Remembering December 7th (long story) (Star: house, theater, school)

[banjomike]

I'm old enough to have grown up among the men who served in World War II. They were my father's generation.
Every year, there is less written about them, and most of what is written makes them seem like no one but old men served. The guys I knew are still young men in my mind when I think about the stories I heard from them.

I believe we will never see so many young men in arms ever again. When I was a kid, these men would get together and talk out their horror stories among themselves. The women never got to hear them, but boys of a certain age did. I heard a lot of these in the machine shed of our farm, where the men would get together, drink some beer and talk.

Here are some of them, all told to me by those guys. December 7th is still a heavy day of remembrance for me. I've dropped out some letters in the names to keep family privacy.


I remember Hoot S****l, a buddy of mine, who flew a Liberator 34 times over Europe and never lost a man, even when the main spar of his bomber was once shot in half and one wing fell off when his plane landed.

I think of my Uncle Pete, who cussed the champaign squadron of new B-29's that dropped the A-bombs from Tinian Island, where Pete kept their radios working. he thought they were a bunch of rich kids skating through the war until they ended it and changed the world.
He fixed a transmitter on the cruiser Indianapolis the day before it left after delivering the first atomic bomb and was sunk a day later, so fast that the radioman never got to use the transmitter.

I think of Vern Ma***n, who was nicked in the leg by a Japanese bullet on a beach in the S. Pacific and was the only man in his landing craft to survive. Vern lay there, playing dead for 3 days while gangrene slowly set in, and he lost his leg. For the rest of his life, he never spent a happy day due to his PTSD, and raised merry hell with everyone who ever loved him. My father was his best friend, and the only one who was allowed to see Vern weep.

I remember my father, who never made it through boot camp because he had 6 toes on his right foot. He was ready and willing to go, but he got to stay home and raise crops to feed our boys instead.
The government even gave him a brand new D4 Caterpillar to do it.
That damned tractor gave me permanent tinnitus in my left ear when I became old enough (11 was old enough) to drive it.

I remember Jack Ca*****l, who shoed our horses. he was a horseshoer before he enlisted. He shoed military mules in Italy, and followed the mules into Germany where he shoed them some more. He was a member of the 110th Mountain, but they wouldn't let him fight because he never crippled a mule, and the mules were more important than he was.
Then he came home and went back to shoeing horses again. His son shoes horses and is as good as his old man. So does his grandson. Jack taught me how to ski when I was a kid. He was a good skiier, and that's what got him in the 110th in the first place.

I remember Hak Ya***aka, another childhood buddy's dad, who left his Idaho spud fields to go join the 442nd at age 18, and came back with 2 purple hearts. Our local Japanese Americans never went to a camp, but there was a big one here, about 150 miles to the west.

I remember Floyd Mc***n, a vet of World War I and a member of my church, who volunteered to go be a field mortician. He buried our boys all over Africa, England, France, and Belgium. He gave up his practice at age 57 to go see to them for the next 3 years.
I once read all their names in a pocket notebook he kept. There were hundreds of names, written in a tiny and precise hand-each page was black with writing.
He sold his mortuary after he came back and never worked in the practice again. I went to school with his son.

I remember my first serious girl friend's Dad, Jerry B****e, who only fought one battle as a Marine; Iwo Jima.
He was one of the first to land, and one of the last to leave, and was shipped home 45 days later, shot to pieces.
In between, he was wounded 3 times, and won a 2 Silver Stars and 2 Bronze Stars.
He was the first owner of the house I now live in, and the holes in the linen closet door, where his medals were kept in a shadow box affixed to the door, are still there. He thought I showed real potential as a son-in-law, but I never married his daughter.

They are all gone now. I still carry these guys around with me every day.

[hatin11r]

Wow Mike....those were some great reminders of ordinary men thrust into extrodinary circumstances.They will be great now and forever. Stories like these are special for me as my dad was in the 3rd Army under Patton.He was on the beach D-Day+8.I still have all his medals and a 1944 European theater map amonst other WWII stuff.

I'm teaching my boys 8 & 10 about the war so these men will not be forgotten.In Dec.2010 we video recorded their grandfather talking for 40 mins.about his part in the war.I will cherish this forever.Ironically, I was born Dec.7,1961.

[Anak]

Thank you Mike for posting those.

Many of those stories quietly go to the grave and too few of us have a proper understanding of the price that was paid.

Thank you.

[cleosmom]

Thank you for sharing Mike.

Not that I had arrived at that time, as I was born in the 60's, but my dad was a paratrooper in World War 2. He was shot down in the Pacific Theater, over Corregidor. The bullet went in his stomach and out his back. He survived and considering the delay of communications back in that day, they had sent my grammy a telegram that he had been shot... nothing more! Imagine her surprise when he walked up that dusty lane in Kansas.

On a side note: my grammy was a tough soldier of sorts herself. She was a widow who raised three children during the Depression smack in the middle of the dust bowl. She sold her eggs at market and did sewing to keeping the family going. Considering she raised two girls and a boy and one became a soldier in the US Army, I'd say she did a fine job