From The Telegraph: Victims of HMT Lancastria sinking honoured with memorial
HMT Lancastria, which was built on the River Clyde, was attacked by a German bomber on June 17, 1940, receiving three direct hits.
It sunk off the coast of France in less than 20 minutes, taking up to 6,500 people with it, making it the largest single loss of life for British forces throughout the whole of the Second World War.
Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is to unveil a memorial on Saturday on the banks of the Clyde, at the site of what was the William Beardmore and Sons shipbuilding yard where HMT Lancastria was constructed.
The memorial is a bronze sculpture, set on a granite block with a commemorative text, and was created by Fife artist Marion Smith. The bronze represents the early steel sheet construction of the Lancastria.
Jacqueline Tanner, 73, from Worcester, who is the youngest known survivor of the disaster, will also attend the unveiling.
She was aged just two when the ship sank, and her parents are said to have held her up out of the water for over two hours before they were rescued.
Mrs Tanner, formerly Jacqueline Tillyer, had to be revived and still has the sailor's jersey she was wrapped in by her rescuer.
It is claimed that the bombing of the ship was "buried" by the government at the time due to the low morale of the country during the war, and this is said to be the reason why it has taken so long to have a memorial put in place.
Mark Hirst, whose grandfather Walter Hirst, from Dundee, survived the disaster when he was 25, is the founder of the Lancastria Association and secured the site for the memorial.
Walter Hirst was a Sapper with 663 Company, The Royal Engineers. About one-third (91) of the men in his company died when the Lancastria sank.
Mr Hirst, 42, from Jedburgh in the Borders, said: "The memorial to the victims of the Lancastria is a fitting and lasting tribute to the thousands who died in what remains Britain's worst ever maritime disaster.
"Their sacrifice was ignored for decades because successive British governments refused to formally acknowledge the loss of the Lancastria for propaganda reasons.
"The site on which the new memorial stands is where the Lancastria was constructed in 1920 and where this once great liner came to life.
"The unveiling of this memorial brings the story full circle and I am certain it will be a place of pilgrimage and remembrance in the years to come."
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
New posting schedule
Sorry for the long delay in posting - had some family issues.
The posting schedule for this blog - starting this Wednesday, Nov 23, will be Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Thanks for your patience!
The posting schedule for this blog - starting this Wednesday, Nov 23, will be Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Thanks for your patience!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Women pilots recognized with memorial at BOHS
Orange County Register: Women pilots recognized with memorial at BOHS
Quintin Ruiz, grandson of WASP Violet Cowden, escorts Mary Lamy and Myrle Mackintosh.
A plaque and monument have been unveiled among 12 pepper trees at the edge of the Brea Olinda High School campus to pay tribute to 12 Women Airforce Service Pilots, better known as WASPs, from Orange County.
The memorial was paid for through donations and fundraisers held by the Orange District of the California Federation of Women's Clubs.
During World War II, the women pilots flew non-combat missions, making more male pilots available for combat flights. The WASPs flew most types of military aircraft including B-26 and B-29 bombers. These women weren't granted military status until 1977.
"They've been overlooked," said Ellie Rankin, member of the Placentia Round Table Women's Club.
Mary Lamy, of Seal Beach, who is one of the 12 Orange County WASPs, was present in her uniform at the dedication Nov. 10.
Along with Lamy, the women honored are Beverly L. Beesemyer, Mary Reineberg Burchard, Violet Thurn Cowden, Jeanne Perot D'Ambly, Mary Ann Dreher, Roberta Jane Fohl, Bethel Gibbons Haven, Dolores M. Lamb, Joan Whelan Lyle, Doris K. Muise and Eleanor Olson Weems.
Marilyn Bennett, president of the Orange District, initiated the idea of getting involved with recognizing the WASP legacy.
Bennett, along with district chairman Myrle Mackintosh, led the women's clubs in this effort for more than a year, Rankin said. Previously, the 12 pepper trees were planted in part of the BOHS campus that was damaged by the 2008 Freeway Complex Fire.
Women from the 23 women's clubs in the Orange District were present for the event.
