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A group of veterans writes the stories of their war.

The Wake Robin community in Shelburne, Vermont—like many retirement communities across the country—is home not only to its 300 residents, but also to memories of a war that shaped a generation of Americans. Within its walls live stories of aviators and admirals, war brides and WAVES.

It was the residents themselves who recognized the historical treasure trove that exists at Wake Robin, and it was the residents who, in 2005, began a three-year effort to collect and publish the personal stories of 65 Wake Robin retirees who lived through the war—stories that, in many cases, had never been told before, even to their own families.

The result was Our Great War, a book of memoirs that captures a small slice of the hundreds of thousands of war stories that are still out there, waiting to be shared. On the following pages, six Wake Robin residents tell their wartime tales.

RICHARD AUSTIN

TORPEDO SQUADRON 3

LIEUTENANT, U.S. NAVY

Kansas in winter can be very cold, especially in open-cockpit primary flight trainers, as I was to learn after my assignment to the naval air station in Olathe, Kansas. This was to be my first flying experience in the navy. The planes were biwing Stearmans, which had windshields but no other protection from the elements. To shield us from the cold wind, prior to each flight aviation cadets were issued a heavy sheepskin-lined jacket with trousers, helmet, face mask, gloves, and boots reaching almost to the knee; the leather and lining of the boots were so thick one felt like a mummy walking out to the plane.

We cadets learned acrobatic flying, including loops, rolls, wingovers, and other tricky maneuvers like the Immelmann turn. This turn consisted of a half-a-loop with considerable positive Gs until the plane was inverted. At this point, pushing the control stick forward stopped the loop at its top, exerting negative Gs. If it were not for the seat belt, this action could promptly eject the pilot from the open cockpit. At the top of the loop with the plane upside-down, we had to make a forceful side motion with the stick to return to right-side up.

One particularly cold day, I was practicing Immelmann turns on a solo flight, one after another. Foolishly unnoticed by me, on one of the rollouts I disengaged my seat belt with my elbow. So, on the next Immelmann, at the top of the loop, I found myself without an attached seat belt and suddenly leaving the bucket seat of the open cockpit.

Instinctively I grabbed the stick, and, fortunately, the top of my special fur-lined boots caught on the front of the seat and prevented my ejection. However, my backside was hanging out in the breeze. After a few seconds, the gravity feed for gas to the engine caused the engine to quit. When this happened, the plane gradually fluttered out of its inverted posture, and thankfully, I fell back into the bucket seat. The engine restarted itself; I refastened my seat belt and forever after became a committed seat belt checker.

We were required to wear parachutes at all times, and had I parted from the plane, that would have saved me, but not my aircraft! The prospect of having to face the commanding officer and apologize for falling out and losing his airplane was indeed frightening. I quietly blessed the fur-lined boots and thanked my good fortune. I didn’t advertise my close call to anyone, but quickly flew back to base, landed, and headed for my bunk. Thanks to those boots, my navy flying career was still intact.

HERVIE HAUFLER

6811TH SIGNAL SECURITY DETACHMENT

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS, U.S. ARMY SIGNAL CORPS

In 1942 I enlisted in the only military service that would overlook my poor eyesight: the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The corps trained me to be a cryptographer and in 1943 shipped me to England as one of some 500 Americans assigned to the British code-breaking program. As I later found out, we Americans were divided into three groups, each located at a different place, and each delegated by the British to take on a different task.

My group’s assignment was at a station whose task was to intercept and copy down encoded German radio messages for delivery to the British code breakers. We worked and lived in Hall Place, an ancient manor house in Bexley, Kent, with radio aerials strung incongruously over its slate roofs.

In military intelligence, you’re informed about only that small part of the whole that you “need to know” in order to do the job. My need to know back then was very slim. We passed messages on to the British at Station X without ever knowing whether they were being broken. There were times, such as the terrible surprise attack of the German army on our Allied troops in the Battle of the Bulge, when we believed in despair that they were not being deciphered, that they were just piling up in a warehouse someplace in hopes that a code breakthrough would come. Else, how could Hitler have so fooled our commanders? We GIs at Hall Place had to sustain our faith that somehow what we were doing was making a positive contribution.

