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In my occupation, I serve many elderly clients. I have been serving this population for 30 years. When I first started, I had numerous WWII veterans as clients. Oh, the stories I have heard! I received a living history lesson nearly every week from a different man, each having served in a different branch of service and having a different war experience.
Some examples:
**During a mission over enemy territory, my client, who was a B-17 waist gunner, bent down to pick up a spent .50-caliber shell casing that had rolled across the floor. As he straightened up and returned to his position behind the twin machine guns, he noticed that a German fighter's round had struck the window directly in front of where his head had been seconds earlier. The bullet passed through, shattering the panel. Bending over to retrieve the casing had saved his life. He never told his family that story. He relayed it to me during our discussions about VA benefits. I shared it with his family after he died, in the vein of "Yes, that story about bending down to retrieve the shell saving your dad's life was amazing!" His family looked at me like, "What?!" It was the first they'd heard of it, so I filled them in on the details.
**Another client was in the brig during the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was later assigned to a ship in the Pacific that was subsequently sunk. He spent three days clinging to a life raft with a couple of others in the Pacific - being circled by sharks - before being rescued by a troop ship. He said he did several stints in the brig throughout the war. He figured he was a dead man walking anyway, so he drank and fought. Again, he told his story for the first time to his family and me during various discussions when he was over 90 years old.
**Another client told me he last saw his cousin on the USS Arizona when they happened to run into each other on the ship in 1940, one a seaman and the other a petty officer. My client went on to serve in the Pacific theater, but his cousin still rests on the USS Arizona.
**Another client was a POW in the European theater. He talked about his treatment (harsh), conditions (deplorable), and the camaraderie (sustaining). When the camp was liberated, he heard the shout of an American voice: "Make for the Gate! We're American!" He said it was the sweetest words he ever heard spoken - and teared up telling me about it.
And this brings me to my last WWII client. He died last month, at age 99.
Mr. H, a stocky man of 5 ft 6 inches, full of spit and vinegar, was trained as a ball-turret gunner on a B-17 and made it to England on May 1, 1945. His first mission was set for May 7. His crew was told to stand down, and VE Day was announced the next day. He told me that "Hitler knew a man from Foreman, Arkansas was coming to kick his A$$ and gave up!" When I met him, he was driving his daughters crazy by mowing his lawn himself in the Texas summer heat well into his 90s and burning his trash in the burn pile, doused with gasoline. (His daughters were concerned he would topple over into the fire).
I believe Mr. H was the last of them. I am beyond grateful to have heard the many stories of these fine men. Mostly they told the funny ones. But sometimes, they shared the traumatic stories, their survivor's guilt (even 60 years later), and their nightmares - seeing their brothers' bodies, swollen in death, floating in the ocean next to them or a friend bleeding out from a limb blown off. These men weren't "special" in the way the world thinks of it, in terms of money and prestige. My clients mostly came from farms of East Texas, North Louisiana and South Arkansas. Military life was a big step up in quality of life for many, as they left their hard-scrabble, one-mule farms where meals weren't guaranteed, to three-hots and a cot with Uncle Sam. They came back home after the horrors of war and made babies, raised families, and built a living - serving in the Lions Clubs, as church deacons and scout leaders. They even raised a little hell with their brothers at the VFW from time to time. They were humble - they rarely ever talked about their war experiences. Most of their families knew almost nothing about what Dad or Grandpa endured. The Library of Congress Veterans History Project has preserved many of their stories.
Mr. H's passing has hit me hard. As long as he was around, the era was still living. Now, for me, it is gone.
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Discussion (14)
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Thank you for serving these men.
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God bless them all for their service, and thank you for serving them.
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My Dad, RIP, never talked to us about his WW2 service in Europe. But one of my sister's friends bugged him so much that he finally opened up to her. He was in a medical collecting company and during the Battle of the Bulge spent most of his time injecting wounded GIs with morphine and loading them onto trucks and planes. I'm almost glad he didn't talk to us about it.
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My brother and I were talking about this a few months ago, about how when we were kids it seemed like every dad or teacher we knew was a WWII vet, even though nobody ever really talked much about it. I know the guy across the street was a B-24 pilot, and several of my high school teachers were vets.
My dad was still in training (B-17 Tail gunner) when the European war ended, was transitioning to B-29s when the Pacific war ended, so was fortunate to never see combat. He did spend November 1945 to April 1946 at Clark Field in the Philippines as a payroll clerk. He said they still got shot at every night. He also said he never again in his life saw hatred like the hatred that the Philippinos had for the Japanese. On one occasion there was a Japanese body on the side of the road and people would go out of their way to spit on it (or worse) and kick it as they passed.
Dad had two first cousins killed in the Pacific. One in a Kamikazi attack on his LST, and one in the sinking of the Indianapolis. Dad wasn't fond of the Japanese for a long time. When my sisters high school boyfriend (now husband of 48 years) showed up at our house driving a Mazda pickup truck, my dad asked him if it came with a map of Pearl Harbor in the glove compartment.
We also had a family friend who was Army Air Corps, was at Pearl Harbor, flew 25 missions as a flight engineer over Europe as part of the 100th bomb group*, and was killed in a B-29 crash in 1948 on take-off while part of round the world flight. I have some of his memorabilia.
I was reading the book Band of Brothers in the breakroom at work a few years ago, and that's how I found out that one of the women in our finance department is related to Frank Perconte from Easy Company. Her husbands mother is his sister.
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My dad was the middle of four brothers. When the US entered WWII, the eldest brother, an engineer grad, was in an exempt position as an oil company executive.
My dad had been in college Army ROTC, mounted cavalry as it happened, so he was called back into active service, serving in the Army Air Corps in England and elsewhere as an intelligence officer.
His younger, fraternal twin, brothers, one was an Annapolis grad, class of '39, and was an ensign on a ship in Pearl Harbor in 12/7/41, while the other twin was engaged in an exempt social work-type position managing residential treatment facilities for troubled, abandoned, or runaway teens.
I never heard a breath of mention of any of their WWII experiences at family gatherings in the years after. I did later learn that the twins had both been very gifted musicians, the exempt brother even having had a composition of his performed, lyrics and score, in a pre-war musical on Broadway, while the other twin, after Pearl Harbor, never touched the piano again.
I remember my dad emotionally telling of one vivid experience in England, his job counting the outgoing bombers and then the returning bombers, and describing a very shot-up bomber just making it to the edge of the runway before crashing and killing all aboard.
And the Pearl Harbor survivor, after decades of silence, wrote a moving account of his and his ship's 12/7/41 experience in a letter to a grand-nephew who was then embarking on his active duty service commitment after his Navy ROTC college graduation. When my uncle died, his sabre went to the grand-nephew.
My point? Many of us, knowingly or unknowingly, have been connected to and blessed by their greatness. May we never forget.
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