Veterans of Bucks County

Andrew J. Orloski

2011-05-25T12:40:00.000-04:00

First generation American served in U.S. Army during WWII.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

Seven decades ago, Andrew J. Orloski, 91, was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. He was 21. The year was 1942.

Orloski grew up in Burnham, Pa., which is 30 miles from Penn State and about 60 miles northwest of Harrisburg. Upon his return home from the service, he would work in the steel mill.

Later, he would move to this area and work at U.S. Steel – Fairless Works as the second helper at the open hearth. He lives in Fairless Hills.

When Orloski was drafted, he was the sole supporter of his Polish mother who could not speak English. He is first generation American. His sister would take care of her mother in his absence.

After he left, his mother was known to lie down on the ground and pray that her son would return to Burnham safely.

Orloski does not talk much about the flesh wound he got in his shoulder while he was in Italy. But when he does, there’s often a joke behind it.

There was a big hole in his jacket. “One of the soldiers said, ‘Were you in that?” I said, ‘Yes, I was in that when it happened.’”

He does tell the story seriously. “I was on a hillside,” Orloski said. “I was sitting down, taking my rifle apart and I was cleaning it. A shell came over and exploded and tore a big hole in my shoulder in the back.”
Orloski was given The Purple Heart.

He has other medals: the European African Middle Eastern Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal.
“One time I was up on top of the hill,” Orloski said. “I was on the downside and I was sitting there and I heard the Germans firing way down in the valley and I saw three shells go over the top and down in another valley. They were behind me. They were firing at some of our troops that were in front of me.”

When Orloski went in the service, he was a private. He reached the rank of sergeant. He was honorably discharged in 1945.

Boot camp was in South Carolina near Spartanburg, Va. He then went to Camp Edwards in Massachusetts. “I joined the 36th Division – that was the Texas National Guard – there were a lot of Texans!” he said.

From Massachusetts he was sent down to Virginia to get mountain training. “We did a lot in the mountains -- up and down,” he laughed. “I just carried a rifle. I was in the 60 millimeter mortar…It’s a tube and there’s a base plate. You drop a shell and it goes up way far and drops on the enemy.

“We went overseas from New York,” he continued. “We landed in Oran, Algeria in North Africa near Morocco and Libya. We just did some more training there.

“Then we got on a convoy and we made the landing in Salerno, Italy near Naples – about 30 miles south of Rome,” Orloski said. “We made the landing. You had to get off those little boats. We got in the water.
“We got on the beach,” he continued. “We walked a little bit and BOOM!! I hit the dirt. It was another BOOM!! A tank was shooting at our ship.”

They kept going. “We cut across a big field,” Orloski said.

“There were a lot of big black cattle. They started attacking our guys. We started shooting them.
“We kept on going,” he continued. “We went up the hills and then we saw the tank shooting the people who were doing the landing. Some of our guys started shooting at the tank.

“I remember once we were up in the mountains and I could hear those bombers that bombed the abbey at Monte Casino,” Orloski recalled.

Later on, they were near Rome. “We fired the 60 millimeter mortars there before we got to Rome,” he said. “When we conquered Rome, that’s when they made the big landing in Normandy. We were glad.”
“They sent us to relieve Patton’s Army so he could relieve Bastogne,” he said. “It was an important village. There were different crossroads. It was like in a forest -- The Ardennes.”

Among the many photographs of his service days, Orloski has a Christmas card from 1944 that he sent to his mother, Anastasia, from France. His wife just ran across the treasure this last year.

Orloski and his wife, Cecelia, have three sons: Andy Jr., Stephen and Perry.

One of their grandchildren, Anastasia, is in the U.S. Air Force and is stationed in Alaska.

Pete Gilbert

2011-05-11T11:31:00.001-04:00

Major Gilbert has served three tours of duty in Afghanistan

By John Williams, BucksLocalNews.com

It’s funny how the simple things in life are always the most enjoyable, and oftentimes, the most cherished.

The same can be said of Army Major Pete Gilbert, who had the opportunity to meet his niece, Sophia, for the first time over the Easter holiday when visiting his sister in Newtown.

“It was awesome,” Gilbert, a Maryland native, enthusiastically said. “Over the past six years, I’ve missed out on some of the most important events in any person’s life, like Christmas’s and birthday’s…so being with them in person was a nice change of pace.”

“This all just comes at a great time for me when I’m transitioning to the next stage of my career and my sister having her first child,” he said. “It’s very rewarding.”

Over the past few years, especially with the amount of work that his high tempo unit is assigned to, Major Gilbert didn’t have the opportunities to visit family in the States. He was serving overseas, in many different capacities, in Italy, Kuwait and Afghanistan.

“It’s truly a double-edged sword,” Gilbert said. “On one hand, you’re sacrificing a lot of family occasions and milestones, but on the other hand you’re improving the security situation over there. The long-term goal is the same – protecting the American people.”

He called his position in the military rewarding and said that all of his efforts are worth it to “secure freedom for this generation and beyond.”

Twelve years ago, at age 22, Major Gilbert was commissioned into the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) at Indiana State University in 1998. He received a military scholarship while at college and earned his bachelor’s degree in Communications. He went on to serve three combat tours of duty in Afghanistan as a member of the 173rd Airborne Bridge Combat Team. He spent a total of 42 months in theatre.

Gilbert describes himself as somewhat of a military brat. His father served in the military as well as his grandfather – a World War II veteran.

Currently, he is stationed at the U.S. Army Command and Staff College at Webster’s University in Fort Leventhal, Kansas, and is pursuing his Master’s degree in Acquisitions and Procurement Management.

Typically when you’re ranked Major, you attend the advanced learning center as opposed to a war college, which is usually intended for veteran military personnel.

Upon graduation from the general staff college, he will be assigned to a higher echelon position based on his particular skill set. He plans to stay in the military “for as long as I can.”

He explained military operations in the Afghanistan, and the Middle East as a whole, as complex.

“After being deployed to that theatre of operation I can honestly say I see a lot of improvement in establishing security forces,” he said. “There’s been a lot of reconstruction projects and development in the Afghan national army, the core of security in the country’s police and security agencies.”

He said the objective is to assist the Afghan people with building a government that they can trust.

“Over the past 5 years, I’ve seen significant progress,” Gilbert said. “I partnered as company commander and I would consistently be in contact with the same Afghan leaders and village elders. They’re all tired of the violence in their country and just want a legitimate government.”

In his experience with civilians, he said they want an economy where their children can prosper – an attitude they share with Americans.

“It’s about helping out,” said Gilbert. “When we do bilateral military training, we’re looking to improve their system. In today’s world, we’re going to war as an allied force. It’s coalition-based. In the military, we have to be able to accomplish the mission at any time in any given situation. That’s what we do best.”

Major Gilbert also recognizes the importance in staying neutral when it comes to political rhetoric about the military.

“We can’t afford to lean to one side or the other,” he said. “At that point, we really become ineffective. You need to realize that you serve the American people on-or-off duty. Sharing and experiencing different cultures is critical because when you’re partnering with other countries, they may have a different approach than we may have.”

“The relationships we build at our level are more critical than political attitudes political attitudes that are portrayed in the news media,” he explains.

And his feelings on the U.S. Navy SEALs mission that killed 9-11 mastermind and notorious al-Qaeda terrorist Osama bin Laden?

“I think the death of Bin Laden is critical to destroying and dismantling the adversarial networks that exist world-wide,” he said. “[What a] great Job by our special operations forces in such a decisive operation.”
To sum everything up, Gilbert’s opinion is straightforward and said it will take the work of the international community to seek and rid the world of terrorist hotbeds.

“At a macro level, we’re already fighting in two theatres of operation,” he stated, “and we have to be sure to consider how far we are willing to stretch our already limited forces. It’s all tied back to the international community and what our allies are willing to contribute.”

For now though, it’s back to enjoying “life in the States” and the “smaller things in life,” like getting his degree, advancing his career and enjoying time with his family.

“My sister having a child has really changed a few things and the center of attention is on Sophia,” he said. “It’s nice to sit down, not venturing out too far, and sharing memories and stories. It’s something that I’ve missed in the past, but now can look forward to.”

Joseph J. Watts Jr.

2011-04-20T13:46:00.000-04:00

Navy air traffic controller instructor was stationed stateside in AC.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

Joe Watts Jr. was a Seaman Second Air Control man in the U.S. Navy. He coincidentally enlisted at the same time as three other young men from Newtown.

As it turned out, they were in boot camp together at the Great Lakes Naval Station, about 40 miles north of Chicago.

The foursome had their picture taken together sporting dress whites – the classic white sailor’s hat and a white uniform with a dark blue tie.

Standing from shortest to tallest, from left, were: Eddy Teschner, Harry Holmes (who lived down the street from Watts), Harry Hauler and Watts. Watts was the tallest.

“It was the four of us --it was neat,” Watts said from his Newtown apartment, where he lives with his wife, Maureen.

“We were buddies when we got to boot camp,” he said. “We had been in school together. We really didn’t hang out together. At Great Lakes, it was basically all training.”

Watts had graduated from Newtown High School. A year after graduation, he decided to join up. He had considered becoming a mechanic, but the pay was not very good. So, he headed to Great Lakes instead.
He enlisted in 1948 and was discharged in 1952. The Korean War broke out in 1950. He had opted for the Navy because he wanted to go on carriers and work on airplanes. “That didn’t work out,” Watts said.
At Great Lakes, he had a row boat on Lake Michigan. “It was lifeboat,” Watts said. “Our training was how to get in and off of the ship and load it up. That was the only time on the sea.”

He was stationed at Navy air stations. He never got on a carrier much to his chagrin.

After basic training, he was sent to Memphis for training in the Air Department of the U.S. Navy.

Watts was asked to be an air controller. “I was given a series of exams like a guidance counselor would do,” he noted. He trained at a U.S. Naval air station 20 miles outside of Kansas City.

Watts was stateside in Atlantic City during the Korean War. For three years, he was instructing controllers. He also saw Memphis, Kansas and Lakehurst, N.J. He was back and forth in the Northeastern United States.

In Atlantic City, he got quite a bit of experience with civilian air operations in addition to Navy air traffic. Eastern Airlines flew in there two or three times a day.

When the Korean War broke out, they activated the Navy Reserves. “They sent all of them from New York and New England air control reserves,” Watts said. “They were weekend warriors. They had to stand watch with us. We mentored them for everything. We stayed there and trained the reserves.”

Watts never went overseas during the service. “I was already to go,” he said.

Nearly 60 years later, Watts commented from an air controller’s point of view on the recent incident when an air traffic controller was out of communication for 16 minutes during a medical emergency.

A radar facility last week in the tower of the Reno-Tahoe International Airport in Nevada was staffed with a lone controller.

Normally, a second controller is on duty and takes charge if the other one falls asleep.

“That’s a civilian tower,” Watts commented. “I don’t know what their hours are. There have always been arguments about the schedule that they work. Controllers can take a nap or snooze with somebody else in the tower to wake them up.

“Our shifts were sometimes long but there were always three or four of us around,” he said. “That was the military. We had plenty of help.”

This September, Watts will mark his 82nd birthday. Born and raised in Newtown Borough, Watts was the third generation to run the family’s neighborhood store on North Congress Street. His grandfather and his wife opened the store and had the house built with a storefront in 1900.

Watts ran the store from the 1950s until 1979 when he retired.

He is a member of Post 440 Morrell Smith American Legion. He just received his 50-year plaque.
Joe and Maureen Watts have three grown children -- Keyna, Donald and Randy. Keyna and her family live in the house that her great grandfather had built in 1900.

1st Lt. Pete Thompson

2011-04-13T11:21:00.000-04:00

Notre Dame High, West Point grad leads his platoon in Basrah.

By John Williams, BucksLocalNews.com

The spark that ignited the fire was small, just a simple newsletter.

“It caught my attention,” said Lower Makefield resident Lois Tragone. “I told my son, Jeff, that we had to do something.”

The newsletter was produced and sent by 1st Lt. Pete Thompson, a high school friend of Tragone’s son Jeff, as a form of communication for family and friends at home.

“People were interested in their progress in Iraq,” Tragone said, “so the newsletter highlighted what was going on, where they were stationed and so-on.”

Pete and Jeff attended Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey and graduated in 2005.
Upon graduation, Pete had mentioned that he wanted to join the military and was, in due course, accepted to West Point Military Academy in southeastern New York State.

“(Pete and I) met during our freshman year and have kept in touch to this day,” Jeff said of his friend. “He was the type of kid that you could tell was ‘going places.’ Even at such a young age, he was a man on a mission - had a good head on his shoulders, hung out with the right people and was loved by all the teachers and staff.”

While at Notre Dame, 1st Lt. Thompson was also a standout track and field athlete and
He studied Systems Engineering at West Point and participated in extensive training and graduated with top honors. Before leaving West Point, 1st Lt. Thompson was designated as commander of his platoon – Unit 107. He was deployed to Iraq about two months later and is currently stationed in Basrah with his platoon.
Pete’s tour of duty in the Middle East began in February. He is slated to stay for 12 months.

“I'm sure Pete won't be done after tour number one,” Jeff speculated.

“At 24 years old, he’s already a platoon leader,” Tragone said, “and there are guys in his platoon that are much older than him. It’s a lot of responsibility for a young man, but he takes everything in stride and is such a great kid.”

Inspired to do something bigger-than-herself and to provide basic necessities that Pete and his platoon needed, Tragone sent out a few e-mails. It started with her e-mail addresses contact list and before long, a small ground swelling of support had spawned. She did not expect her idea to take off like it did.

In an open letter to the public on her grassroots organization’s website, SoldierStuff.org, Tragone writes that some men under Pete’s command will not receive a single letter of encouragement or even a piece of food during their tour of duty.

“He respectfully asks that any or all of us who are able,” Tragone writes, “please send some necessities or pleasantries to these young men.

“I sent one email to everyone on my contact list – about 10 or 12 people – and before I was even finished doing it my doorbell rings and my old neighbor drops off a box of stuff at my doorstep. Many people offered help and were interested in getting involved.”

Tragone described Pete as a smart and athletic individual who could light up the room with his smile and who, most importantly, is goal oriented.

Tragone enlisted the guidance and help of family friend and Lower Makefield Supervisor, Ron Smith. E-mail blasts were sent out and soon enough, Tragone got another surprise.

“One man emailed me to let me know that he had setup a website,” she said. “I thought to myself ‘What am I going to do now? The donations started coming in fast, so I opened up my living room and closed it off. Now, it’s my workshop, so to speak.”

Some of the necessities that 1st Lt. Thompson and his platoon use on an almost daily basis range anywhere from baby wipes (the only “shower” they get for a few days sometimes), beef jerky, sunflower seeds, toothbrushes and toothpaste – which are not only used for dental hygiene, but to clean their rifles.

Ground coffee is always a hit, said Tragone.

“It’s almost like treat,” she said, “to get a real cup of coffee. The troops also ask for fruit rollups so when they’re out on patrol they can give it to the local children. With the blistering heat almost year round, lip baum and moisturizer are essential, including sunscreen.

Some other items include batteries, packs of crystal light and propel and swiffer brooms. For a complete list, visit SoldierStuff.org.

In a little over a month, 14 boxes have already been sent and another 19 are packed, labeled and ready to go.

“I probably have another 15 to 20 boxes that could be packed and ready to go at anytime,” Tragone said, while sifting through a box filled with classic car magazines.

“We put so much importance on the wrong things anymore,” she said. We get mad because a hospital is going to be put in down the street, but that’s what people think are a priority. It upsets me. I think I’m getting more joy out of doing this than anything I’ve ever done.”

“He is a great kid, a true friend and someone who would always help you out,” Jeff eloquently said about Pete. “He will give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He is a true leader and we wish him all the best.”

Newton Dana

2011-04-06T14:13:00.000-04:00

World War II veteran was a member of the Flying Tigers.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Newton Dana lived a lifetime in 1945.

It was during that historic year that Dana flew with the infamous 14th Air Force’s Flying Tigers under the command of Gen. Claire Lee Chenault. He co-piloted a B-24 Liberator, flying harrowing bombing and supply missions over the Himalayas and into China during World War II.

“Because of what we were doing in China, the Japanese had to split their forces in the Pacific,” said Dana. “They had to bring forces over to China and that made it easier for our guys in the Pacific who were bombing Japan.”

A native of Trenton, Dana graduated from Trenton High School in 1941. After high school, he enrolled at Ohio State University to study animal husbandry. In 1943, World War II interrupted his education. He left OSU and volunteered for the draft to become a flight officer with the U.S. Air Force. He was 18 years old.
“I always wanted to fly, but it was in the back of my head. Now, here I am enrolled in flight training,” said Dana. “And I always knew I was going to end up in China. No rhyme, reason or correlation. There was nothing on paper as to why this should occur. I just had a feeling,” he said.

For the next year, he underwent extensive training to become a pilot with the U.S. Air Force. He took basic training on the 12th floor of the Claridge Hotel in Atlantic City. He then trained in West Virginia, Florida and Alabama before earning his wings in September 1944 from twin engine pilot school in Arkansas.

From there he was sent to Texas where he was trained to fly the Liberator and then to Westover Field in Massachusetts where he met his flight crew in October 1944. The crew trained together in Charleston, S.C., before flying to Mitchell Field to pick up their plane, which they named the Manhattan Maiden.

In February 1945, the 12-member crew with Dana in the co-pilot’s seat departed on the long flight to China with stops in Bermuda, the Azores, Marrakesh, Tunis, Benghazi and Iran. The crew arrived in India before traversing the Himalayas to their final destination, an airbase in China.

During their seven months there, Dana and the crew of the Manhattan Maiden flew 40 bombing and supply missions over Eastern China, hitting targets occupied by Japanese forces.

“If it wasn’t for the Flying Tigers, they would have overrun China,” said Dana, of the Japanese.

One of their most frequent missions was the Yellow River Bridge that crossed the Yangtze. “That was the main link going down into China and our job was to knock that out,” he said. “But every time you’d hit it, they’d rebuild it overnight,” he said. “We were constantly going over it. It was heavily armed.”

Dana said the crew frequently flew through exploding flack, which caused tension on the plane. He remembers one mission where a burst exploded overhead and one of the guys ducked his head down too quickly and broke his scalp open. Blood dripped down onto the navigator’s charts causing some concern until they determined the injury was not life threatening.

During a mission to bomb a power plant, Dana said several planes in their formation were lost. “Coming back we lost people running out of gas because it was over 12 hours. 12 hours in the air is a lot of damn time,” he said. One of the planes barely made it back after losing two of its engines.

With the end of the war approaching and after exhausting their targets in China, the crew relocated to an airbase in India and flew supply missions over the Himalayas.

Flying “over the hump” was scarier and more dangerous than the bombing missions, said Dana. And the statistics bear him out. The Air Force lost 580 aircraft between air transport and heavy bombers during that time period.

“Imagine not having navigation, no stars to look at and you’re fighting weather, sometimes with winds of over 150 mph, and you can’t get a real good fix. You had no control over your destiny,” he said.

“Every bomb we dropped, every gallon of gas we used we had to fly over the Himalayas,” said Dana. “We lost more people hauling gas then we did in combat."

Inside the cockpit, Dana said he felt invincible, like nothing was going to happen to him. “When you’re young and 20 you’re stupid,” he says today. “Whatever happened, happened to the other guy. The only time you got excited is when something comes close to you. Over the hump I got rid of that feeling. Flying over the Himalayas was worse than combat. The Himalayas was enough to scare the hell out of anyone.”

The crew returned to the United States in early October 1945 not long after the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan putting an end to the war in the Pacific.

“Had President Truman not dropped the bomb, I wouldn’t be sitting here,” said Dana. “I guarantee you that. We would have had over 50 percent fatalities.”

Following the war, Dana returned to Ohio State University and finished his degree in animal husbandry, graduating in 1948.
He returned to Trenton where he worked for his family’s meat packing business, Delaware Valley Meat Packing. He was married in 1952 and moved across the river to Bucks County in 1955. He eventually moved to Lower Makefield where he raised his family.

He recently moved to Buckingham Springs where he continues to work as a food broker, a job he has done since 1964. He’ll be 87 next month.

“I lived a lifetime in a very short time and the only heroes are not in this room,” he said, his voice filling with emotion. “This was a war of survival. There was no choice on this. It was just something that had to be done.”

Hugh A. Bell

2011-03-30T11:24:00.009-04:00

Cold War vet forged brotherhood of allies, four- and two-legged.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Hugh Bell isn’t like most veterans. Most veterans look back on their military careers and recall spending the bulk of their time alongside other soldiers, two-legged ones who might have barked, but likely used words instead.

Bell, however, primarily served as a patrol dog handler and a K-9 supervisor, positions he took on as a military policeman with the U.S. Army. He says one of the most important things he learned in the service was the importance of mentorship, and what he cherishes the most is the brotherhood he forged, which, he says, included men and dogs alike.

“I’ve always been a dog person,” Bell says. “Ever since I had a cocker spaniel growing up.”

Bell, 53, grew up in Northeast Philadelphia, until his parents, John and Agnes, moved the family to Levittown. Bell was 7. He and his siblings, John, Karen and Theresa, attended Woodrow Wilson High School. Bell says he knew he wanted to join the military well before he graduated in 1976.

“My junior high school and high school years were during the Vietnam era,” he says. “My cousins were in Vietnam and my father was a WWII vet. That influenced me a lot. I just knew I was going to be on a path into the military.”

Bell set his sights on military police, specifically the K-9 program. He enlisted in August 1997, heading to Ft. McLellan, Ala., where he underwent both basic training and Advanced Individual Training (AIT). In October, he became a K-9 handler, joining the Sentry Dog Program at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. He learned basic obedience with the dogs, ran obstacle courses, learned how to use them to detect people, and how to attack and apprehend.

His first official assignment was in Alaska, where, as a sentry dog handler, he walked the interior and exterior of a fence line, guarding a Nike Hercules defense missile site.

“The assignment took a kid from the suburbs and put him into the wilderness,” Bell says. “We were 50 miles outside of Anchorage. It was my first experience seeing a bear and a moose walking around like a dog or a cat.”

Bell moved on to the (warmer) military police unit at Ft. Hamilton in Brooklyn, N.Y. He worked gate duty, and his job became, as it would remain, quite akin to that of a traditional county or local police officer. He issued parking tickets, enforced speed laws and patrolled barracks areas. In 1980, at the end of his three-year enlistment, he thought he’d logged enough experience to join his own local police, but couldn’t due to quotas based on gender and race.

To remain associated with the Army, he joined the Reserves, reporting to Ft. Totten in Queens, N.Y., the closest base with a military police unit. It was there that he met one of his mentors, Mickey Goldman, who helped Bell meet with a recruiter, reenlist and get back into active duty (“Something was missing,” Bell says. “Full-time military was missing”).

Apparently, something else was missing, too, for before he set out to Seneca Army Depot in the Finger Lakes to guard a Navy ammunitions storage unit, Bell literally married the girl next door, Barbara, whom he dated for a mere six months before making her his wife. Barbara, Bell says, followed him to virtually every subsequent military mission.

That included a return to Lackland, where Bell upgraded his K-9 education and learned more about using dogs as “regular police dogs,” getting them involved with tracking, building searches and traffic stops. His training ran until September 1982, at which time he went to Fishbaugh Army Depot in Germany, again doing walking patrols with dogs to guard an American weapons and ammo storage unit.

A Cold War veteran, Bell went back to Lackland to hone his skills as a patrol narcotics dog handler, then landed at Ft. Dix, N.J., where he served as a military police K-9 supervisor. Patrolling the massive fort just like a normal town, he oversaw other handlers and performed duties with the dogs regularly. He held his post for five years, working with the Philadelphia Police K-9 Academy, the Atlantic City Police K-9 Academy, the New Jersey State Police and the New Jersey State Corrections Department.

From Ft. Dix he went back overseas to Bremerhaben, Germany, serving as a certified U.S. Customs inspector at the nation’s border. In 1992 he went to Bad Kreuznach in Germany, fulfilling the same duties. His most intense assignment came in 1995, when he was temporarily sent to Bosnia for Operation Joint Endeavor. Landing at Eagle Base Camp in Tuzla, he worked as a bomb dog handler, detecting explosives and sweeping areas newly occupied by U.S. troops. Bell never came across an actual mine, but danger loomed, as he’d heard of multiple soldiers being wounded or killed doing the same tasks during his same mission.

“It was scary work,” he says.

Bell’s final assignment was at Ft. Hood, Texas, where he oversaw 20 K-9 teams as a K-9 supervisor. He retired in 1998 as a Staff Sergeant, and moved back to Levittown with Barbara. Since then, the couple has relocated to Fairless Hills, and Bell has worked as a security guard with numerous regional facilities.

As a hobby, he’s trained dogs with PetSmart and the Lower Bucks Dog Training Club. A mid-’90s hip injury cut into some of his activities, but he remains an active member of the Guardians of the National Cemetery in Washington Crossing, The Disabled American Veterans of Levittown Chapter 117, and the American Legion of Yardley Post 317. He says that these affiliations provide him with the same sort of brotherhood he valued so much in the service.

“The most important thing is to surround yourself with good people,” he says.

Good dogs help, too.

Salvatore Castro

2011-03-09T11:36:00.002-05:00

Levittown resident served in the South Pacific during WWII.

By John Williams, BucksLocalNews.com

Bullets fired from Japanese infantry whizzed overhead and Corporal Salvatore Castro took cover in the rugged terrain of the dense Philippine rainforest.

Three days earlier his battalion had just started a six mile prowl through the jungle. He and his unit had come to a big valley shaped like a horseshoe, bare of vegetation due to all the fighting; they spread out and took shelter in fox holes.

Just as he thought the worst had passed, grenades began to shower down on top of his unit’s position. They exploded from all directions with a fierce veracity. Many of his fellow soldiers – some of whom he trained with – perished in the attack.

“I was instructed to shoot in the general area of where the Japanese troops were firing from,” Castro, 85, said. He took his Browning automatic rifle and fired into the directed area.
“So I shot, but that exposed my position,” Castro said.

“As the grenades began exploding, I caught pieces of shrapnel on my legs and arms and, quite frankly, all over,” he said. “Most of it missed me, but I still had foreign objects like stones and clogs of dirt kicking up at me.”

He immediately started feeling the pain and began to bleed.

“I passed out and rolled down this hill,” Castro recalled. “I heard my battalion call to ‘pull back’ and I heard them leaving the area. I started crawling up the hill screaming for their assistance because I didn’t want to be left behind.” He assumed that the rest of his battalion thought he had died.

“I finally got up the hill and managed to catch up to them,” he said. “I still have nightmares sometimes about that moment. I wake up screaming.”

It all started when Castro was a mere adolescent.

He said joining the military was an ambition of his for a while. Before the war started, he aspired to be a pilot. His plans took a detour though after he was drafted in October of 1943 in his senior year of high school.

“I was assigned to infantry,” Castro said. “My basic training took place at Camp Blandey [a military installation outside of Jacksonville] and lasted 17 weeks. After training, they sent us home for a two week furlough.”
After his furlough, Castro was sent to Fort Ord – a disbanded Army post on Monterey Bay in California – and on March 20, 1944, he and his unit embarked on a three-week trek across the Pacific Ocean en route to New Guinea.

“We were attached to the 32nd Division who were already in combat at a small town named Aitape,” Castro remarked. “We got there around the beginning of July and in about a week the Japanese began their offensive.

“We ended up killing some 9,000 Japanese who ambushed us,” he said. “So, we pulled back and prepared for the next invasion, which came not too long after on Sept. 15, 1944 on the island of Morotai,” a member of the Molucca Islands in New Guinea.

Castro said the island wasn’t well occupied and that it stretched only about 50 miles long. It was all a part of General Douglas MacArthur’s strategy of island hopping dubbed “Hittin ‘em where they ain’t.”

Our mission at Morotai was to destroy a Japanese radar station and setup a United States controlled radar facility,” he stated.

“Information intelligence told us that there were about 3,500 Japanese ashore, but mostly service troops,” which Castro said wasn’t a huge threat. “Apparently, the Japanese were told to create fake camps to create an illusion, so we thought we were outnumbered. We fought them head on and were relieved by men in the 33rd Division.”

By the time he left the South Pacific, he had developed Jungle Rot, a type of tropical, fungal parasite that was often contracted by soldiers overseas. He was treated for the fungus while in Hollandia, New Guinea.

“It nearly killed me,” Castro said. “Penicillin helped relieve the fungus.” He said that Penicillin was his saving grace. Then on Feb. 20, 1945, he was permitted to return to the United States because of the complicated nature of his injuries.

“I quick grabbed my bags and got out of there. We stopped in Hawaii for a day to refuel and then shipped out to San Francisco. It was a great feeling seeing those Golden Gates,” Castro said in a relieved tone.

A military hospital train took him across country to Camp Upton in New York, where he recuperated and attended shows featuring Hollywood personalities such as Lena Horne and Irving Berlin. He even met and spoke with actress and film star of the 1930s and ‘40s, Jean Arthur – he even got her autograph.

He got discharged on Christmas Eve, 1945.

“I was in New York and there was a horrible snowstorm,” he stated. “We stayed in these wooden shacks – it was very cold – so I wore every bit of clothes I had and I was happy to get out.”

The Army had asked him to join the Reserves, but he declined. He served a total of 27 months of active duty in the military.

He attended Drexel University and received his degree in Mechanical Engineering. Not long after, he returned to school and earned a degree in Electrical Engineering because the devices he worked on at work required knowledge of electronics.

“We designed centrifuges and flight simulators,” he said. “I got involved with Environmental Tectonics Corporation (ETC) where we designed pilot training systems.”

He got involved with the Guardians after a close friend of his died. He is currently an active Guardian of the Washington Crossing Cemetery.

“I knew he was going to be buried in Washington Crossing Cemetery and I wanted to be in his honor guard,” Castro said. He volunteers in the office once a week – usually on Tuesdays.
Castro reflected on the enormity of military enlistment in the wake of World War II.

“When the Japanese hit the U.S., we only had a about a half million men in the service.
Eventually we had 16 million people join the service.

“It’s incredible.”

His parents emigrated to Cuba from Spain in 1917, where they met and traveled to the U.S. Salvatore was born in Newark, N.J., and moved to the Philadelphia area in 1948 and got married to his wife, Elenor.

Retired Army Corporal Castro moved to Levittown in 1953-54 and bought his house in the Highland Park section for $13,500.

“When you’re overseas there’s not much to get away from,” Castro divulged. “Living in foxhole isn’t great and living in tents in the South Pacific was very hot and uncomfortable. The best moment was when we got on that boat to go home.”

Michael Donovan

2011-03-02T11:15:00.001-05:00

Newtown native pays tribute to local veterans who died in WWII.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

U.S. Coast Guard Veteran Michael J. Donovan has become known as the hometown researcher who keeps a folder filled with a variety of information for each of Newtown’s service people who lost their lives during WWII.

He prides himself on having been “born and raised” in Newtown.

On one sheet of paper, Donovan, who served stateside during WWII, has assembled the photographs of 16 people, many he knew from attending Newtown High School. The Chancellor Center, as it is known today, now houses the Council Rock School District central administration.
Their pictures are situated under the heading: “1941 Reflections of WWII 1945.”

