My dad graduated from high school in 1943 and talked to the Navy recruiter. The recruiter told him that if he went to the Merchant Marine Academy and graduated, the Navy would take him as an officer, as long as he enlisted right now. So he did, then graduated from the Merchant Marine Academy a year later. When he went to the recruiting office, the officer there told him that the previous recruiter used to tell folks that to get his enlistment count higher.
So my dad went into the Navy and spent the remaining part of WWII training for the invasion of Japan. Fortunately for me, that never happened.
There was an elderly gentleman that used to hang out at the airport. He was a B-17 A/C commander, then a B-29 A/C commander. In the B-17, he was on his way to England when that part of the war ended, so he turned around to take a B-29 to the war in Japan. After they got to their assigned base, that part of the war ended. Later he was based at Roswell. He said the hangar the crashed ''UFO'' was in was unlocked and unguarded and anyone could go in and look at it.
My mom grew up in Los Cruces, NM. A week earlier everyone was warned to stay indoors and keep the windows closed and blinds down on 16July1945. She remembers something woke her up that morning, like the bed lightly shaking. Her dad told her it was a train, but she didn't believe him.
I remember several men I had met in my life that were WWII veterans. My dad would tell me about them, like a friends dad. He was a B-17 crew member that was shot down and spent 2 years as a POW. He did not think ''Hogan's Heroes'' was a funny Tv show.
Another guy at our church always walked on the toes of his right foot. My dad told me he was in the Bataan death march. The story was his friend fell to the ground, so he bent over to pick him up. A Japanese soldier shot at his friend but instead hitting the heel of the man picking him up. He was a pilot after the war and I remember riding with him in his twin engine airplane. (6 place twin, I don't remember what it was)
My uncle joined the marines in 1939 for 2 years. He claimed to be the first US soldier to kill a Japanese soldier. As I understand the story, he was somewhere in the south pacific working as security to a construction battalion crew, before they were officially called seabees. He was bored and asked the person in charge if they had anything for him to do. They had him running the marker as they were surveying the area to build a landing strip. He went out to put in a marker. As he raised his machete to cut the marker tape, he heard a bullet go between his hand and his ear. That messed up his aim and he hit his finger with the machete. He dropped to the ground and rolled out of the area to circle back to observe the area he was at when he heard the bullet.
He saw a Jap soldier looking at the ground, presumably looking at the blood on the ground. As I understand the story, my uncle dropped him and went back to work. When the officer in charge found out, he told them to forget this ever happened, since the US was not at war with the Japanese at that time. There are no records of this so there is no way I can verify if this story is true or not.
My uncle got out of the Marines in 1941, only a few months before Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army thinking it would not be as bad as the Marines. He ended up D-Day +3 as a replacement squad leader. Later he was wounded in the part of his body that goes over the fence last. And to my aunts horror, he had no problem showing folks where he was wounded...
Another uncle was in Italy. Of the three brothers, he saw the most combat. He was in the 3rd Infantry Division, same as Audie Murphy but not the same company. At one time his company lost communications during a battle. My uncle volunteered to run a new phone line across open land under fire to connect back up. He did not get the bronze star for that. Reportedly he got the bronze star for running across open land to return.
I remember him as a quiet, yet tense man. He smoked a lot, and apparently drank more than his share. He brought home war souvenirs, including a German Luger, but my cousin stole them and traded them for drugs.
All these men are gone now. I wish I had realized their significance to the war effort while they were still alive.