WWII veteran shares memories in Portland
From Middletown Press: WWII veteran shares memories in Portland
PORTLAND — “You want to talk to this guy, my neighbor,” Ed Drzewiecki said. “You really do.”
Oh, how right Mr. Drzewiecki was.
James D. Wright sat quietly, slowly eating his dinner at the “Thank you, Veterans” dinner in Portland High school Friday night. As he finished the last of his roast pork, mashed potatoes and carrots, Drzewiecki, his tablemate, neighbor and friend looked on approvingly.
When at last he had finished his meal, Wright put down his silverware and pushed his plate out of his way. And then Wright, 92, began to tell a story about his grandfather, the Brooklyn Dodgers and Gen. George Patton.
The grandfather first.
“My grandfather was born in 1847. I used to sit on his lap. He chewed tobacco,” Wright explained. “And he fought in the Civil War.” His grandfather died in 1929, when Wright was 10.
“He used to send me to the store to get his tobacco. His brand was Liberty. They still make it. It had a picture of the Lady (Liberty) right on the cover,” Wright explained in a clear, direct voice.
And when he came back from the store, mission accomplished, Wright would climb into his grandfather’s lap.
Wright retains clear memories of his grandfather. “Oh, he was a great guy.”
Fighting for the Union, the grandfather took part in the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia in May 1864.
Known today only by serious students of the Civil War, the Wilderness ended inconclusively. What little fame it has today rests on the fact it was the first battle undertaken by Ulysses Grant against Robert E. Lee.
While Grant did not win, he also did not retreat. Instead, he sidestepped sideways, pushing ever further south towards Richmond.
This sideways crab-like movement and fighting continued unabated for nearly 11 more months until, worn down and flushed from his defenses at Petersburg, Lee finally gave up and surrendered at Appomattox Court House.
Wright’s grandfather wasn’t there to see the end; he was captured in the confusion that was the Wilderness and sent south to Andersonville, the Confederate prison camp in southwest Georgia that became a synonym for hell on earth.
When William Tecumseh Sherman launched his scouring march to the sea from Atlanta in late 1864, Wright’s grandfather was moved to South Carolina. When Sherman turned his 60,000-man strong column north into the cradle of secession, Wrights’ grandfather was freed in a prisoner exchange.
Which is how he came to be sitting in a chair in a house in New Jersey in the 1920s.
His grandfather’s death coincided with the stock market crash. Suddenly jobless, Wright’s father moved the family to Brooklyn where he got a job with Sheffield Farms Dairy.
Those years in Brooklyn live on in Wright’s pronunciation. And then, Wright got a try-out with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“Me and 15 other guys, we all got the chance to get out on the field” of the Dodgers’ fabled home, Ebbetts Field.
“They’d hit six or seven grounders to each one of us, and we’d get to throw from third to first,” Wright recalled.
But He would have to be happy with the fact he got the tryout. “I didn’t have that much of an arm; I was only 17,” he explained.
Still, he was good enough to play semi-pro ball on Long Island. That was where he was when the United States Government decided it required Mr. James Douglas Wright’s skills in the Armed Forces. It was 1941.
At first, “I played a lot of baseball,” Wright said, “until they caught up with me and sent me to France.” It was 1944.
He joined the Third Army, commanded by George S. Patton. The Allies had finally disentangled themselves from Normandy and were streaking across northern France. There was talk the war could be over by Christmas.
Wright was assigned to a mobile anti-aircraft unit; he was gunner on a quad .50, a pod that was mounted on a truck bed and which contained four .50 caliber heavy machine guns.
Designed for use against attacking airplanes, Wright said most often the guns were fired across rivers in support of ground attacks upon German positions.
With Patton in the lead, 3rd Army swept east across France and Belgium into Luxembourg. It was mid-December, 1944. And then, “we got bogged down,” Wright said off-handedly.
What caused 3rd Army to “bog down” was the Germans famous last-gasp offensive which became the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle in history involving US troops.
It took two months of hard fighting and some 80,000 US casualties before the battle was over, and Patton could resume his drive ever eastwards. When the war finally ended in May, Wright and Patton had streaked through Germany and were in Czechoslovakia.