The photo page pays tribute to George Hennessey, Billy Swayze, Leon Hennessey, Ned Maher, Varsal Kirby, Cliff VanArtsdalen, Arthur Strathie, Wm. T. Werner, Wallace Murfit Jr., George Dutton, Mary Bond, Mickey Swayze, Conrad Atkinson, Bob Cahill, Marvin Hilsee and Norman Davis Jr.

Donovan is ensconced in his complex project, which is being made into a Power Point presentation.

Those who attended Newtown High School are part of a memorial at the center, which Donovan made.

“I was young when the war started,” he said. “You are part of the group. I was 13 or 14 when the war started.”

Donovan is married to Josephine and they have two grown children, Amy and Patrick. The couple’s home is in Newtown Township. He enjoys sitting in his easy chair with the fireplace aglow, paging through his research, which is carefully organized.

He went into the service on Oct. 8, 1943 when he was 17 with his father’s permission. The recruiting station was in a former bank at Third and Chestnut in Philadelphia. Basic training was at the Manhattan Beach Training Station in New York.

“I enlisted because I didn’t want to go into the Army,” Donovan said. “I would have gone in the Army when I was 18. I was a junior in high school.”

He would have graduated from Newtown High School in 1945. He had attended St. Andrew School until the eighth grade.

Donovan is humble about his time in the service. “I was just a seaman -- that’s all. I wasn’t an admiral,” he joked.

He said one of the reasons he compiles history about Newtown’s part in World War II is for younger people to learn more.

He emphasizes that WWII is an important part of history. “Hitler was going to take over the world – he tried to anyhow – Hitler and the guy in Japan – Tojo,” he said. “The Imperial Japanese Navy was taking over the whole Pacific Rim. It started with Pearl Harbor.”

Donovan described what the feeling was in the States when the war broke out. “Everybody made a great effort to get the planes, and the tanks and the ships into production,” he said.
“We didn’t have anything -- we started from scratch,” he said, noting that he worked at an aircraft factory after the war in West Trenton.

Donovan described the climate when everyone learned that the war was over. “We were all glad, but we didn’t get discharged until the following June” he said. “The ones with the higher points [amount of action you saw] were discharged first.”

One of his prized pieces of history is a picture of the “Newtown Honor Roll,” which listed all of the people from Newtown who served in World War II. When someone was killed, a star was put next to their name.

The actual honor roll had been displayed in the Gaine and Murfit Chevrolet showroom at 215 South State. Donovan said the expansive board with seemingly countless names no longer exists. He thinks it was destroyed in a barn fire, though he does not know that for certain.

The deaths of ‘Newtowners’ who perished during WWII weighs heavily on his mind and heart. “I knew all them - I knew everybody from Newtown,” Donovan said. “Instead of graduating, we were in war.”

William H. Swayze was one of the 16 who died. He was killed in action on April 28, 1945 in Okinawa, Japan. “The war was over in August 1945,” Donovan stressd.

Donovan’s file on “Billy” Swayze is nearly complete, including a write-up by Donovan.

“Pvt. Swayze and others were guarding a restricted area when an enemy artillery shell exploded nearby,” Donovan wrote. “He was wounded in both legs and received immediate treatment from a medical officer. He was rushed by ambulance to a field hospital where he received treatment on both legs.

“However, the “shock?” seemed to be too much for him,” Donovan wrote.

Donovan explained where he found the information about the 16 who died during WWII. The Newtown Historic Association has a 100-year history of Newtown in a newspaper called the Newtown Enterprise, which was published from 1865 to 1965.

“It’s on microfilm – that’s where I got a lot of this information,” he said, noting that he also wrote to the Army, Navy and Coast Guard for information.

Ned Maher was killed in action in Anzio, Italy. He was in the 3rd infantry division, U.S. Army.
George Hennessey’s transport was “rammed by a French aircraft carrier,” Donovan.

His brother, Leon, died in the Azores off the coast of Africa on March 3, 1945.

“I have a file on every one of them,” Donovan said.

He is especially proud of is seniority in the local American Legion. “I got 63 years in The Legion,” Donovan said. “Not many people can say that.” He is the historian for the Morrell Smith Post 440 in Newtown.

One of Donovan’s treasured possessions is a photograph of himself with his boot-camp buddy, Joe Connell, who he keeps in touch with today.

The picture was taken in Baltimore on the 110-foot harbor tug – a Coast Guard cutter called the Chinock.

Henry H. Pennock

2011-02-23T12:37:00.006-05:00

Former paratrooper still standing tall, with stories to tell.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, Pennington Post Editor

A lot of war veterans might tell you they “leapt” into battle, or just kind of “fell into” their military careers, but such statements take on literal meanings when coming from Henry Pennock, a Levittown-based WWII hero who experienced first-hand many tumultuous events that shaped our nation’s military history. Pennock became a paratrooper, a skydiving soldier who sails into combat zones from above. He has the scars and long-term effects to prove just how much action he saw, and though he’s not doing very much leaping these days, Pennock values all that he is and all that he’s come from.

“I enlisted in the paratroopers while I was in boot camp,” Pennock says. “The jump pay earned me an extra $50 a month, and all the girls liked the paratroopers, so it was a good gig.”

Pennock had originally wanted to join the Air Force. Born in Altoona and raised with sisters Betty and Suzanne by parents Henry Sr. and Lillian, Pennock, now 85, attended Altoona High School, where seniors were graduating early each month after January 1943 to meet the military’s high demand for soldiers. Pennock’s flawed eyesight rendered him ineligible for the Air Force, so he enlisted with the Army that March. His boot camp was based at Alabama’s Fort McClellan.

His paratrooper enlistment led him to Fort Benning in Georgia, where he commenced six weeks of jump school training. The rigorous, daredevil program tested soldiers’ psyches as much as their athleticism, consisting of tethered practice leaps off the top of telephone poles and base-jump drills off of 350-foot towers.

“My class started out with 8,000 guys,” Pennock says, “and only about 2,000 got their boots. Some of these guys were really physically fit, but they just couldn’t handle it mentally. If you could imagine jumping off the side of a building, that’s what it was like. The object was to toughen you up for the future.”

And that future came soon enough. Pennock – who says the humiliation that befell those who quit inspired him to keep focused and complete training – logged four true “day jumps” and one “night jump” before diving into a week of combat training, then boarded a French luxury-liner-turned-troop-carrier that would take him to Liverpool, England.

There, Pennock was assigned to the 101st Division, the military’s premiere paratrooper outfit that’s since been instrumental in battles in Germany, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. From Liverpool, Pennock and his company moved on to Bastogne, Belgium, where, he says, they weren’t present for two days before they were surrounded by seven German Panzer divisions. The Siege of Bastone had begun. In their attempt to split the allied forces and enter Brussells, German troops bombed Bastogne, leaving nothing, Pennock says, but the basements of houses. The town was a war zone, and the soldiers, who’d moved to the outskirts to escape the bombing, re-converged to battle the ground troops.

Fighting amidst the rubble, and in the bitter cold, Pennock struggled on in Bastogne for 30 days before he and his fellow surviving division members were liberated by Gen. George Patton and his canon-wielding cavalry. This was the battle that would leave Pennock with serious shrapnel wounds and near-frostbitten feet. It was where he’d get by on oatmeal and turkey dinners generously dropped in canisters from airplanes overhead. It was where, on Christmas Eve, Americans and Germans would temporarily drop their weapons and join each other in the singing of carols, the very scene that’s etched itself into history books and been shared with multiple generations.

“When you think about George Washington, and how his men suffered on Christmas Eve, it was a lot like that,” Pennock says.

After recuperating in a Belgian hospital, Pennock traveled to Berchtesgaden, Germany – specifically its Kehlstein peak – where American soldiers had taken control of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest hideaway. It was 1945. Pennock offers anecdotes about vast German estates where hundreds of Americans guarded thousands of possessions collected by the Nazis, and swanky restaurants that, having once served the Fuhrer himself, were now catering to U.S. troops.

Pennock began training as one of the paratroopers who would enter Japan, but the subsequent dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima nixed the mission. It was just about time for Pennock to return to the States, where he’d land in January 1946 after 25 days of travel. He’d have one last big jump with the 17th Airborne Division, then spend a brief time studying topography at Penn State Altoona. In Kenosha, Wis., he worked with Simmons mattress company and met his first wife, Winnie. They had two daughters, Sonya and Cynthia.

Returning to Altoona, he worked for the Altoona News until, around 1952, he got a job with Seaboard Finance Company – a job that would lead to a 35-year career. Pennock retired in 1985 as a managing supervisor, giving him more time to do as he pleased while based at his home in Levittown. It’s where he still lives today, with his second wife, Elaine, whom he met in 1960 and with whom he’ll soon be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary. Pennock and Elaine have two children, Diane and Henry, and Pennock has a total of 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

During his time as a paratrooper, Pennock endured an injury whose effects haven’t been fully apparent until recently. His left ankle, he says, has become devoid of cartilage, making walking on uneven terrain rather difficult. But he says he’s not ready for any motorized scooters yet, nor does he have any trouble keeping balance. He stands tall, in more ways than one.

“I’ve taken a lot of pride and discipline away from my military service,” he says. “You realize you’re a small cog in a big wheel, but it’s all those small cogs that keep our country free.”

Norman Schnitzer

2011-02-16T12:47:00.002-05:00

Korean War-era veteran now leads Jewish war vets.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Korean War-era veteran Norman Schnitzer, a national committee member for the Jewish War Veterans of the United States and a former state commander, has fought many battles on behalf of the veteran, but none on the field of combat.

He was among the lucky ones who served during the “Forgotten War,” but was never called to duty in the combat zone.

“But I believe I helped in my own way,” said the Bensalem Township resident, who served stateside for 10 years in the U.S. Air Force Dental Service from 1951 to 1961.

Schnitzer grew up in South Philadelphia during World War II and was the son of a World War I veteran. His father, Max, served as a combat engineer, responsible for building bridges and trenches in France.

“He was also very lucky,” said Schnitzer. “He caught the flu and his CO told him to go see the doctor. But he said, ‘We’re working on this bridge.’ The CO says to him, ‘That’s an order. I want you to go to the doctor.’ While at the doctor, the bridge was hit and his crew was killed.”

After the war, his father worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, laying down the teak decks on some of the country’s most known battleships, including the New Jersey, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

“Whenever I visit the New Jersey, I kneel down and touch the deck,” said Schnitzer.

Schnitzer, who was 13 when World War II broke out, graduated from South Philadelphia High School. Following graduation, he took a job as a dental technician. He met his future wife, Harriet, in 1948, and the two were married in 1950.

With the Korean conflict raging between the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, supported by China, Schnitzer made the decision to enlist in the U.S. Air Force in 1951.

“It was either that or get drafted,” he said. “I was able to go wherever I wanted to be and I was able to continue my career in the Air Force.”

Schnitzer took full advantage of the opportunity, attending several schools and receiving additional dental training. He served with the Air Force in Texas, Alaska, Ohio and at the MaGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey before returning to civilian life.

“Our job was to make sure our guys were in top shape,” said Schnitzer, who was assigned to the dental laboratory. “I made dentures and partials. I even made some simple orthodontic appliances.”

In one case, while serving in Alaska, he was responsible for rebuilding the dentures of a patient who was in a motor vehicle accident and had fractured his upper and lower jaws.

“They handed me a handful of pieces,” he said. “It took me five hours to put it together.” For his work, he received a promotion.

The year and a half he spent in Alaska were the most memorable. While stationed at an Air Force hospital near the capital city of Anchorage, an early morning fire broke out at the facility.

“We set our plan in motion and we evacuated over 250 patients. We didn’t lose one patient. We lost a nurse from smoke inhalation,” said Schnitzer. “We all got a letter of commendation from the Surgeon General of the Air Force,” he said.

Afterwards, the men had the job of cleaning up the damage, which was confined to the officer’s club and the nurse’s quarters. “I was swinging a mop. I was a sergeant, but I was swinging a mop just like everyone else. Someone walked by and I splashed water all over his shoes. I looked up and I saw three stars. It was the Surgeon General of the Air Force. And he said to me, ‘Just carry on sergeant.’ I apologized, but he said, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

A volcano also erupted while he was stationed there. “We were covered with six inches of dust and it was hard to get rid of,” he said.

Schnitzer took full advantage of his time in the Air Force, using it to perfect his dental technician skills.

“It wasn’t like World War II where dentistry was sloppy,” he said. “We did some pretty fine work and I was proud of that.”

Following his discharge, Schnitzer worked as a dental technician in the Philadelphia area, making removable full and partial dentures for dentists. Health conditions sidelined his work two years ago and he made the decision to retire.

Today, when he’s not spending time with his 10 grandchildren and a grandchild-in-law, he’s working to make life better for the Jewish War Veterans, both locally and across the nation.
For all the combat he missed during the Korean War, he’s made up for it by waging a battle of a different type in the halls of political power.

Schnitzer has become a strong advocate and lobbyist for the local veteran, serving numerous times as commander of the Fegelson-Young Post 697 of the Jewish War Veterans, as state commander of the JWV and currently as a national executive committee member, which he said is kind of like being in Congress. He also serves on the board of directors and is a life member of the National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, D.C.

“Part of our function as Jewish War Veterans, or any veterans organization, is to help veterans,” said Schnitzer, when asked why he is so passionate about his work on behalf of veterans.

“It’s a constant battle,” said Schnitzer, of his efforts on behalf of the veteran. “When it comes time for the V.A. budget, we have to beg. We don’t have mandated funds. In other words, we’re part of the budget that the V.A. gets every year. And we have to beg.”

The biggest need right now, he said, is the physical and mental care and placement of the men and women returning from combat.

His other passion is the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, which he said is unlike other museums of its kind.

“We don’t exhibit weapons. We tell stories about people,” he said. “Did you know there were 15 Jewish veterans who were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor? Two are still alive,” he said. “That’s what we tell about in the museum.”

Leonard Feinberg, Part 2

2011-02-09T14:11:00.002-05:00

POW recalls his experience during World War II (PART TWO OF TWO)

By Rebecca Schnitzer, Correspondent

When the Battle of the Bulge occurred, Leonard Feinberg found himself in Marvie, a little town outside of Bastogne, Germany.

“We replaced the guys in the 103rd Airborne, who were holding that town,” Feinberg said.

As Feinberg’s regiment started going forward, they came under fire from behind.

“All I know is, they opened up on us and a couple of the guys got hit and there we were. How did we bypass them?” Feinberg still wonders. “So then we retreated forward and it was all woods after that and we just wandered around – this whole regiment.”

Feinberg ended up being the only medic left with his regiment.

The regiment began marching back in a long column with Feinberg in the middle for easy access to the wounded. As they started marching, a machine gun opened up and took down several men in the front of the column. Feinberg and some others jumped into a ditch to escape the bullets.

Feinberg looked around and saw a hill behind them with bushes at the top.

“The ground was all open behind us. I set the Olympic record for the uphill dash wearing galoshes in the snow!” Feinberg laughed.

He got to the top, waiting to see if anyone was coming and wondered where he could go. He started walking along the line of bushes and noticed two men walking up. He dove into the bushes and waited to hear what language the two men were speaking – were they American or German?

“I’m lying there in the bushes, in the snow and a mortar comes in right near me. That’s when I got hit in the thigh and that’s when I got the other hole in my helmet,” he said.

Feinberg saw an open space next to him with more woods. Thinking he could run out-of-sight from the Germans, he got up and started running.

“I get halfway across the open space and a guy yells out in German,” Feinberg remembered. “So I said to him, in my best German, ‘I have my hands up!’ and he opens up with his gun, so I yelled again. Finally, I remembered the German word for medic and yelled ‘I’m a medic!’ and he said, ‘Come here.’”

He joined a few other Americans who were captured.

“You know that expression that your whole insides fell down? That’s the only way I could describe it.”

After working briefly at a German hospital, Feinberg was moved to several different places including a POW camp in Gerolstein. They kept the POWs in an old factory and took the prisoners out on work duty. When word got around that Germans were ready to move some people out, Feinberg was itching to go, but another prisoner was not. They switched names and both went their separate ways.

“I wanted to try to get back to a place where the Red Cross would know I was there so my family could know what happened.”

After Gerolstein, they ended up in Flomersheim where they kept about 100 POWs in an old beer hall. A typical meal there was a piece of bread. Feinberg had gotten sick with an infected throat and as a medic, had his thermometer with him.

“I think it had something to do with my religious background, because they always came to me first, trying to get me to go to work,” he said.

After showing them several times that he had a fever, they took Feinberg’s thermometer away and made him go to work.

“It was the best thing they could have done, but they didn’t realize it,” Feinberg laughed.
“It was a night job where we were unloading boxcars in this little town nearby,” Feinberg explained. “And I discovered as we were taking these cardboard boxes out of the boxcars, that there was food in them.

“We were hungry and here I see cans of tuna, biscuits and I discovered that the boxes didn’t have a lot of tape and I could stick my hand in, take some out, stick them in my pockets and I thought, ‘this is great!’”

Feinberg shared his newfound treasure with the other POWs and pretty soon, people were lining up for work duty, eager to smuggle food back for each other.

They marched the POWs 60 kilometers, from Flomersheim, through Bonn and all the way to Cologne. Afterwards, they moved the POWs in boxcars.

Feinberg ended up in a real prison camp in Lindberg.

“There were hundreds of guys there. But finally, I got registered with the Red Cross.”

Representatives of the Red Cross from Switzerland were at the prison camp handing out packages to the prisoners containing toilet paper and other toiletries.

“The one thing was, they refused to register anyone as Jewish. Evidently, sometime before Christmas, which was quite awhile beforehand, there had been a bombing nearby and there were some unexploded bombs. The Germans came in and went through the list and picked out all the Jewish guys and made them a bomb disposal squad. After that, the Red Cross refused to register anyone as Jewish.”

As quickly as they were moved into the prison camp, they were moved out.

Feinberg recalled a day when American planes decided to bomb the railroad yard. They were locked in the boxcars, people panicking, praying they would not get hit.

“Fortunately, we were not one of the things that got hit! They hit just about everything but us.”
The prison guards took the POWs out and marched them to a railroad station. They put them back in boxcars and they rode to a wooded area in the middle of nowhere.

Someone came over and opened the boxcar that Feinberg was in and they came flying out of the boxcar as the planes began to bomb the tracks again. Feinberg and another prisoner ran out into a big field with their Red Cross packages.

“We ran out into the middle of the field and took the toilet paper. I made a big ‘P’ and he made a ‘W’ and we stood there and waved as the planes came in.”

Some other prisoners lined up in the field and also made a ‘PW’ with their bodies.

“There was a little newspaper article and the article said ‘Human PW saves train.’ But they didn’t mention my toilet paper!” Feinberg laughed.

At this point, the prison guards marched them to Braunfels, Germany.

“There was a big field that was surrounded by barbed wire and that’s where we were,” Feinberg explained.

Feinberg noticed that across the street was some houses and saw an alley between the houses. He told a couple other guys about it and they devised a plan.

They approached a guard and Feinberg told him they weren’t feeling well and wanted to see the town’s doctor.

Feinberg and a couple other men were allowed to go towards town. When they got there, the other men went into town while Feinberg ran down the alley.

“I didn’t want to go into the town. I stayed by myself and I was cold and miserable.”

There was a big hill next to the town and a big cave in the hill. Feinberg went into the cave but he wasn’t alone for long.

“All of a sudden, in come all these civilians. It turns out it was their air raid shelter!”

Feinberg noticed a young girl and her family in the cave with him. Knowing what he was, the girl would come over to him when nobody was looking and point out the people to stay away from.
The little girl, Gretel, told him that her father had been in a concentration camp for “being against the Nazis.” Feinberg knew he had made a friend. He told her he wanted to go to her house.

“It was only a matter of days and the town was taken by the Americans,” he said.

Feinberg had been a POW for three months.

Following his discharge from the army, Feinberg returned to Rutgers and completed his Bachelor of Science degree in June 1947. He then earned a Masters of Science in biochemistry at George Washington University and a Ph. D. in biochemistry at Penn State University. After graduation he spent four years in industrial research and 13 years in cardiology research. He worked at Philadelphia General Hospital and then became the vice president and director of a private clinical laboratory.

Feinberg tells his story with a smile and a quirky sense of humor. He says he wants to write a book about his experience.

“I was just at the right age where I was looking for adventure. This was the ultimate adventure.”

Leonard Feinberg, Part 1

2011-02-02T11:28:00.003-05:00

Jewish War veteran shares story as WWII POW (PART ONE OF TWO)

By Rebecca Schnitzer, Correspondent

Leonard Feinberg Ph.D., a retired biochemist living in the Forsythia Gate section of Levittown, remembers his first thought when WWII started.

“I wanted to get into something. That’s the only way I can describe it. I wanted to go fight for my country.”

Feinberg, 87, is a member of Jewish War Veterans Post 697 and likes to speak about the time he spent overseas.

He was born in Longbranch, N.J. and graduated from Jefferson High School in Elizabeth, N.J. in 1941. He started college at Rutgers University in Sept. 1941.

“You can imagine trying to tell your parents, ‘Can I go enlist in the Army?’” Feinburg laughed, adding that his parents’ first reaction was, “No way!”

“But they did come around not too long after Pearl Harbor.”

Shortly after the start of his sophomore year at Rutgers, he enlisted in the Enlisted Reserve and went into the Army. When it was time to choose what basic training he went to, Feinberg told his friends, who also enlisted, that he wanted to go into the tanks.

“They said, ‘Nah, we’re all pre-meds. Let’s go into medical.’ So that’s how I ended up as a medic.”

Feinberg had 17 weeks of basic training followed by three months of surgical tech school, after which he was sent to a replacement depot and then to England to join the 134th Infantry Regiment in the 1st Battalion, which was made up of men from the Nebraska National Guard.

“We got to Normandy – not on D-Day,” Feinberg said. “Where we landed was a short walk from Omaha Beach.”

“We came in a couple weeks after D-Day. As the low man on the totem pole, with all my training, I became a litter-bearer. What we littler-bearers did was go right up to the front line, where anybody was wounded and carry them back to the aid station,” Feinberg remembered. “That was fun and games.”

Feinberg said that the Germans would usually avoid shooting medics. “However, that didn’t always fly.

“Our first objective was to liberate the town of Saint-Lô. That was an important town for us to take, because for them (the Germans), it was sort of a message center,” Feinberg recalled.
“In Normandy they had these hedgerows and these things were impenetrable. That’s what Normandy is famous for – their hedgerows. So I devised a way that we could carry a guy on a litter, cross over a hedgerow and hardly miss a beat!”

“I was such a good litter-bearer; I got the first promotion, to corporal!” Feinberg smiled. “And then I became an Aidman – a company aid medic.”

Feinberg’s battalion went on to liberate towns and cities in France all the way to the German border.

“It was so exciting and so great to liberate these cities and these people were so thankful,” he recalled. “That part – that was the fun part of the war.”

After they had taken a big city in France, they crossed over the German border.

“We had taken this little town and they had some hills, all of the sudden. And there was this big hill and the Germans were holding the hill.”

Feinberg’s commanding officer insisted that they take the hill, but it was late in the afternoon. “The officers were on their radios, telling him it was too late. We can’t go and take the hill. But nope, he insisted.”

Feinberg’s battalion came up the side of the hill and took control of part of it. They started having skirmishes with the Germans, who still ‘owned’ the other half of the hill.

“It was just mass confusion. It was dark by the time it got up there. And we didn’t have time to dig-in and get set.”

Feinberg noticed that his company commander was looking for Art, the company runner. The runner would take messages to headquarters when there was no other way to communicate. In the dark, Feinberg and his company commander came down the hill and saw Art. Just as they reached him, a mortar shell hit right behind the company commander, killing him.

“He took the whole blast of it, he was right behind me. I got hit in the back and head.”

Feinberg still has his helmet which boasts two holes made from mortar shells.

That’s when things started to get interesting for Feinberg.

(Continued Next Week)

Joseph Oberto

2011-01-19T14:31:00.002-05:00

Senior Airman served in Afghanistan at Bagram Airfield.

By John Williams, Bucks Local News

After serving nine months at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan, Joe Oberto stepped out of his terminal at Philadelphia International Airport and into the warm embrace of his family.

“Coming home after my Afghanistan deployment and hugging my parents for the first time in nine months,” said Oberto, who is 20-years-old, “it was the happiest day of my life. I’m not going to lie to you – I choked up when I saw them.”

“One thing that I’ve learned since enlisting in the military is to never take your family for granted,” he said.

Senior Airman Joseph Oberto was born in Langhorne and grew up in Levittown. He graduated from Conwell-Egan Catholic High School in 2008 and was a stand-out Lacrosse player, earning Philadelphia All-Catholic Team honors his senior year.

He is the son of John and Susan Oberto (of Levittown) and has two younger sisters, Megan and Stephanie, including an older brother, George.

At age 17, he enlisted in the Air Force. After a month upon graduating high school, he left for basic training.

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be in the military,” Oberto said. “I’ve served about two and a half years,” he said. “I completed basic training and tech school training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. In December 2008, I was assigned to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.”

The area surrounding MacDill AFB was given to the federal government in 1939 and founded in April of 1941.

He also carried out minor assignments at McChord Air Force Base in Tacoma, Wash as well as Fort Worth, Texas.

He is a Security Forces Defender in the 6th Security Forces Squadron, which means that he provides law enforcement and security duties for United States Air Force bases. It is a subsidiary of the 6th Mission Support Group on MacDill AFB.

A year after arriving at MacDill AFB, Oberto deployed for his first tour of duty to the militarized airfield in Bagram, Afghanistan located in Parwan province (about 27 miles from the capital city of Kabul). Oberto would spend six months at the base.

Bagram, aptly named the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing, is the temporary home to 5,000 Airman whose mission is “Fighting Terror and Building Peace,” as stated on Bagram Airfield’s official website. The base also has an 11,820 foot runway that was just completed in 2006.

On the base sits Camp Cunningham, an Air Force village that is dedicated to the memory of Jason Cunningham. Cunningham, a pararescueman, was killed on March 2, 2002 while medically assisting fellow soldiers and saving the lives of 10 of them. Posthumously, in Sept. of 2002, Cunningham was awarded the Air Force Cross, which is the second-highest mark of distinction a soldier can receive only to the Medal of Honor.

“Before I went to Bagram, I heard about the story of Senior Airman Cunningham,” said Oberto. “When I was at basic training our barracks (the 324th Training Squadron) was named in honor of SrA Cunningham.” He didn’t lodge in Camp Cunningham, but remembers many memorials positioned around the camp.

“For the majority of time I spent at Bagram it was quiet,” Oberto explained. “It was during the winter so all of the bad guys were hiding in the mountains.” However, he said, when March and April rolled around, Bagram received minor rocket attacks.

He said it was the insurgents’ form of “harassment.”

“Just two weeks after I left, Bagram witnessed a major ground attack,” he said.

In mid-May of 2010, the Islamist militant group the Taliban attacked Bagram Air Field with rocket propelled weapons, grenades and suicide bombers. In all, the standoff lasted eight hours and killed one American contractor, while injuring nine U.S. military members.

His fondest memories are of him and his unit sitting around makeshift tables and playing cards and discussing what they’ll do once they get back in the States.

“We would talk about what we wanted to do once we were home as well as the good times and the bad,” he said. “It was in May and the weather was exactly like spring time in the States. It reminded me of just sitting outside on a spring afternoon, hanging out and talking to my family.
It basically brought me that much closer to seeing my family, but I know I would miss the people I served with at the same time.”

Oberto also abides by a strict training regimen.

“Besides working, I enjoy going to the gym – a lot,” he said. “It’s something that has stuck with me since my deployment. When you are deployed you live by a set schedule. You wake up, shower, get ready for work, work (however long that may be), come home and change into your PT (physical training) gear, hit the gym for a good two hours, eat and go to sleep.

“If you aren’t working, you’re keeping in touch with your family or watching some movies on your laptop,” he said.

Joe is once again stationed at MacDill AFB in Tampa.

When he isn’t performing duties on base or in the gym weightlifting, Joe visits Clearwater, Florida to watch the Phillies in spring training or during the fall, they’ll head to “The Swamp” in Gainsville to watch the University of Florida Gator football team. If he and his friends feel ambitious, they will make the 5-hour haul to Tallahassee to watch the Florida State Seminole football team.

“Sometimes we’ll just go back to my buddy’s house, which is about three and a half hours from base and we’ll spend the weekend there,” said Oberto.

He also leads his flights’ physical training regimen. His task is to create workouts and make sure that Airmen pass their PT test.

In the spring, he will deploy to Riydah, Saudi Arabia and will remain there until the fall.

“My future plans are to separate from active duty, but stay in the reserves,” he said, “and hopefully attend Penn State University for Kinesiology. Once I’m finished, I want to get commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, reserves or active duty, and continue a military career.

As of now, he is attending the American Military University, an accredited online university. His ambition is to go to medical school and earn his doctorate in physical therapy.

Bernard Lens

2011-01-11T16:15:00.002-05:00

Army Pfc. helped liberate Dachau concentration camp

By Petra Chesner-Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

Telling the story of the Holocaust is necessary, so it will never happen again.

That's what people who teach the lessons of the Holocaust strongly believe.

One of those people is U.S. Army Pfc. Bernard Lens of the Makefield Glen section of Lower Makefield Township. He served in Europe during WWII.

Lens, who turns 90 this month, talks with students, telling the story of the Holocaust and what he saw and experienced during The Liberation of Dachau concentration camp.

"We go to schools," Lens said. "We were invited to Washington D.C. two years in a row to present our program."

Lens is a member of Post 697 JWV (Jewish War Veterans.) The group meets monthly and has more than 100 members from Levittown, Bensalem, Yardley and Newtown.

He was part of the American Liberation of the Nazi's Dachau concentration camp.

"We walked in," Lens recalled. "The gates were open. We go in and the first thing we hit is a building. It's an administration building. I see 12 maybe 14 bodies."

Lens said the bodies were civilians who kept records. He said they had been killed so they wouldn't talk.

"We walked around the corner," Lens said. "There were maybe 20 or 25 dead bodies lieing around.

The people, frail and malnourished, needed help. "I asked the captain, 'What do you want to do?' He said, 'Let's get them out. Some need medical care.'"

He approached a building. "God, the door opened -- the stench just threw me back. They looked at me scared. They had never seen an American soldier," Lens said.

When Lens told them he was a Jewish American soldier, he said they seemed relieved.

Lens talked a little slang with them. The thought was "to just take them out -- get them out to the air."

Some were given IVs. "Some could walk," he said. "Some died in my arms -- that's the one thing I'll never forget.

"They would be just walking. They would just fall. They were nothing...The weight of their body was the weight of there bones," Lens said.

"That's what they did to them - starvation," he said. "The things that killed them were TB, malnutrition, not getting medical attention and slave labor."

Lens can attest to being part of the Liberation of a Dachau concentration camp. A photographer he was with took his picture. He is holding a rifle while standing amidst bodies covering the ground beneath him.

One of his jobs was to stand watch over a road leading to the concentration camp. The barbed wire stretched around the camp. He was to shoot with a machine gun if any German soldiers approached.