We had one disadvantage. Our location in Kent was directly in the path of German bombers, and, later in the war, V-1 and V-2 rockets, aimed with not very good accuracy at London. We got our fill of hearing air raid sirens and of recoiling from the blasts of British antiaircraft gunners trying to bring the Luftwaffe planes down on our heads. We spent a good many off-duty hours at bombed sites trying to find victims under the debris or helping to clear out the rubble. We ourselves almost became victims when, in September 1944, a V-2 landed close enough to make the walls of Hall Place tremble, some of the ceilings crack, and to smash several windows. Two of our guys received Purple Hearts because of injuries they suffered in the bombings. All this was scary but also balm to our egos: sure, we were rear-echelon troops, but we weren’t completely immune to the bloodletting.

When the war was over and I was back in the U.S., I had to sign a pledge never to reveal what I had done in the war. I and some 10,000 others involved in this British program kept that pledge for 30 years after the war’s end. Then, the British authorities themselves began to let the wall of secrecy come down and to allow books to be published about their codebreaking triumphs. Suddenly, I learned in detail about that “secret war” I’d been involved in.

JOHN CARPENTER

6TH REGIMENT, 2ND MARINE DIVISION

CORPORAL, U.S. MARINE CORPS

During World War II, for the period from 1942 to 1944, I was involved in Marine Corps combat operations in the Pacific theater. We were taught at boot camp and basic training to hate the enemy, to love our country, and to believe that there was no better service than being a marine.

We were ready for combat, physically and mentally. Our training for jungle warfare in particular paid off. Our unit encountered little initial resistance when our Higgins boats landed on Guadalcanal. The Japanese enemy was lurking in the jungle, hiding and harassing, or fleeing just in front of us as we advanced. We had to chase them down over many days and nights, often in rain, through dense jungle, barbed wire, up and down coral ridges and wet valleys, across rivers, among palm trees—all the time avoiding sniper fire and sneak attacks reminiscent of “Indian warfare.” This was my first experience with hand-to-hand combat, foxhole living, mangled and stinking bodies, a diet of C- and D-rations, and shortage of potable water.

On November 20, 1943, our marine division—18,000 men strong in a heavily protected convoy—began landings on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. The attack was on Betio, a very flat coral island just two miles long and a half-mile wide, but the site of a large airfield that had been built by the Japanese. The island was heavily fortified, with underground concrete pillboxes, blockhouses, coconut sea walls, tank traps and underwater obstacles, and mines. More than 5,000 defending Japanese forces were prepared to repel the attack and were mostly underground.

The surrounding coral reefs made it impossible to transport troops all the way to the beach in the Higgins boat landing craft. The recently available amphibious craft, known as Amtracs, were being used for the first time, but with minimal success. The first waves of landing forces were wiped out before ever reaching the beaches. Our unit had to transfer in the surf at the coral reef to rubber boats, all the while being subjected to heavy enemy fire from mortars and machine guns. Capsizing boats inflicted more casualties. Although our group was not scheduled to be one of the early waves, we ended up being among the first marines to reach the beach. In water up to our shoulders and loaded down with heavy combat equipment, we crawled along the side of a 700-yard-long pier, which offered us some protection from enemy fire. At the end of the day, the outcome of the invasion remained in doubt.

Once the Japanese communication system was knocked out, however, their units became isolated and more disorganized. By the second day, with aggressive use of flamethrowers and bulldozers sealing off openings to underground fortifications, the threat from the pillboxes was virtually snuffed out. Some 4,700 Japanese defenders were killed, leaving only 17 wounded remaining, who were taken prisoner. The sight and stench of the countless dead bodies were nauseating.

The whole operation lasted only 76 hours. Marine casualties totaled nearly 900 dead, 2,300 wounded, and 88 missing. The stubborn resistance put up by the Japanese was unexpected. For several days leading right up to the landings, fierce naval gunfire and navy torpedo bombers had bombarded nearly every inch of the island, so most observers could not believe anyone could still be left alive.

Before we left the island I escorted several of the navy pilots who had engaged in the bombing of Tarawa to view the coral terrain and the built-in defense pillboxes. They were flabbergasted because these obstacles and fortifications had all blended into the topography and were never identified by aerial photography. The troopships that evacuated the surviving marines were a sight for sore eyes. We buried many of our fellow marines at sea. Then we were treated to an old-fashioned Thanksgiving meal en route to safe haven in Hawaii.

ELIZABETH MIDDLETON BROWN

AMERICAN RED CROSS

I wasn’t a nurse, but anyone seeing us in our smart gray uniforms could guess we were with some special service during World War II. I was serving as an occupational therapist with the American Red Cross and stationed at Staten Island Area Hospital in New Dorp, New York. It wasn’t long before I discovered that the uniform covered not only my ignorance but also my fears about what I had gotten into. Where were the nurses? Inside the office, I learned. Yes, we were expected to do all that was necessary short of actual nursing.