The rest of Wright’s abruptly left for home en masse. He alone remained behind.
“Someone had to watch the Germans – and the German women!” Wright said, prompting Drzewiecki to laugh out loud, “Not bad for 92, huh?” Drzwiecki noted.
When he finally came home, Wright went to work for Western Union and then for a trucking company. He worked until he was 75, retiring for good.
Just after he got back, “I met the most beautiful girl at an American Legion dance on Long Island.” They were married 56 years before his wife died in 2002. He moved to Portland following her death.
Wright and his wife had two children, a son and daughter. The son died within the past month, at age 62. It is a loss Wright is still coming to terms with.
His daughter, Carol Lanigan, lives in East Hampton and came with her father to the dinner Friday.
Wright and Ed and Josephine Drzewiecki live in a 55-and-older community in Portland.
A Navy veteran who served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the early 1960s, Drzewiecki helped recover Gemini space capsules as part of the US space program.
He keeps an eye on Wright and helps out when and where he can. “The only reason I agreed to help him out was because I found out he was a World War II veteran. How can you say no to a guy who served in World War II?” Drzewiecki said.
In June, Wright traveled to Washington, DC, to see the World War II Memorial on the National Mall.
“Oh, it was great!” Wright said. All his nieces and nephews surprised Wright by showing up unannounced at the memorial.
“There I was, standing in the middle and suddenly they were all around me. I didn’t even know they were coming. It was great – and it was a freebie,” he said.
About his army career, Wright said, “It’s something you had to do. I’m not saying I enjoyed it, but when they tell you to do something – you do it."
PORTLAND — “You want to talk to this guy, my neighbor,” Ed Drzewiecki said. “You really do.”
Oh, how right Mr. Drzewiecki was.
James D. Wright sat quietly, slowly eating his dinner at the “Thank you, Veterans” dinner in Portland High school Friday night. As he finished the last of his roast pork, mashed potatoes and carrots, Drzewiecki, his tablemate, neighbor and friend looked on approvingly.
When at last he had finished his meal, Wright put down his silverware and pushed his plate out of his way. And then Wright, 92, began to tell a story about his grandfather, the Brooklyn Dodgers and Gen. George Patton.
The grandfather first.
“My grandfather was born in 1847. I used to sit on his lap. He chewed tobacco,” Wright explained. “And he fought in the Civil War.” His grandfather died in 1929, when Wright was 10.
“He used to send me to the store to get his tobacco. His brand was Liberty. They still make it. It had a picture of the Lady (Liberty) right on the cover,” Wright explained in a clear, direct voice.
And when he came back from the store, mission accomplished, Wright would climb into his grandfather’s lap.
Wright retains clear memories of his grandfather. “Oh, he was a great guy.”
Fighting for the Union, the grandfather took part in the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia in May 1864.
Known today only by serious students of the Civil War, the Wilderness ended inconclusively. What little fame it has today rests on the fact it was the first battle undertaken by Ulysses Grant against Robert E. Lee.
While Grant did not win, he also did not retreat. Instead, he sidestepped sideways, pushing ever further south towards Richmond.
This sideways crab-like movement and fighting continued unabated for nearly 11 more months until, worn down and flushed from his defenses at Petersburg, Lee finally gave up and surrendered at Appomattox Court House.
Wright’s grandfather wasn’t there to see the end; he was captured in the confusion that was the Wilderness and sent south to Andersonville, the Confederate prison camp in southwest Georgia that became a synonym for hell on earth.
When William Tecumseh Sherman launched his scouring march to the sea from Atlanta in late 1864, Wright’s grandfather was moved to South Carolina. When Sherman turned his 60,000-man strong column north into the cradle of secession, Wrights’ grandfather was freed in a prisoner exchange.
Which is how he came to be sitting in a chair in a house in New Jersey in the 1920s.
His grandfather’s death coincided with the stock market crash. Suddenly jobless, Wright’s father moved the family to Brooklyn where he got a job with Sheffield Farms Dairy.