Before World War II, Lens, a graduate of Central High School in Philadelphia, worked at the Sun shipyard in Chester.

When he came home from the war, he would be in expediting in the clothing industry. He would also work in the sales room. Sometimes he went to New York City when the company had shows. Most recently he worked for a fur company that sold ladies fur coats. Lens retired when he was 70.

Lens has lived in the Yardley area for a dozen years, but lived in Levittown for 35 to 40 years.
His sense of humor is infectious. When asked what he did in the service, he replied, "Run like hell when they wanted volunteers. I was infantry.

"I had special training," Lens said. "I never knew where I was. I moved so fast I didn't get paid for four months."

He was in the 546 Battalion. "I did a stint with General Patton," he said.

Lens said he never regretted being in World War II. "I was single when I went in," he said.
"But I remained a good old 'doughboy,'" he said. "That means you're infantry at the ground -- you're eating the ground. That was a slang expression for infantry.

About being part of the Liberation of Dachau concentration camp he said, "I did what every service person did," Lens said humbly. "We went in, were trained, we did our job.

"The only heroes are those buried with crosses over their graves -- that's my personal opinion," he said.

Lens has been collecting photographs of the Holocaust. He has some very graphic pictures of those who perished in concentration camps. He has pictures taken at Auschwitz concentration camp.

There are bodies upon bodies. They look like skeletons piled one on top of each other in many of these pictures. The mouths of the victims are open. He has photographs of skeletal bodies being put in the crematoria.

Bernard Lens will never forget.

Dachau concentration camp was the first Nazi concentration camp opened in Germany, located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, which is located in southern Germany.

It is believed that 25,613 prisoners died in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps, primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide.

The Americans found approximately 32,000 prisoners, crammed 1,600 to each of 20 barracks, which had been designed to house 250 people each.

Over its 12 years as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and 31,951 deaths. Crematoria were constructed to dispose of the deceased. These numbers do not tell the entire story, however.

Prisoners perished from poor sanitation, deprivation of medical care, withholding of nutrients, medical experiments, or beatings and shootings for infractions of the rules or at random.

Beginning in 1942 more than 3166 prisoners in weakened condition were transported to Hartheim Castle near Linz and there were executed by poison gas for reason of their unfitness.

Glenn L. Hall

2011-01-05T17:20:00.003-05:00

Navy vet went to become Bucks County Community College dean.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Glenn Hall didn’t know it at the time, but while he was serving with the U.S. Navy at the end of World War II, he was being groomed for a career in education that would lead him all the way to the highest ranks at Bucks County Community College (BCCC). A Doylestown resident, Hall is now retired, living quietly with his longtime wife, Gloria. But ask a great many people how he’s known in Bucks, and they’ll tell you he saw a lengthy stint as BCCC’s Dean of Academic Affairs. His experience in the Navy lent itself to his experiences as both a teacher and an administrator, making him, among other things, a savvy judge of character.

Hall was born in 1925 in York County’s Windsor Township to parents Charles and Rosetta. Raised, primarily, by his uncle and his uncle’s wife, Hall grew up in Windsor and attended Red Lion High School. He graduated in 1943, and went on to attend summer and fall semesters at Lebanon Valley College. Then, his plans were interrupted.

“I turned 18 in December,” Hall says, “and Uncle Sam said, ‘Welcome.’”

Hall was drafted into the Navy in February 1944. In March, he went to boot camp at New York’s Sampson Naval Base. Soon after he was assigned to hospital corpsman school in Bainbridge, Md., and then to a hospital in Bainbridge, where he tackled “everyday nursing duties.” Bored with that work, he urged a Chief Petty Officer to put him on a ship, and got his wish when the USS Granville (APA-171) needed men. Hall took a train across the country to Astoria, Ore. and joined “a new ship and a new crew.”

After some spirited escapades (such as tending to the sore throat of Irish tenor Dennis Day, who was on board the Granville as part of a traveling singing group), Hall and his shipmates left Astoria to undergo various training exercises. In January 1945, the crew left the U.S. for Pearl Harbor, then traveled all over the Pacific.

“Our primary job was to carry troops and their equipment,” Hall says. “We’d unload them to go into battle, and if there were casualties, we would wait, bring them back to the ship and take them to bases to be treated.”

Hall says he always felt grateful that he wasn’t one of the men climbing down the nets to meet the enemy in combat. Another thing he felt was loneliness, despite the company of his shipmates.

“You don’t know what distance is, or what loneliness is, until you’re in the South Pacific,” he says. “There’s the occasional small island, but it’s mainly thousands of miles without any land or anything. The Pacific is so vast.”

Hall says his ship sometimes took troops to Okinawa, and during one such run, in August 1945, after the war had technically ended, the USS Granville was credited for shooting down a remaining kamikaze and aiding in the destruction of another. In addition, the ship took on a lot of wounded soldiers from the battleship New Mexico, which suffered a kamikaze attack.

According to Hall, he served as a “dirty nurse,” working in the sick bay and an adjoining operating room, collecting instruments and cleaning up messes from surgeries. He continued in that position for some time after the war, as his ship continued to travel the South Pacific and recover soldiers. He was discharged in June 1946 as a Pharmacist’s Mate Third Class, and soon after, he returned home.

He went back to Lebanon Valley College, completing his bachelor’s degree in social sciences. He then went to grad school at George Washington University, where he studied history. In the early ‘50s he got a job teaching in York County, where he met Gloria, a nurse. The couple married in 1952.

Hall began frequenting Penn State for summer sessions, earning credits toward a doctorate. He was offered a graduate assistantship, whereby he’d conduct small sessions with students under the supervision of a professor. Shortly thereafter he got a job teaching at a junior college in Florida, and moved there with Gloria. While in Florida, he made good on a Fulbright grant he received to teach in Europe, and from 1961 to 1962, with Gloria in tow, he lived and worked in the Netherlands.

He returned to Florida, taught two more years at the junior college, then saw an ad at an educator’s meeting in Miami for teaching jobs at the newly-forming BCCC. Hall sent in his application, went for an interview with the school’s freshly-appointed president, and became BCCC’s first faculty member. He says it was difficult, the process of getting a new college off the ground, but the rewards far outweighed the hurdles. Hall was teaching what he loved – history. He soon became the department chair, then the division chair, and by 1972, he was the Dean of Academic Affairs. He kept his position until 1987, at which time he returned to the faculty before retiring in 1989.

And as for those special skills Hall applied to his professional life? Gloria says her husband was constantly involved with hiring and interview processes at BCCC, essentially from its start. He would interface with individuals on a regular basis, be they students, colleagues or employees. Hall says that, all along, he’s had a keen knack for reading people, and he has the Navy to thank for that.

“One thing I know is that the Navy increased my sense of being able to perceive phoniness,” Hall says. “There were always hustlers in the Navy, and I developed, very quickly, an ability to detect phoniness.”

And that’s no bull.

George Frazier, Part 2

2010-12-22T15:21:00.006-05:00

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, he served with the SeeBees.

By Jeff Werner, Bucks Local News

Due to injuries he sustained in the attack on Pearl Harbor, George Frazier of Warminster was discharged from the U.S. Army in Dec. 1941.

Back at home in Massachusettes, he took a job at the Boston Navy Yard. While working there he saw signs advertising for help in Hawaii. Longing to get back into the service and figuring he might have a chance if he returned to Hawaii, he put his name in and was sent back to Pearl Harbor as a civilian worker.

It was not until he returned to Pearl that he realized just how devastating the attack had been.
“When everything happened in December it was all confused,” he said. “Getting hit, going in and out of the hospital, trying to stay there. It was mixed up,” he said.

“When I got back to the yard, it was devastation. You had no idea until you really saw it,” he said. “They were still raising ships and we were working on them to get them back on duty,” said Frazier. “The Arizona was still down there. The stack was still up before they cut that all down,” he said.

“We could never figure out why they never hit the oil tanks – there were big tanks all over the place — or the ammunition places,” he said. “The first thing they did was knock out all the fighters, like Wheeler Field. That’s where we heard all the bombing and everything.

“It was just devastation,” he said. “The P-40s that had been lined up in a row at Wheeler were just knocked out completely. They had lined up the airplanes to make them easier to guard, never figuring the Japanese would plow through them right down the line – bang, bang, bang.
“They hit all the fields so no one could get up and shoot them. From then on it gave them leeway to come in. The torpedo bombs were the second wave and they hit everything then,” he said.
Frazier said everyone took the attack personally.

“It was like someone slapping your face. And not just us,” he said. “Back at home, everyone man, woman and child got involved in the war effort. It was the only time in the history of this country that happened.”

Not long after returning to Pearl, he ran into some of his old Army buddies in Honolulu and again longed to be back in the service. He rode with them up into the mountains, where he slept overnight in the dugouts. “I spoke with the captain and he said he’d love to have me back, but I couldn’t get out of the Navy Yard.”

After some persistence, the powers that be finally allowed him to enlist with the U.S. Navy SeeBees, a militarized Naval Construction Force which built advance bases in the war zone.
As a SeeBee, he was shipped to Midway Island, then to Saipan and Iwo Jima where he saw significant action. He received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts for his service both at Pearl and at Saipan.

After more than a year of service with the SeeBees, he returned to Hawaii where he re-enlisted in the Army. He ended up with his old outfit in Japan.

“In a roundabout way, a lot of things in between, I ended up with them,” he said.

While in Japan, he witnessed the devastating aftermath of the atomic blast at Nagasaki.

“Everyone had tears. We had just came from jungle fighting and here we are crying,” he said.

“The whole town, 100,000 men, women and babies, all gone. A couple big buildings standing there. The rest was flat. Whoever come up with a device like that, people should shoot them. People have no concept. Oh, God.”

Unlike many, who argue dropping the bomb prevented countless American deaths and brought an early end to the war, he sees it differently.

“When you pick on babies, that’s going too far. To me, that’s a no-no,” he said.

Following the war Frazier lived briefly in Boston and Norfolk, Va., before settling in the Germantown section of Philadelphia. In the 1960s, he moved to Hatboro. He worked for a moving company for about 50 years until his retirement.

For years after the war, he never talked about his time at Pearl or in the service
“Nobody had any idea,” he said. That changed one day when his granddaughter ran into a group of Pearl Harbor survivors at an event in Philadelphia. Soon after, he joined the Pearl Harbor Survivors.

He is often invited to speak to school groups about his experiences and was recently among 20 veterans to participate in a program at Council Rock High School South.

*This is the second article in a two-part series. For part one, CLICK HERE.

George Frazier, Part 1

2010-12-15T13:29:00.003-05:00

World War II veteran survived the attack on Pearl Harbor.

By Jeff Werner, Bucks Local News

“Yesterday, Dec. 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered those now immortal words, Warminster resident George Frazier was recooperating in Hawaii after being shot by the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Frazier, who was stationed in Hawaii with the United States Army, was scheduled to leave the island on Dec. 13.

Frazier grew up in Cambridge, Mass., during the Great Depression. He left school after the eighth grade to join Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, a public work relief program for the unemployed, to earn money for his family.

Just before turning 18 in 1941, he left the CCC and joined the United States Army. “I just wanted to go into the service. I had it in my head for a long time, ever since I was 14 or 15,” he said.

He requested duty in the Philippines and Panama, but was told in both cases the quotas were filled. Then Frazier asked, “‘What about Hawaii?’ They told me, ‘You’ll get it.’”

He arrived in Hawaii in March 1941 and was assigned to Schofield Barracks, which is located near Wheeler Field and about 15 miles from Pearl Harbor.

Days before the attack, Frazier was notified that he was to be shipped back to New Jersey on Dec. 13 to attend communications school. “So on Dec. 6, my friends took me downtown and gave me an aloha party,” he said.

Sunday morning, Dec. 7 dawned like any other on the island. The men got up and went to breakfast. On their way back, as they crossed the quadrangle, they heard a lot of racket.
“All this noise was going on and we couldn’t figure out what it was. The Navy was back in from maneuvers. We were off of maneuvers,” he said.

“We’re standing there out on the quadrangle and we see this plane circling and coming lower and lower. You could see the red spots. Someone said, ‘They’re Japanese.’ Somebody else said, ‘What are they doing over here? They’re supposed to be in China.’

“By that time they started strafing and we scattered,” he said. “It went on for about a minute or two. We went into the supply room to get rifles and anything we could to fight back. We were fighting them with everything we had – we had automatics, .45s and a couple of .22s. If I had a slingshot I would have fired it,” he said.

Frazier was directed by his captain to secure a weapons carrier from the motor pool and to load it up with ammunition.

He ran upstairs, put on his field uniform and headed to the motor pool with a .45 in his hand. “I get to the motor pool and they’re looking for a trip ticket. I told them I don’t need a trip ticket. I just grabbed the weapons carrier and came back.”

Back at the barracks, he joined a column of vehicles bound for pre-assigned field positions. A medic joined him in the front seat of the weapons carrier.

“Off we went,” he said. As the column crossed a bridge, he saw Japanese planes crisscross in front of him and knew he was in trouble.

“The next thing I knew the medic, he went forward, blood spurting out of his neck. He was killed,” said Frazier. “I hit the dash board and split my leg open. I don’t remember anything until I woke up in the hospital.”

He was told later that he had been wounded by gun fire and that the vehicle had struck the rail of the bridge, jamming the steering wheel into his stomach.

“We had no idea it was going to happen there,” said Frazier. “We knew we would be going off to war somewhere, but we never figured the war would come there. You just shook your head and said, how can a fleet just disappear?”

After a four to five-day hospital stay, he returned to the Schofield Barracks. He spoke to the chaplain and his captain, pleading with them to intervene and keep him on the island. “No one could help,” he said.

On Dec. 29, he was shipped back to California and was discharged out of the army due to his wounds. He hitchhiked back to Boston. But he was eager to get back to the war.

--

*This is the first half of a two-part series on George Frazier. It continues next week.

Joyce Sherman

2010-12-08T15:02:00.001-05:00

Served in North Africa during WWII as an Army Nurse.

By John Williams, BucksLocalNews.com

Joyce Abramson was headed home after serving two and a half years in the United States Army Nurse Corps in North Africa. She was about to receive her honorable discharge at Fort Dix, N.J.
Meanwhile, her pen pal during the war, Herbert Sherman, was a young Army Pfc. serving in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. He had just gotten into a cab with his cousin and was wondering if she had safely returned to the States. It just so happened that a fellow cab rider knew Joyce, and soon the two would meet face-to-face.

Not too long after in September of 1946, Joyce and Herbert married.

“I told him that he had to take orders from me because I ranked higher than him,” Sherman, 89, laughed. She was a Lieutenant and Herbert was a private first class.

Born and raised in Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr, Sherman eventually attended nursing school at the former Jewish Hospital on Old York Road in Philadelphia (the hospital is now Albert Einstein Medical Center).

She attended the educational hospital for three years and graduated in 1942. She was one of 25 girls in her class. Twenty went on to serve in the Army and one in the Navy.

In June of 1943, she was sworn into the Army Nurse Corps at the age of 21. She subsequently reported to Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, Maryland.

Then in September, she was ordered to report to Port of Charleston in South Carolina for embarkation. She boarded and sailed on the S.S. Delaires and arrived at the 67th Station Hospital on October 27, 1943 in Accra, Africa, which is now modern day Ghana.

Sherman reported to a former Pan American Airlines base taken over as part of the ATC (Air Transport Command).

“It was a very modern hospital, equipped with air conditioned rooms and good living quarters,” Sherman said. “We received many flights from the China-Burma theatre of operation.”

“I remember the first Christmas or New Years that I was in Accra we had a young private with meningitis,” said Sherman. “I was assigned to treat him. This is during a time when penicillin was very new, its full potential wasn’t realized fully and not everyone had it.” She said penicillin was brought from Cairo and stored in refrigerators in the pharmacy, which wasn’t located at the same site as the hospital.

“An orderly would go to the pharmacy and bring back one dose and I would have to inject it. This young man had almost passed away before I could give him the injection,” she said. “But he survived.” Not too long after, the Philadelphia Inquirer published a story on her heroic actions.

Malaria was a big problem at the time and one of the illnesses medical workers treated. It was required that everyone receive Malaria injections.

“Because of the mosquitoes, boots and long sleeves were a necessity and if we went to the movies every 15 to 20 minutes they would go up and down the aisles spraying mosquito repellent.”

“Any place that I was we couldn’t eat fresh fruit because of the dysentery,” she said. “When there would be a sandstorm we would have to take sheets, wet them and put them over the windows so sand wouldn’t get in.” She got dysentery once because she ate tainted strawberries.
Sherman also has a collection of occupation issues from Italy, Cairo and a handful of other Western European and African countries. Occupation issues are a type of currency, which are printed in time of war in order to sustain the national and local economy of a nation.

“During World War II, soldiers heading off to war would bring bank notes inscribed with their friends’ signatures on it,” said Sherman. “This was called short snorting.” It’s almost like a “keep sake” for the soldier.

She said Accra was a nice place to serve because it was close to the beach.

In September of 1944, Sherman transferred again. This time she advanced to the 93rd Station Hospital in French West Africa. While in Dakar, she went on leave to Casablanca to celebrate Hanukkah.

“The hospital was right in the medina quarters, a walled in area of the town,” she said. “We couldn’t go outside of the grounds walls because of the plague.” She was vaccinated while in Casablanca.

Sherman transferred to the 38th General Hospital in Cairo, Egypt in March of 1945. The Jefferson Hospital unit from Philadelphia provided treatment at the base.

“When I got to Cairo, the combat was already in Europe,” said Sherman.

“Cairo was very interesting,” she said. “I got to see the sphinx statues and the pyramids. I saw a lot of camels, but never got the chance to ride one. Every place I traveled to was nice in its own way because it was all new experiences.”

Sherman also visited Cyprus while on leave as well as Israel, twice.

She is a member of Jewish War Veterans Post 697 in Levittown. Her JWV group named her “Woman of the Year” in 2008. She was also awarded a World War II veteran medal, American Campaign medal and European-African-Middle East Campaign medal from the United States Army.

Sherman lives in Bensalem, where she has lived for the past 36 years.

Richard J. Beresford

2010-12-01T13:39:00.003-05:00

Remembering schoolmates who perished in Vietnam.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

U.S. Navy PC2 Richard J. Beresford, 62, was a mailman during most of the 20 years he served in the military. When he came home to Newtown, he became a rural postal carrier for the U.S. Post Office.

But in between those times, his military career would take him to Illinois for basic training and to Vietnam.

Beresford prides himself on being involved in the community. He served as post commander for the Morrell Smith Post 440 of the American Legion in Newtown.

Today, he serves on the board of the Guardians of the National Cemetery. He is currently the service officer with Post 79 of the American Legion in New Hope.

For 22 years, Beresford led the Veterans Day Service at Council Rock High School North because he knew the young men from Council Rock who died in Vietnam. One is missing in action (MIA). He believes strongly in honoring them.

Their pictures are proudly displayed on Memorial Wall in the high school.

From the U. S. Army were Capt. William D. Booth, Lt. Daniel A. Hennessy, Sgt. Nelson C. Luther, C.W.O. Robert O. Hill Jr., W/O Robert L. Scott Jr., Spec.4 Harry C. Wilson, FCC David Lownes, Spec.3 Frank M. Mebs and W/O William H. McDonnell.

Two served in the U.S. Marines: Lt. William S. Geary and Lance Cpl. Marvin O. Wittman. One was with the U.S. Navy: Airman Douglas A. Post. Missing in Action is Capt. Walter H. Sigafoos of the U.S. Air Force.

Beresford graduated from Council Rock in 1966. He graduated from boot camp in Great Lakes, Ill. in June of 1967. Beresford would eventually be honorably discharged in 1985 as a 2nd class petty officer (PC2.)

His first assignment lasted for four years on the USS Sacramento. The type of ship was a fast combat support. Nicknamed “a one-stop shopping center,” it was three ships in one — ammunition, oiler and supply ship.

In 1971, he transferred to Yokohama, Japan outside of Tokyo Bay where the fleet mail center was based. The center provided all the mail on the ships in the western Pacific.

In 1974, he was transferred to the sister ship, the USS Camden (AOE2). He was transferred to the naval weapons station in Coltsneck, N.J. where he ran the post office.

From there, Beresford was transferred to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The island was owned by the British.

“It was called isolated duty, which is a special assignment,” he said.

While in Diego Garcia, he worked in the post office. The island was used as a staging area for what was to come in the Iraqi War.

Beresford was then transferred to the naval station at San Diego to the USS Jouett (CG29), which was a guided missile cruiser.

He was discharged honorably in 1985 at age 38.

Beresford talked about the Vietnam War. He was involved in shore support for the battle groups. “We provided all the bombs that were needed to go into Vietnam,” he said. “The main objective of the USS Sacramento and the USS Camden was to supply the aircraft battle groups that were off of Vietnam.

“We provided everything from a paper clip to a 5,000-pound bomb,” Beresford said. “We were a floating time bomb. If anyone was to come after us, we knew there was someone nearby to protect us.”

He was on the Sacramento from 1967 to 1971.

“The Tet Offensive in 1968 was the major attack that went on in Vietnam,” he said. “We were one of the support ships for that. We would also patrol the demilitarized zone [DMZ] and would provide the ammo for the ships that where in the area.

“They would come by us, rearm and re-fire on a specific location,” he said. “We would be out there cruising the area.”

Beresford said the rapid gunfire was so bad that it burnt the paint right off of the gun barrel. Then, they would get the empty brass from the shell that the powder was in and bring it back to the Philippines. “As much brass as possible was sent back to the U.S. to be redone and to be reused again,” he said.

In 1968, there was another big operation. The Sacramento had just come out of the Philippines for a port visit. They rearmed themselves.

“We were fully loaded,” Beresford said. “The USS Pueblo was being captured by North Korea. We were sent to head to North Korea as fast as possible in the middle of the night to be prepared to rescue the Pueblo from the North Koreans.

“We had four aircraft carrier battle groups consisting of four carriers, 22 destroyers and three guided missile cruisers around us,” he noted.

The Pueblo was captured by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) on Jan. 23, 1968, and is still in the hands of the DPRK. The capture occurred less than a week after President Lyndon B. Johnson’s State of the Union Address and only weeks before the Tet Offensive, it was a major incident in the Cold War.

James McAnulty

2010-11-24T11:33:00.002-05:00

Airman provided supplies to airplanes flying into Iraq.

By Natalya Bucuy, Correspondent

It’s Veteran’s Day 2010 and Lt. Colonel James McAnulty of the United State Air Force is looking through two large photo albums dedicated to the three and a half months of his life spent in the Middle East.

In January 1991 McAnulty, then a captain, left his quiet post as a supply officer at the Willow Grove Air Force base and headed to Thumrait Air Base in Oman. There he assisted the airmen who fought in the Persian Gulf War, providing supplies for the airplanes that flew into the battles of Iraq.

McAnulty’s entire unit was activated to leave for what became known as Operation Desert Storm. His duties on the base included overseeing the aircraft supplies and fuel operations. McAnulty recalls serving closely with active duty officers and airmen – working seven 12-hour days a week.

“We were in the fall-back position for the aircrafts,” he said. “Myself and the commanding officer went up to Saudi Arabia to do the fall back requirements in case we needed to get out of there. We did a study and put all that information together.”

McAnulty remembers his time at the base “not much different” from home. While the base was located in the desert, he says, everything else felt as if he never left home.

“People were different when we went into town,” he says. “Omani population is very small and they hire foreigners as their laborers – Indonesian, Pakistani, Chinese. But it wasn’t any different. You go downtown, certain places felt like I never left the States.”

Though his experiences in Oman were as close as he ever got to a hot spot, McAnulty’s military career began long before the war erupted. He joined the armed forces reserves in 1966, a few years after receiving his bachelor’s degree in Marketing from St. Joseph College. He spent two years in the Army reserves, but then switched to the Air Force. He later earned his master’s degree in public administration from Penn State University.

“I always liked the military,” he says. “As a little kid I played with airplanes. I just always liked it.”

Back at his home base in Willow Grove McAnulty maintained the supply chain for the base’s aircraft on the daily basis. Administrative work in various leadership positions took him up the ranks all the way up to lieutenant colonel, which he received in 2000 before retiring in 2001.
McAnulty’s 37-year-long career in the Air Force took him places he would never otherwise have visited. Every year he would leave for training oversees for two weeks.

“I enjoyed the military. It was great for me because of all the travel experiences,” he says. “I met so many different people. I loved it.”

And world travel, which for McAnulty included most of Europe, Hawaii, and much of the continental United States, wasn’t the only perk of serving in the reserves.

“Military teaches you to be organized, meet schedules, do things correctly the first time; otherwise it is life-threatening, if you don’t,” McAnulty says. “It teaches you confidence and leadership skills.”

Out of all he gained and learned, McAnulty names leadership as his favorite part of being in the military.

“Trying to shape these young kids into something that would be beneficial to themselves and to the military and also to see them come up through the ranks with their skills is great,” he says.

Now retired, McAnulty lives with his wife Maggie in Warwick. He is involved with his church, enjoys time at his shore house, and recently was voted to the Commander post of the American Legion Post 119 of Warwick. In his spare time McAnulty builds model railroads in his basement.
“No airplanes though,” he laughs.

Jim McComb

2010-11-17T14:32:00.002-05:00

A proud U.S. Marine and Vietnam veteran.

By Bob Staranowicz, Correspondent

“The Marines had comradeship and spirit and I wanted to be a part of that,” is the reason Jim McComb gives for his decision to join the U.S. Marine Corps before he graduated from high school.

“High school was not challenging for me and I guess I was looking for a challenge. The Marines certainly provided that. I was looking for the opportunity to be part of a greater effort – a team,” he adds.

McComb was born in the Frankford section of Philadelphia not far from the Bridge and Pratt streets elevated station. He attended Warren G. Harding Junior High and Frankford High School, both within walking distance from his home.

McComb was the first from his family to join the Marines and he looked forward to the challenge and the opportunity to be part of a team.

“I joined the Marines three months before I graduated from Frankford High on the delayed entry program,” McComb recalls. He was originally leaving for basic training in July of 1969 but since several of his classmates had also joined the Marines and were leaving in June, he called his recruiter and had his entry date changed so that he could be in basic training with them.

Before McComb left home for Vietnam, he told his family that his orders would most likely send him to Mainland Japan or Okinawa. “I did not tell them I was going to Vietnam until I was in Staging Battalion just before going overseas,” he recalls.

McComb went to Vietnam as a radio operator and was assigned to the 1st Marine Air Wing. From April 1962, when Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron (HMM)-362 flew into the Mekong Delta to set up operations at the Soc Trang airfield in, through April 1975, when helicopters of HMM-164 evacuated the last Americans from the embassy in Saigon, thousands of Marines served as members of the First Marine Aircraft Wing (First MAW) during the Vietnam War.

“There was not a great need for radio operators, so I began driving in convoys,” said McComb. Convoys were used to resupply a remote communications site just west of Khe Sanh. McComb’s route took him through a nine-mile stretch on Route 9 that was known as Ambush Alley, but by 1971 the threats of ambush were minimal.

“We were always greeted with sniper fire that usually just hit our vehicles and sometimes they would hit one of our guys, but it was never fatal as far as I knew,” McComb remembers.

Unlike many Vietnam veterans, when McComb returned to the states, he was met with no adverse greetings.

“One of the officers told us we should expect a hostile reception at the airport. He suggested we change from our uniforms into civilian clothes. I was proud to be wearing my uniform so I did not change. I encountered no problems at the airport,” he says

“But, when I got to my home it was as if I arrived at a new place. Things were not as I remembered them. None of my old friends were around. I became anxious to get to my next duty station and to a life I knew.”

McComb set many goals for his return to civilian life. There were four major goals agreed upon by him and his buddies, who sadly, did not return. One was to grow a beard; he grew one and still has it. Another goal was to get an education; McComb completed his Doctorate in Business Administration at the age of 49 from Kennedy-Western University and had accomplished what he considered to be the complete educational experience. The third goal was to get married and raise a family. McComb has been married for 31 years to Sophie, whom he says has been the greatest influence on his life. They have one daughter, Erin, who was recently married.

The last goal has been the most difficult to measure or complete. “I now have to focus on the last goal – helping others. I am trying to accomplish this now,” McComb reflects.

Those four goals are very important to McComb for several reasons; the most important is that he and his buddies spent many hours talking about them. Jim returned from Vietnam but they did not. “I think about those goals often. Every time I help someone in some way, it is in honor of those guys.”

McComb is currently a member of American Legion Post 210, the Central Bucks Detachment of the Marine Corps League, Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 210 and the Doylestown Post 175 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars where he is a Past Commander. His is also the District 8 Patriots Pen Chairman, a VFW-sponsored essay writing contest, a member of the Doylestown Lions, and a volunteer with the Toys for Tots program.

McComb believes that “on graduation day, when we were finally called Marines, that was the proudest day of my life and remains so to this day. From that day forward, we were part of a brotherhood that bonds all Marines to mutual helpfulness. When we got out of the Marines that spirit of helpfulness was to extend to all – Marines and non-Marines.”

Herbert Freedman

2010-11-10T12:38:00.002-05:00

Korean War vet aided wounded soldiers on hospital trains.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Discussing his service as an Army medical assistant on a hospital train during the Korean War, Newtown resident Herbert Freedman says he had “a very cushy job,” which wasn’t harrowing, but “pleasant.” He knows a great many other veterans can’t say the same, and that many of them endured military experiences that altered their lives forever.

But Freedman also found ways for his service to alter his life, channeling the energy he devoted to his duties overseas into a fruitful, fulfilling career.

Freedman was born on June 18, 1928 to parents Abraham and Clara. Along with his younger sister, June, he grew up in Atlantic City – “a quiet little town, before the gambling and casinos.” He graduated from Atlantic City High School in 1946. He pursued higher education, first attending George Washington University in D.C., then transferring to Temple University, where he studied business administration and earned his diploma in Feb. 1951.

While at Temple, Freedman was selected for the draft; however, the Army allowed him an extension so he could complete his courses. In April, less than two months after graduation, he headed to Fort Dix for 14 weeks of basic training. Freedman remembers it being “pretty rough,” and that his first time firing a rifle “knocked [him] on [his] rear end.”

Following a very short break, Freedman boarded a boat to Germany, told by his superiors that he’d eventually wind up in Korea. Luckily, though, he didn’t, and instead he and many of his peers remained in Germany throughout their tours of duty. Freedman first landed in Bremerhaven in 1951, then moved on to Sonthoven and then to Degendorf.

He eventually ended up in Munich, which he’d call home for the next six months. It was there that Freedman got assigned to the hospital train, ferrying wounded and disabled soldiers to and from hospitals in Germany and beyond. Freedman and those like him were tasked to serve food, wash dishes and tend to the soldiers’ needs, all the while receiving medical training to prepare them for the worst.

In April of 1952, Freedman relocated to Kaiserslautern, where he continued to serve on the hospital trains, this time traveling with patients to and from a facility in Verdun, France.
Freedman stayed in Kaiserslautern until the end of his service, which wrapped up in January of 1953 (he received an early discharge, having served overseas for more than 21 months).

