James Frederick Gebhardt passed away on December 5, 2021, at his home in Leavenworth, Kansas, after a long struggle with leukemia and its side effects. Jim was born on April 2, 1948, in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the second son of Marvin and Ellen Gebhardt. As a young child, he was active in the sports of baseball, tennis, and hockey at Riverside Park, and was a member of both band and chorus in junior high and high school. Jim graduated in the Grand Forks Central High School class of 1966 with high academic standing. He then embarked on a career in the US Army that lasted 20 years of active duty in uniform-about 10 years in tactical units and 10 either being educated or educating other soldiers and officers. He served three years as an enlisted infantryman, including a combat tour in Vietnam at age 19 split between a mechanized infantry company and a long-range reconnaissance patrol unit. Upon return to the USA, he served as a range instructor and then a drill sergeant at Fort Dix, New Jersey. As with most veterans of that conflict, his Vietnam experience shaped the remainder of his Army career and life in a positive direction.
Jim completed his enlistment at the rank of staff sergeant in the summer of 1969, moved to Idaho, enrolled in university, and continued serving in the Army Reserve and later the Idaho Army National Guard for about 18 months. He financed his undergraduate education with the GI Bill, part time work first as an evening-shift equipment scrubber in a poultry-processing facility, and later as a plumbers’ helper, and then with his Reserve Officer Training Corps stipend. In December 1970, he married his beloved wife Debbie, with whom he shared almost 51 years. He graduated from the University of Idaho cum laude with a BA degree in political science in May 1974 and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant, Armor Branch. Through a competitive process, the Army awarded him a fellowship to attend graduate school and immediately sent him to the University of Washington in Seattle, where he earned an MA degree in history in June 1976.
During his 17+ years of service as a commissioned officer, Jim served in armor and infantry units at Fort Benning, Georgia, and in Germany from 1976-83. He attended Armor Branch Basic Course (1976), Infantry Officer Advance Course (1980), and Command and General Staff College (1985 as a non-resident student). After his designation as a Soviet Foreign Area Officer in the spring of 1983, Jim continued his study of the Russian language that he had pursued in both undergraduate and graduate school, first with a year at the Defense Language Institute, Presidio of Monterey, California, and then two additional years at the U.S. Army Russian Institute in Garmisch, Germany. His last two active-duty assignments were as a military historian, author, and unclassified-sources Soviet analyst at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas (1986-late 1990), and then as an escort officer for Soviet military, scientific, and diplomatic personnel conducting arms control treaty inspections in the western United States out of Travis Air Force Base, California (1991). In that position he supervised Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps officers and a large group of enlisted Russian linguists and technical specialists from all branches of military service in the conduct of the USA-USSR bi-lateral treaty protocol inspections.
His military decorations include the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Army Meritorious Service Medal (x2), Army Commendation Medal (x3), Army Achievement Medal, Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, NCO Professional Development Ribbon, Army Service Ribbon, Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross Unit Citation Badge, Combat Infantryman Badge, Drill Sergeant Identification Badge, and Parachutist Badge. He was also awarded the Superior Civilian Service Medal for exceptionally meritorious service as an analyst, author, and project editor at the Center for Army Lessons Learned in a wartime environment.
Following his Army retirement in January 1992, Jim and his family returned to Leavenworth, Kansas, where for the next 13 years he worked for local contractors serving both the Army and the US Department of State. He traveled to Army installations in the continental United States as well as in Korea, Hawaii, and Europe to train soldiers in simulation use, and to Africa several times to train indigenous military personnel in peacekeeping duties using a computer simulation. In late 2005, he became a Department of the Army Civilian and, until his leukemia diagnosis in March 2014, worked for the Center for Army Lessons Learned, collating, writing, and editing lessons gleaned from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq to inform soldiers and units in pre-deployment training.
In addition to his on-duty research and writing efforts, on the side Jim became an internationally recognized military historian and translator in Soviet military subjects. His areas of focus included the Soviet use of American Lend-Lease equipment and the obscure, but important conventional and special operations conducted in World War II by Soviet ground and naval forces along the Soviet-Norwegian border in the far north of continental Europe. He also translated 17 user-level technical manuals for Soviet military small arms, which became especially useful for collectors of those weapons and re-enactors, and more importantly, for American military personnel who encountered them on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, in the hands of both opponents and friendly forces. The products of these intellectual labors were published by Naval Institute Press (two titles), University of Nebraska Press (two titles), University Press of Kansas, Paladin Press (16 titles), the National Park Service in Anchorage, Alaska (two titles), and by Canadian, Australian, and British presses. Abridged editions of two of his works were translated into Swedish, and one each into Polish and Norwegian for publication in Europe. He collaborated with a British author by providing translated Russian-language source materials for two “pocket histories” of combat on the Eastern Front.
Jim was also a “gear head,” with a strong affinity for anything that was powered by an internal combustion engine. First came a scooter with a pull-cord starter and chain drive, then a 1940 Harley Davidson his dad assembled from parts, in 1965 a new motorcycle he bought with his paper route, lawn-mowing, and snow-shoveling money, and over the subsequent years several more Japanese, British, and German motorcycles, each larger or more capable than the previous. While always a motorcycle commuter, he later favored long-distance touring and, while serving in Germany, in 1982 camped his way in a 3,600-mile round-trip from Mainz to the Arctic Circle in Finland with four other soldiers. After the children left home, in the mid-1990s and later he rode to the Pacific Northwest twice with his motorcycle buddies, to the Michigan Upper Peninsula, from Kansas to North Dakota to do spring and fall chores for his aging parents countless times, and on five separate occasions over 1,000 miles in a single day just to get a patch, a pin, a certificate, and bragging rights. Over several years he rode about 45 Patriot Guard Rider missions on his motorcycle within a 250-mile radius of his Kansas home, helping to bring final honors to our combat casualties from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He never met a car or motorcycle from the ‘50s or ‘60s he couldn’t tell you something about. Jim also drove and helped to maintain every type and size of wheeled and tracked vehicle assigned to his units during his Army years with mechanized forces.
After bouncing back from leukemia, which was diagnosed in early 2014, put in remission by chemotherapy and kept there by a bone marrow stem cell transplant, in 2016 Jim resumed his translating efforts, focusing again on the World War II battle zone at the roof of continental Europe. At the age of 70, he learned how to use Internet-based software to translate German military documents generated during their occupation of that region and made these documents available to military historians in the United States and Norway for use as primary sources. He also translated over 1,000 pages of Russian-language doctrinal and operational history studies generated by the Soviet Navy before, during, and after the war, and provided them to research libraries at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, California, and Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, as well as to his contacts in Norway. He was working on a publication for the US Marine Corps University Press at the time of his passing.
Jim was preceded in death by his older brother David (1988), his younger brother John (2012), and his mother and father (2013-14 respectively). He is survived by his wife Deborah, son Kevin, daughter Karla (Hagemeister) and her husband Scott, and four grandchildren-Jakob and Emmaly in Manhattan, Kansas, and Paige and Kahle in Topeka, Kansas.
His viewing is scheduled for Monday, December 13, 2021, from 5:00-7:00pm at the Leintz Funeral Home in Leavenworth, Kansas. His memorial service will be held at First United Methodist Church (422 Chestnut) at 10:30am on Tuesday, December 14, 2021, followed by interment at the Leavenworth National Cemetery.
Memorials in his name may be sent to the Motorcycle Relief Project, P.O. Box 3220, Evergreen, CO, 80437. This non-profit organization provides a no-charge, multi-day, off-road motorcycle-based training and counseling program for military veterans and law enforcement officers who have post-traumatic stress issues stemming from their military or community service.