Those years in Brooklyn live on in Wright’s pronunciation. And then, Wright got a try-out with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
“Me and 15 other guys, we all got the chance to get out on the field” of the Dodgers’ fabled home, Ebbetts Field.
“They’d hit six or seven grounders to each one of us, and we’d get to throw from third to first,” Wright recalled.
But He would have to be happy with the fact he got the tryout. “I didn’t have that much of an arm; I was only 17,” he explained.
Still, he was good enough to play semi-pro ball on Long Island. That was where he was when the United States Government decided it required Mr. James Douglas Wright’s skills in the Armed Forces. It was 1941.
At first, “I played a lot of baseball,” Wright said, “until they caught up with me and sent me to France.” It was 1944.
He joined the Third Army, commanded by George S. Patton. The Allies had finally disentangled themselves from Normandy and were streaking across northern France. There was talk the war could be over by Christmas.
Wright was assigned to a mobile anti-aircraft unit; he was gunner on a quad .50, a pod that was mounted on a truck bed and which contained four .50 caliber heavy machine guns.
Designed for use against attacking airplanes, Wright said most often the guns were fired across rivers in support of ground attacks upon German positions.
With Patton in the lead, 3rd Army swept east across France and Belgium into Luxembourg. It was mid-December, 1944. And then, “we got bogged down,” Wright said off-handedly.
What caused 3rd Army to “bog down” was the Germans famous last-gasp offensive which became the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle in history involving US troops.
It took two months of hard fighting and some 80,000 US casualties before the battle was over, and Patton could resume his drive ever eastwards. When the war finally ended in May, Wright and Patton had streaked through Germany and were in Czechoslovakia.
The rest of Wright’s abruptly left for home en masse. He alone remained behind.
“Someone had to watch the Germans – and the German women!” Wright said, prompting Drzewiecki to laugh out loud, “Not bad for 92, huh?” Drzwiecki noted.
When he finally came home, Wright went to work for Western Union and then for a trucking company. He worked until he was 75, retiring for good.
Just after he got back, “I met the most beautiful girl at an American Legion dance on Long Island.” They were married 56 years before his wife died in 2002. He moved to Portland following her death.
Wright and his wife had two children, a son and daughter. The son died within the past month, at age 62. It is a loss Wright is still coming to terms with.
His daughter, Carol Lanigan, lives in East Hampton and came with her father to the dinner Friday.
Wright and Ed and Josephine Drzewiecki live in a 55-and-older community in Portland.
A Navy veteran who served aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the early 1960s, Drzewiecki helped recover Gemini space capsules as part of the US space program.
He keeps an eye on Wright and helps out when and where he can. “The only reason I agreed to help him out was because I found out he was a World War II veteran. How can you say no to a guy who served in World War II?” Drzewiecki said.
In June, Wright traveled to Washington, DC, to see the World War II Memorial on the National Mall.
“Oh, it was great!” Wright said. All his nieces and nephews surprised Wright by showing up unannounced at the memorial.
“There I was, standing in the middle and suddenly they were all around me. I didn’t even know they were coming. It was great – and it was a freebie,” he said.
About his army career, Wright said, “It’s something you had to do. I’m not saying I enjoyed it, but when they tell you to do something – you do it."
Veterans receive salute at Issaquah ceremony
From Issaquahpresss.com: Veterans receive salute at Issaquah ceremony
A World War II Navy veteran, Paul Miller has been through his share of Veterans Day celebrations.
Not surprisingly, he still thinks those remembrances are important and worthwhile.
“We need to pay our respects and honor those who have served and … especially those who made that ultimate sacrifice,” he said following the 45-minute commemoration at the Issaquah Valley Senior Center on Veterans Day.
The ceremony ended with a 21-gun salute provided by the Issaquah High School Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps.
“Veterans do not take life for granted,” said veteran and Issaquah City Councilman Fred Butler, who presented the keynote talk during the event. “They know that duty and sacrifice are more than words.”
Butler said the country has a new breed of veterans in those returning from often multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Too many veterans with real skills cannot find jobs in this economy,” he said.
He urged those listening to get to know those new veterans and help and hire them if possible.