It took three weeks for Freedman to venture home across the English Channel. He finally set down at Camp Kilner in East Orange, N.J., and was formally discharged on Feb. 19, 1953 as a private first class. He dabbled in retail for a bit, taking part in his father’s shoe business and opening a store of his own in Baltimore. Also in Baltimore, he worked for the U.S. Postal Service and even taught Spanish to elementary school students.

But, ultimately, Freedman settled into a counseling career, parlaying his experiences of tending to strangers on trains into advising individuals as part of the Department of Social Services.
A talkative gentleman, Freedman says he enjoyed chatting with people about their concerns. He continued to do similar work with the Social Security Administration, which employed him until he retired in 1997.

Along the way, Freedman met his wife, Marcia, whom he married in August of 1955 and with whom he had two children, Michelle and Neal. Marcia passed away from complications with diabetes in 2001, and these days, Freedman finds comfort in his grandchildren, Margo and Alex, and a new companion, Patricia, whom he met on Match.com.

He enjoys traveling (he’s visited Argentina, Greece, Thailand and Beijing), theater (he sees shows through his synagogue, Shir Ami), serving as a secretary with his Jewish War Veterans chapter and movies.

And what does he think of his military service now?

“It was a good experience,” he says. “I learned a lot.”

David William Jacoby

2010-11-03T14:01:00.002-04:00

U.S. Navy Reservist back home after Iraq deployment.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

On Veterans Day, First Lt. David William Jacoby of the U.S. Naval Reserve will deliver the keynote address during ceremonies at Council Rock North High School in Newtown, Pa. The program begins at 9 a.m.

The Council Rock social studies teacher, who returned home in May after a one-year deployment to Iraq, will share his experiences, talk about the special camaraderie that is shared in the military service and personally thank all veterans for their service.

“I’ll be talking to some enormously impressive people so I’m humbled by that,” said Jacoby. “They’ve all served just like me and some of them have done extraordinary service, putting their lives on the line as a young kid, crawling in holes and getting shot at. It’s amazing the stories that I can’t even compare to,” he said.

Jacoby said veterans like his father, Robert Jacoby, are the reason he joined the military. “I joined so at least I could relate to them, to say, well, I did my duty as an American and hopefully it was enough. I hope it is.”

He also wanted to be part of the fight.

Jacoby, a Churchville native and Council Rock graduate, joined the U.S. Naval Reserves at the age of 35. “It was sort of a whimsical thing. I was driving past the recruiting office and I saw a sign that they were looking for adventurous people.

“I just wanted to do it,” he said, adding that his dad had also served in the Navy as a reservist at Willow Grove.

“He was localized to Korea early on and was on an aircraft carrier for a year. I heard stories about that. Both his brothers were in the service. I grew up in a very military and patriotic family,” he said.

Six months after he joined, terrorists attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001. After 9/11, he said, “suddenly it got serious. We knew that we were now at war and people were going to die. It really separated the men from the boys and solidified who we were.”

Over the next seven years, while teaching at Council Rock South High School, he served weekends, two-week and summer deployments to places like England, Italy and Hawaii. He also completed a six-month deployment in Naples, Italy, and earned a commission as a Navy Ensign.
But Jacoby was restless. “A lot of guys around me were being mobilized and a lot of guys were volunteering. It was time for me to step up,” he said. “I was having a lot of fun but I didn’t join to have fun. I joined to be part of the fight. I joined to be a warrior.”

Jacoby approached his superiors and asked to be put at the top of the list for mobilization. “I told them, ‘If you are about to mobilize a father or a new husband, I want you to replace that person with me.”

In 2009, the Navy Reservist took military leave from the classroom and mobilized to Iraq, this time as a member of the U.S. Army.

He arrived just as the combat mission was ending and troops were transitioning to a support and training role.

While in Iraq he worked at a military compound north of the capital city of Baghdad where he served as a liaison between the ground forces and the officers making the decisions.

“I felt very proud of the job I was doing. I felt very proud of the guys that I was supporting. And I felt an enormous amount of responsibility to get the accurate information to the decision makers on a daily basis,” he said.

The ground forces were charged primarily with training the Iraqis to protect their own people and provide security for the mass population and the new government of Iraq, said Jacoby.

Mortar and rocket attacks were daily occurrences at the compound. “Some of them were serious – they came over the fence and blew up fairly close to where we were. Some of them blew themselves up before they reached the fence line,” he said.

“For the most part, we remained unscathed by the ubiquitous attacks. Some of our comrades were not so fortunate, and during my time there, we did have several memorial ceremonies. Every one was solemn.

“I never saw so many tough guys with tears streaming down their cheeks, completely unashamed of their emotions as they stood like statues, proud to be honoring their fallen comrades, sad for the wives and kids left behind, resolved to fight on bravely and do their job well, do their duty to country, and continue to honor the memory of those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.”

Jacoby said it was at one of the memorial services that he felt closer to his comrades then to anyone else in his life.

“It’s something extraordinary to be with these brave men and women. It’s just amazing,” he said.

As for Iraq’s future, Jacoby said he’s not worried. “We set them up for success,” he said. “The younger generation isn’t interested in the religious fanaticism. I think by the time they are our age it will be a different world in the Middle East.”

Not one to miss a beat, Jacoby is using his experiences in the military and in Iraq to teach his students about the Middle East. “We’ll be talking about not only what happened in Ancient Egypt, but also the struggles the people are going through today.”

The Iraqis, he said, are “truly nice people that care. But I can’t relate to them at all because they just think differently. Their goals are very different in life. We’re a very ambitious society. They are not. We don’t mesh that way, so we have to be careful.”

America, he said, is a very unique society in the world. “We can be very proud of ourselves and I am absolutely convinced that the people to thank are the ones in uniform. They made it happen. They made our society and our world a better place.”

Chet Furtek

2010-10-27T11:59:00.002-04:00

He was aboard the USS Corry when it was attacked on D-Day.

By Bob Staranowicz, Correspondent

“I was certain that I was not planning on making it through the D-Day invasion.” This was Furlong resident Chet Furtek’s feeling as he knelt before a priest during what he thought could have been his final confession.

U.S Navy Seaman Chet Furtek was aboard the USS Corry (DD-463), the destroyer that led the D-Day Invasion at Normandy. Launched in 1941, the Corry was a Gleaves-class destroyer weighing about 1,630 tons and running at a speed of about 35 knots. It carried four 5-inch guns with a range of nine miles, had 40mm and 20mm anti-aircraft guns, ten torpedo tubs and various depth charges.

Even with all of this power, at approximately H-Hour (0630) on D-Day, the USS Corry was hit amidships by heavy-caliber projectiles that detonated in the engineering spaces and broke the keel. As a result of the battle, 24 Corry crewmembers lost their lives and at least 60 were wounded, many seriously.

Chet still remembers that day vividly. “When the captain gave the order to abandon ship, I helped launch our life raft on the starboard side. After jumping into the water we found it just about impossible to move the raft any distance at all, because the waves kept pushing us back against the side of the ship, so we all decided to abandon the raft and swim as far away from the Corry as possible. Shells seemed to be bursting all around us, and no matter what direction I swam a shell would fall nearby.”

“After the air finally cleared, a fellow mate, Wainwright was close by and he looked at me and said, ‘This is Hell.’

“On three separate occasions while attempting to swim away from the gunfire, shell bursts were so close I was hit by the spray, and the odor from each of the explosions was very strong and frightening because it seemed that death was imminent. At one point, I thought I had been hit with shrapnel. I ran my hand over my face and was happy to find I wasn’t hit. I was quite thin, so the cold water was taking its toll, and I felt I couldn’t continue much longer. After swimming for what seemed like an eternity I simply stopped because I was totally exhausted and freezing and thought to myself, ‘This is it, I’m gonna die,’” Chet reflected.

Chet didn’t remember anything after that thought of death until he woke up with a warm blanket covering him.

“There was soft music in the background and the sudden and miraculous change from complete misery to divine comfort indicated to me I had died and was now in Purgatory,” he said.

He removed the blanket from over his face and was actually disappointed to find he was alive and lying on the deck in the wardroom of the USS Fitch; most of the wounded from the Corry were lying there as well.

“Later, I was removed by stretcher and put aboard the Barnett. After spending a few days in a hospital in England, I was diagnosed with having suffered from hypothermia and released to join the rest of the crew. I later learned that I had been spotted by a damaged whaleboat that had no room aboard because they were carrying so many of the wounded. I was floating still in the water and the area around my mouth was covered with foam, so I appeared to be dead to them. However, Lt. Vanelli had them take me in tow and tie me to the gunwale, and keep my head above water in hope that I would still be alive. I was then picked up by a torpedo boat and then put aboard the Fitch. I was unconscious the entire time until I awoke in the wardroom.”

Chet admits that his faith had a lot to do with his rescue and he thanks God every day for his rescue and survival.

Furtek was born in the Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia. He joined the Navy on his 17th birthday in 1943 and served for three years. He also had an older brother who served in the Navy. He currently lives in Furlong with his wife of almost 60 years, Nancy. He has a daughter, Deborah, three grandchildren, and three great-granddaughters with a great- grandson on the way. He and his wife are members of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Buckingham and he is a member of Doylestown VFW Post 175.

David Kolmetzky

2010-10-20T13:53:00.001-04:00

Military career as a recruiter turns to career with the VA.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

Retired U.S. Air Force SMSgt. David J. Kolmetzky may have officially retired from the military, but in his current job, he continues to serve his country.

Kolmetzky is marking his first year as administrative officer of Washington Crossing National Cemetery.

The first burials at the 131st national cemetery took place Jan. 20, 2010.

Administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the new 205-acre national cemetery will serve veterans’ needs for at least the next 50 years. The cemetery will serve approximately 580,000 veterans in the Philadelphia metropolitan area.

After 22 years in the Air Force, Kolmetzky’s new employer is the VA. He joined the Air Force when he was 18 and served in the military from Oct. 1987 to Aug. 2009 until he was 42.
He applied on line through USA Jobs. “I actually left a job with the Department of Labor in Philadelphia to take this one, because I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a retirement still being able to serve,” he said.

Kolmetzky said he cannot think of anything as rewarding as “honoring veterans and their families like we do here everyday. It’s the next best thing to still being in active duty.”
When he was 6, his family moved to the Bustleton area of Northeast Philadelphia from the Mayfair section.

Most of his relatives were law enforcement officers, but his grandfather served in the Pennsylvania National Guard. His father, Benjamin Kolmetzky, was a Philadelphia police inspector. He is 87 and lives in Bucks County.

Kolmetzky spent most of his career as a recruiter. “I did not deploy in support of any battles or operations,” he noted.

“The reason I stayed in so long and stayed with Air Force recruiting for so long was just the number of kids I was able to give an opportunity to like I had myself,” he said. “I helped kids get into the Air Force who had everything in life they needed to kids that had nothing.

“There was one young man in Michigan,” Kolmetzky remembered. “I went to meet him and interview him and talk about the Air Force,” he said. “He lived in a 12 x12 cinderblock home — one room — chickens running through the house.”

Kolmetzky said the kids slept on a board that was placed across the rafters with a mattress on it. He had a brother and a sister as well. “He joined and came back. Just to see that change in any young man or young woman was about as heartwarming and rewarding as anything.”

But, that’s one story. In the 19 years he was a recruiter, he had a hand in over 3,000 men and women joining the Air Force in one way or another. He said he hopes he made a difference in their lives.

“I still have every letter that was ever written to me from all my recruits,” Kolmetzky said. Call him sentimental. He has all of his 200 recruits’ basic training photographs.

When he completed his tour as a recruiter and then as he moved through different supervision or leadership positions, he technically stopped recruiting.

“But I supervised the recruiters that did,” he said. “I worked at the processing stations where they joined. So, I had a hand one way or another of over 3000.”

Kolmetzky started as an aircraft armaments systems specialist. For three years, he maintained the weapons systems on B52 aircrafts. Then, he became an Air Force recruiter and did that for the next 19 years.

He retired as a production superintendent in charge of recruiting for New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

When asked what his hope is for the country, the world and children, he said, “I would hope that someday there would be no need for the military. I would just love to see every country, every nationality, every religion respect one another.”

Regarding world peace, he said, “I would hope it would be in my children’s time.”

He is a member of the American Legion Post 79 in New Hope, which is where the veterans’ group, the Guardians of the National Cemetery, is based. Group members are active in the formal ceremonies held at the cemetery.

Kolmetzky lives with his wife, Lynn, in Warminster with their children, Devin, 15, and Hannah, 12. Devin is a sophomore at Archbishop Wood High School. Hannah is in the seventh grade at St. Joseph/St. Roberts School.

Lynn is a radiological technologist specializing in mammography at Lansdale Hospital.

Don H. Gee

2010-10-13T14:02:00.002-04:00

Marine hunted down snipers during Missile Crisis.

By Natalya Bucuy, Correspondent

“Whatever I am today I owe it to the Marine Corps.”

For military journalist and public affairs chief Don H. Gee, life as a Marine did not end after his departure from the Corps in 1977. He is, in fact, a Marine for life.

Gee was born in Bristol, but grew up in Warrington and graduated from Central Bucks Joint High School – now CB West. His father, a World War II Marine, did not push his son to join the military, but what he brought from his experiences in the Marine Corps attracted young Gee.

“When my father came home from World War II he didn’t talk much about it. The only thing he would say is that the times were rough,” Gee recalls. ”But I noticed that people he associated with, the Marines, they had a bond. I guess that’s pretty much what did it.

“I always wanted to join the Marines,” Gee says. “Even as a kid – you play cowboys and Indians – I played Marines and Indians.”

Gee’s 20-year Marine career began on November 20, 1957.

“I was 18 and I decided - now was the time to join the Marines,” Gee said. “I have absolutely no regrets.”

Gee chose public information specialty. He attended a Navy Journalist School in Great Lakes, Ill. As staff sergeant he managed and edited a number of Marine newspapers and publications.

Gee traveled the world with the Marine Corps. His training and service within the United States’ borders took him to California, Florida, Illinois, Georgia, and Virginia. After completing his training Gee went on a six-month Mediterranean cruise, then a two-month Caribbean cruise.

Gee’s favorite tour took him to Iwakuni, Japan – the location of Marine Corps air station, where Gee taught conversational English to auto plant workers.

“I had the opportunity to explore a culture that I only heard about,” he says. “When you get involved with people like that you learn a lot more about the culture and a lot of myths are dispelled. You have to experience it. To me it was more than educational. It was educational and fun.”

Gee goes on to explain that his father was a World War II veteran to whom Japanese were “the bad guys.” Gee’s experience in Japan gave him an opportunity to learn for himself what Japanese culture was about. He made friends and exchanged cultural values.

Even though Gee never went to Vietnam – “I think they were saving me for the big one,” he says, he smelled the gunfire of the Cuban Missile Crisis in Dominican Republic as his squad knocked on doors in Santo Domingo looking for hiding snipers.

Gee retired as a gunnery sergeant in 1977. He continued his communication career as a public affairs officer for various organizations, including a number of veterans’ associations. He graduated with a degree in business administration from Delaware Valley College in 1987.

Even though Gee celebrates his 71st birthday this October, he is far from quiet retirement.
Working 18 hours a day from his home office in Chalfont, Gee manages DHG and Associates together with his wife, Iris. Their organization provides a variety of membership services to veterans’ organizations.

For the past few years Gee also served as grand marshal of the Doylestown Memorial Day Parade.

Gee has two children – son Don Jr. and daughter Tammy. Don Jr. continued the family path and served in the Marine Corps.

Gee is proud of his family tradition with the Marines. Years after leaving the Marine Corps, Gee values his military years and Marine Corps connections more than anything.

“Being a Marine is an obligation you can never fulfill,” he says. “Society holds Marines to a higher standard. The opinions of my Marine friends are more important to me than anyone else’s. There is no hidden agenda with the Marines – what you see is what you get.”

Jonathan Gremminger

2010-10-06T13:27:00.002-04:00

Local Marine spent months training Afghan police.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Local Marine Jonathan Gremminger is very glad to be home, and to once again be able to enjoy “creature comforts” like a soft mattress and running water. For the five months prior to Gremminger’s mid-September return to the U.S. he was in a place that had no such comforts. The Holland resident was stationed in an especially desolate region of Afghanistan, training members of the Afghan police and helping to restore the region from a war-ravaged state. Gremminger says he got much personal growth and gratification from the experience, and explains that military service is in his blood.

Gremminger was born on July 28, 1987 at the Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune to mother Stacy and father Eric, a Marine himself who was serving at the time. Gremminger grew up in Holland, along with brothers Eric and Frank. The latter, Gremminger says, is currently in the Navy, aboard a ship headed for Pakistan.

“My father and brother definitely had an influence on me,” Gremminger says in regard to his reasons for enlisting. “I thought I should definitely do at least one tour and do my part.”

A 2005 Council Rock South graduate, Gremminger first studied international politics and economics at Penn State. In 2006, following his freshman year, he joined the Marine Corps Reserves. He graduated in 2009, all the while serving the customary one weekend per month and two weeks per year with the Reserves. He enrolled in law school at Drexel, then in November was summoned, along with 38 other enlistees, to report to a training facility in Pittsburgh.

By January of 2010 he was headed to North Carolina’s Cherry Point, a Marine Corps Air Station not far from Camp Lejeune. He was a Lance Corporal, promoted to Corporal once he and the rest of his unit landed in Afghanistan, after a Valentine’s Day departure led them through Kyrgyzstan. The crew set down at Camp Leatherneck, where they offered force protection and aided British soldiers. Before long they began their new assignment of police mentoring, moving on to Now Zad, a town in southern Afghanistan.

“We were training Afghan police, being accountable for them, going on patrols with them and having them work with the Afghan army,” Gremminger says, noting that the police and the army often speak different languages and rarely get along.

Gremminger says Now Zad was strewn with IEDs, a number of which he personally saw detonate. If not found and dismantled by Afghan de-miners, who’d sweep areas for old and new explosives, Taliban-planted IEDs would often be set off by vehicles. Fortunately, Gremminger explains, most current military vehicles are far more enforced than traditional Humvees; during his time served, Gremminger saw only IED-related injuries, and no fatalities.

“I can’t complain,” Gremminger says. “A lot of Marines have seen more dangerous situations with more hazardous conditions.”

What Gremminger did see was the gradual rebirth of a community, ushered along by his own efforts. On establishing a rapport with the Afghan police, he says mealtime played a pivotal role. He says Afghan people take rituals like gathering around together to eat very seriously, and rushing through the process is not an option. According to Gremminger, shifting from completing his duties and thinking in an “all-business” U.S. mindset was challenging, but invaluable in getting to know the locals.

When Gremminger and company first arrived in Now Zad, the town “was half-rubble and housing only 10 percent of its population,” the soldier says. Over their five months of service, the Marines saw the population grow to nearly five times its size; the market, or bazaar, expand and thrive with the opening of additional shops; and a decrease of Taliban control as the incresingly fortified Afghan police expanded its influence and gained more territory. By the time the Marines’ mission had neared completion, the number of local officers had increased from 14 to 100.

“Once people saw the security was stabilizing, they began to return to their homes,” Gremminger says of the slowly repopulated region.

Gremminger was of course ready to return home, too. He and his peers departed Afghanistan around Dec. 9, spent a couple of days in transit, then returned to Cherry Point. Retracing his steps, he then went back to his Pittsburgh training facility for “decompression and transition classes,” before finally touching down again at his Holland home on Friday, Oct. 1. While basking in his creature comforts, the 23-year-old speaks of what his tour taught him.

“It has a definite maturing effect,” he says, “and I’m sure that’s even more true for the even younger guys over there. And it lets you see how other people live. So many people study abroad, but they don’t really get to see how the other half lives – the poor majority.”

Having done his part, Gremminger says he doesn’t plan on pursuing a career in the military. Instead, he’s aiming to go back to law school next fall, with an ultimate goal of practicing business or contract law. For now, he says he’s in search of “some work to hold [him] off,” along with activities that will help him remain active.

“Anything that keeps me moving,” he says.

Charles L. Fulton

2010-09-30T04:13:00.002-04:00

WWII infantryman was shot while fighting in France.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

“We had to beat the Germans,” said World War II veteran Charles L. Fulton of Newtown. “Hitler had to go – no question about it.”

For two months, Fulton fought the German war machine in the mountains of Eastern France as a member of the 103rd infantry division.

“You never knew, from one minute to the next, if you’re going to have a bullet go through your head,” said Fulton. “My whole service life was full of pure unadulterated luck.”

The mountains of France were a world away from his home in St. Paul, Minn., where he spent his childhood during the 1920s and 1930s.

Fulton was born in Minneapolis, Minn., and grew up in St. Paul. He graduated from high school in Jan. 1943 when he was still 17. When he turned 18 that April he received his draft notice in the mail.

“I had tried to enlist in the Marines with one of my friends. That was the height of World War II. Very patriotic. Everybody wanted to do their part. I was looking forward to it,” he said.

The Marines, however, wouldn’t take him because he was nearsighted in his left eye. “It’s a good thing because my friend was killed in Tarawa and I’m sure I would have been killed along with him.”

Instead, he found himself in the Army. “They took me as limited service, sending me to basic training as a medic. I never understood why medics didn’t have to have good eye sight,” he said.
His status was soon changed from limited to general service.

“I wound up with the 103rd infantry division as a PFC rifleman and took extensive combat infantry training,” he said.

The division landed in Marseilles, France, in October 1944.

“Ironies of all ironies, the 103rd was committed to combat in the Vosges Mountains on Nov. 11, 1944. Twenty-six years after the Armistice was signed to stop World War I, I was in the mountains of France committed to combat, fighting the self-same Germans in the self-same country. I never got over that irony.”

Their objective was to wipe out the Germans in the Vosges Mountains, which forms the rugged border between Germany and France.

On Jan. 11, 1945, exactly two months after landing in France, he was wounded in action along the German border as he fled machine gun fire.

“We went into a defensive position near Forbach. There was snow and unbelievably cold weather. We were told to start an attack to push the Germans back into Germany. I was second scout that time. Another buddy of mine was in front of me and we were going along a hillside and a sniper put a bullet to his helmet. I thought he was dead and I called the medics to get him out of there. Three of us started down a hillside to see if we could outflank the sniper when a German machine gun opened up on us.”

Bullets sliced through the men on either side of him, killing both where they stood.

“How they missed me, I don’t know,” he said. “I dove behind a pine tree and I can still see it. I was sitting there trying to edge out there and machine gun bullets were digging up the ground around me. A bullet hit my helmet and knocked it off. The tree starts to splinter in front of me. My rifle gets knocked out of my hand. And I decided I better get out of there.

“I stood up and took one step and a baseball smashes me in the side and the next thing I know I’m laying down and starring up at the blue sky,” he said. “I thought I was dead. I absolutely couldn’t feel anything on my left side, but I put my hand over there and my arm was there. It was full of blood, of course. I jumped up, and again by miracle upon miracle, I ran up the hill and the machine gun chased me every inch of the way. I managed to get over the hill and walked to the aid station.”

The bullet had entered his left arm, nicked a nerve and tore out his shoulder blade and muscle. A medic team transported him to a field hospital where he was operated on.

The doctor told him, “You know you didn’t have to get yourself shot. You have a touch of Trench foot. You’ve got the start of pneumonia. You would have been back here anyway.”

He was aboard a hospital ship on his way home when the war officially ended in Europe.

One of the most emotional times of his life was standing on deck and seeing the Statue of Liberty come into view. “That was really something,” he said.

Back at home, he was sent to a hospital in Spokane, Wash. He was eventually granted a 30 day leave to return home to St. Paul. He was there when the war in Japan ended with the dropping of the Atomic Bomb.

“I forever bless President Truman to this day because I was an experienced combat infantryman and there was no way that I wouldn’t have been a replacement for the thousands that would have been killed invading Japan,” said Fulton.

Following his discharged in Feb. 1945, he returned to school under the GI bill. He attended McAllister College before transferring to the University of Maryland. That’s where he met his wife, Fay.

After graduation in 1951, he worked at the naval ordinance lab in Silver Spring, Md., the Frankford Arsenal in Philadelphia and the Picatinny Arsenal in New York before retiring in 1989 one year before his 65th birthday.

He documented his wartime experiences in the book, “My Draftee Life,” which he wrote for his sons.

On a return visit to France, he found the graves of the two men who were on either side of him when the machine gun started firing back in 1945. “I saw where I would have been buried. That was very emotional,” he said. “You just cry internally. There, for the grace of God, would have been me.”

Bill Stevens

2010-09-22T02:30:00.002-04:00

Military Police Captain hears the echoes of war.

By Natalya Bucuy, Correspondent

Bill Stevens is a busy guy.

He serves as a councilman on Doylestown Borough Council. He coordinates sports officials for four Eastern collegiate conferences. He plays softball three times a week.

He is also a member of American Legion Post 210 in Doylestown and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW).

A graduate of Pennsylvania Military College, Stevens was commissioned as a Lieutenant to the Military Police Corps in 1965. From there he moved closer and closer to the combat zones of Vietnam.

First, Stevens went to Georgia for training. From there he was sent to Washington to form a military police unit. Then his and two other military police companies packed their gear to ship overseas. Only no unit knew where to until the last minute.

Steven’s company did not go to Vietnam. Instead Stevens and his men went to Ryukyu Islands – a cluster of about 50 islands south of Japan. The main island in the cluster, Okinawa, housed a U.S. military base with every branch of the military present. It became a home base for Stevens for the next three years as he served as a military policeman.

Okinawa, infamous for the battle of Okinawa during World War II, served as an important communication zone – a base of support for those fighting in Vietnam.

Although located more than 700 miles from the combat zones, Okinawa heard the echoes of the war as soldiers came and went through the base, Stevens recalls.

“People were coming and going; many of our people went. We referred to Vietnam as ‘down south,’ we never said, ‘Vietnam,’” Stevens remembers. “We had a lot of men who went back and forth to Vietnam for different reasons. I had a good friend who ran a dog training school so he went down there every month. The first Special Forces group was stationed there and they were always gone, we would never see them there.”

Stevens’ job was to run the military police station on the island, where the MP was the major police force.

His wife joined him on the island and worked as a librarian. The couple’s first daughter, Julie, was born there.

Stevens recalls that most of his classmates form college went to Vietnam, as did a lot of his friends. None of his military police friends died in combat, but some other friends did, he recalls. A close family friend, whom Stevens wrote to during the war, was killed right before Stevens went to the Army.

“That hit pretty close to home,” Stevens remembered.

Stevens said that though it was a given that he would be sent to Vietnam when he joined the Army, he never got to go.

“I wanted to go. Even though I had a family, I wanted to go,” Stevens said.

In 1968 Stevens left the Army as a Captain. His father told him he needed help with the family business, so Stevens made the decision.

“I was going to stay and become a general, but I realized after two years I wasn’t going to become a general,” Stevens said.

Once Stevens returned home he helped his father with the family business for two years and then became a commercial banker.

“That was the best job I ever had,” Stevens said.

For the past 32 years Stevens and his family have lived in Doylestown. Stevens has three children, Julie, 43, Jessica 40, and Tim, 36, who all reside in Bucks County.

Timothy Loux

2010-09-08T13:33:00.002-04:00

Vietnam Veteran lost both legs in mine explosion.

By Bob Staranowicz, Correspondent

“I was a bit embarrassed when I was taken to the hospital after my encounter with a Claymore mine. I didn’t have my dog tags on but was able to give my Social Security number to the hospital staff even though I was pretty doped up.”

A Claymore is a directional anti-personnel mine used by the U.S. military. Unfortunately for Tim, this one was probably bought by the Viet Cong on the black market. This device fires shrapnel, in the form of steel balls, out to about 100 meters across a 60-degree arc to the front of it. It is used primarily in ambushes and as an anti-infiltration device against enemy infantry. Because of that encounter with a Claymore mine, Timothy Loux, formerly of Dublin, is a double amputee.

Tim was born in Trenton, but grew up in Dublin Borough. The oldest of three children, he attended Pennridge High School, and Bucks County Community College where he received an associates degree in computer technology. Tim had trouble finding a job as a programmer, so he transferred to Delaware Valley College and changed his major to business administration. Unfortunately, this change in his major caused Tim to lose his student deferment and he was later drafted in August of 1970.

After basic training at Fort Dix, he was sent to Fort Polk, Louisiana for Advanced Infantry Training. Luckily, Tim’s commanding officer was able to move a few men into Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) training at Fort Knox. This was supposed to prolong his stateside service and keep him out of Vietnam a bit longer, but after three weeks of training, he was off to Vietnam in January of 1971.

Tim arrived in Long Bihn, a popular entrance point for many new arrivals, and was assigned to the 11th Infantry of the 5th Division Mechanized. Mechanized infantry are infantry equipped with armored personnel carriers (APCs), or infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) for transport and combat. He then joined his permanent squad a few weeks later in Khe Sahn.

“We performed numerous search-and-destroy missions in the area, but had little contact with the enemy. But, one night we were hit by a barrage of mortars and lost one of our mortar guns. Luckily, no one was injured in that attack,” Tim recalled.

Tim also had a close call with “friendly-fire” mortar rounds called in by his lieutenant to take out an enemy position dropped right in front of his perimeter.

Walking point was the worst duty you could have in Vietnam. A point man assumes the first and most exposed position in a combat military formation and is frequently the first to take hostile fire. On this mission, Tim was “volunteered” to walk point since the regular point man was heading home soon. It was an extremely hot day and the squad had stopped for lunch. The squad had a trained dog to sniff out mines but due to the extreme heat, the handler did not feel the dog could accurately predict in the situation.

Approaching the wooded area, the squad came upon a tank trail with many small footprints in the sand. Tim left the trail and had to walk through high grass for about 100 yards.

“It was quite unsettling,” Tim recalled. “I felt a blast to my right and found myself lying on my back.” Tim tried to get up but could not. “I could not use my legs even though I noticed that my boots were still intact.” Tim remained there in the intense heat until the medevac chopper arrived. Helicopters in Vietnam were, for the most part, the difference between living and dying for the many wounded who were rescued from the field.

Tim feels lucky that he was close to that Claymore when it ignited because if he were farther away, he may have been injured more seriously or even killed, since the Claymore wasn’t able to spread its shrapnel to its intended further range. So, being at close range, his life was spared.

Tim had both legs amputated below the knee and after spending a few days in a hospital in Quang Tri in the northern part of South Vietnam he was moved to Japan. It was there where a fellow Christian soldier, Wayne Moore, who was the radio man from his platoon, came to visit him.

Tim was sent home to the Valley Forge General Hospital where he was able to see his family. He spent 11 months recuperating and attributes his faith in God and strong supportive family in assisting his recovery.

Tim now lives in Morris, Pa., with his wife of 33 years. They have three children, Megan, Matthew and Nathan, and two grandchildren. Tim recently worked as a controller for Harley Davidson. He enjoys fishing and hunting and both he and his wife are NASCAR fans.

Tim recently returned to the area to speak at Veterans Day ceremonies at Plumstead Christian School where he told his story and displayed the courage and faith that has guided him through life since his tragic accident in Vietnam.

Norman A. Moorhead

2010-09-01T12:42:00.002-04:00

U.S. Air Force veteran remembers the shock of Kennedy’s assassination.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

The date was Nov. 22, 1963 when John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United Sates, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time.