Wounded soldiers came regularly to be treated. They were all bed patients. I was assigned to an amputee ward. Suddenly occupational therapy became real to me. Never mind looking for an occasion to play gin rummy; what does this guy want? He wants a urinal. My job at this moment is to find a nurse. Sometimes we saw a movie, when again my training might desert me. I might pull a cart alongside a patient’s bed and we’d go together to see It Happened One Night.

On New Year’s Eve I went all out, demanding extra sodas from the canteen, more hats, blowers, and whistles. I ran about the corridors whooping it up in a hula skirt; yes, it relieved the boredom, the men sang, they laughed, finally telling army jokes that dispersed the shadows creeping along the gray cement-block walls that they had come home to.

Sometimes the men would practice walking. The hospital was located on the beach at New Dorp and had a short boardwalk. Again, my Washington schooling didn’t fill the bill. Carl caught his crutch between the boards—here was a job I could do, grabbing a shoulder, leaning for balance, and he came up, one leg, one crutch, one smile. Another GI, a real smart guy, pegging up to me might say, “Hi! Wanta dance?”

Sometimes work was heartbreaking. Early in the morning as I checked in for the day I would hear a nurse speaking softly on the phone to the CO: “Yes, sir. Corporal Smith managed to escape last night. He crawled down the sand to the water and he drowned.” And Oren, a slight figure struggling to accept that his arms were gone: I said to him, “Good night, Oren, we will work those muscles tomorrow.” When I went to the ward I saw that his bed was freshly made up—and empty. He had died in the night.

So I had training as an occupational therapist in Washington, D.C., with plastics and play dough and other useful things to help keep wounded men busy and trying to get well. But I found out a lot more in New Dorp. The cement hospital is now gone. The tides flow freely back and forth on my bit of history.

DR. JAMES MCKAY

275TH ENGINEER COMBAT BATTALION, 75TH INFANTRY DIVISION

CAPTAIN, U.S. ARMY MEDICAL CORPS

In military lingo, all doctors are called surgeons, and a battalion surgeon is the primary care doctor for a battalion that is involved in frontline fighting or supporting combat troops. I was assigned as battalion surgeon to the 275th Engineer Combat Battalion, 75th Infantry Division.

In Belgium in December 1944, we began to see battle fatigue from the physical strain and emotional tension of combat, combined with the associated lack of sleep and personal hygiene. As a method of handling the problem without sending afflicted soldiers back to the rear echelon for psychiatric care (which meant loss of a soldier’s services to his unit for a week or more, or sometimes permanently), I developed a form of mini–R & R, hoping to avoid their dropping out of their units, as well as loss of self-respect and that of their comrades in arms. This involved assigning the affected soldier to “temporary duty” in the medical detachment, a haircut done personally by me (having a captain and a doctor as one’s personal barber seemed a particularly good morale booster, especially for enlisted men), a shave (skillfully done by the medical detachment’s podiatrist), a warm bath or shower, a hot meal, and an undisturbed night of rest on a dry cot under warm blankets. The period of sleep usually lasted from 12 to 20 hours, and after a second meal, the soldier was generally ready and eager to return.

We moved about from bivouac to bivouac as the weather changed from overcast and foggy, which protected us from being strafed or bombed by the occasional German plane passing overhead, to cold and snowy. Nighttime patrols by the Germans occasionally awakened us when they were fired on.

During the next few days, as the weather turned much colder, we started to receive wounded at the aid station. I recall the shock of seeing my first battle wound, a shrapnel wound of the shoulder that had laid bare the scapula and muscles of the back— on Christmas Eve. That same night, one of our company officers was brought in raving mad. He had broken under the stress of having been ordered to send some of his men into almost certain death—for the third time that day.

Christmas 1944 dawned bright and clear. The first of a series of 1,000-plane American bombing raids on German supply lines and factories in the Ruhr droned overhead. Wave on wave of bombers flew unfalteringly into heavy antiaircraft fire (or “ack-ack,” as we called it), with numerous planes shot down within view, yet flights continued unwaveringly. Prior to that raid, we “regular” soldiers had been scornful and derisive about the spoiled flyboys and their soft “rear-echelon” life we had perceived. Seeing that raid and the bravery of the flyboys who conducted it totally reversed our opinion. Respect and admiration replaced derision. It still brings tears to my eyes whenever I think of that raid and those brave airmen. The effect of these Christmas bombing raids was apparent almost immediately, as our forces started to press the enemy back, and we became less apprehensive about being overrun during the night.

