Even the youngest veterans of World War II are now fast approaching 90. Most of that generation has, of course, already passed on. A few years ago, I read that there were so many funerals happening for those World War II vets that there was a scramble on for volunteers to play one last “Taps” for the departed. A generation vanishing.
My late stepfather saw that same story and wished that he still had the lip for it. He had played cornet in an admiral’s band for the entire six years he was in the Navy from 1942 to 1948, 19 years old when he started. Those who enlisted in the Navy in ‘42 had to sign on for “the duration” of the war plus three years. He liked to say that he spent the first three years of his service fighting the Japanese and the last three years trying to get out of the Navy.
After enlisting, he left his tiny, northeastern Nebraska town (one 12-mile road in, the same road out) and took the train to San Diego for six weeks of basic training. Then he shipped out on a round-bottomed “Liberty ship” for Australia. He was stationed at Perth, where he spent a lot of time on the beach and dating Australian women while the Australian men were in Burma and elsewhere defending the Commonwealth against the Japanese. On the base there, he played “Taps” every night for months. When he died, an active-duty sailor blew “Taps” twice on my stepdad’s old, still very fine cornet.
When he departed Australia, leaving one broken heart behind as I gleaned from tucked-away love letters I found after he died, he shipped out on a submarine tender, following the island-hopping Marines up through the Solomon Islands and the Marshalls, places that the warming South Pacific waters will soon inundate. The closest he came to being a casualty was when a Japanese plane dropped a bomb near the ship and, after barely missing, returned for a strafing run. No fatalities. On him, not a scratch. Later in the Philippines, with all the Japanese except snipers in retreat, he snagged a finger on the jagged edge of the metal control stick he was snapping off from the cockpit of a Japanese fighter plane that had been shot up on the runway. His only war wound.
He really had nothing but good stories to tell, and perhaps because of that, he wasn’t at all close-mouthed about his war experiences the way so many men from that era who had been in combat were when they came home. Indeed, he was kind of a chatterbox about it. He did lose an older brother at Guadalcanal, so the potential outcome he understood. But he seemed to me unscathed by his time in uniform. One of the lucky ones.
Another man who enlisted in ‘42 was my late father-in-law, Jim. He had a wholly different experience. He chose to learn to fly bombers. He was perfect for the job, ultra-calm and, with 20-15 vision, eagle-eyed. In Utah, late in the training, this quiet-spoken 5’ 5” fellow showed his leadership mettle. When a trainee bounced a B-17 hard on the runway, its landing gear crumpled and the plane was soon afire. Three people were aboard and none seemed to be getting out. While others stood paralyzed, intoning the ‘40s version of OMG, Jim sprinted toward the burning plane, manhandled a door open, climbed in and pulled the first man out, the flight supervisor. By then other staff and trainees had arrived and pulled the other two men to safety. Had Jim not instantly responded, they might all have stood there frozen until rescue was no longer possible.
In Norwich, England, Jim picked up a life-long hatred for mutton as he and his crew of 10 flew Ice Cold Katy against the Nazis. The plane, with its risqué-for-the-times “pin-up girl” painted on the nose, was one of several B-17s given that name during the war in honor of the way-below-freezing winter temperatures two miles high in the sky. In their sheepskin-lined jackets and trousers, they braved mission after mission over France and a few in Germany, dodging Nazi fighter-planes, dropping highly inaccurate gravity bombs on factories, military bases, and residences, then turning around and flying home, always leaving behind at least a few planes and their crews as fatalities or POWs. Never did they land without counting the bullet and shrapnel holes they’d acquired.
Like most pilots, Jim was only required to fly 25 missions. But he volunteered to fly five more when his quota was fulfilled. And most of his crew joined him. Why not? He had brought every one of them back so far, with only a couple of light injuries from flak or fighters. The closest they came to disaster was on mission 22. On the way back, two German fighters appeared and strafed Ice Cold Katy as Jim piloted her to the runway. An engine caught fire, and the plane was riddled with more holes than usual by the time it stopped and the crew walked away, nobody hurt. The next B-17 they flew was also named Ice Cold Katy.
After Jim flew his final mission in Europe, he volunteered for another duty—training a half-dozen or so African American pilots to fly the sleek new B-29s. But none of them ever flew the bombers in combat.
Jim was nearly 80 when his family heard any of these stories for the first time. He just hadn’t wanted to talk about his experiences and nobody had pressed him all those years. Later, after we did get him to talk a bit, we learned that his squadron had put together a 50-odd-page loose-leaf account of all 30 missions. Even then, with a lot of prodding and cajoling, he gave a lot of short answers to questions we hoped would pry loose longer replies. An undiagnosed case of PTSD? Certainly in his postwar behavior nothing other than his silence about his war experience would seem to indicate so. Maybe he simply wanted to forget it.
Did you have a parent or grandparent who fought in World War II (or a later war) who didn’t want to talk about it?
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