered a fuller picture of my great-uncle.
Ambrose, who was born on April 9, 1916, grew up in Dubuque in a large, Catholic, blue-collar family. Nicknamed “Sam,” he was the youngest of six children. His father was a printer for the Catholic Printing Co. for more than 50 years at a time when it transitioned from printing Catholic newspapers in German to English. Ambrose was an active and well-liked member of Sacred Heart parish. He led the Youth Society there, and helped stage theatrical productions in the church. He enjoyed sports, and after graduation he helped the Rev. Albert Hoffman, one of the priests at Sacred Heart, coach the boys’ baseball team. Hoffman called him his “parish reliable.”
As talk of war simmered in 1940, Ambrose was 24 years old, the last child living at home with his widowed mother. His father had died in 1937. Unable to afford college, and unsure of what to do for a career, he worked in the filling department of a local chemical manufacturer. It was there, on Oct. 29, 1940, that a reporter for the Dubuque Telegraph Herald tracked him down after Secretary of War Henry Stimson dramatically drew the first draft number out of a canister. Ambrose was wheeling a barrel of insecticide across the factory floor. Sitting the barrel down, he offered a measured response when the reporter broke the news to him: “If I fight, I hope it will be a defensive war, and not an aggressive war.” Not every draftee responded with such stoicism. When the draft number of another Dubuque great-uncle was selected in May 1941, he burst into tears.
Clockwise, from top left: Ambrose Kueper’s Draft Registration Card, also known as the DSS registration card, used to register men for the draft during World War II (photo courtesy of findagrave.com); the Dubuque Telegraph Herald’s Oct. 29, 1940, story in which the newspaper’s reporter informed Ambrose Kueper while he was at work at Midland Chemical Laboratories in Dubuque that his draft number was selected first (photo courtesy of Daniel Kueper); and a map of the area in which the Battle of Hill 609 in Tunisia was fought in late April 1943 (photo courtesy of ww2today.com).
Ambrose enlisted in the 133rd Regiment (34th Infantry Division) of the U.S. Army, part of the Iowa National Guard, in early February 1941; Hoffman had volunteered to be the chaplain for the regiment, and suggested that Ambrose also sign on. Later that month, Ambrose knelt at his father’s grave to say goodbye, kissed his mother, and joined other Iowans on the train transporting them to basic training at Camp Claiborne in Louisiana.
He quickly adapted to Army life. He learned to shoot with accuracy, and critiqued draftees who did not march properly: “they look at the ground instead of straight ahead, and don’t swing their arms in cadence.” However, his skepticism about Roosevelt’s management of U.S. involvement in the war seemed to deepen. Listening to the radio in his barracks in May 1941, he wrote that “Churchill put out a good song and dance.” He encouraged his brother, Vince, home in Dubuque, to keep sending him newspaper op-eds about the folly of the war. When Stimson announced in July 1941 that the U.S. was considering extending the length of service for draftees, Ambrose wrote to his mother, “Don’t let them kid you, Mom. We don’t want it. These big shots who claim to be speaking for us, aren’t.”
Yet, even as he voiced distrust of the “big shots” in Washington, D.C., and opposed U.S. involvement in the war, he began to feel at home in the Army. He never explains this change in sentiment, but on Dec. 4, 1941, he told his mother that his officer asked him if he would be interested in enrolling in the Officers Training School. He accepted, saying that he “liked the Army life pretty well.”
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