RUDYARD COLTER

NAVAL AIR TRANSPORT SQUADRON

LIEUTENANT, U.S. NAVY

The year is 1944. Early morning sun shines roseate on the silver fuselage of my twin-engine plane as it rises over the Chesapeake, banks a two-needle-width turn, and heads out over the ocean. It’s the start of a routine Naval Air Transport Service flight to the island of Bermuda. Having climbed to 9,000 feet to take advantage of the favorable winds aloft, I turn the controls over to the copilot and tune into the Berlin Philharmonic playing Beethoven’s Seventh. All routine.

Some three hours later, the sharp-eyed copilot abruptly levels binoculars on the forward horizon. “Submarine— submarine—bearing 025 degrees!” Rapid thumbing of the ID silhouette cards confirms a surfaced German U-boat’s conning tower, crash-diving. Break radio silence! Warn Bermuda control! Enemy sub position, course, and speed go out in clear language. With the message confirmed and transmission completed, we resume our scheduled course and land at Kindley Field, Bermuda.

Meanwhile, the call to general quarters shatters military routine throughout the armed island. American, British, and Canadian navies scramble patrol bombers and deploy antisubmarine ships. Then follow three harrowing days of the deadly cat-and-mouse game: hunting—finding—depth charging—losing—seeking—wounding the quarry. Finally, leaking fuel and losing seaworthiness, the U-boat is forced to surface. The crew scuttles the vessel, and everyone who had been aboard the sub is taken captive, including the captain.

Several weeks later, after interrogation, the U-boat commander is ordered under marine guard to a POW camp in South Carolina. By coincidence, the same plane and crew that had spotted the U-boat is again in Bermuda, ready for the return flight to Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. Among the passengers are the U-boat captain and his guard.

Another routine flight? Not quite. The passenger configuration of that workhorse plane of World War II, the rugged, dependable DC-3, features two lines of unpadded aluminum bucket seats along the sides of the fuselage. Up forward, just aft of the cockpit door, are four upholstered leather so-called MacArthur chairs reserved for VIPs. On this run they are occupied by wounded servicemen with a medical corpsman attending. The prisoner and his guard are assigned two bucket seats.

Cleared for takeoff, as pilot I take the U.S.–bound plane to the designated altitude of 8,000 feet. Then we level off, correcting the course, throttling back to cruising rpm, trimming for straight and level altitude, and leaning out the fuel/air mixture for optimum cruising speed and fuel consumption. Flying over blue water, all pilots are conservationists.

However, on this particular flight for some reason the plane refuses to trim down to a straight and level course, but instead gently porpoises up and down, a gas-wasting motion. After adjusting the trim tabs again and again, finally in frustration the copilot heads aft to investigate a possible cause in the cabin. Returning, he reports that the U-boat commander is stamping up and down the length of the compartment citing the Geneva Convention and demanding a MacArthur chair as befits his rank. His constantly shifting 200 pounds is enough to upset the weight and balance ratio necessary to a perfectly trimmed, level flight.

Again, the copilot is dispatched to restore order and quiet. However, angry and arrogant insistence upon his rights of rank is the only response. The plane’s porpoising continues. At this, I yield the controls to the copilot. I two-block my tie, don my lieutenant junior grade uniform jacket and gold braid hat, strap on my ammo belt and .38-caliber Smith & Wesson service revolver, and dramatically throw open the cabin door, then march down the aisle, right quarter-turn before the marine guard and the now-seated German prisoner. Jerking my head up, I lead the rising marine in a formal salute.

“Sergeant, if this prisoner gives any further trouble—shoot him!” Both salute, with only the marine catching the broad, private wink. Then I march back to the cockpit, knowing, as the guard knows and all in earshot know, this breaks U.S. Navy regs. The prisoner, however, knows only Nazi customs.

The rest of the flight? Routine all the way.

 

Our Great War contains 59 additional wartime stories—from the Anzio beachhead, to Clinton, Oklahoma, to the Japanese war crimes trials in Tokyo. Visit wakerobin.com to learn more.

Originally published in the November 2009 issue of World War II. To subscribe, click here.