Kennedy was fatally shot while riding with his wife, Jacqueline, in a Presidential motorcade.
U.S. Air Force Reserve Staff Sgt. Norman A. Moorhead of Newtown Township remembers what he was doing on that day.

“Our whole squad at Sheppard Air Force Base was on the drill pad when they came over the PA system and they said, ‘Our Commander and Chief has just been shot and killed.’”

Moorhead said he, like countless others, just simply felt ill when he heard the shocking news.
“It is something that should never have happened in my opinion,” he said.

The veteran served in the U.S. Air Force from 1963 to 1967. Some of that time was spent at Naha Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan. The base was the major support during the Vietnam War.

Calling the time period in which he served “the Vietnam era,” Moorhead talks openly about how the American servicemen were treated when they came home from Vietnam. “Some of the guys that came back from Vietnam — I don’t know how to say it — but they were not very welcome.
“They weren’t treated the way they should’ve been treated and that kind of bothered me a little bit,” he said. “Everyone who was in the military was in there to fight for our country and that’s what these guys were doing. They weren’t treated very fairly when they came out. That has since changed though.”

Moorhead graduated from Council Rock High School in June 1963 and enlisted in the Air Force on Sept. 10. “I was sent down to Lackland Air Force Base to complete my basic training,” he said.

He joined the Air Force almost 50 years ago because it “was just something I planned on doing. My buddy wanted to join the Navy, but he didn’t. I wanted to join the Air Force. I had a cousin in the Air Force. That’s probably one of the reasons.”

He completed his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, before being transferred to Sheppard Air Force Base where he learned what he was going to be doing when he was in the service.

“I was on the alert crew, civil engineering squad,” he said. “That was my job when I was overseas, but there was nothing really outrageous or spectacular about it.”

Moorhead’s job had to do with generators for the bases. His title was electrical power production specialist. When training was over, he was assigned to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. From there, he went to Okinawa, Japan and was stationed at Naha Air Force Base in Okinawa in the Pacific Air Force.

“I did have security clearance to get into special buildings on the bases,” he said.

“I was on what they called an alert crew overseas,” Moorhead said. “There was myself, I was an electrical power production specialist. There was an electrician, a plumber, heating and air conditioning person."

He was at Naha for 18 months and then was discharged from the Air Force with the rank of Airman First Class at Travis Air Force Base. But his discharge paper says: “Staff Sgt. United States Air Force Reserve,” he said, noting that was a promotion.

Moorhead was in the Air Force for four years active duty and for two years inactive duty. He was first an Airman 3rd Class with one stripe and was promoted to Airman 2nd Class with two stripes. He finished as an Airman 1st Class with three stripes.

Moorhead said being in the Air Force taught him a lot about discipline and how to take care of himself.

He came home to a law enforcement career. “In January 1968, I was hired by Newtown Township as a police officer,” Moorhead said. “I was promoted to sergeant. Later, I was promoted to captain. I retired as a captain with the Newtown Township Police Force.”

There was a big retirement party when Moorhead retired from the force in May 2008 after 40 years of service.

He is a member of the American Legion Morrell Smith Post 440 of Newtown. “I have been a post commander, assistant deputy sergeant at arms and now I am the service officer.”

Each year, Moorhead participates in Newtown’s Memorial Day Parade. In recent years, he has laid the wreaths at the veterans’ memorial near Newtown Borough Hall. He lays four other wreaths, including one at the gravesite of Morrell Smith. The American Legion in Newtown is named after him.

Moorhead and his wife, Linda, have two children, Karen and Jeff. The couple will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary in May 2011.

Jim Schuler

2010-08-25T13:48:00.004-04:00

Yardley resident served as a Radiomanin World War II and the Korean War.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

“Any sort of military operation must have communications,” says Jim Schuler, a Yardley resident and veteran who served in both World War II and the Korean War. Communications was Schuler’s specialty, and because of specialists like him (Radiomen, they were called), a great many American soldiers were able to reach their destinations safely and effectively. Now 84, Schuler still distinctly recalls the places he visited during his time served. And why shouldn’t he? His stops included Iwo Jima and Kure, a base next door to Hiroshima.

Before Schuler enlisted in the Navy, he attended the University of Missouri for one semester. Before that, he attended Sullivan High School in Sullivan, Mo. That’s where he was born, to parents James R. and Grace, but he says he grew up all through the Midwest. James R. was a highway contracting superintendent, and wherever the road took him, it took the family (which also included Schuler’s younger siblings, Robert and Linda). Schuler estimates he went to “20-some schools” in multiple states before finally graduating from Sullivan High in 1942.

Schuler enlisted at 17, a year before he could be drafted into the Army. After preliminary training, the Navy sent him to the University of Idaho for three months of communications training, where he’d get to know the radios of a Radioman. From there he headed out to Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base in Southern California. After partnering with the Marines for amphibious training, whereby he learned to be part of the liaison communication between ship and shore for incoming troops, Schuler moved on to Pearl Harbor, where he awaited orders.

“It was a personnel reassignment base,” Schuler says of Pearl Harbor. “They took us where they needed us. Some went with the Navy, some stayed behind.”

Schuler, it turned out, was needed in Iwo Jima, which he set out for in 1944.

“I was not engaged in the on-beach fighting, but it was very hostile,” says Schuler, who was based on a ship off the Iwo Jima coast. Helping to direct troops to shore via radio communication, he says the enemy had cannons that could have easily taken out his ship, and kamikaze pilots swirled overhead, attacking when not shot down by the Air Force.

After Iwo Jima, Schuler – who was not assigned to a ship’s company but was instead an “orphan,” going wherever the military sent him – made his way to Kure, a former Japanese naval base five miles from a then-already-bombed Hiroshima. He was performing the same duties, albeit this time on shore. Schuler and his fellow soldiers set up a port authority for radio communication in the village, which was separated from Hiroshima by a mountain range (the very thing that saved Kure from being leveled as well, Schuler says).

In 1945, Schuler left to set up another port authority in Tokyo, which at that point had surrendered, but still needed a properly established communications presence.

“You need that whether it’s war or peace,” Schuler says. “Our function was to direct traffic and to maintain communications with the Navy ships coming into port. They had to resupply and maintain the harmony and control of the country.”

Tokyo was Schuler’s last stop, and in 1946, he returned to the U.S. and was discharged as a Petty Officer First Class. He married is sweetheart, Diana, whom he hadn’t seen since 10th grade in Texas (“We wrote lots of letters,” he says). He completed a degree at Washington University in St. Louis, majoring in accounting and minoring in law, and shortly thereafter, he and Diana had a daughter, Diane. The familsettled down in a home in St. Louis, and then, Schuler got the call – the call that said he wasn’t quite finished with the military.

Though his one year as an inactive duty reserve soldier was nearly finished, the nationwide legislation to extend such terms drew him back in, and in 1950, he was called to fight in Korea.
Patrolling a large river along the 38th parallel, Schuler was tasked to draw fire from the North Koreans, and call in the Air Force to bomb and strafe (or attack with machine guns) the North Korean gun positions. He and his crew also took South Korean rangers up into North Korea to capture enemy soldiers for interrogation. Suffering a ship attack that claimed the lives of a few of his peers, Schuler was more than ready to come home for good when second stint at war came to an end after 13 months.

Upon his return, Schuler went to work for NCR Corporation (nee National Cash Register Company), where he worked with computers for 39 years before retiring as a state marketing director in 1988. He spent the subsequent years traveling with Diana, “his gal,” to everywhere from China to Russia to Germany to Australia, until she sadly passed away in 2007.

“I’m glad we had the time to travel together,” Schuler says.

These days, Schuler looks forward to the time he can spend with daughter Diane, his other daughter, Susan, and his granddaughters, Emily and Jessica. A born fighter, he recently emerged safely from a bout with cancer, and is focused on maintaining his health.

“Today, I feel good,” he says.

John Galione

2010-08-18T13:11:00.002-04:00

Bristolian’s discovery of missiles changed America’s war-time strategy in Germany.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com

“The Journey of Private Galione” is not only an incredible forthcoming story about a Bristol veteran, but it is the name of a book that chronicles the military accomplishments of the author's father.

Mary Nahas, a registered nurse and 1975 Bristol High alum, has been on a mission to get her father's story told, despite his lifelong humble nature.

“My father has died and I want to finally honor him for saving the people and bringing the weapons here to America,” said Nahas.

Specifically, Nahas is referencing her father's heroics in April of 1945.

In an excerpt from the description from Nahas' book, we learn that “after walking over a hundred miles to search for the prisoners of labor camps, an exhausted Private Galione found a secret tunnel, a train car filled with corpses, a German guard shooting at him, and prisoners praying for rescue behind a locked gate.”

According to Nahas, America's objective at the time, was solely to eliminate enemy opposition, not to search for camps. But, Galione's discovery of Mittelbau Dora and Nordhausen Concentration Camps and the German creation of ballistic missiles led to a change in approach.
Now, the main American objective was to search for and seize missiles.

“Private Galione's discovery saved the prisoners of Dora-Nordhausen and related camps, and changed the future of the United States and the world,” writes Nahas.

*****
John Galione was born January 25, 1919, in the famous haunted Long Island farmhouse that Douglas Fairbanks Sr. later bought.

John and several siblings moved to Pennsylvania's King's Farm, now known as Penn Warner Club.

Galione was at “Fields’ Dance Hall” on Wood Street, currently the Dragon Moon Martial Arts Association, when he met his wife, Viola.

Viola, formerly called Iole, tripped down the steps into John Galione’s arms.

After the couple married, they moved to Bristol and had a daughter. John then went to war. Upon returning, John and Viola had two more daughters.

John was not only a war hero, but an inventor, as well. He invented and designed a pollution system that kept five 3M Manufacturing facilities from shutting down. He also invented a harmonica holster which enabled him to play guitar and two harmonicas simultaneously.

But despite all of this, arguably Galione's greatest accomplishment was taking care of his beloved wife during a 10-year run of Alzheimer's disease.

John Galione passed away on June 23, 1999, at the age of 80, following a three-year fight with congestive heart failure. He received a military burial at Sunset Memorial Park in Feasterville, PA., where he rests beside his Viola.

*****
Two years ago Nahas had the opportunity to meet Charlie Lang, currently a New Jersey resident, one of the Jewish survivors of Mittelbau Dora's Nordhausen Death Camp.

Mary explained, “He was one of the Romananian Jews thrown in the camps when he was a young teenager. He was first in Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, and then inside Nordhausen Death Camp, the restricted zone of Mittelbau Dora. It's the place where they dumped the slave laborers who had become too weak to manufacture the missiles and left them there to die a slow death from starvation and disease.”

And Lang is not the only survivor who has many good things to say about John Galione. Michel Depierre, a Dora Survivor, echoed his appreciation for Galione:

“In a few more days I would have died. John Galione and his fellow soldiers saved my life!”

Richard G. Bleiler

2010-08-12T01:54:00.002-04:00

Korean War veteran served aboard oil tanker.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Two years before the start of the Korean War, 17-year-old Richard G. Bleiler walked into a recruiting office in Philadelphia and enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

The next three years and nine months would be among the most memorable of his life.

Bleiler grew up in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, graduating from Germantown High School in 1948. Less than three months later, he was a member of the U.S. Navy attending boot camp in Great Lakes, Ill.

“At that time, it was pretty much the way guys did it. You got out of school and you went and joined one of the services,” said Bleiler. “College wasn’t a big factor back in those days, not for the average guy.”

Bleiler had intended to join the Marine Corps. But when he got to the office, there was a Marine sergeant standing outside the door. “He got me by the arm and said, ‘I think we can use you in the Marines.’ I decided, ‘I think not.’ And I went and joined the Navy.”

After boot camp, he was sent to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, then to the island of Guam. He eventually wound up on the island of Saipan in the Marianas where he was stationed from January 1949 to June 1950.

Scattered with abandoned air strips, the island was in the process of being demobilized following World War II. “Literally hundreds of planes, anything from B-51 fighters up to B-29 bombers, were just left there — like a big junkyard,” said Bleiler.

He worked in the supply department unloading and loading ships and operating a forklift.
In his spare time, he and others would venture into the mountains where they explored caves containing the remains — bodies and skeletons — of Japanese soldiers. He has photographs showing piles of skulls and bones documenting the gruesome sight.

While en route back to the states for leave, the war started in Korea on June 25, 1950. So instead of getting his expected leave, Bleiler was sent to Bremerton, Wash., to help in the reconditioning of a small World War II escort aircraft carrier in the mothball fleet.

“If you have ever ridden passed an abandoned industrial site, you know what it looks like. These ships were the same way. They were falling apart and filthy dirty,” said Bleiler. “We eventually got the ship running again. They re-commissioned it. They threw a fast paint job on it and as soon as possible they sent us down to San Diego.”

From there, he made two trips as a seaman working on the deck of the USS Sitkoh Bay as it traveled from California to Japan carrying Marine Reservists and airplanes. After the second trip, he was transferred to the Naval Hospital in Oak Knoll, Calif., for treatment of minor frost bite to his hands and face.

Following his hospitalization, he was reassigned to the Navy oil tanker USS Taluga, where he spent the next 17 months as a gunner’s mate.

The ship traveled first to the Aleutian Islands before being reassigned to carry oil from Japan to the East Coast of Korea where they refueled a number of warships, including the USS New Jersey, Wisconsin and Iowa.

“We would keep going at a designated speed and these other ships would come up along side of us. We would string hoses over to them and we would fuel them while were under way,” he said.
The good thing, he said, was that after the ships were refueled, the crew of the Taluga would return to the coast of Japan. “The guys on the warships would stay there,” he said. “We had a lot better duty.”

The tanker spent about six months off the coast of Korea, protected by small destroyer escorts that traveled alongside.

The closest Bleiler came to combat was when a destroyer in the formation struck a mine. The explosion ripped off the bow of the ship and they lost 200 men, he said.

Bleiler said he considers his service among the most memorable of his life. “I’m grateful I came out unscathed. It was an experience you just can’t put a price on it. Had I joined the Marine Corps God only knows if I’d be here today. The Marine Corps and the Army took a hell of a pounding,” he said.

Following his discharged in May 1952, he returned to Pennsylvania where found a job with Bell of Pennsylvania.

During the 1950s, Bleiler installed phones in the newly-built homes in Levittown and Fairless Hills. He also worked on the phone systems at the sprawling US Steel Fairless Works plant and at the Bucks County Courier Times.

He married his wife, Louise, in 1953. They lived in Bensalem before moving to Middletown Township.

In late 1983, when the government broke up Bell, he took early retirement and formed his own company, RB Communications. He handled all the branches for First Federal Savings & Loan, Union Fidelity Insurance and the Bucks County Courier Times among many others. After his retirement in 1997 he and his wife moved to New Holland in Lancaster County.

They have two daughters, Pat Mervine of Langhorne and Linda Mooney of New Mexico, and one grandchild.

Raymond G. Bertles

2010-08-04T12:31:00.002-04:00

Korean War veteran was aeronautic radar mechanic.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Ray Bertles, recently marked his 80th birthday. He lives in Lower Makefield Township where he is a lifetime member of VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) Post 6393.

A veteran of the Korean War, Bertles looks back on the time he spent in the military as somewhat of a training ground. He also noted that being a Civil Air Patrol Cadet (CAPC) as a teenager and his education at Trenton Central High School made a significant impact on his life.
He wanted to go into the Air Force pilot training program, though he did not go to pilot training until he worked in the commercial air transportation industry.

“The officer in charge of our unit, knowing what I wanted to do, told me because of the extensive training I had in electronics and radar, rather than going to pilot training on completion of officer candidate school said I would in all likelihood become an electronics officer,” he recounted.
“Not wanting to become an electronics officer, I withdrew my application for officer candidate school,” he said.

Bertles was already flying at the young age of 15 and took his first solo flight when he was 16. He couldn’t drive a car because the driving age was 18. Instead, he rode his bike to the airport.

Bertles, who enlisted when he was 18 and was discharged at 22, said he wants young people to be better aware of the CAPC program, which still exists today.

He started in the program when he was 14. “I’ve been keenly interested in aviation ever since I was a young toddler and I do mean very young,” Bertles said. “Because of this, I was able to build model airplanes when I was about nine years old.”

Basic training was at Lochland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. He completed Airborne Radar Mechanic School at Keesler Air Force Base in Beloxi, Miss. Upon completion of the training, he was transferred to the Air Force Base at Houston, Texas.

When the Korean War broke out, he was transferred to Fort Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio.

He was next transferred to the Korean Theater and was stationed at Tachikawa Air Force Base in Japan. He operated as an aeronautic radar mechanic with the 7th Signal Radio Maintenance team until it was absorbed into the 6400 Communication and Electronic Repair Squadron.

The squadron operated throughout Japan, down through Okinawa, Guam and Korea, which were all of the bases that operated in the Korean Theater, according to Bertles.

After the Air Force, he went to Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology in Illinois. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in aeronautics with a major in aircraft maintenance engineering.

After that, Bertles worked for the U.S. Naval Air Turbine test station in West Trenton. N.J. as an aeronautical power plant engineer and he tested jet engines.

On Dec. 5, 1955, he was hired by TWA (Transworld Airlines) as a student flight engineer and finished that program, and worked for TWA as a flight engineer.

Bertles became a pilot while working for TWA. ”In 1966, when there was a shortage of military pilots because of the Vietnam situation, TWA allowed some of the flight engineers with sufficient background to cross over to the pilot program,” he said.

He worked as a flight engineer, a captain and as instructor check captain and flew
On Dec. 23, 1989, he retired as an instructor check captain on the Lockheed 1011. He had worked for TWA for 34 years. And although he is retired, he still flies airplanes.

Bertles and his wife, Joan, who is in the aviation field, have lived in Lower Makefield since 1967. Bertles was born in Ewing, N.J. and is a lifelong resident of the area. The couple has four daughters and four grandchildren.

Vincent J. Deon

2010-07-28T15:16:00.002-04:00

Northampton supervisor enjoyed time in Air Force.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Vincent Deon gets uncommonly excited when discussing his military service. Looking back on his memorable stint in the U.S. Air Force, the 46-year-old Northampton resident makes frequent use of words like “awesome,” “cool” and “amazing.” He didn’t see any combat, and he’s quick to observe that those who did “are the true heroes,” but he’s nevertheless proud to have served his country, and he considers himself fortunate to have had a good time doing it.

But good times aren’t what got him into the service in the first place. Born to parents Pasquale and Anna Mae, Deon grew up in Levittown with siblings Pat, Mark, Michael, Lisa and Chris before moving to Langhorne in 1978. At 17, while attending Neshaminy Maple Point High School, two “very big” events occurred that Deon says steered him toward the military.

The first, he vividly remembers, took place on Aug. 20, 1980. Four of his best friends, in a car that would have contained him if not for a last-minute date, got into a horrific accident in Levittown. Two of them died. One of the survivors is currently at Pennswood Village in Newtown, unable to move or speak for the past 30 years.

“It was just one of those things...,” Deon says, searching for the words. “When you’re a kid, and you lose your friends, it’s a crazy, coming-of-age moment.”

The second event was a drastically long teachers’ strike in the Neshaminy School District, which Deon estimates ran from October 1980 to March 1981 – roughly 70 percent of Deon’s senior year of high school. He was still able to graduate on time, but he wasn’t learning anything, and he wasn’t attending meets or meeting with scouts to advance his career as a young gymnast.

Robbed of his friends and his education, Deon passed the time “working and playing” until, on March 5, 1981, he chose to join the military and save up money for college. He decided on the Air Force and enrolled in the Veterans Educational Assistance Program (VEAP), a type of G.I. Bill. Deemed “delayed entry,” Deon didn’t officially join until Nov. 11, 1981, shortly after he turned 18.

His first stop was at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas for basic training, then Sheppard Air Force Base for crew chief training. (A crew chief, Deon explains, is a noncommissioned officer in charge of a crew of maintenance specialists, but more on that in a bit.) After Sheppard, Deon headed to Hill Air Force Base in Utah. It was the spring of 1982. Deon was working on F-16s as a Tactical Aircraft Maintenance Technician. He was part of the 34th Tactical Fighter Squadron of the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing. Each squadron had 20 battle-ready fighter jets, which were deployed for test missions to bases in places like White Sands, N.M. and Wendover, Nev.

“It was very technical and fun,” Deon says, “but we always knew what was at stake. We knew we could eventually get killed if called into battle. We were next in line – we were on alert – for Grenada. We were mobilized and ready to go.”

But he didn’t go. Instead, Deon and his crew were selected for Red Flag, an aerial combat training exercise/competition that Deon considers a “big part” of his career. Held at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Red Flag is to the Air Force what Top Gun is to the Navy, Deon says. Squadrons from across the U.S. compete, and the finest may be selected for the elite Thunderbirds, the Air Force’s official air demo squadron known for its elaborate shows.

Initially sent in as an assistant crew chief, Deon would arrive at Nellis a week prior to Red Flag, and he and his fellow crew members would be in charge of logistics, making sure all of the aircraft maintenance equipment was set up properly, and that every plane had everything it needed, from tools to fuel.

“Red Flag represents the best of the best in the Air Force,” Deon says. “I was chosen to be a part of it. I was very proud of that. It was an awesome assignment.”

Deon was also chosen for Below the Zone (BTZ) promotion, a program reserved for superior Airmen and one that allowed him to enter non-commissioned officers school one year earlier than he’d anticipated. Selected by his squadron commander for BTZ, Deon became a Senior Airmen in the process, then, while in school, was given the rank of Sergeant.

“It was very cool to be a sergeant at 21,” Deon says. “It was awesome to have command bestow that responsibility on me.”

At the same time, Deon earned crew chief status, enhancing his duties when he returned to Red Flag for a second year. This time, he oversaw his crew. After that, with only a short time left in his tour of duty, and nearly a month’s worth of leave days saved up, Deon soon waved au revoir to the Air Force and returned home to hit the books.

With a handful of credits already under his belt from classes he took during time served, Deon attended St. Joseph’s University. He graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor’s degree in marketing. While at college, he met his wife, Grace, with whom he had a daughter, Aubrey, now 13. Upon graduation he dabbled in his family’s beer distribution business, ran a restaurant for nearly a decade, then spent the early half of the 2000s as an insurance adjuster.

He’s spent the last five years working as an employment recruiter for regional banks, assisting in the hiring of commercial lenders in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. In addition, he’s also spent the last five years serving on the Northampton Township Board of Supervisors, of which he is currently the chairman. He’s supported such initiatives as the Veteran Advisory Commission, which was set up by the board to oversee veterans’ concerns in the township.

When asked what he got out of the military, Deon throws out a lot of responses: “Maturity. Humility. Respect. Honesty. Integrity. Core values.”

And, of course, some fun and excitement, too.

Dick Neelan

2010-07-15T11:32:00.002-04:00

A dream out at sea during WWII leads to 64 years of marriage.

By Matthew Fleishman, BucksLocalNews.com

While working outside of Pittsburgh in the 1940s, Dick Neelan did not have to fight in World War II, but while out at sea, a dream changed the rest of his life.

Neelan was a machinist on his second deferment in 1943, but his younger brother, Robert, got drafted, so Neelan enlisted to fight.

“I had deferments because I was working in the defense industry,” said Neelan. “I got out of my second deferment because my brother was drafted. Fortunately or unfortunately, I had tried to get into the Marines, but they were filled, so I joined the Navy.”

Neelan tried to stay with his brother, but he graduated two weeks ahead of Robert, and volunteered for the submarine service, which sent Neelan to the Pacific Ocean. Robert did the same two weeks later, winding up in Florida.

“When I graduated, they gave me three choices – Southwest Pacific, Atlantic or Florida,” said Neelan. “I chose Florida but wound up in the Pacific Ocean. He chose the Pacific and wound up in Florida.”

After graduating as a gunner’s mate, Neelan was sent to California to train, and then took a converted carrier to Pearl Harbor. From there, he was assigned to a sub-tender, which would go from island to island repairing American ships.

While this type of duty took Neelan throughout the South Pacific, including Guam, Majuro and Atoll, it did not last long, as he was assigned to the USS Kingfish as a gunner’s mate in 1944.

Aboard the Kingfish, Neelan was part of several patrols, taking out Japanese convoys, which would have brought vital supplies to Japanese troops in the region.

“During one of the patrols, we picked up a Japanese convoy on radar and tracked it all day,” said Neelan. “We fired and took out a few of their ships, and they were dropping depth charges to hit us, but we had already made it out to the horizon and just watched them looking for us, but we were nowhere around.”

After the patrols, the USS Kingfish and its crew were assigned to lifeguard duty in the Pacific, meaning they were the rescue crew for pilots that were shot down or forced to eject from their planes.

“We went on flier guard duty, and picked up a few pilots during that time,” said Neelan. “One was on a raft for two days when we found him. Another barely even got wet because he landed right near us.”

While his tour of duty in the Navy sent Neelan throughout the Pacific Ocean, one night out at sea set up the rest of his life. One night, Neelan had a dream about a girl he had dated before enlisting to fight. The two went out a few times but nothing came of it until the dream.

“My wife and I dated before the Navy and then stopped for some reason,” said Neelan. “Then out at sea, I had a dream about her, so I wrote her a letter. We got married in April 1946.
“It worked out good for me,” continued Neelan. “It was the best thing that happened to me. Marrying her is the one thing I did right in my life.”

Dick and Ruth moved to Yardley in 1965, and have three daughters, eight grandchildren and “two-and-a-half great-grandchildren.”

“One is on the way,” said Neelan.

Despite a tour of duty in the U.S. Navy, and more than 30 years working for U.S. Steel, Neelan says that he is doing his most important work right now – taking care of Ruth, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2008.

“This is my time to take care of her,” said Neelan. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I hope everybody is as lucky as we are because we grow closer and closer each day.”

Graceon White Jr.

2010-07-07T13:36:00.004-04:00

Bristol’s only Korean War casualty is remembered.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com

Over 450,000 Americans died in the Korean War and World War II. Only one from Bristol, according to most sources.

A member of the Bristol High School Class of 1950, Sergeant First Class Graceon H. White, Jr. served as squad leader with the 7th Infantry Division, 17th Infantry Regiment in the U.S. Army.
White died during this week (July 10) in 1952 at the tender age of 20, while on patrol duty.
White lived a short life, but still has a story worth telling from his years before his untimely death.

White was a varsity football player in Bristol High. He lived with his paternal grandmother, Mrs. Lucy White, since his widowed dad worked out of town quite often.

After graduation from high school in the Summer of 1950, White took a job in Bristol Borough at Leedom’s Carpet Mill on Beaver Street before he enlisted in the Army in March of 1951.
At the time of his death, his father, Graceon H. White, Sr. and his stepmother, Mildred White and his only sibling, Marie White, survived him.

Graceon, in his short life of two decades, was unable to leave a lot of history but he left a lot of heart. He gave his all in what has been termed “The Forgotten War.”

Graceon served with Corporal Fred Bernerd McGee, Sr., who distinguished himself by gallantry in action near Tang-Wan-Ni, Korea during an assault on enemy fortified positions.

According to Corporal Fred, he and Graceon and their other buddy, the late Captain Charles “Sonny Boy” Simpson III were “real fast friends and looked like brothers.”

As the gunner on a light machine gun in a weapons squad, Corporal McGee delivered a heavy volume of supporting fire from an exposed position, despite intense enemy machine gun and mortar fire directly on his position. One particular combat was a “very bad battle, a bloodbath.”
Fred was shot in the face and the leg. He was recommended for the Medal of Honor and a Battlefield Commission by his West Point commanding officer, but this was pre-Civil Rights America. When the medals were distributed, he received a lesser medal, the Silver Star.

Cpl. McGee’s heroic actions and decisive thinking saved many on that bloody battlefield but a few months later, he was unable to dissuade Graceon from participating in the battle that claimed his life.

“I’m not worried,” Graceon responded. He was determined to make “Master Sergeant and go home and get married.”

The “good guy who never smoke or drank” was killed that night and lay on the road among several other bodies under the makeshift shelters. Fred refused to look at his friend for the last time.

Graceon’s grandmother had baked and sent homemade cookies for the three of them as they were unselfishly enduring the harsh environment and remaining focused to their cause of freedom. Fred made a trip to Bristol in the 1980s but was unsuccessful in locating any of Graceon’s family.

Girlfriend at the time of death, May Daughtrey and White had exchanged letters every day. She was engaged in 1950 to the “very handsome, very nice, and a lot of fun” soldier.

“Everyone seemed to love him. He was a genuine good person.”

As high school sweethearts, they swam and ice skated together at Silver Lake and played co-ed softball. In the last letter she received, he had written, “I’m gonna go on my last patrol and be home soon.” Cpl. McGee reminisced, “Graceon loved that girl May.”

She shed many tears as she walked around Silver Lake in the evenings after she lost him.
California resident W. May Guillory now has three daughters and two granddaughters. She has never forgotten him, especially every July 10.

White's close friend, Sid Taylor, a local historian, was especially impacted by Graceon’s death because “his life was cut so short.”

According to Sid, “He was smart; a very bright kid. He was born to be a hero. It was the way he was.”

Sid recalls him as a very good football and baseball player: “He played hard. He would get knocked out cold.”

White gave his own dark blue Elks baseball cap to Sid as a keepsake when he left for the service. Sid remembers their last car ride when he drove to Fort Dix with Graceon, his father and his girlfriend, May.

Sid paused for a few moments. With compassion, he shared, “He gave all he had for his country.” Graceon White made the supreme sacrifice.

And that sacrifice came just 20 years after his birth, touching many people along the way, despite few records of his legacy around.

Though one quote under his yearbook picture reflects the feelings of all who knew him:
“Gray is friendly in every way. We hope he never goes away.”

*Cate Murway contributed to this article.

James E. Seamans

2010-06-30T13:51:00.002-04:00

B-17 pilot crash-landed on his final bombing run.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

James E. Seamans was on his 30th and final mission over Germany when disaster struck. It was November 1944 and World War II was raging through Western Europe.

Flack from anti-aircraft gunfire had struck his B-17 bomber, taking out an engine. He and his crew were in a forced nose dive and frantically looking for a place to land over hostile territory.
“I had to make a decision. Could we make it back to England? If we did, we’d be going home. If we couldn’t, maybe we could land in the English Channel. But that’s questionable with a B-17,” said Seamans.

“I called my crew together to see if everyone had life jackets.” Unfortunately, one of the men, in his haste to lighten the plane, had tossed his jacket out the door. “That made my decision easy,” said Seamans.

Known as Seamans’ Demons, the 10-member crew had flown 30 combat missions together, mostly over Germany, between July 17 and Nov. 26, 1944. During those short months, they developed a special bond that continues to this day.

Seamans, who was the pilot, was born and raised in Scranton. He attended Keystone Junior College in Factoryville where he enrolled in a Civilian Pilot Training Course and earned his pilot’s license. The course, he said, was introduced by the Governor of Pennsylvania in 1941 to introduce “guys like me” into the U.S. Army Air Force.

In 1942 he graduated from Keystone, enlisted in the Air Force and joined the aviation cadet program to become a pilot. He earned his wings and was commissioned a second lieutenant. At about the same time, he married his high school sweetheart, Marjorie.