Issaquah Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 3436, led by David Waggoner, presented the Veterans Day event. For his part, Waggoner’s talk highlighted an Issaquah vet he believes deserves more attention then she has gotten so far.
Jayne Elizabeth Erickson is one of 19 local veterans who died while in the service and who are listed on the memorial just outside the senior center.
Killed at age 22 while training to be a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, Erickson is the only woman on the memorial.
According to Waggoner, Erickson died in April 1944 while trying to take off for what would have been her second solo flight. Her plane collided with another and Waggoner said Erickson never had a chance to eject from her plane.
After noting some big discrepancies in the treatment of female veterans at the time Erickson died, Waggoner said other WASPs actually had to take up a collection to send Erickson’s body back to Issaquah. Though she had lived in Issaquah, Erickson was buried in Seattle with no flag on her coffin and no military honors. That apparent snub rankles Waggoner, who vowed the VFW would correct that mistake.
“We gotta make that right,” he said.
On another front, as has become customary, Waggoner and the VFW intend to supply the city with new flags for municipal flagpoles. Waggoner said the city only needs to replace four of its flags this year, but promised the VFW would continue to ensure that, as long as there are U.S. military personnel serving in harm’s way, the city’s U.S. flags would “fly clean and bright.”
A World War II Navy veteran, Paul Miller has been through his share of Veterans Day celebrations.
Not surprisingly, he still thinks those remembrances are important and worthwhile.
“We need to pay our respects and honor those who have served and … especially those who made that ultimate sacrifice,” he said following the 45-minute commemoration at the Issaquah Valley Senior Center on Veterans Day.
The ceremony ended with a 21-gun salute provided by the Issaquah High School Navy Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps.
“Veterans do not take life for granted,” said veteran and Issaquah City Councilman Fred Butler, who presented the keynote talk during the event. “They know that duty and sacrifice are more than words.”
Butler said the country has a new breed of veterans in those returning from often multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Too many veterans with real skills cannot find jobs in this economy,” he said.
He urged those listening to get to know those new veterans and help and hire them if possible.
Issaquah Veterans of Foreign Wars Post No. 3436, led by David Waggoner, presented the Veterans Day event. For his part, Waggoner’s talk highlighted an Issaquah vet he believes deserves more attention then she has gotten so far.
Jayne Elizabeth Erickson is one of 19 local veterans who died while in the service and who are listed on the memorial just outside the senior center.
Killed at age 22 while training to be a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, Erickson is the only woman on the memorial.
According to Waggoner, Erickson died in April 1944 while trying to take off for what would have been her second solo flight. Her plane collided with another and Waggoner said Erickson never had a chance to eject from her plane.
After noting some big discrepancies in the treatment of female veterans at the time Erickson died, Waggoner said other WASPs actually had to take up a collection to send Erickson’s body back to Issaquah. Though she had lived in Issaquah, Erickson was buried in Seattle with no flag on her coffin and no military honors. That apparent snub rankles Waggoner, who vowed the VFW would correct that mistake.
“We gotta make that right,” he said.
On another front, as has become customary, Waggoner and the VFW intend to supply the city with new flags for municipal flagpoles. Waggoner said the city only needs to replace four of its flags this year, but promised the VFW would continue to ensure that, as long as there are U.S. military personnel serving in harm’s way, the city’s U.S. flags would “fly clean and bright.”
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Anderson (SC( man talks of flying C-47s, gliders in World War II
From Independent Mail: Anderson man talks of flying C-47s, gliders in World War II
ANDERSON COUNTY — Inside a shadow box on Carl Ellison’s living room wall is an array of colorful ribbons and medals. In the middle of that box are two sets of small metal wings.
Those are wings that Ellison, 88, earned.
“I’ve always been interested in airplanes,” Ellison said. “From the time I was a kid, I’d always wanted to fly.”
World War II gave him the opportunity to do just that.
On Dec. 12, 1942, about two years after he’d finished high school in Williamston, he traveled to Spartanburg with two other buddies to sign up for the U.S. Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force. They had to take a test. Ellison was the only one who passed. He was sworn in that day, and by Feb. 21, 1943, he was called to active duty.
