Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire WW2 Veterans?

One uncle was a WW2 vet, 95th Infantry Division. Two uncles were in Korea, 7th Infantry Division. None of them talked about it much, except to say how cold it was. All three are gone. Brave men.

Yes, I know one. He is 96. I met him in gun trading and we have been buddies for about twenty years.

My high school principal was a landing craft driver, Bill is in his late nineties, and still well as far as I've heard.

Know any??? How could you not growing up in the 60s and 70s.

Yep he flew all his missions out of Molesworth. I have a bunch of the AA shrapnel he picked out of his plane. We should talk sometime. The old man has stories w/o end. He went on to fly transports in the Pacific and flew the Jap cabinet back to to Japan after the war. It's a funny story.
He is 97 and his mind is still totally with it.. Funny he never talked about the war until he he was well into his 80's . He is one tough SOB

His best story is about a 4th grade class in Cut Bank where he was asked to tell the kids about the War....One child raised his hand. Mr Geiger did anyone get hurt in that war?

This morning reading this and looking out the window of the living room of a beautiful morning, reminded me of what a lot of young men went thru in what was WW2.....

I am recalling an older guy, that I met at a local tire shop waiting room, here in town while we were waiting to have tires put on our cars...Don't recall his name now, because this was back around 1995 or 1996.... I am sure he is gone now...

He told me about a lot of experiences he had during the war, but some of the highlights of what like was like for our young men in those days I will briefly share what he told me...

He was from Dallas Oregon.... and was 17 years old and a Senior in High School in December 1941. After hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he went down to the courthouse in town Sunday afternoon.. In a town of 2000 people, he was met with over 200 of the local boys and men at the court house, that afternoon...those there spent the night on the lawn of the courthouse, to be there at 8 AM when the office of the local recruiter opened their doors Monday morning....

Monday December 8th 1941 most of those young men were new recruits for the USArmy....The Army had recently opening a training base not far south of their town and north of Corvallis Oregon.... the Base was for training of people bound to be in Armor Units....they all were attending basic and AIT not that far from home.... after that they were shipped to Ft Hood Texas to receive their equipment, new Stewart Tanks.. trained on them a short while, and then found themselves shipped to North Africa for the invasion there in early 1942.....

90 days after leaving Oregon, they found themselves engaging Rommel at Kasserine Pass.... they suffered badly....
of the 180 boys from Dallas Oregon, that were put into that Tank Unit, that had spent the night on the court house lawn on the evening of Sunday, December 7th 1941 to join our arm forces.. many still in high school, or just recently graduated.. The Battle of Kasserine Pass, took the lives of 172 of those young men....only 8 of them survived that battle.....

of the 8 of them that survived, with the rest of the company essentially wiped out, they were shipped to other units to fill gaps as replacement for men who had lost their lives in that early battle...

of those 8 men that survived Kasserine Pass, 5 of them never made it home to Dallas Oregon... population of 2000 in 1941, and not much more by the summer of 1945....The gentlemen I had been talking with, was one of those 3 that survived WW2....

of those 180 guys who signed up the morning of Dec 8th 1941, after spending the night on the courthouse lawn... Three came home in 1945....

Dallas Oregon and this story, was repeated in 1941, with much of the same ending in 1945.. young men who left high school, or had recently graduated, answering the call of their nation.. never made it home and their remains scattered all across the globe..

We don't think much of the sacrifice of those that answered the call, and the price not only they paid, but their home town paid... to defend our freedoms and our way of life, against the tyranny World Wide, spread by Nazis, and Imperial Japan.....

We should remember their answering a call.. and the support they had and paid by their community, and their families...
Less we NEVER EVER forget.......

Sadly, if such an event happened today, the response of most of our young people would probably be "Not my problem!" before going back to playing a video game or text messaging on their smart phones! One kid out of 200 these days has the balls to put on a uniform and defend our freedom.
Jerry

Talked to one this morning. He was wearing a baseball cap with 'World War 2 Flyboy' on it and some miniature representations of his ribbons. I asked him what he flew and he said "Many different ones. Mostly P-51, D model". I said "Beautiful plane" and he agreed.

Merion passed a few years ago . My Dad's best buddy and fishing partner Had half his ass shot off in ww2. Passed me his Browning A5. Told me stories about killing Germans.. He was a hard ass
Merion went on to become very successful.
I am so lucky to know these guys.

http://www.cutbankpioneerpress.com/obituaries/article_e02a8888-d28f-11e4-b8a2-a3cebd337370.html

My last living uncle died in 2017. He was a radio man/navigator on a C-47 that flew “The Hump” from India into Burma and China. He flew it for two years and rotated back home with the understanding that he was done. He was then stationed in KS for several months until he finally agreed to enlist in the reserves...and got his release within 48hrs. He was called up when the North Koreans invaded the South. He was assigned to a B-29 and flew 46 missions into NK.

He was my last living connection to the Greatest Generation.

My Dad was also at the Battle of the Bulge, Patton's 10th Armored Division, and wounded twice, 2 Bronze Stars, one of which for shooting down 1 of 2 Messerschmitt 109's that were strafing his column going into Germany.

My uncle John was a waste gunner on a B-17 and caught a round from a 109 in his upper back that gave him problems the rest of his life. Said he always knew when it was going to rain.

Another uncle, Lawrence, was one of the divers that helped patch and keep afloat the U-505.

Sadly, Dad's been gone since the mid 80's. I was a very young 21 years old when he passed away after an ugly 3 week stay in the hospital. Dad was a proud member of America's Greatest Generation. He served under General Patton in the infantry. Wounded twice in combat, Dad saw a lot of action, and lived to see another day. He was my mentor, my hero, and my dad, all rolled into one. 10 feet tall and bulletproof-that was Dad. He didn't talk about his experiences a lot, but when he did, I'd be riveted to the chair, listening to what he did, what he went through. Stuff like the first time he saw a jet airplane, his run through Italy and so many others. He'd say he was just doing his job, and trying to survive. So many fine men didn't make it back, and of the ones that did, their numbers are dwindling quickly. Never pass up an opportunity to thank them for their service.

A local barber, "Shaky Pete", passed away last December at the age of 96. WW II vet, he was an 8th Air Force ground crewman until Dec. '44, when he was transferred to the infantry and sent to the Bulge. His father was a barber, and Pete came home from the War to find that his dad had built a barber shop just for him. Pete cut hair in that shop from 1946 to 2018, shortly before he passed. Five days a week! As Forrest Gump might say, "A haircut by Shaky Pete was like a box of chocolates, you never knew what you were gonna get." But I sure do miss him.