Fresh out of flight school, he was assigned to fly B-17s (nicknamed the Flying Fortress) and was sent to training school. He and his crew trained in Florida before being sent over to England in June 1944 where they were assigned to the 100th Bomb Group, nicknamed the Bloody 100th due to the heavy losses it had sustained.

“We were greeted with that information when we arrived at the base, which didn’t please us too much,” said Seamans. “However, it was a great group and we met some fine people there.”

Up until its final mission, Seamans said the crew was pretty fortunate, suffering only one injury and always returning home with nothing more than bullet holes in the plane. That changed with its last run over Germany.

“We thought it was a milk run, but it ended up being the most difficult,” he said. “it was a short mission to Hann where we were to hit a huge marshalling yard. We figured this was our last mission and we were going to make it without any problem.”

Five seconds before the bombs were to be released the plane took a direct hit on its second engine from anti-aircraft fire. “When you take damage to an engine, the first thing you have to do is feather the engine” to reduce the resistance on the prop and prevent it from windmilling, he said.

Twenty minutes after taking the hit, the prop broke lose from the crankshaft, severed the Plexiglas nose of the plane and compromised the plane’s air lock. Seamans sent the plane into a dive in an attempt to put out a wind fire raging in the engine. “They say it doesn’t always work, but for us it worked twice.”

With the fires out, the crew crash-landed on an airfield in Belgium. “Fortunately my navigator found an air field that had been liberated by the Americans two weeks prior to us needing it,” said Seamans. “But one of the problems was the airfield had been pot-marked with bomb craters and it was just a mess.

“We had a difficult time on the landing. We ended up with our nose into the ground,” said Seamans, but no one was injured. “The Lord was good to us that day,” he said.

Seamans, however, couldn’t get out of the cockpit. His legs had been frozen when the plane’s air lock was compromised.

“They lowered me out of an escape hatch underneath the aircraft. Fortunately they had an ambulance at the base and they took me to the hospital in Brussels. They put me in a room at 32 degrees and thawed me out in 24 hours, just gradually increasing the temperature. And I have not had one problem with my legs since.”

He returned to Scranton on Christmas Eve, 1944, to an anxious wife who was eager to welcome him home.

After his discharge in the summer of 1945, he returned to Scranton where he raised a family. He worked briefly for a print shop before taking a job with United Gilsonite Laboratories, which manufactures do-it-yourself-products. He worked in advertising before becoming the company’s marketing manager.

In 1992, the couple retired to Buckingham Springs in Bucks County. The couple has two children, Jim Jr. of Newtown and Diane Laughlin of Pittsburgh, six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

John David Silvers

2010-06-23T13:10:00.004-04:00

West Point graduate believes in giving back to the community.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

“A lifetime of service will present challenges in your life,” said U.S. Army Capt. John David Silvers.

At 42, Silvers is a freshman member of the Upper Makefield Township Board of Supervisors. He strongly believes in giving back to his community.

He is past president of the Upper Makefield Business Association, former co-chairman of the annual Revolutionary Run in Washington Crossing and former chairman of the Bucks County March for Babies Walk in 2008 and 2009.

Originally from Harrisburg, Silvers now lives in Upper Makefield with his wife, Catherine, and their two children, John Jr. and Laura. The couple runs Academic Coaching and College Counseling in Newtown.

Like father, like son – John Jr., a graduate of Newtown Middle School, is a proud American. He was awarded the American Legion Citizenship Award, the highest honor that the school awards annually.

“John is very patriotic,” Silvers said. “There is a good chance that he will go into the service, but for anyone who serves, that’s a personal decision. I’m not going to insist that they serve or not serve.”

Silvers, a West Point graduate, said his father, Warren Silvers II, served in the U.S. Air Force from 1966 to 1968 and was stationed in Myrtle Beach, S.C. “He went in as a dentist,” Silvers said, noting his brother, Warren Silvers III, also went into the Air Force as a dentist.

“I joined because I went to West Point,” he said. “I had a five-year obligation upon graduation in 1990. I actually served six years, but I went to West Point for the education and the leadership qualities that they teach.”

Silvers entered West Point in July 1986 at age 18 and entered active duty in May 1990 upon graduation. He was discharged in April 1996 when he was 22.

“I started at West Point for my first assignment as a graduate assistant coach for the football team,” he said. “I played football while I was there. I was a starting offensive tackle.” He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.

After West Point, he went to Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas. While there, he went through the Army Air Defense Artillery officer training course, which prepared newly promoted captains for their command assignments.

He was stationed in Germany with the 4-3ADA regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division.

“My first real duty assignment with a unit was in Germany – a small town called Kissinger,” he said. “One of the things we did as a battalion was we took a professional development trip to Normandy and really gained an appreciation for what it took to establish that beach head.”

They learned about the Invasion of Normandy, which took place during World War II.

For two months, Silvers served in Saudi Arabia while he was stationed in Germany. He also served for two months in Korea. He completed airborne training.

“I jumped out of small airplanes,” he noted. “I was in ranger school, but dislocated my shoulder halfway through,” Silvers said.

His final year in the Army would be as the logistics officer at Ft. McGregor Range in New Mexico. Silvers has fond memories of his time serving in northern Bavaria on Germany’s Main River. The area reminded him of Pennsylvania. The closest city was Wuerzburg.

“We loved it there,” he said. “Catherine and I got married when we were in Germany. We traveled throughout Europe. We actually met while I was stationed at West Point. I’m glad I stayed for those six months because that’s when I met my future wife.”

The young couple rented an apartment while in Germany. Two brothers had built the house in the 1980s. The landlord lived on the first floor and his brother lived on the second floor. The Silvers lived on the third floor. There were slanted ceilings just like the ones in John’s Newtown office. His office is also on the third floor.

They became very close with the German family, to the point that they have visited them several times.

“We were even able to stay in our old apartment because it wasn’t rented,” Silvers said.

Looking ahead, Silvers said his hope is “that we are able to maintain our freedom and appreciate them more deeply."

“For my children, I hope they are able to be good citizens in their communities and to serve them well,” he said.

Silvers stressed that he faces the challenges head on.

"I find the most effective way to work through any of life’s challenges is a Christ-centered approach,” he said. “My faith is very important to me.”

William L. Goldman

2010-06-16T14:07:00.002-04:00

WWII vet piloted airships over the Atlantic Ocean.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

William Goldman has a buoyant personality that can lift spirits, so it makes perfect sense that in World War II, this 91-year-old Doylestown resident wound up serving as a pilot of the Navy’s Lighter-than-Air (LTA) airships – blimps that watched over American cargo boats as they carried precious material through dangerous waters. Goldman says that when he volunteered for LTA, he didn’t even know the American military had such aircraft – and many people still don’t.

Before joining the armed forces, Goldman, who was raised in West Philadelphia by parents Grace and Samuel and with brother Albert, studied business law at Temple University. After earning his Bachelor’s Degree in 1942, he volunteered for the Navy.

“If I didn’t volunteer, I would have been drafted,” Goldman says. “They needed men in World War II. So, it was a matter of waiting until they called you or choosing what you wanted. I picked the Navy because I wanted clean white sheets when I went to bed at night – I didn’t want to sleep in the mud.”

He also had a strong interest in being away at sea, but that wasn’t in the cards. He was turned down for the Deck Navy, or service at sea, because of his flat feet and slight overbite. (“I told them, ‘I’m not going to trample the enemy to death, nor am I going to bite them to death,’” Goldman says.) He instead volunteered for the Air Navy, and was sent to the University of North Carolina for pre-flight training. It was there that he learned about LTA.

Goldman and 12 other men signed up for airship duty, and moved on to Lakehurst, N.J. for flight training. Goldman earned his Navy wings in the spring of 1943, and was then sent to a naval air station in Glynco, Ga., where he’d fly out on his first anti-submarine patrol missions over the Atlantic.

In January 1944, Goldman was transferred to Amapa, Brazil. He and his outfit were responsible for protecting American ships that were leaving Paraguay with large amounts of bauxite ore, which was mined in Paraguay, then shipped north to the U.S. to be refined and made into aluminum – a very valuable substance at the time, used for military vehicles and weapons. So valuable was aluminum that Germans were attempting to sabotage plants on American soil and attack the cargo-carrying ships that were traveling through the South Atlantic.

But, as Goldman tells it, the Germans rarely attacked a convoy of U.S. boats while the airships were hovering above, watching over.

“The Americans would look up to us and wave, feeling confident we would protect them,” says Goldman, who was one of two pilots on his airship. “They never got attacked under my watch.”

Though he never had to use them, Goldman says each airship was equipped with two depth charges and two 50-caliber machine guns. In addition, the craft had Sonar gear, which could be dropped into the water to detect metal, i.e. submarines.

During his time in Brazil, Goldman traveled from Amapa on south, hitting points like Sao Luiz, Natal, Macio and Rio de Janeiro while protecting the cargo ships. A more southern squadron would precede Goldman’s group in keeping watch, and then Goldman’s squadron would also eventually pass the duties on to a more northern squadron.

Goldman completed his LTA duty in Brazil in November 1944, then came home to the U.S. for various Navy officer duties that kept him on the ground. For a few years after, he visited stations in Atlantic City, Willow Grove, New York and Oklahoma. Most importantly, in Brooklyn, at Floyd Bennett Field, he met his wife, Jean Marie, a Navy nurse. The two were married in 1947 and moved to Wilkes Barre. They’d eventually have five children: William Jr., Bob, Jan, Lee and Jeanie.

After being formally discharged from the Navy in 1949 as a Lt. Commander, Goldman remained in the Reserves and enrolled at Temple Law School. He became a lawyer and started his own practice, William L. Goldman Law Offices. Specializing in commercial law and criminal defense, Goldman practiced in Doylestown for 57 years. He just retired last year. His son, William Jr., remains active in the business.

Extraordinarily peppy and upbeat, Goldman isn’t your average 91-year-old. He says he feels great, and his voice fails him only when he speaks of Jean Marie, who passed away four years ago. He says he loves visiting his vacation home in Ft. Lauderdale, and he especially loves spending time with his children and grandchildren.

“Family comes first,” Goldman says, his spirits high, his mood lighter than air.

Nick Reid

2010-06-09T16:06:00.001-04:00

From the “One Room School House” to lead bombardier.

By Matthew Fleishman, BucksLocalNews.com

Less than a year after walking out of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ 21-7 win over the New York Giants at the Polo Grounds to the news that Pearl Harbor had been attacked, Nick Reid enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps, and would eventually become the lead bombardier on missions throughout Europe during World War II.

Other than his time in the military, Reid has lived his entire life in Lower Bucks County, including attending school at the One Room School House on Big Oak Road, Lower Makefield Elementary School, Edgewood Junior High School and Morrisville High School.

In September 1942, Reid knew that he needed to join the fight, so he enlisted in the Army Air Corps because it was the one branch of the military that appealed to him.

“I was just out of high school, and I thought I would enjoy being in the air,” said Reid. “It was an all-out war. Hitler, Mussolini and Japan wanted to take over the world. If we didn’t conquer them, we wouldn’t have our freedom today.”

After enlisting, Reid went to basic training in New Mexico, then after four months of cadet training at Butler University in Indiana, he went through pre-flight training, gunnery school and bombardier school, which took him throughout the Southwest.

Along the way, Reid and his bride, Bettye, were married during a military wedding in Pueblo, Colo., in August 1944. The couple spent 51 years together.

In January 1945, after completing more than two years of training, Reid was sent overseas to Southern Italy, where he was part of 25 bombing missions aboard a B-24 Liberator, knocking out bridges, railroads, air fields, oil refineries and munitions plants in Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia.

During these missions, Reid’s B-24 would be under constant pressure from heavy flak guns as they approached the target.

“I was scared,” said Reid. “We found out in the morning what type of mission it would be. Vienna had 360 flak guns. The anti-aircraft would explode and rock the plane. We were hit many times, but luckily we always made it back to the base. Thankfully, I never had to parachute out of the plane.”

During these missions, Reid eventually became the lead bombardier, due to an instance where he did not drop his bomb.

“My pilot yelled ‘bombs away’ and I looked at my bomb-site, and realized it wasn’t time to drop them,” said Reid, who has numerous aerial photographs of his bombing missions because of his lead role. “I held my bomb. Everyone else dropped their bombs, but we weren’t at the right spot. When we got back, I was asked why I didn’t drop my bomb and wound up getting promoted to lead bombardier.”

While the pilot was responsible for flying the plane toward the bomb-site, it was Reid and the bombardiers in each plane that actually guided the aircraft to the site.

“Once the navigator got us to the I.P. (initial point), the pilot would put the plane on automatic,” said Reid. “I would control the flight of the plane from my position as bombardier using my crosshairs.

After the war in Europe ended, Reid was supposed to head for Japan because he had not reached the required 35 missions, but the war in Japan ended before his crew would have taken part in the invasion.

After leaving the military, Reid spent 40 years working for a firm that distributed Wise potato chips. During that time, Reid never missed a day of work.

“Back in those days, whether I was sick or not, I had to open the warehouse and get the trucks loaded,” said Reid. “I realized around 23 years in that I hadn’t missed a day of work, so I figured I would try for 25 years. Then 25 years became 30 and 35, and then 40 years.”

Reid’s strong work ethic wouldn’t let him sit idle during his retirement, as he has worked for the last 20 years at the Pennington Quality Market, and also works at McCaffrey’s Supermarket in Lower Makefield Township.

“I thank God for my good health,” said Reid, about his ability to work continuously since the 1940s.

Currently, Reid lives in Lower Makefield Township. He and his wife, Elizabeth “Bettye,” spent 51 years together before her passing. He has two children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

George Edmondson

2010-06-02T16:48:00.002-04:00

Korean Vet remembers the “Forgotten War.”

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com

Fire Control Technician Third Class George Edmondson, a graduate of Minersville H.S. ‘50, grew up in the coal-mining town of Minersville, located in the mountains of eastern PA in Schuylkill County.

Towards the end of WWII, after years of prosper in the coal mining world, the area started experiencing increasing economic and social dislocations as the result of the continuing decline of the entire coal mining industry.

Mineral deposits became exhausted and technological and economic changes brought about extensive mine closures.

George spent his childhood leisure time in a deep, clear cold water-filled-in “Strippin’ Hole.”

Strip mining is only practical when the ore body to be excavated is relatively near the surface.
George later played football in school and baseball with his friends, delivered grocery store circulars, and worked at the nearby Globe dance hall selling refreshments.

There were no employment options, so the week after H.S. graduation, George entered the Navy with seven of his closet chums from his graduating class under the “Minority Cruise." The only friend who remained with him during his tour of duty of 3 years and 3 months was Lawrence Gallagher.

George's family, late parents, James & Esther, his late siblings, Kenneth and Margaret and his sister Sally (her husband originally a Borough resident, Tony Ferraro) relocated to Dorrance Street in Bristol Borough to join relatives who lived on New Buckley Street after the mines had closed.

His dad first found work with Shipbuilder Henry J. Kaiser on Radcliffe Street and then Barker & Williamson, a recognized leader worldwide in the manufacture of the highest quality antennas and radio parts for military, commercial, emergency management and amateur use.

The Korean War started a week or so after he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, so he was the first company with no leave after boot camp in the great lakes Navel Station, a formidable site situated on the banks of Lake Michigan in Illinois.

His first assignment was on The USS Kenneth D. Bailey DD-713 that had entered the Boston Naval Shipyard for modernization and conversion to a radar picket destroyer. George was part of the deck force painting and cleaning the interior and his responsibility included exterior maintenance of the ship for 6 months.

His next opportunity was to attend fire control school in Washington, D.C., training for a year to learn his specialties of electronics and operating massive computers. Fire Control Operator training taught how to track targets and send information to the computer down below, or one was able to control it manually from above and assign weapons from the subs fire control system.

After the DD-713 ship left the dry-dock used for the construction, maintenance, and repair, George went to Cuba to test the repairs of Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, GTMO or “Gitmo” Bay, the oldest overseas U.S. Navy Base.

His next assignment was the USS Black (DD-666), a 2,050-ton Fletcher class destroyer built at Kearny, NJ of the United States Navy, named for Lieutenant Commander Hugh D. Black (1903–1942), who was killed in action during the sinking of his ship, Jacob Jones (DD-130) in February 1942.

George was involved in no gun battles, Koreans didn’t have a Navy, but he was active in the shore bombardment of the Battle of Inchon Harbor, September 15-28, 1950.

Because the harbor was so shallow and muddy, the timing of the invasion had to be synchronized precisely with the autumn high tides so the landing craft could make it to the shore without running aground on the mud flats.

In spite of intelligence warning of the attack, the overextended North Korean army was unable to maintain a strong defense and the city fell with Allied losses of only 20 dead and 179 wounded. This was a decisive invasion and battle during the Korean War. USS Black continued her Korean operations until June 4,1953.

Once when he was on leave, he accompanied his friend, Jerry Farley to see his girlfriend and that was when he met his future wife, Beverly Ann Rinaldo, Minersville H.S. ’53.

He returned to his ship and they continued building their relationship through the mail with letters. Bev saved every letter he wrote to her. “She didn’t throw anything away.”

From January 1953 until August 1953 he toured the Panana Canal, San Diego, Hawaii, Midway Island, then Singapore and Hong Kong, Japan; Cannes, France; Naples, Italy; Athens, Greece; and up the Suez Canal. Back to the U.S. and his last stop was Norfolk, VA. He was discharged and returned to Bristol.

He and Beverly got engaged and were married in the First United Methodist Church on Mulberry Street in January 1954. They lived in Borough apartments and purchased several homes before they moved to their new construction Monroe Street home in 1973. He and his late wife had three children, James, Sharon and Laurie. He also had six grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Though there are still some who insist it should be referred to as the "Korean Conflict" or a police action because the participants never officially declared "war," the most well-respected men who served our country, our veterans, would never disagree that the fighting in Korea between 1950 and 1953 was as bitter as any war. The Korean War has been dubbed "The Forgotten War," being overshadowed by the more current memories of Vietnam, Desert Storm and the anniversary commemorations of World War II.

But, George Edmondson is not forgotten.

*Cate Murway contributed to this article.

Frederick E. Ehmann

2010-05-26T16:22:00.002-04:00

Shot down over Italy, he was taken prisoner by the Germans.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Frederick E. Ehmann will never forget the day he was shot down over Northern Italy.
It was three days after Christmas in 1943. Ehmann was part of a 10-member crew flying a routine bombing mission when his B-24 came under heavy fire by enemy planes.

Within minutes, the whole back of the bomber was on fire. The tail gunner was dead and the left waist gunner had been hit. The ball turret gunner was still firing at the enemy unaware the plane was on fire.

The order was given – “Bail out.”
***

Born in 1914 in Philadelphia, Ehmann grew up and went to school in the Logan section of the city. He attended trade school before getting a job with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
In September 1942 his life took a sudden and dramatic turn when he was drafted into the U.S. Air Force.

“I requested the Air Force because I loved to fly,” he said. “I had a pilot’s license and I used to go up to [Roosevelt] Boulevard and fly a plane once in a while.”

At the time of his draft interview, Ehmann said he was asked if he had any hobbies. “When I mentioned music, he said, ‘I have just the spot for you – radio operator and gunner on a heavy bomber.’”

Between September 1942 and August 1943, he went through Boot Camp at Kessler Field, Miss., Aerial Gunner School in Kingman, Ariz., Radio School at Traux Field in Madison, Wis., flight training in Casper, Wyo., and final flight training in Herrington, Kan.

In August 1943, his crew took off for Europe, spending a short time in Iceland and Belfast, Ireland, before being assigned to the 376th bomber group in Africa.

He flew numerous missions as a radio operator and top gun turret operator before his plane was shot down. He documents his service in a book, “My Longest Mission – A World War II Memory.”

“We boarded our planes and took off for Vicenza on what we thought would be a milk run,” said Ehmann, who was a fill-in at the right gunner’s position.

“I saw a large group of fighter planes going in the opposite direction. The planes were too far off to identify and I heard my pilot say they were probably our escort returning to the base. A few minute later we saw and identified enemy fighters coming from behind our group. All hell broke loose.

“The guys in the back radioed up that we were on fire and we had to get out. There was absolutely no fear of jumping out. It had to be done.”

In the urgency of the moment, he didn’t know his back was on fire as he parachuted toward the earth. Fortunately, he landed in a canal, which put out the fire. “My back was burned, but not critical,” he said.

On the ground, Ehmann was greeted by an elderly man with a small pistol pointed toward his head. “Don’t shoot. I’m an American,” said Ehmann.

“We weren’t scared,” said Ehmann. “I don’t know why I had that attitude. All the guys in the crew were the same way. We were just overly curious about what the hell was going to happen to us.”

The Germans interrogated Ehmann, but he refused to divulge any information, giving only his name, rank and serial number.

Ehmann was now a prisoner of war. He was sent to Stalag 17 in Austria. He spent about a year and a half there waiting for liberation.

“There was no brutality. If anyone tells you something other than that, they’re a liar. There was a shortage of food. We would be fed once a day. Sometimes it would be a lousy soup,” he said.
There were times in which real life mimicked “Hogan’s Heroes,” though they never had a two-way radio or a secret tunnel system. They did managed to piece together a crystal radio and listen to the BBC.

Once, said Ehmann, the guys were given a giant sausage. “It looked good from a distance but it was full of maggots. We thought, what are we going to do with this now? We dressed it up in a little uniform and laid it on a board. We named it Adolph. We marched it around camp and then had an official burial in the latrine.”

Despite the difficult conditions, Ehmann said morale was always sky-high. And the Germans couldn’t understand that. “We didn’t want them to think we were all hurt or sad. We held up and they kept shaking their heads.”

After 15 months in captivity, the Germans and POWs evacuated the camp on April 15, 1945. “They said the Russian Army was only kilometers away and that they were killng prisoners and anyone who was not Russian. We found out later they were liberating soldiers being held by the Germans.”

After nine days of walking, the prisoners arrived at their new camp in a forest at the fork of the Inns and Salzach rivers. On the other side of the river was Germany.

“On the morning of our fifth day, I was sitting by the edge of the road when a military jeep came by with four American officers and a machine gun. Several of us stood up and shouted that we were Americans ... They said they would be back within 24 hours with help. They left us and we all had a feeling I will never be able to describe.”

A group of American soldiers arrived in trucks around noon the next day and within an hour they had removed all of the German guards. “We were finally able to say we were free.”

Back at home, Ehmann went to work for C. Schmidt and Sons in Philadelphia, where he spent his career in brewery operations. He married Kathryn Hipp on August 10, 1946 and the couple raised three children, Frederick, William and Evelyn Ehmann Pantuso.

The family moved from Philadelphia to Doylestown in 1957. He joined the Doylestown Country Club and at one point served as its president. He enjoys playing the piano and time with his dog, Cady.

J. Preston Van Artsdalen

2010-05-19T14:13:00.003-04:00

He played seven games with major-leaguers during WWII.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

U.S. Army Air Corps Sgt. John Preston Van Artsdalen, 88, always wanted to fly airplanes and be a Major League baseball player. But at age 21, he enlisted in the military on Sept. 5, 1942 in Philadelphia. He was discharged Oct. 25, 1945.

During his time in the service in World War II, Van Artsdalen was a member of a baseball team that actually played a team of major-leaguers. There were seven games. “We won two games,” he said. “We played them in Manila Stadium.” He still has a photograph of his team. He proudly keeps it on a shelf in his office.

Van Artsdalen played short stop with the 12th Air Depot Group. “When I was playing against the major-leaguers, after seven games with them, I knew I wouldn’t make the major league,” he said.

“It was a heartbreaking experience, knowing you’re not going to be good enough to be in the Major Leagues,” he said. “I would have been too old. I would have been 25.”

Van Artsdalen’s days during the war were spent rehabbing aircraft. A native Newtowner, he said, “I didn’t want to be drafted. I wanted to get into the Air Corps. If you were drafted, they could put you anywhere.”

First, he went to Duncan Airfield in San Antonio, Texas. “We didn’t have basic training,” he said. “They put us right in repairing all sorts of planes. They put me on flight status.”

He left Stockton, Calif. for the South Pacific on a ship which was a converted Dutch luxury liner. Because of his Dutch name, he was given special accommodations and did not have to sleep in a bunk bed.

Van Artsdalen served under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 5th Air Force in the 12th Air Depot Group. He went into the service as a private. “I was a flight engineer on a C-47,” he said. “We used it for everything.”

Everything meant using the plane for cargo, dropping paratroopers, transporting the wounded and personnel.

He said sadly that some of the parachutes did not open.

Vanartsdalen said his first assignment overseas was in Australia. “We were only there for a week,” he said about being in Brisbane.

“They brought these old planes,” he said. “They flew them out of the Philippines. We worked on them. They were B-17 and B-25 bombers.

“They would be shot up pretty good,” Van Artsdalen said. “They didn’t want the Japanese to get them.”

He went up to Townsville in northern Australia. Of all his travels during the war, Townsville was his favorite place. He said it was like the Old West.

“We evacuated all the women and children,” he recalled. “They got them out of Townsville because the Japanese were trying to invade Australia.

“The Battle of the Coral Sea was going on and we were diverted south to avoid the Japanese,” he said.

U.S. forces turned back the Japanese, Van Artsdalen said.

At one point, the U.S. advanced to the Philippines as the war progressed through New Guinea. Vanartsdalen said they went up to Leyte in the Philippines. “Ours was one of the first planes to land at Manila after the ‘Liberation.’ Runways were mined so we were very lucky,” he wrote in his memoires about the war.

As a flight engineer, Van Artsdalen replaced engines. Maintaining the aircraft was important and they made sure the planes were safe to fly.

“When they dropped the bomb, we were all given numbers,” he said. “My number was 229 to identify you when you would leave for the States. The longer you were there, the lower the number.”

In addition to Australia, the Philippines and New Guinea, Van Artsdalen went to Okinawa. He remembers when the U.S. defeated the Japanese and liberated Manila.

“Getting out alive,” was what he often thought about during the war. “Of all the fellows in the service, I had it pretty well,” he said, noting infantrymen and paratroopers had it tough. “They were fighting in the forests,” he said.

In the service, Van Artsdalen discovered he was “pretty good with a rifle.”

Baseball, airplanes and golf have been his favorite pastimes throughout his life. Van Artsdalen had played baseball for Newtown High School. He graduated in 1939.

He later played what he described as semi-professional in the area. He managed the Newtown team for several years. “We had what was called ‘The Town Team,” he said.

For years, he managed the Cardinals Little League team in Newtown.

Van Artsdalen has been a member of the Morrell Smith Post 440 of the American Legion for 64 years. He served as treasurer of the Newtown Exchange Club,

He studied business at then-Rider College as a night student while raising a family and running a successful transportation company.

Van Artsdalen was in the trucking business for 25 years and later was a school bus contractor for New Hope, Council Rock, Lower Moreland and Abington school districts.

He served on Newtown Borough Council during the 1960s. He remarked that Newtown Township and Newtown Borough did not get along.

Van Artsdalen and his wife, Jane, will celebrate their 62nd wedding anniversary on May 22. They have two grown children, Betty Jane and Edward; five grandchildren; and five great-grandchildren. The couple now makes Washington Crossing their home.

They have spent a lot of time traveling, including taking a memorable trip to the South Pacific.
--

Editor's Note: J. Preston Van Artsdalen passed away on Tuesday, May 18 at St. Mary Medical Center. Our condolences go out to Jane Van Artsdalen and her family. This article is a tribute to him and his service to our country. The news of his passing came shortly after press-time.

Richard O. Bertz

2010-05-12T15:32:00.001-04:00

WWII vet clearly remembers his treacherous time served.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

World War II veteran Richard Bertz just celebrated his 88th birthday, and his memory is as sharp as that of a 22-year-old. Easy to talk to, the Trevose resident remembers growing up in Spring City, Pa. along the Schuylkill River. He remembers his Eagle Scout training and details of his time at Royersford High School. He remembers desperately wanting to fly.

At 19, he went to Philadelphia to try out for the Air Force, only to receive a crushing blow.

“I passed everything, all the tests,” Bertz says, “until they put that [vision test] book in front of me and told me I was colorblind. I pleaded with them, but it was no use.”

With what little money he earned working at a glass factory near the home he shared with parents Otto and Ida and siblings Kenneth and Alicia, Bertz hopped a bus to California. Alone, he found a place in Ocean Park where he received free room and board and free meals for serving as the driver for a group of Army soldiers.

All the while, he was taking aeronautical drafting courses at a nearby military airport.

Returning to the Philadelphia area in 1942, Bertz got a job working on airplane prototypes and small drafting assignments.

“I just loved airplanes,” he says. “I wanted to be close to them.”

From there, Bertz was drafted into the Infantry, and sent to join the 94th Infantry Division at Camp Phillips in Kansas. Arriving on Christmas Eve, Bertz spent five months at the camp before undertaking 14 months of maneuvers across the United States. He was an Armor officer, responsible for weapons and ammunition.

In August of 1944, he and his company left the U.S. on the Queen Elizabeth II. They landed in Scotland, passed through England, then wound up in Lorient, France, a submarine base on the Normandy peninsula. There, he and his fellow soldiers were responsible for containing 25,000 Germans, before moving into Germany in the midst of the Battle of the Bulge.

Soon Bertz reached Orsholz, a village located near Germany’s Sarr Valley. Instructed to join troops who were set to invade the village, Bertz donned bedsheets so as to blend in with the snow; however, it wasn’t enough to hide from the minefield that lay before the group, or the sea of bullets the enemy would disperse from across the valley.

“I got about halfway down and all hell broke loose,” Bertz says. “Our lieutenant colonel was killed, many others were killed.”

As instructed, Bertz withdrew into the woods, but without any companions. The snow was over a foot deep and the temperature was well below zero.

Noticing an Army tank nearby, Bertz approached the hatch and asked the occupants if he could come inside, but to no avail. He was freezing and subjected to the elements.

Bertz soon noticed a superior curled up against a tree. Scouting taught Bertz never to fall asleep in freezing weather. He stayed awake; the other man didn’t. He survived; the other man didn’t.
“That was my worst night,” Bertz says.

Bertz’s division eventually took Orsholz, and from there, under the command of Gen. Patton, moved on to Trier and all the way up to the Rhine River.

In Czechoslovakia, Bertz encountered cold weather again, which left him with throat problems and frostbite. (To this day, he wears socks to bed and struggles with a lack of feeling in his feet.)
After suffering through a train disaster while en route to the French port city of Le Havre (a car derailed and was dragged for miles, dumping equipment along the way), Bertz boarded the SS George Washington, a WWI ship that would cart him back home across the Atlantic. Caught in a violent storm, the ship lost a rudder, nearly capsized, and six men were lost.

The boat finally arrived in New York Harbor, and Bertz was home by Christmas Eve – the same day he arrived at Camp Phillips in 1942. He was discharged as a Staff Sergeant. He met his wife, Helen, in 1945 at a dance hall near Pottstown. The couple had two daughters, Renae and Lynn Anne.

In 1949, Bertz graduated from Millersville University, where he studied industrial arts. He went on to become an industrial arts teacher at William Tenant High School, where he taught for 35 years and founded an adult education program.