For the next two years, he served the Air Corps, in the 91st Squadron. He was assigned to the 439th troop carrier, and learned how to fly every aircraft that the Air Corps had.
Two of those planes, the C-47s and the gliders, would become second-nature to him by the end of the war.
He traveled all over the South for pre-flight training. For most of his training, he and his wife, Hazel, were able to spend time together, and even live together on the bases. But by October 1944, he received orders to report to Maxton, N.C. This time, he couldn’t take Hazel, and could not tell her where he was going.
All he could say was that he had to report to North Carolina and she couldn’t come with him. They had a week together, before he had to board a bus and head north.
“When I kissed her and left her at the bus station, it was one of the most difficult days of my life,” Ellison wrote in a memoir about Hazel, after she died in 2008.
The two met in a ninth-grade study hall at Williamston High School, he said. He noticed her right away and can still remember where they were sitting in that room. By the end of the study hall, Ellison said he made it a point to meet her.
For 64 years, they were married. In that memoir, Ellison said it was the letters he received from Hazel that gave him strength in the midst of the fighting around him.
The memories of the time they shared together were the only thing he had to cling to as he flew more than 60 missions — many of them in the midst of anti-aircraft fire.
In one mission, Ellison said about half of the planes in the mission were lost as Germans shot them down.
“The Germans had closed up a corridor that we thought was open,” Ellison said. “We were trying to drop supplies in to the 101st Airborne. We took fire and in about five minutes, they put a big dent in our squadron.”
By that Christmas, he was sleeping in a four-man tent in a foot of snow, because the Germans had bombed out the barracks at their base in France, Ellison said.
In his memoir, he said this day was a bad day for him.
“I did not have to fly that day and I was sitting alone in our four-man tent with about 18 inches of snow on the ground,” he wrote. “I had nothing to do but think of the past.”
Before that day ended, something else would happen that would change his experience in the war. A plane crashed shortly after take-off, killing everybody on board, including 25 glider pilots.
For the first time during the war, Ellison was assigned to fly something else besides a C-47. He had to fly a glider as Gen. George Patton made his push across the Rhine River.
Ellison had to land behind enemy lines to try and get some artillery to the troops on the ground.
“Glider pilots were getting killed left and right,” Ellison said. “Now, they call that a suicide mission. You were scared all the time. You never did get used to flying and getting shot at.”
As he landed behind enemy lines, Ellison was just a few feet from a German 88-mm, an anti-tank gun.
“It just so happened that I landed 10 or 12 steps too far to the left,” Ellison said. “He couldn’t hit me from where I was at.”
For a week, he and several others were stranded behind enemy lines. The British troops were cut off and couldn’t get to them. They hadn’t packed enough rations for a week, so they had to live off the food they found at a nearby farm, Ellison said.
“I found a spot, dug a foxhole and stayed there that week,” Ellison said.
Ellison survived that week, but some of the details, he said are still too hard to talk about.
The following months would bring the end of the war. Ellison’s role would turn to flying into the concentration camps and prison camps run by the Germans. He flew prisoners out of Germany to where they could receive medical care, food and shelter.
“We brought some out who were just skin and bones,” Ellison said. “We saw some terrible sights over there.”
By the late summer of 1945, Ellison, who made it to second lieutenant, was allowed to return home to his beloved wife, Hazel. In just those few months, he’d earned those wings.
“I had a lifetime of experiences in that year and a half,” Ellison said. “I wouldn’t take anything for the experience but I wouldn’t go through it again for anything either.”
ANDERSON COUNTY — Inside a shadow box on Carl Ellison’s living room wall is an array of colorful ribbons and medals. In the middle of that box are two sets of small metal wings.
Those are wings that Ellison, 88, earned.
“I’ve always been interested in airplanes,” Ellison said. “From the time I was a kid, I’d always wanted to fly.”
World War II gave him the opportunity to do just that.
On Dec. 12, 1942, about two years after he’d finished high school in Williamston, he traveled to Spartanburg with two other buddies to sign up for the U.S. Army Air Corps, which later became the Air Force. They had to take a test. Ellison was the only one who passed. He was sworn in that day, and by Feb. 21, 1943, he was called to active duty.
