They had been schoolboys. Now they were soldiers.
Veterans interviewed by University of Findlay history professor Mark Polelle described serving in World War II as “a very heady, exciting time,” but a scary one, too. It was in some ways “the greatest experience of their lives, except for the fact that they would never want to repeat it.”
Richard Robinette, who served in the U.S. Navy aboard the destroyer USS Claxton, said of entering military service, “I really wasn’t too scared. I just didn’t take it too good that they sent me over there to kill a person. But that was my job. So I just took it as a command.”
In November 1944, a Japanese suicide plane crashed on the starboard side of the Claxton, where it struck a gun. “And it exploded, put a hole in the side of the ship, about, oh, I imagine you could have (driven) a Jeep through the hole,” Robinette said.
“I was in water to my waist for about two hours, and couldn’t get out,” Robinette said.
He was 18 years old.
Looking back, Robinette said being in the service “made a man out of you.”
Bill Rowe arrived in the Philippines at the end of World War II, on Aug. 21, 1945. Most of the Japanese soldiers were surrendering.
“But there were quite a few that were die-hards and they decided to fight it out. And… two of us were taken on a patrol with some older fellas that had been there a while, and ran into a hornet’s nest that night. And that was my baptism of fire, right there.”
Rowe would stay in the military through the Korean and Vietnam wars. Looking back on his days in the service, “I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”
Carl Gierke’s unit spent part of the war “protecting England from the (German) buzz bombs. The buzz bombs would come over and (it) was up to us to shoot them down. We were stationed around Belgium, there, and out in the fields. We used to shoot them down. We always hated to even hear them.”
Gierke said it could be scary, and the soldiers never knew what to expect from one day to the next.
He recalled sleeping in 10- or 12-man tents outdoors in the wintertime, on cots.
Not all veterans were in combat. Mike Mygrant was stationed in Bermuda, “to guard the East Coast” in case something happened. His job was baking pies, cakes and cookies to feed thousands of men every day.
“Well, they seemed to like us, anyhow,” he said of his fellow service members for whom he made dessert.
His brother-in-law, Ned Ammons, was a cook for some of his time in the service, in the 254th Field Artillery Battalion. He recalled hanging a whole frozen mutton next to a stove, joking to the other service members, “Dog food tonight.”
And, “We would take a case of eggs and break them into a big jar, into a big pan. You’d be surprised how many eggs were purple. That’s bad.”
“I wouldn’t take a million dollars for my service. But I wouldn’t give you a nickel to go back in,” Ammons said.
Tom Daley, who served in the Air Force in the 379th Bomb Group, 525th Bomb Squadron, said he painted a jacket with World War II markings “because it just brought me back to that day, back to those days that I felt proud of the fact that I was flying for our country, you know.”
(Photo by Randy Roberts)
Ray Hartzell, who served in the 4th Marine Division, 23rd Marines, told the story of how one night, his crew had “dug in for the night” in a sugar cane field, when a lieutenant ordered them to go back up a hill. They weren’t pleased: “We were tired. We hadn’t eaten right. It was horrible. But we went back, ’cause we was ordered.”
They dug another hole to take cover in. And the next morning, “We could have kissed that lieutenant.” Enemy fighters had blown up the sugar cane field during the night.
During the Battle of Saipan in 1944, Hartzell jumped into a shell hole — only to discover an elementary school classmate, Glen Vogelsong, in the same hole.
Vogelsong died recently.
“He was a decent guy,” Hartzell said. “And I hated to go to his funeral.”
Hartzell, like many other veterans, spoke of the friendships he formed during the war.
“These Marines — that were obnoxious, obscene and impure — I loved ’em,” he said.
Military units were close-knit and many soldiers felt a “family bond” with others in their unit, the University of Findlay’s Polelle said. A soldier felt the man to his right would do anything for him. This led soldiers to remain in dangerous situations despite unbelievable odds, “simply because they didn’t want to let their buddy down.”
After the war’s end, they missed these buddies, and transitioning to a 9-to-5 job in the civilian world could feel boring.
Although they felt a lot of fear while at war, Polelle said, they might also feel “exhilarated.” So, many were nostalgic after the war, as it was a time that “You really felt alive.”
Ned Ammons’ nephew, Ron, who interviewed World War II veterans for the Hancock Historical Museum’s “Heroes by Necessity” books, made the point that America’s soldiers were drafted out of everyday life and sent “to take on professional armies” — some of the Japanese and German soldiers had been fighting for years.
These “very young guys” were up against hardened professionals, Ron Ammons said. “And we eventually won.”
The U.S. service members faced obstacles beyond enemy fighters.
Daley’s crew flew over German railroads, bridges, factories and cities, dropping bombs. Flying at 32,000 feet meant the temperature would be 60 below zero. The Air Force equipped the crews with heated suits they plugged into an electrical outlet, plus gloves and footwear.
“And you just hope that none of those anti-aircraft pieces would hit the electrical system,” Daley said. “Because if it did, you’d freeze to death. … We had to be on oxygen. If it hit the oxygen system, in about a minute and a half you’d die without oxygen.”
After one particularly scary mission, Daley and his crew upon landing “dropped down and kissed the ground.”
Daley said if a plane got hit and started to go down, “the guys were still in there if they couldn’t bail out. You know what centrifugal force is? … That’s what pinned them in there. They couldn’t move. Which meant that this plane’s going down, take how long for it to go down from 32,000 feet, and these guys were still alive waiting. Waiting, that they know they’re going to die. That’s what I was afraid of. It was terrible.”
Katherine Landdeck, associate professor of history at Texas Woman’s University, said as she interviews veterans what strikes her most is “how humble most of them are.”
And they’re always especially eager to share the stories of “those whose voices weren’t being heard, those who didn’t survive.”
Gierke said he still watches war movies, and can identify what guns are being fired.
“I was too damn young to go. … But we went. We served. Done our duty,” he said.
Arthurs: 419-427-8494
saraarthurs@thecourier.com
Twitter: @swarthurs