In 2005, Bertz lost Helen to cardiac problems. He now lives alone in a home filled with his handmade furniture and woodworking creations. In two weeks, he’ll be heading to Charleston, S.C. for the reunion of the 94th Infantry Division. He’s active with the VFW, and says he wants to be buried in the new Washington Crossing Cemetery, where other soldiers like him have been laid to rest.

“I don’t think people appreciate what service men do,” Bertz says. “I got an awful lot of experience, and I wouldn’t want to go through it again, but I wouldn’t want to give it back, either. I wish people would look back and appreciate what the WWII soldiers did. People need to remember.”

Just ask Bertz. He remembers.

Peter J. Cugasi Sr.

2010-05-05T17:49:00.002-04:00

WWII Armed Guard tells about the convoys to Europe.

By Matthew Fleishman, BucksLocalNews.com

Drafted into the United States Navy at just 17 years old, Peter J. Cugasi Sr. wound up spending nearly three years in the secret Armed Guard during World War II.

“The Armed Guard is special services,” said Cugasi. “In World War II, the Navy put guns on merchant ships to get personnel and supplies to the war zone. The Armed Guard manned the guns on those ships. There was one Armed Guard officer, about 25 gunners, like myself, and also a few radiomen and signalmen on each ship.

“We were told, ‘Don’t talk about where you have been and don’t talk about the Armed Guard to anybody,’” continued Cugasi.

When the Navy came calling for Cugasi, he told them that he would be happy to serve, but he needed to take care of his mother at home, so the Navy helped him do both at the same time.

“I said, ‘You people don’t understand, I’m taking care of my mother,’” said Cugasi. “The officer made me a deal. My pay was going to be $49 per month, which was a lot back then, so he took $25 from my paycheck each month, and the Navy matched it and sent it home to my mother.”
After being drafted, Cugasi had one more concern, which was the possibility of having to shoot a gun.

“On April 3, 1943, I saw a big bulletin board with my name on it, so I asked the chief why it was there, and he said ‘You’re going to be in the Armed Guard, and we’re going to make a gunner out of you,’” said Cugasi. “I told him that I didn’t want anything to do with guns. I said I would be a radioman or signal man, but I didn’t want to have to explain to my family that I would be shooting a gun. He told me that I didn’t have a choice.”

As part of the Armed Guard, Cugasi would be part of a convoy of about 100 merchant ships, which would depart from Halifax, Nova Scotia in Canada. The ships secretly carried reinforcements to Europe.

“The United States government didn’t want the enemy to know that there were Navy guns and personnel on the merchant ships,” said Cugasi. “Ships from all over the world were used in this because many of them couldn’t go back to their home countries because of the war.”

During his three years, Cugasi served aboard the S.S. Edward Paine, the Simon Willard, and the Thomas Sim Lee. On the Lee, Cugasi made the Murmansk Run, which delivered vital supplies to Russian troops on the Eastern Front as the war was turning in the favor of the Allies.

“Our convoy crossed the Arctic Circle to get the supplies to the Russian units,” said Cugasi. “The Russians told President Roosevelt that they needed everything we could produce. They didn’t have the money or the ability to make the supplies, but they had the soldiers ready to continue fighting.”

Fifty years after the war ended, members of the Armed Guard received medals and commendations from the Russian government for their heroic Murmansk Run, which saved the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers, and possibly the entire nation. The ceremony took place on the Liberty Ship John W. Brown.

“The Russian commander told us that if it wasn’t for the convoys, the war would have been lost,” said Cugasi. “The convoys were so secretive, that the Russian soldiers at the ceremony didn’t know much about them.”

After nearly three years in the Armed Guard, and having crossed both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Cugasi was discharged from the Armed Guard.

“I had three years and three ships, so I said a lot of prayers in that time,” said Cugasi. “I had enough war by then, and on November 11, 1945, I got my discharge from the Armed Guard. I was one of the first guys to get out.”

Cugasi, who reached the rank of Seaman 1st Class, is the Chairman of the Delaware Valley Armed Guard, which holds a monthly meeting for veterans who served in the Armed Guard. During his time in the Navy, he received the World War II Service Medal, Distinguished Service Medal, State of New Jersey Distinguished Service Medal, Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, American Campaign Medal, and also received recognition for his time in the China-Burma-India Theatre.

Currently, Cugasi, who spent 41 years working as an electrician in Trenton, lives in Levittown with his wife. Together, they have three children and nine grandchildren. In an “odd coincidence,” according to Cugasi, each of his three children are blessed with two boys and one girl.

Peter Fesovich

2010-04-28T13:39:00.001-04:00

Bristolian served with MacArthur Honor Guard.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com

Army First Sergeant Peter J. Fesovich attended East Conemaugh High School as part of the class of 1945. There, Peter was a star basketball athlete and was one of 11 children. Peter’s wife, Joanne Louise, a retired nurse after 32 years, also attended East Conemaugh and met Peter in 1952 at a basketball game.

At the height of the steel industry in Johnstown, where Fesovich resided, mills spread out over 13 miles along the Little Conemaugh and Stonycreek Rivers. They ran 24 hours a day, seven days a week, both to keep up with demand and to keep the furnaces going.

If they were allowed to go cold, it took days for them to get hot enough again to melt iron ore. Faster than anyone dreamed, the mills were closing. Instead of smoke and fire lighting up the night, there was quiet. Thousands of workers lost their jobs.

In 1954, Pete was asked to investigate transfer options to the U.S. Steel Fairless Works in Fairless Hills as he was job class 14, proficiently experienced in the hot, galvanized, cold roll sheet and tin-rolling mills, earning a top pay of $2.80 per hour.

But the real heroics in Peter's life came soon after his graduation when he entered the armed forces. After leaving high school, his mom simply stated to him, “America needs soldiers.”
He obediently went to the recruiting office where he was told to “go home because he wouldn’t be 18 for two more weeks.” Pete rationalized, saying “Put down that I’m okay; it’ll take two weeks to get where I’m going.”

His first stop was Fort Meade, MD, named for General George G. Meade, a Union Army general in the U.S. Civil War, for the mandatory inoculations.

Then Peter was off to Fort Knox, Ky., to join the Third Armored Tank Corps Division, nicknamed the Spearhead Division, of the U.S. Army. It first activated in 1941 and was a key participant in the European Theater of World War II.

Pete explains that the tanks didn’t have the faster swivel in the turret traverse speed and were not like the tanks they have today, “If they had these tanks, I’d still be in the army at 80 years old!”

He never actually even used the tanks. He “thought he was going to ETO [European Theatre of Operations] but went to the Pacific.”

Pete was recruited for the Honor Guard, the top outfit in the service, for MacArthur from October through November 1946. Although Five Star General Douglas MacArthur was the top-ranking military leader in the Pacific, he had no troops directly in his command. The honor guard was formed in May 1945, to perform security and other tasks for MacArthur, who had a profound effect on the world stage, as a symbol of his authority and separateness.

Looking toward the future, he envisioned a need and role for a special unit under his control, a “crack” company of Infantrymen to serve as his personal security force, which was to include excellent character, fluent in Russian, Peter J. Fesovitch.

His order began, “The C-in-C desires that a special Guard Company be organized for providing local security for the Commander-in-Chief and General Headquarters installations.”

Minimum security by a single company of the exemplary soldiers served the General and guarded the Imperial Palace without fail from Manila to Tokyo.

After returning home from the service, Peter and wife Joanne have resided on Pond Street since 1957. They fell in love with the wharf along the Delaware River and the single home with a fireplace in the neighborhood that reminded them of their hometown Conemaugh, an Indian name meaning “long fishing place.”

*****
The Fesovich family includes Robert Faight, retired from nuclear medicine, and grandson, Bristol Borough Police officer Peter Faight. Owner of Radcliffe Learning Center is granddaughter, Chrissy DeLuca.

Pete and Joanne now love to read and live a simple life, until the World Series rolls around. Pete cheers for the NY Yankees and Joanne’s a Phillies fan.

*****
Cate Murway contributed to this article.

Pete Palestina

2010-04-14T14:56:00.002-04:00

U.S. Marine Corps forever changed his life.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

“Oh my God, he’s going to get killed.”

Northampton Township resident Pete Palestina can still hear his mother’s reaction as he told his father over the phone from the North Broad Street recruiting office that he had been drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps.

It was Feb. 1, 1966 and the Vietnam War was raging.

Growing up in a heavily Italian neighborhood in South Philadelphia, Palestina wanted to do two things with his life – be a mobster or a cop. The last thing he wanted was a tour in Vietnam.

“That’s just what I didn’t need to hear,” said Palestina, of his mother’s words. Up to that point, he had done everything to avoid the Corps, and with good reason. During the days of Vietnam, no other branch of service had a higher casualty rate.

Just weeks earlier, he had turned down a six-month commitment to the Marines. “Here I could have gone for six months, but now I’m being drafted. It was like a nightmare,” he said.

But life has its ironies.

Instead of being shipped to Vietnam like he expected, Palestina was assigned duties as a cook.
“There were few Marines during that time that didn’t go to Vietnam, except for me,” he said. “There were 77 of us in the platoon. When they gave out our assignments, 70 were picked for infantry and five of us were chosen as cooks.”

During his two years with the Corps, he served at the training center at Parris Island, then at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and aboard a ship in the Caribbean. He also spent time in Panama undergoing juggle training.

Early on, Palestina gained a reputation for his cooking.

Six weeks into his training, he was scheduled to make pizza for 1,200 men. “You have to follow Navy regulations and it said to use tomato soup, crushed tomato and cheddar cheese. I said, ‘You got to be kidding me?’”

After a phone call to his mother to double check ingredients, he made arrangements for someone to pick up a case of crushed tomatoes, a case of puree and mozzarella cheese. And he made pizza.
“The next thing you know the base commander calls me into his office. I was scared. He turns to me and says, ‘I understand you made the pizza. You understand you didn’t follow regulations?’ Then he turns to me and says, ‘That was the best f-ing pizza I’ve ever had.’ He gave me a four-day pass.”

Palestina quickly became known among the men for his willingness to bend regulations and cook to order, sometimes to the consternation of the other cooks on the line.

“If I fed you and you liked what I did, that gave me pleasure,” said Palestina. “The way I looked at it, half the guys I’m feeding are going to be dead in another two years and I should be making their lives better.”

Palestina never saw action, except from the inside of a mess hall. “I don’t know why I never went to Vietnam. I only know three people in the Marine Corps that I was associated with that didn’t go.”

Today, as Palestina looks back on Feb. 1, 1966 – the day he was drafted into the Marines – he considers it the best thing that ever happened to him.

“If I didn’t get drafted and I didn’t go into the Marine Corps, God knows if I would have been dead from an overdose or killed by the mob. What started out as a Marine Corps nightmare has become the proudest thing that I ever did.

“It changed my life. It made a man out of me. It gave me a respect for what our military does. And it gave me discipline.”

Following his service, he earned a degree in business administration from Temple University under the GI Bill and found a job as an insurance underwriter.

He met his future wife, Joan. They were married in 1969. “My wife is the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.

The couple moved out of the city to Northampton Township where they settled down and raised their family. They have two children, Melissa, of Warminster, and Peter Jr., at home, and two grandchildren, Matthew and Sean.

More recently, Palestina served on the Northampton Township Board of Supervisors from 1984 to 2007.

During his tenure on the board, he instituted the Northampton Patriots Flag Program to honor the men and women of the township serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The seeds of the program were planted seven years ago when Palestina and Council Rock School Board member Bernadette Heenan organized a ceremony honoring the troops at Northampton Commons. A flag representing each soldier was planted in the ground.

The flags were later brought inside the township building and placed in a handmade display. When a soldier returns home, their military flag is presented to the veteran during a public meeting and a U.S. flag is put in the display in place of the military flag.

“The toughest thing I ever had to do was three years ago,” said Palestina. “The parents of Bob Dembowski had asked about a flag for him. We put it in that Wednesday night at a supervisors’ meeting. The next day he was killed in action. I was stunned. It still chokes me up today.”

Today, 63 flags are on display, eight of them representing people who are still in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I can honestly say other than the birth of my kids there has been no greater pleasure,” Palestina told a reporter in 2007, of his involvement with the flag project. “Having been in the military myself, I know how important it is for people at home to appreciate what you are doing. It makes their life a little better when they are in harm’s way.”

Joseph F. Longmore

2010-04-07T14:17:00.002-04:00

Former Northampton supervisor recalls The Cold War.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

U.S. Army Spec. 5 Joseph F. Longmore, 76, of Northampton Township may have been stateside during his time in the service, but his experience in the military changed his life forever.

He did not travel to foreign countries. He did not fight any battles. Yet, being in the Army gave him a chance to hone his skills, and focus on taking charge and making changes.

Today, Longmore, a former Northampton Township supervisor, looks back at the time he was in the service during the Cold War which lasted from 1947 to 1991.

In 1950, he had been “called down” when he was still in high school at age 17. He graduated in 1951. That was during the Korean War. But, he was told to wait. The war was coming to the end.
Longmore served two years of active duty from 1956 to 1958, two years in the active reserves from 1958 to 1960 and two years inactive reserves from 1960 to 1962. The whole commitment was for six years.

Longmore was the only one of his group who went on to Fort Meade after basic training at Fort Dix. At Fort Meade, his job was electronic processing of information, which involved mainly the inventory systems for supplies. He dealt with the quantity of rifles and tanks around the world that were assigned to the 2nd Army.

They dealt with “all the things that an army needs. We created reports in the process that went up to people that made decisions,” Longmore said.

“We did the job,” he said. “We did what we were asked.”

And Longmore said he and his teammates changed procedures. “We made presentations to the lieutenant and the captain: ‘This is what we can do.’ And, they accepted,” he noted.

He described The Cold War as “a different kind of a war. You’re out there fighting as a young service person. You start to live with the danger and you start to accept it.”

There were two world powers – the Soviet Union and the United States. “We were trained in a lot of things. We had some exposure to what an atomic bomb would do in reality,” Longmore said.

“They were telling the kids in the homeland to go under their desks,” he said. “None of that was feasible when you see the destructive power of an atomic bomb.

“You recognize at that time you felt safe,” Longmore said. “We were the only ones that had it, but by the 60s and 70s, other people had it.”

He said that the attitudes differed from what they are today. “There was a lot more love of country.”

Longmore said President Ronald Reagan, who served two terms from 1981 to 1989, had the power to help bring the Cold War to a conclusion. He said it was “incredible” to see what happened between Russia and the United States, and to see the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Reagan, he said, was “a leader capable” of using the strength of the United States. “It sure looked like life would be better – absolutely – with the conservative view on things.”

When asked who his two favorite presidents are, Longmore said Reagan and George W. Bush. He said Reagan “loved America. He made you feel good about America…

“It was quite visible that Reagan believed in the heart of America and the good people that made it up and they understood what it meant to be free,” he said.

“Bush was willing to defend the country after we were attacked in 2001, trying to protect the country from a nuclear explosion in the United States,” Longmore said. “That’s still a huge threat in this country. It goes off the people’s radar screen.”

He recommends reading the book, “We Still Hold These Truths – Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future,” by Matthew Spalding, which is about the founding fathers and how their ideals still hold true.

He is critical of the current administration. He said the country is headed toward socialism. He fears that government is getting too big.

Longmore said that he enjoys freedom. “I grew up in a great America. I would like to think my grandkids would get the same feeling about America,” he said.

Longmore knows firsthand about public meetings and local government, having been a supervisor in Northampton Township from 1974 to 1980. He served when the area turned from agrarian to suburban.

Thirty years later, though Longmore no longer holds public office, he advocates people getting out and vote. “It is important for the people to understand the power of one vote, because if everyone votes you have a collective group that can change destiny.”

Looking back, he said, “The military service was one of the better things that happened in my life,” Longmore noted. He was single at the time of his service, and married Shirlee afterwards.
Shirlee and Joe have five sons and ten grandchildren. They moved to Holland in 1970. Longmore grew up in the Frankford section of Philadelphia.

Two of their sons were in the service, like their father. Joseph was in the U.S. Navy Seabees and Michael was in the U.S. Air Force.

All of their children graduated from Council Rock High School, which is now Council Rock North.

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2010-04-06T11:14:00.001-04:00

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John F. Sandle

2010-03-31T15:53:00.002-04:00

Ex-Marine knows a thing or two about dedication and sacrifice.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Former Marine and Perkasie resident John Sandle has a natural inclination to help others, which he admits has sometimes gotten him into trouble. An outwardly stoic man, but one with a clearly emotional center, Sandle, 64, says he tries hard to focus on positive things and leave bad memories in the past, but he does make it a point to mention that he was stabbed five times and shot once, all before graduating from Bloomfield Tech High School in Essex County, N.J. At least two of the incidents came as a result of Sandle attempting to help a stranger, and when Sandle told his father he was interested in joining the Marine Corps, the response he got was plain and simple: “There are two things the Marines can teach you better than I can,” his father, Frederick, told him, “defending yourself and running away.”

Sandle did little of the latter throughout his military career, which began on Nov. 5, 1963 when he was still a senior in high school. He says he was the first guy in his class to go into the service and, as far as he knows, the fourth guy in his class to ultimately go to Vietnam. Sandle first enlisted with the Marine Corps Reserves, unable to jump right into active duty given his status as the sole surviving son of a WWII Army veteran. After appealing to the right people, Sandle was able to dodge the restriction, but before deploying he stayed home to tend to his father as he battled cancer. When Sandle was 19, his father passed away, and he reported to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.

With his basic training already complete, Sandle stepped in as an armor, test-firing and repairing weapons. At roughly the same time, his wife Sandra, whom he’d married in 1966, gave birth to his son, Todd. And when Todd was one month old, Sandle received orders for Vietnam, one of many instances in which he’d be forced to choose work over family.

“I knew I had a job to do and I knew I’d be going [to Vietnam] eventually, but it was unfortunate it had to happen right then,” Sandle says.

Sandle first reported to Okinawa, where he initially spent much of his time as a file clerk while waiting for the recuperation of his left ear, which he injured by not wearing protective gear while test-firing weapons (to this day, the ear has never recovered, says Sandle, who’s 85 percent deaf in his left ear and 50 percent deaf in his right – the result of another injury in Southeast Asia). For the unit in Okinawa, his mission eventually became to repair all Marine Corps weapons in Southeast Asia, from handguns to tanks, and to send teams of men into Vietnam to repair weapons in the field.

During his 13-month stay in Okinawa, Sandle’s second child, Pam, was born, and when he was reassigned to California’s Camp Pendleton, serving as a troop handler and pre-deployment instructor and training men who were bound for Vietnam, the workload began to take its toll on his family.

“It was long, hard work,” Sandle says. “We worked six-and-a-half days per week for 19 months straight. That’s why I ended up getting a divorce. I think I had seven days off in 19 months. But it was a job that had to be done.”

In 1970, when his wife finalized the divorce, Sandle signed a waiver to volunteer to go back to Vietnam. He served as company administration chief and platoon sergeant. When asked if he saw much action, Sandle says “not really” and “I saw enough” before revealing that, at one point, he inadvertently killed a 14-year-old native boy, who’d been holding a gun on him, and whom he meant to knock out with his weapon but accidentally shot.

“It’s not something I’m proud of,” Sandle says with genuine remorse.

Sandle was soon assigned to the 2nd Battalion 5th Marines, the most highly decorated battalion in the Marine Corps, and then to 1st Battalion 11th Marines, where he was promoted to Staff Sergeant. Soon after that he met his second wife, Kate, whom he married on Nov. 4 1972 – one day shy of his anniversary of joining the Marine Corps. In 1976 he was transferred to a Marine brigade in Hawaii, where he served as a casualty officer. In 1979 he transferred to Washington, D.C., where he worked closely with NATO and SEATO and where, he says, he was involved with the legislation of the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), which stabilized officer manpower throughout the services.

He eventually ended up back at Camp Pendleton, where his duties included the out-processing and discharging of Marine Corps personnel. He says he discharged about 40,000 people in 3 years and devised a way to save $1.4 million in administration costs via simple things like reduced paperwork. He received a Navy Achievement Medal for his efforts.

Sandle retired in 1988, went to work for the now-defunct Globe Security in Philadelphia, and was then called back to active duty to serve in Desert Storm. When he was sent home once more, he worked for the Department of Agriculture, then a mortgage processing firm. He’d later work for a security company and postal service, but not before a pursuing a degree in criminal justice at Allentown College, which he’d have to forgo to take care of his dying mother and stepfather.

In 2003, Sandle split with his second wife, with whom he had a daughter, Kristen. In 2007, he remarried again, this time to Phyllis, whom he’s still with today. In the Marines, he says he learned the value of growing up in America, to respect people of all walks of life and, of course, helpfulness, work ethic and sacrifice.

“John F. Kennedy, when he was sworn in, stated, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,’” says Sandle, who’s also commander of the Guardians of the Washington Crossing National Cemetery. “I have that on a plaque on my desk, followed up with the quote, ‘I can, I have and I will.’”

Steven Webb

2010-03-24T16:35:00.004-04:00

Sergeant served in Iraq after 26 years in National Guard.

By Matthew Fleishman, BucksLocalNews.com

A self-described “army brat,” Sgt. Steven Webb spent 26 years in the New Jersey National Guard before being deployed to Iraq in June 2008. That upbringing is what motivated him to join the National Guard in 1982, at age 18.

“I’m what’s called an army brat,” said Webb. “My dad was a career officer who retired, after 26 years, as a captain. We lived in several places around the country, and the army has always been in my family and my blood.

“It’s an honor and a pleasure being in the National Guard,” continued Webb. “Being in the National Guard has meant everything to me because not only do you have your military duties, but you have your civilian job and your responsibilities at home. It’s not just being part of the army, but also representing, protecting and defending New Jersey in times of trouble, like during floods and disasters.”

In the National Guard, Webb has been part of a combat engineer unit. Before his unit was deployed for Iraq, it was sent to Fort Bliss in Texas, which is where Webb sustained an injury that would not prevent him from going to Iraq, but would prevent him from staying there for his entire tour of duty.

“We were at Fort Bliss and were doing combative training, and I was trying to subdue someone larger than me, and I performed a move and injured my elbow and shoulder,” said Webb. “Nothing was broken so I was deployed to Iraq with the rest of my unit.”

While this deployment was something that Webb knew was possible from when he first entered the National Guard, his feelings were mixed.

“There were a lot of thoughts that came up,” said Webb. “First, this is what we trained for all of these years, and we would be putting all of our training and skills to the test. But there was also apprehension, too.

“The flight was 26 hours from Texas to Iraq,” continued Webb. “You kind of start thinking about the potential bad things and whether or not you have everything taken care of in case God forbid you don’t come back. Once we got there though, I thought about my crew and my missions, and I just had to put the thoughts about my family in the back.”

Once in Iraq, Webb’s unit was assigned to a cavalry unit, and he became a truck commander on a three-man crew. The crew would perform area security operations for eight to 12 hours at a time, looking for improvised explosive devices, clearing roads for convoys, or doing demolition work to create obstacles to prevent anyone from traveling on certain roads.

It was during these missions that Webb’s shoulder injury began to worsen.

“We would be out patrolling, looking for IEDs and working with locals around the base, but it got to the point where my shoulder started wearing down. I would come back at the end of the mission, pop some ibuprofen and be good for a few hours, but every day it would get worse.”

The injury continued getting worse until Oct. 29, 2008, when he felt a “snap” in his shoulder.
“I felt a snap in my shoulder,” said Webb. “I tried to suck it up and keep going, but when that happened I couldn’t move my arm.”

For Webb, the injury was a minor issue, but the thought of leaving his three-man crew was devastating.

“The worst part about being injured was not being with my crew,” said Webb. “I was the truck commander, and I was concerned about who would be taking care of my boys and watching their backs. Every stop along the way, I would tell the doctors to patch me up so I could get back to my guys.”

After being sent to Germany for treatment, it was determined that Webb’s injury was too severe for him to be sent back to Iraq, so he was sent to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he received additional treatment for his injured shoulder.

Currently, Webb is a fire inspector at Rutgers University and a volunteer firefighter with the Hopewell Fire Department. He proudly remains a member of the New Jersey National Guard.

Joseph Haak Sr.

2010-03-17T14:47:00.001-04:00

Late Bristolian devoted many years of service.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com

Joseph Haak, Sr., of Grundy Commons in Bristol Borough, had always remembered conditions of the dramatic, worldwide economic downturn in the late 1920s known as the Great Depression.
His widowed mother Catherine was affected by economic conditions that were beyond her control and she cleaned offices for a living; and often times, cleaned the homes of the doctors on Radcliffe Street.

Haak attended Bristol High School and Bristol Township High School in the Class of 1944. During his high school years, Joseph was a machine press operator in the Manhatten Soap Company, stamping the die to make “Sweetheart” soap, the streamlined pink oval bar with the filigree border.

He also worked at the Grundy Mills as a pinsetter, replacing the damaged pins in the combing machine, making $15 a week.

“Senator Grundy’s car broke down in front of our home and the chauffeur asked to use our phone and my mom let Senator Grundy come in to make a call and she made him a cup of tea,” Haak once shared. But, his career soon later took a turn into the military field.

At the end of his junior year, Joe enlisted in the Army Reserve and was drafted in August 1943.
His first stop was Fort Meade, MD. Here he was given his uniform and the new recruits received instruction to provide a mission ready workforce to maximize efficiency and effectiveness, but his travel had just begun.

He was sent to an Army training camp at Camp Gruber Military Reservation, Okla., which closed at the end of WWII and then reopened in 1977 for reserve and active unit training.

He trained with the “Rainbow 42nd Division” before going overseas and returning to Fort Mead.
Twice in this century, the Rainbow Division has signaled to millions of people the end of tyranny and oppression and the beginning of new hope for a better world. These companies were used to defend against and attack and counterattack powerful German forces along a furious battlefront.
At this point, Joseph was on his way to Camp Myles Standish, outside of Boston, Mass., then to a temporary Army base in Liverpool, England in June of 1944 on the Wakefield ship, that in civilian life was a pleasure cruiser, the “Manhattan,” converted to a Naval transport ship.

Haak recalled at this time, after singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” that he and the troops courteously remained at attention and remained saluting for the British National Anthem. England’s fields were “khakied,” jammed with American men, planes and weapons.
He invested well over two years of his life in the service and traveled to five countries, including England and the invasion area in Utah beach.

Joe also fought in Normandy and in Belgium.
Haak was hospitalized in France in the 40th General Hospital for a month and a half after an artillery shell pummeled through a house in which they were sheltered. It went into the ground and detonated.

He was shell-shocked after that ordeal long after his uniform was hung up in the back of the closet. Joe was one of the surviving 35 of the normal strength of 189 men. A soldier had gone limp and died in his arms and he had always had nightmares about this.

He was reclassified “unfit for further combat duty” and was briefed very strongly in March 1945 in the 726th Military Police Battalion. His job then was to look out for high-ranking German officials leaving to go to neutral Spain or Switzerland.

Pfc. Joe was on the small, 60-acre Mogmog Island when Germany surrendered.
“You never boasted, bragged or asked for adulation for your past,” said Haak. “You did the job you knew was right and quietly you cry at night.”

Now it was time for Joseph to go home. His entire battalion boarded on trains and moved to Marseilles, France and then boarded ship to pass the Straits of Gibraltar, cross the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean and traveled through the Panama Canal.

Upon returning home, Haak went out looking for work and secured a position in the Madsen Machine Company, with an apprenticeship to be a machinist under the G.I. Bill.

His next employment was at the Tangent Tool Company in Morrisville to learn to be a custom specifically designed tool maker, engineering extreme precision and high performance tools and he completed his on-the-job training and apprenticeship.

Joe returned to Bristol Borough and lived there for a few years until his recent death in February of 2010.

In an interview with BucksLocalNews, just a year before his death, Haak stated that “Bristol has always been a great town” and that after all that he had accomplished in life: “[Now] I do what I want to do.”

Well, whether he wanted to or not, growing up through the Great Depression and devoting years to our military, Joseph’s family can truly look back on his life and call it heroic.

“[I was] not a good dancer, two left feet,” Haak once said. “Just a good marcher as a soldier.”

****
Cate Murway contributed to this article.

Creed Palmer

2010-03-03T14:06:00.002-05:00

‘Country Boy’ supervised gun repair during Battle of the Bulge.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

At 91, U.S. Army Master Sgt. Creed Palmer has a strong memory of being part of the invasion of Normandy and the subsequent Battle of the Bulge. By the time WWII ended, Palmer had reached the rank of master sergeant.

“I was in the ordinance company,” Palmer said, sitting at his kitchen table in Wrightstown Township. The Middletown Grange Fairgrounds back up to his small white house on Worthington Mill Road.

He is in good health. Surprisingly, he still helps to mow the yard.

Originally from North Carolina, Palmer graduated from the ninth grade. He and a friend, who was part Cherokee Native American, literally hitchhiked north, ending up at Bowman’s Tower in Washington Crossing, where his friend’s uncle lived. He was a full-blood Cherokee.

Palmer, who once was a hired farmhand at a nearby farm, had a book written about him: “The Life Story of a Country Boy.”

Being a farmhand, he worked to pay for food. “I made enough to eat,” he said.
“I went in the service,” Palmer said. “I figured that was better.”

In 1941, Palmer and his future brother-in-law, Leon Worthington, drove to Ft. Dix to enlist.
Getting to Europe was a long road for Palmer. From Ft. Dix, he was sent to points throughout the country for training. He went to Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri and Arizona. They were tested in 20 degrees below zero and 120-degree heat.

He would take responsibility of 50 men, heading up a group who repaired guns. That meant working on everything from rifles to canons. His men worked on .50-calibre machine guns.
“I had charge of all the guns that needed to be fired,” Palmer said.

“We did everything on the big guns (cannons),” he noted. “We stripped them all the way down and then put everything back together. We tested, fired it and it went back into position. We pulled it with a big truck.”

Palmer remembered how he had to sign a paper, taking responsibility for repairing the guns. “That was my job,” he said. “We had to certify the weapon was done. If it wasn’t, I’d get in trouble.”

The trip overseas to Europe was long, with ships of men packed like sardines. The hammocks were hung one on top of each other. They slept in shifts. When he would later return home by ship, he had learned that sleeping on deck was the way to go.

“We landed in Ireland,” Palmer said. They went to little towns where they trained for six months. They went into the mountains and approached foxholes. “You’d crawl and they were shooting machine guns over you,” he recalled. “You literally had to keep down.

“We went from there to Normandy,” he said. “The Germans had everything fortified. The Americans had to establish a beachhead to make sure the Germans were back far enough to make sure the troops could get in.”

“We went in the second day of the invasion of Normandy,” Palmer continued. “That’s how we got started. We established the beachhead and kept right on going. We stopped once. We wound up in Le Havre. We stayed there two to three weeks. We cleared out Le Havre of Germans.

“Once we got them out, we traveled a lot of time,” he said. “We went up through France up into Luxembourg. We traveled from there and went into Germany. We were riding in vehicles and walking.”

The Germans bypassed Palmer’s company. “They went right by,” he said. “Some of their troops went around our flank. That’s when they had the Battle of the Bulge. We were surrounded for three days. Finally, our troops cleared us.”