For the next two years, he served the Air Corps, in the 91st Squadron. He was assigned to the 439th troop carrier, and learned how to fly every aircraft that the Air Corps had.
Two of those planes, the C-47s and the gliders, would become second-nature to him by the end of the war.
He traveled all over the South for pre-flight training. For most of his training, he and his wife, Hazel, were able to spend time together, and even live together on the bases. But by October 1944, he received orders to report to Maxton, N.C. This time, he couldn’t take Hazel, and could not tell her where he was going.
All he could say was that he had to report to North Carolina and she couldn’t come with him. They had a week together, before he had to board a bus and head north.
“When I kissed her and left her at the bus station, it was one of the most difficult days of my life,” Ellison wrote in a memoir about Hazel, after she died in 2008.
The two met in a ninth-grade study hall at Williamston High School, he said. He noticed her right away and can still remember where they were sitting in that room. By the end of the study hall, Ellison said he made it a point to meet her.
For 64 years, they were married. In that memoir, Ellison said it was the letters he received from Hazel that gave him strength in the midst of the fighting around him.
The memories of the time they shared together were the only thing he had to cling to as he flew more than 60 missions — many of them in the midst of anti-aircraft fire.
In one mission, Ellison said about half of the planes in the mission were lost as Germans shot them down.
“The Germans had closed up a corridor that we thought was open,” Ellison said. “We were trying to drop supplies in to the 101st Airborne. We took fire and in about five minutes, they put a big dent in our squadron.”
By that Christmas, he was sleeping in a four-man tent in a foot of snow, because the Germans had bombed out the barracks at their base in France, Ellison said.
In his memoir, he said this day was a bad day for him.
“I did not have to fly that day and I was sitting alone in our four-man tent with about 18 inches of snow on the ground,” he wrote. “I had nothing to do but think of the past.”
Before that day ended, something else would happen that would change his experience in the war. A plane crashed shortly after take-off, killing everybody on board, including 25 glider pilots.
For the first time during the war, Ellison was assigned to fly something else besides a C-47. He had to fly a glider as Gen. George Patton made his push across the Rhine River.
Ellison had to land behind enemy lines to try and get some artillery to the troops on the ground.
“Glider pilots were getting killed left and right,” Ellison said. “Now, they call that a suicide mission. You were scared all the time. You never did get used to flying and getting shot at.”
As he landed behind enemy lines, Ellison was just a few feet from a German 88-mm, an anti-tank gun.
“It just so happened that I landed 10 or 12 steps too far to the left,” Ellison said. “He couldn’t hit me from where I was at.”
For a week, he and several others were stranded behind enemy lines. The British troops were cut off and couldn’t get to them. They hadn’t packed enough rations for a week, so they had to live off the food they found at a nearby farm, Ellison said.
“I found a spot, dug a foxhole and stayed there that week,” Ellison said.
Ellison survived that week, but some of the details, he said are still too hard to talk about.
The following months would bring the end of the war. Ellison’s role would turn to flying into the concentration camps and prison camps run by the Germans. He flew prisoners out of Germany to where they could receive medical care, food and shelter.
“We brought some out who were just skin and bones,” Ellison said. “We saw some terrible sights over there.”
By the late summer of 1945, Ellison, who made it to second lieutenant, was allowed to return home to his beloved wife, Hazel. In just those few months, he’d earned those wings.
“I had a lifetime of experiences in that year and a half,” Ellison said. “I wouldn’t take anything for the experience but I wouldn’t go through it again for anything either.”
Monday, November 7, 2011
11 Nov: Navajo 'Code Talker' tells his WWII story at GVSU
From Chicago Tribune: Navajo 'Code Talker' tells his WWII story at GVSU
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.—
An 88-year-old Marine Corps veteran who was among the famed Navajo Code Talkers during World War II is bringing his story to western Michigan on Thursday for a Veterans Day week event.
Samuel Sandoval of Shiprock, N.M., and his fellow Navajo speakers used the Native American language to communicate and keep Japanese interpreters from understanding U.S. forces' communications. Since few outsiders understood the language, their work offered a considerable tactical advantage for the U.S.
"The Japanese didn't have a chance," said Sandoval, who served in the Pacific. "I am pretty proud of what we did."
Using the language during the war was the idea of Phillip Johnston, the son of a Protestant missionary who grew up on a Navajo reservation. After convincing top commanders, Johnston launched a test program and the unit was formed in early 1942, as Johnston recruited the first 29 Code Talkers.
Native words were assigned to military terms, often linked to weapons they resembled. For example, tank was "chay-da-dahi," the Navajo word for turtle, and a dive bomber was "chini," which translates to chicken hawk, The Grand Rapids Press (http://j.mp/tZb7N) reported.
The code was expanded by assigning Navajo terms to individual letters, allowing Code Talkers to spell out words. The Navajo term for ant, "wo-la-chee," became the letter A. The term for badger, "na-hash-chid," was the letter B.
Sandoval enlisted in the Marines in 1943, followed by his brother, Merril, who also joined the Code Talkers. At first, Samuel Sandoval said he was puzzled at the intense interest the military had in him and his fellow Navajos.
"Why did they choose the Navajo boys? I didn't have an idea," he said.
Historians and military experts consider their work a remarkable chapter in the history of military intelligence, said Jonathan White, a terrorism and intelligence expert at Grand Valley State University.
"It certainly was an ingenious idea. And given our treatment of Native Americans, it was certainly gracious of them to perform a service like that," said White, head of the school's Homeland Defense Initiative.
It offered a considerable tactical advantage to have a code that the enemy couldn't penetrate, White said. He noted that U.S. intelligence operatives managed to break the German and Japanese codes in World War II.
Sadoval will tell his story at Grand Valley State University's Eberhard Center at 1 p.m. on Tuesday. The Marine Corps League of Grand Rapids is hosting the event to highlight Veterans Day, which is Friday.
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.—
An 88-year-old Marine Corps veteran who was among the famed Navajo Code Talkers during World War II is bringing his story to western Michigan on Thursday for a Veterans Day week event.
Samuel Sandoval of Shiprock, N.M., and his fellow Navajo speakers used the Native American language to communicate and keep Japanese interpreters from understanding U.S. forces' communications. Since few outsiders understood the language, their work offered a considerable tactical advantage for the U.S.
"The Japanese didn't have a chance," said Sandoval, who served in the Pacific. "I am pretty proud of what we did."
Using the language during the war was the idea of Phillip Johnston, the son of a Protestant missionary who grew up on a Navajo reservation. After convincing top commanders, Johnston launched a test program and the unit was formed in early 1942, as Johnston recruited the first 29 Code Talkers.
Native words were assigned to military terms, often linked to weapons they resembled. For example, tank was "chay-da-dahi," the Navajo word for turtle, and a dive bomber was "chini," which translates to chicken hawk, The Grand Rapids Press (http://j.mp/tZb7N) reported.
The code was expanded by assigning Navajo terms to individual letters, allowing Code Talkers to spell out words. The Navajo term for ant, "wo-la-chee," became the letter A. The term for badger, "na-hash-chid," was the letter B.
Sandoval enlisted in the Marines in 1943, followed by his brother, Merril, who also joined the Code Talkers. At first, Samuel Sandoval said he was puzzled at the intense interest the military had in him and his fellow Navajos.
"Why did they choose the Navajo boys? I didn't have an idea," he said.
Historians and military experts consider their work a remarkable chapter in the history of military intelligence, said Jonathan White, a terrorism and intelligence expert at Grand Valley State University.
"It certainly was an ingenious idea. And given our treatment of Native Americans, it was certainly gracious of them to perform a service like that," said White, head of the school's Homeland Defense Initiative.
It offered a considerable tactical advantage to have a code that the enemy couldn't penetrate, White said. He noted that U.S. intelligence operatives managed to break the German and Japanese codes in World War II.
Sadoval will tell his story at Grand Valley State University's Eberhard Center at 1 p.m. on Tuesday. The Marine Corps League of Grand Rapids is hosting the event to highlight Veterans Day, which is Friday.
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