They headed to the Rhine River. “After we crossed the river — that was it. The war was over,” he said.

“We came back and went into France and they said, ‘You can go home,’” Palmer said.
What stands out in his mind is how many of the towns were leveled in France. “They didn’t touch any churches,” he said of the Germans.

“The people (the French) were nice,” he said. “The people were glad we got there.”

Watching the German surrender was quite a sight to see, according to Palmer. “We just crossed the Rhine River,” he said. “All the German vehicles came. They surrendered. Seeing all the guys coming – they were glad to give up.”

Palmer said he felt great, too. “I can get out of here now,” he remembered thinking. He was discharged in 1945.

Upon returning home, Palmer worked for General Motors. Next, he was a clerk at the Newtown Hardware House on South State Street in Newtown, where he worked for three decades.
In town, Palmer gained a reputation for being able to fix anything that was brought into the store.

Leon Bass

2010-02-24T18:54:00.003-05:00

WWII combat engineer became a champion for peace and equality.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Leon Bass is a fine storyteller, and he has an incredible story to tell. The extremely eloquent 85-year-old, who lives in an apartment in Newtown’s Pennswood Village, has lived a life that would warrant a feature film. A WWII combat engineer who grew up before the Civil Rights Movement, he’s seen and endured hateful atrocities at home and abroad, only to emerge victorious as a resolute soldier for peace, equality and enlightenment.

Along with four brothers and one sister, Bass was raised by parents Henry and Nancy in a Philadelphia household. After graduating from West Philadelphia High School in 1943, Bass was voluntarily inducted into the Army and sent off to Camp Wheeler in Georgia for basic infantry training. He was placed in an all-black unit under the leadership of white officers.

“It was horrendous,” Bass says. “I had never experienced the kind of racism I experienced there. It was present in Philadelphia, but nowhere near as blatant. My father used to want to take me back to his hometown in South Carolina, but my mother always advised against it. I understood why when I got to the South. It was a very painful experience.”

Bass spent four months at Camp Wheeler before becoming a combat engineer and moving on to Camp McCain in Mississippi, a base that would send him out on long outdoor “maneuvers” to practice battle tactics. He then made his way to Camp Robinson in Arkansas to prepare for overseas duty, and soon found himself in Fordingbridge, a country town in Hampshire, England that would serve as a post to organize supplies. In December 1944, he crossed the English Channel into France and awaited orders in the bitter cold.

“When orders came down, we were told we were going to be part of the third army under the command of General George Patton,” Bass says.

Bass and the rest of the men in his unit were assigned the duty of repairing a bridge near the town of Martelange in Belgium. The bridge needed to be fixed so tanks, guns, men and ammunition could pass through and reach the adjacent town of Bastogne, where Americans were trapped by German soldiers.

“We worked night and day,” Bass says, “in spite of the weather, in spite of the land mines we would encounter, in spite of that one plane that seemed to fly over every day trying to bomb the bridge. And we finished it on time. And all of those resources reached the other side and we were able to defeat the enemy. And that was all part of what we now know as the Battle of the Bulge.”

Bass says he was very proud of the victory, but seeing the bodies of the men who died in the battle got him questioning what he was doing at war in the first place. Knowing full well he may also die in battle, he began wondering what he was fighting for, remembering all the times he was discriminated against in America: denied the privilege of drinking at a water fountain, unwelcome at a restaurant, forced to stand for 100 miles on a bus with vacant seats.

“I was angry at my country,” Bass says. “I felt used and abused. I’m going to protect all these people with my life, should that become necessary? Fight to preserve all the wonderful things I’m not good enough to enjoy? But the war went on, and I had to keep my anger down inside.”

Bass received new orders to report to Weimar in East Germany, and before long he saw something that would alter his life and outlook forever. A lieutenant drove him and a fellow soldier to Buchenwald, a concentration camp.

“I was to have the shock of my life,” Bass says.

At 19, Bass had never even heard of a concentration camp, and received the rudest awakening imaginable. Bass saw what he calls “the walking dead” – people who were skin and bone with skeletal faces. He says the stench of death and human waste was unbearable. He saw torture chambers, and human experimentation labs with body parts in jars of formaldehyde. He saw human skin stretched out on tables, crematoriums with human remains and stacks of corpses.

“And I knew it was all because the Nazis were saying these people weren’t good enough and therefore could be terminated,” Bass says. “Something changed. I came into the camp angry, but now I could see more clearly. I understood that human suffering was not relegated to just me – it can touch all of us. I had seen the face of evil, and the hate I saw in the South couldn’t even compare to the hate of the Nazis. I realized I had something to fight for – I had to help to destroy that evil. I decided that if I made it home, I would do something to effectuate change.”

Less than a year later, in January of 1946, Bass made it home, and he got busy. Using the financial benefits from his military service, he got into West Chester University, where he still had to face down racism, unable to stay in the dormitories or eat in the cafeteria. Only the second member of his family to attend college, he focused on his education, and began to adopt a non-violent protest mentality. After graduation he got a teaching job at an all-black elementary school in Philadelphia, and saw such landmark developments as the rise (and tragic fall) of Martin Luther King, Jr., the bold actions of Rosa Parks and the start of the Civil Rights Movement.

Bass became an elementary school principal in South Philadelphia, then the principal of an all-white school in the Northeast. Finally, he was called upon to be the principal of Benjamin Franklin High School, “the toughest school in the city” that, at the time, was all-male.

Bass has a knack for cleverly and dramatically unfurling the details as he recounts his life. There’s the sense he’s not only told this story before, but perfected the way he tells it. And then he explains how an Auschwitz survivor visited Benjamin Franklin High School one day, and wasn’t well-received by the unruly students until Bass told them to pipe down and listen, that he had seen the same things she did. After her presentation the survivor pulled Bass aside and told him he had a story to tell, too, and he needed to speak out.

“That was 1971,” Bass says, “and I’ve been speaking ever since. I’ve spoken at colleges, universities, maximum security prisons, churches, places across the country, overseas in Ireland, Bermuda. I was just at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School and soon I’ll be at a high school in Chicago. Because that evil is still with us. People are still doing evil things to each other. It will take over our hearts and minds if we let it, but we must not let that happen.”

Ralph “Fluffy” Landolfi

2010-02-17T15:08:00.002-05:00

Former deli owner received three Bronze Stars in Korea.

By Matthew Fleishman, BucksLocalNews.com

At 21 years old, Ralph “Fluffy” Landolfi was sent to Korea after being drafted into the U.S. Army.

“I was stunned,” said Landolfi. “I didn’t know what to expect with the war going on. All I knew was that I would be away from home for two years.”

Landolfi, who was born in Trenton in 1930, was working for Labor and Industry in New Jersey when he was drafted and sent to Fort Dix for a week. From there, he was sent to Camp Gordon in Georgia for eight weeks of basic training, and eight weeks of training for his duties in Korea, which were jobs in Army communications.

In Landolfi’s first assignment, he was a courier dispatcher and would have to deliver information to the front.

“I would deliver messages to R.O.C. outfits at the front,” said Landolfi. “All alone at night with just the cat eyes of the Jeep. The only time I wasn’t scared over there was when they sent me to Japan on ‘R and R.’”

Soon after, Landolfi was assigned to the 937th Field Artillery B Battery, which was equipped with four M-40 self-propelled 8-inch guns. With the 937th, Landolfi was a radio jeep operator, which meant that he would go ahead of the unit to set up radio communication capabilities.

“We would always have one artillery piece with us, and would go up with a convoy that would pick a spot,” said Landolfi. “My job was to set up communications with the FDC (Fire Direction Center). Then we would be sent to the observation post to report on enemy activity and call in fire power.”

It was while with the 937th that Landolfi was injured, and subsequently received the Purple Heart. While scouting a new position for the outfit in September 1952, Landolfi’s truck was hit, injuring him and two other men in his unit, causing him to spend two weeks in the hospital with a leg injury.

“I didn’t know I got wounded until I put my hand on my leg and it was hot from the blood,” said Landolfi. “I was in the truck trying to get my gear out, and then we ran for cover just as the truck got hit.”

After recovering, Landolfi another nine months in Korea, and was sent home the day the truce was signed in 1953. He was honorably discharged from the Army on Sept. 16, 1953.

For his service in Korea, Landolfi, who is a member of both VFW Post 6393 and American Legion Post 317, received three Bronze Stars, the Korean Service Medal and the United Nations Service Medal, in addition to the Purple Heart.

Back at home, Landolfi opened the original Landolfi’s Deli in the Yardley Town Center in 1983 with his son, Steve. The Landolfi name was already famous in Trenton, as his father, Pasquale, owned Landolfi’s Frozen Food. The deli closed in 1988, but Steve later re-opened the deli in its current location on South Main Street in Yardley Borough.

Landolfi lives with his wife of nearly 55 years, Loretta, and they have five children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Danny Quill

2010-02-10T14:23:00.002-05:00

World War II veteran turns 95 years old on Feb. 10.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

*Editor’s note: Danny Quill was one of the first veterans to be profiled in our “Saluting Our Veterans” series. In honor of Mr. Quill’s 95th birthday, we spoke with him about a very interesting aspect of his life.*

Looking back on his life, World War II veteran Danny Quill of Morrisville remembers when he had homing pigeons.

“I flew pigeons in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Quill, who turned 95 years old on Feb. 10.
Homing pigeons, he said, have saved lives. He pulls out an article about “G.I. Joe,” a pigeon that saved the lives of 1,000 British soldiers during WWII because of a message it delivered.
“I’ve had that article for over 60 years,” Quill said.

His life, in a way, previously centered on homing pigeons and racing them. He talked about how he had them since he was 16 years old. Quill reminisces as he sits in his easy chair with his cat, Queenie, on his lap. Quill said the cat sleeps on his feet to keep him warm.

Quill is still a member of the Delaware Valley Pigeon Club in Horsham and the Bristol Homing Society. He has two white sweatshirts with pictures of homing pigeons on them.

“Pigeon flying was good,” he said. “I had a lot of friends.”

“When I got rid of my pigeons, they auctioned them off,” Quill said. “I took 70 up and brought three back and I got $1,600. Then the fellows that bought them two years later wrote me and said my pigeons were breeding winners.”

“I had pigeons, chickens, golden pheasants and silver pheasants,” he recalled about raising birds while he and his late wife, Ann, lived in the Woodside section of Lower Makefield Township.

“After my wife died, I was living alone,” Quill said. “I got rid of practically everything. She died in 1976. I got rid of them all. My buddies — a couple of them died. They used to train my pigeons.”
Quill said he raised and flew homing pigeons because “It’s a great, great sport and a lot of fun.”
“When you put them in the race — when that pigeon comes home — it has a counter mark on its leg,” he continued. “You drop that into the clock and you turn the key and it tells the time. We have a regular clock.”

For a race to Minnesota, he would release his homing pigeons at 8 o’clock in the morning and they returned home at 4 o’clock.

“There may be 1,500 or 2,000 pigeons in one big race,” Quill said.

His homing pigeons had personalities of their own. He described what one of his favorites did. “I’d leave her out,” he said. “You’d call her and she’d fly up and sit on your shoulder. My wife used to call her. She’d land on top of my wife’s head. She didn’t like that too much.”

Quill raised champion pigeons. “I won with them,” he said. Often, Quill would have about 150 homing pigeons at one time.

“Today, it’s too expensive for training pigeons,” he said.

Another reason he gave up the sport was the high cost of feed. “You’ve got to feed them a certain kind of feed — all different kinds of grain,” he explained. “It’s regular mixed-up grain with all kinds of seeds.”

To prepare for baby pigeons, Quill would use tobacco stems to make a nest. Each female laid two eggs. “The male and the female take turns sitting on them,” he said. “Then the male feeds them. It’s something they throw up for their babies.”

Quill described what homing pigeons do when they’re not racing afar, sometimes traveling 600 miles in a day. “You leave ‘em out every day to exercise and then you whistle to come back in the coop,” he said. “They’re looking for feed. You let them fly for a while and then they come in.”
Describing what the pigeons look like when they take flight, Quill said, “Oh, man – their speed I can’t explain. They spin and spin and go around and around in a circle.

“They’ll go for a half mile in a big circle way up in the air and they’ll exercise,” Quill said. “Then, they’ll start coming down low to your coop and you whistle. You shake the feed and they’ll come into the coop to get their feed.”

Quill said the homing pigeons “go way up – you can just about see them. But the real pleasure is to see that one come home, and it comes down VOOM!! They’re glad to get in the coop and glad to get home.”

Dominic “Brownie” Marino

2010-02-03T12:15:00.002-05:00

Bristolian and Purple Heart recipient loved to dance.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com

Dominic Marino is more affectionately known as “Brownie,” but is also known as a military hero with a Purple Heart, a long-time husband, a dedicated man in the community, and one heck of a dancer.

Staff sergeant Dominic “Brownie” Marino was drafted into the army when he was 21 and was sent for 16 weeks basic training to Camp Livingston in Louisiana.

Home to the 28th Infantry Division, it was first known as Camp Tioga and renamed Camp Livingston in honor of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase.
Brownie's next assignment was in Camp Gordon Johnston. Acres of beaches and woods along the shores of North Florida were converted to a base with the sole purpose of training amphibious soldiers and their support groups.

This Florida facility trained over a quarter million men for amphibious assaults during World War II, readying them to embark upon the Great Crusade.

The next stop for Brownie was Camp Pickett located in Blackstone, Va., about 30 miles west of Petersburg where there was enough land, water and other resources needed to establish a post large enough to simultaneously train more than one infantry division. This site of logistical efficiency also offered easy railroad access to both mountain and coastal training sites.

Brownie then left the U.S. for England and then Tenby, Wales, and most likely received one of history’s most discouraging pep talks, “Good bye and good luck.”

His responsibility was to create the correct setting of the elevation, traverse and charge to position guns and establish an outpost line of resistance to cover an entire mile or more radius area with 60-mm mortar and machine guns. The results of a single, well-executed barrage could be decisive, and equally appalling.

After the D-Day invasion, he ventured through France from July 19 until November 10 in 1944 when he was seriously injured in action by a sniper shot in the shoulder that traversed straight through his back. Battle in the dense impenetrable conifer Hürtgen Forest, barely 50 square miles east of the Belgian–German border was so costly that it has been called an Allied "defeat of the first magnitude." He was transferred from the front lines to a school house in Belgium where he was operated on and remained in a hospital in Paris for 2 weeks. He was awarded the Purple Heart.

***
Brownie, the youngest of five children, grew up on Butler Street in Trenton’s famed Chambersburg neighborhood also known as “The ‘Burg.”

Brownie played baseball and football in school and as a kid, he played hardball and pitched quoits, using real horseshoes “the ones you put on a horse; metal, steel.”

Dominic was married to his wife, Yolanda, for 63 years from 1945 until her death in 2008. The couple was married in St. Ann Church and lived on Wood Street in the Zefferi home before moving to Winder Village. They moved back into the Borough, purchasing a home on Wood Street about 30 years ago.

They had three children: Bristol Borough resident Dominic John Marino (Brownie, Jr.), Levittown resident Maryann, and Jennett.

***
Brownie worked in the Fort Dix Army Camp carpentry shop for 26 years expertly woodworking for the GIs and their wives. He has designed handcrafted furniture in his small basement workshop for almost every family member.

He also was an integral part of the construction crew for the Italian Mutual Aid-Fifth Ward Association building on Wood Street.

***
Despite this busy life, Brownie, along with his late wife, had a true passion for dancing.
Brownie and Yolanda belonged to the Bordentown Elks and went dancing there. It was the Paso Doble Ballroom every Friday night for the foxtrot, jitterbug, Lindy Hop, and the Cha Cha, an offshoot of the Mambo.

Brownie danced even through his service tenure. His favorite music is any music during the swing era, Big Bands and all the Sinatra songs,

“You can dance to it," said Brownie. "I don’t know the words. I didn’t think about words!”

***
Correspondent Cate Murway contributed to this article.

James J. Anderson

2010-01-27T13:50:00.002-05:00

Patrolling the Mediterranean aboard the USS Lowery.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Veteran James J. Anderson is about as patriotic as they come. He loves his country. He’s proud of his flag. He chokes up when he talks about freedom.

And when a lot of guys were fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, he was looking for a way into the combat zone.

The Philadelphia native volunteered for service in Vietnam not once, but numerous times. Each time, though, the answer from the U.S. Navy came back “no.” It was a huge disappointment for Anderson, who was eager to see combat at the young age of 17 back in 1963.

“I was a hawk and you can’t be a hawk if you’re not willing to go,” he said. “But I also felt I owed something to this country. I’m a flag-waver. I always was. I felt like I owed it to the guys who went before me.

“To me, it was unbelievable that they had the draft; that they had to grab somebody to serve their country. I grew up with all the war comic books, all the war movies. My father was in the war and my grandfather was in the war before that. I had a great-great-grandfather in the Civil War.”

His father, James J. Anderson, served on the light cruiser Phoenix in the South Pacific. His grandfather, Frank McAdams, was in the Army Air Service in France during World War I. And his great-great-grandfather, Michael Denig, served with the 3rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Calvary in the biggest battles of the Civil War, including Antietam and Gettysburg.

“I wanted to be like my father. He was in the Navy and I wanted to be in the Navy. He was on a cruiser during World War II. I wanted to do what he did,” he said.

Born on Sept. 9, 1946, Anderson grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. He spent his early childhood attending St. Veronica’s Grade School in Tioga and Cardinal Dougherty High School, graduating in June 1964.

He joined the service and started his senior year of high school on his 17th birthday in 1963. He would have joined earlier, but his father insisted that he first finish high school.

“During the Cuban Missile Crisis, when I went in to enlist, they said my father would have to sign. So I went home and I said to my father, ‘I’m joining the Navy.’ He laughed at me and said, ‘When you’re out of high school.’ So I said to him, ‘When I hit 17 I want you to sign my papers.’”
He was true to his word. When he turned 17, he returned to the recruiting office with signed papers from his father and volunteered his service.

He spent his senior year of high school serving in the reserves, going to sea one weekend a month learning how to be a sailor. He served aboard the destroyer escort, Joseph Douglas Blackwood.

He officially joined the service following graduation from high school and requested assignment in the South Pacific where his father had served. “If it was good enough for my father, it was good enough for me. There was also action going on there.”

He never saw the South Pacific as a serviceman and he never made it to Vietnam despite his numerous attempts.

In Oct. 1964, he was assigned to the 177-man crew of the U.S. destroyer Lowrey. He spent several years aboard her in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coasts of France, Turkey, North Africa, Spain, Greece, Italy and Lebanon.

His served as a deck aid before being named personnel man. He was the guy who kept the ship’s records, including transfer orders and discharges.

He also worked as a powderman and projectileman for the gun mount. “We fired every other day while we were at sea,” said Anderson. “We always had to be ready. And when we weren’t firing, we were replenishing ammunition.”

The destroyer’s mission was to provide protection and support for American carriers and cruisers.

“We were a killing machine from bow to stern,” said Anderson. “We had 5-inch ammunition. We had hedge hogs. We had torpedoes, aviation fuel and two Destroyer Anti-Submarine Helos (DASH). If anyone went after one of our carriers or cruisers it was our job to intercept the torpedo. We were there showing the flag and keeping the peace,” he said.

While Anderson never saw combat aboard the destroyer, there were a few harrowing moments.
“We were refueling off an oiler and the seas were real choppy. A seaman from the oiler fell overboard. Our swimmer went over to get him with a line tied around him. He brought him along side the ship. The ship went up in the air, the line parted and they both went under the ship. They got the kid but our guy didn’t make it. He was a nice guy. It’s always the nice guys.”
Ironically, while Anderson never made it to Vietnam, his ship did. Three years after he left the destroyer, it was sent into the war zone.

He completed his service in 1969 and took advantage of the GI Bill, earning a degree in industrial relations from La Salle University. He fell in love and married his sweetheart, Maureen. The couple raised three children, Jim, Karen and Kate.

He worked at various companies through the years before finding a job as an industrial engineering supervisor for SPD Technologies.

He worked for the Philadelphia manufacturing company for 26 years before being forced to retire at the age of 61.

“Early retirement worked out well for me because my daughter had triplets,” said the proud Middletown Township grandfather. He’s now enjoying retirement with Madison, Abigail and Colten, and spending time with his wife of 39 years.

He also devotes time to the Morrell Smith Post No. 440 of the American Legion in Newtown where he serves as adjutant.

“These guys are all salt of the earth. You can find fault with none of them. Yeah, sometimes they’re a pain. But they’re good men with good hearts who did so much for our country,” he said.
To his fellow veterans and to his family, he’s known for his patriotism and his deep and abiding love this country.

“The American flag is everything,” he said. “It’s the Alamo, Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg. It’s all those who went before to preserve freedom. You’ve got to feel it here,” he says, placing his hand over his heart.

Robert M. Davis

2010-01-20T12:31:00.002-05:00

Army veteran recalls his time in The Battle of the Bulge

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

U.S. Army Capt. Robert M. Davis of Newtown remembers Dec. 16, 1944 as if it were yesterday.
First, Davis, then a lieutenant, was a forward observer in the field artillery. Then, he served as an air guard observer. “That means bringing the tactical air right in front of the tanks,” he explained. “Tactical air would mean bringing the P-47 where they would most benefit the advance of the tanks.

“A lot of people would say I was under Gen. Patton. The way they moved divisions around, he was with the Third Army,” he said. “You might be in the Third Army one month and sometimes elsewhere. I was in Patton’s Army, but I was in other armies, too.

“I was in the middle of ‘The Bulge’ in Belgium and Luxembourg – more Belgium,” Davis said.
“We were in the Saint Vith area in Belgium, about 25 miles north of Bastone,” he said. “I was wounded in France...in front of Metz and once in ‘The Bulge.’”

Davis was outside of the tank the first time. “I was caught right in the middle of a mortar barrage, and a piece of shrapnel dug itself into my back right where the vital organs are. It missed all of them,” he said.

The shrapnel measured three inches long and two inches wide. “They dug that right out of me,” Davis said. “It had a bunch of little fish hooks on it.”

After six weeks of recovering from the serious wound, Davis joined his outfit again just in time for The Battle of the Bulge.

“It was the Germans,” Davis remembered. “It was their last big thrust in the Ardennes Mountains and they attacked with approximately 20 divisions. Many of what would be armored Panzer divisions. It’s a German armored division and they pushed us back, and just put a big bulge in the line.

“They didn’t break through, but they put a bulge in the lines and we had to fall back.
“It was over by the middle of January 1945,” Davis said. “After that with the coming of the spring of 1945, it was just a motor march through Germany.”

“In the spring, we advanced with very little opposition,” Davis said.

He was in Europe for about a year. “We did not cross ‘The Channel’ with the invasion and were in the dash across France,” he said.

Davis was in Germany when peace was declared. “That’s when they dropped the A-bomb over in Japan,” he continued. “I can just say we were greatly relieved.

“Whether that was morally correct or not, I can’t say. I can say it saved a lot of lives on both sides,” Davis said.

Looking back, he has memories of good and bad times.

“After you’ve been in a conflict, when it’s all over, it’s a great feeling when you talk about what different people did at the time.”

One story that he shared was about sleeping in a tank. There were five men. “Somehow or another, I stuck my foot out and it hit the fire extinguisher,” Davis explained. “It made a sound like someone had shot a bazooka at us.

“All of us jumped out of the tank,” he continued.

“When we talked about that, we got a big bang out of it!”

While in France, Davis was in “champagne country.” The French were so happy the Americans were there that they gave countless bottles of champagne to them. “I remember one of my friends saying, ‘I got so much, I was cleaning my teeth with champagne!”

Before heading to Europe, Davis saw a lot of the U.S. — northern California was the most beautiful place for him.

“I always said I was going to go back there. I have never gone back,” he said.
“It was in the Gold Rush country,” Davis said. “There were all sorts of rivers there that had many fish. There were pheasants galore and also ducks. That was a great place.”

Though Davis did not return to California, he did return to Europe a couple of times.
“Bob and I have made several trips back,” said Dorothy, his wife. The couple now lives at Pennswood Village, a retirement center near The George School in Newtown. Another time, he traveled to Europe with a good friend.

In France, the people hugged them, Dorothy recalled.

“When we went to the beaches, we had a wonderful time,” he said.

At one point, they were with a group of people in Belgium. “They toasted ‘The Liberation.’ We toasted the people of Belgium. We toasted. They toasted.”

Davis has medals and photographs, which help him to remember his time in the service.
He has two purple hearts, three bronze stars and five battle stars, including The Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.

Davis, a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in geology, would later go into farming.
He had a ranch with Dorothy in Wyoming. Then they had a dairy farm in New Jersey. They bought the Newtown Hardware House on State Street and they lived down the street.
The couple ran the popular store, still a centerpiece in town, for three decades.

Davis went into the Army in 1942. “I would have been 20 then,” he said. “I was discharged in October 1945. I was 25.”

This month, Davis celebrated a milestone: turning 90.

Michael Gavaghan

2010-01-13T13:20:00.001-05:00

Council Rock grad found growth, fulfillment in Air Force.

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Like most young men, Mike Gavaghan took part in his share of teenage mischief and rebellion. In addition to providing him with employment, excitement and a long-term career path, Gavaghan credits the U.S. Air Force for instilling in him some necessary post-high school maturity.

“I wasn't too far off-course,” says the 27-year-old Council Rock North graduate, “but (the Air Force) definitely straightened me out, for sure. It taught me discipline and respect.”

Born in Northeast Philadelphia and raised in Holland, Gavaghan says his interest in planes stretches back to his childhood, when he used to attend air shows with his father. He had that interest in mind when he graduated high school in 2001 and, knowing college wasn't for him, enlisted in the Air Force.

“I wanted to travel and serve my country,” Gavaghan says. “I didn't want to be in the infantry, I wanted to get more involved in maintenance – that's what really appealed to me. So I signed up to be a maintainer.”

Gavaghan's first stop was Lakeland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he stayed for seven weeks of boot camp. Regarding the famously rigorous breaking-in period, Gavaghan says the physical demands were easier than he expected, but the emotional toll was “10 times” more difficult.

“It's really your first time leaving everyone you know,” Gavaghan says. “That was the hardest part: they really break you down, and you have no one to turn to. You're alone.”

Gavaghan says such a feeling is common among first time soldiers – a universal experience that creates a camaraderie among peers and provides them with people to turn to after all.

In November 2001, Gavaghan headed to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, for a year of daily aircraft maintenance training. According to him, he went from knowing virtually nothing about airplanes to being able to “tear an airplane apart and pretty much know how to put it back together.” He later headed to a base in Tucson, Ariz., where he underwent more specialized training, learning the ins and outs of a machine he'd come to know quite well: the A-10 Thunderbolt II – or “Warthog” – jet aircraft.

He says he was responsible for the upkeep of 25 of these single-seat, twin-engine, close air support planes while stationed in Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, where he remained for two years. It was during that time when Gavaghan received orders to deploy to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, a mission that filled him not with fear, but with excitement.

“I was extremely excited to be part of a unit that was going to deploy,” Gavaghan says. “I had an opportunity to really serve my country and I was ready to get out there. I was a little nervous – it's hard to go to the desert and not be nervous – but the fact that we were actually going to be doing our job was fun. It was like practicing a sport and finally being able to play.”

In fact, Gavaghan was so pleased with his new gig that after his first three-month rotation at Bagram ended, he volunteered for another. On maintaining planes used to provide cover and air support for soldiers stationed in particularly dangerous areas, Gavaghan says, “It was fulfilling. Working on the planes and knowing that they were flying combat missions, protecting the Army and stopping terrorism – because of us – was very satisfying.”

The most exhilarating part of the job, Gavaghan says, was when an order to “Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!” would come over the radio, and he and his fellow maintainers would need to ready a plane for takeoff – a process that can normally take up to an hour.

“Five minutes and that plane would be up in the air,” Gavaghan says, proudly.

In June 2004, Gavaghan relocated to Florida's Eglin Air Force Base, where he remains stationed to this day after reenlisting twice. He says Eglin has been “a boring base and an extremely exciting base at the same time.” Boring, he says, because he only has two planes to take care of (and because anywhere must seem tame compared to Afghanistan), and exciting because his mission became the testing of new bombs and missiles.

When new weapons are developed, Gavaghan and company ensure that they're compatible with the aircraft, and that they're firing and detonating properly. Once approved, the weapons are then shipped overseas. Gavaghan says the job creates a strong sense of urgency and an even stronger sense of pride, which also accounts for why he's chosen to remain in the military well after his initial tour of duty, and why he plans to continue to do so well into the future.

“A lot of people think I'm crazy,” says Gavaghan, who now holds the rank of staff sergeant. “People say, 'Why stay in the military?' while other people see it as an easy way out. But any military member will tell you how satisfying it is – the honor in it. Some people might not understand it, but I love what I'm doing. I'm protecting our troops, I'm protecting America, I'm making my dad proud.”

Gavaghan shares a house with a fellow soldier in Fort Walton Beach, a tourist town not far from the Eglin base. He says the area is nice and the scenery is gorgeous. Since new weapons aren't released every day, an average day of work for Gavaghan typically involves “keeping his skills sharp,” helping pilots with simulations and, of course, maintaining the planes.

Gavaghan says, “We keep the planes in top shape so they can continue flying.” Ironically enough, one might say the Air Force has done the very same for him.

Josh Mellor

2010-01-06T14:12:00.002-05:00

Former college baseball player saw action in Africa and Iraq.

By Matthew Fleishman, Yardley News Editor

For Josh Mellor, enlisting in the Marines was simply something that he felt he needed to do.

Mellor, who was a rightfielder for the University of Pittsburgh when they made the Super Regional of the College World Series in 1995, enlisted in the Marines in September 1999, and saw action in both Africa and Iraq after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I really felt there was something missing in my life,” said Mellor. “I always wanted to be a Marine. As a kid, I wanted to go to the Valley Forge Military Academy, but my mom said ‘no.’”

When Mellor enlisted, he was sent to Paris Island, S.C., for 12 weeks of training, and he graduated first in his class of more than 400 Marine recruits. From there, he was stationed at Camp Lejeune in the 2nd battalion of the 6th Marine Regiment.

Mellor was involved in work-ups, which are training missions, at Fort Bragg, preparing him for going on float for six to eight months in the Mediterranean Sea, when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 occurred.

“We were out in the field and were told that an airplane struck the World Trade Center, so we immediately started thinking that we were preparing for some type of urban warfare,” said Mellor. “Then the gunnery sergeant said ‘this is not a drill, we’ve actually been hit.’”

Immediately, Mellor, and the fire team he was leading, got supplied and headed back to Camp Lejeune.

“At first we really thought it was a drill, but after we found out what actually happened, we headed back to Lejeune, and still even had on our face paint,” said Mellor.

After returning to Camp Lejeune, Mellor was supposed to head out on ship for the Mediterranean Sea, but his unit was called back. In February 2002, he did head out to sea, landing in Djibouti, where he encountered his first action of Operation Enduring Freedom.

“We were the first U.S. forces to land in Djibouti since the first Gulf War,” said Mellor, who was supposed to take part in off-ship training in the African nation. “During the training, the French told us that everything was clear, but that’s where we had our first firefight of the mission. We got lit up pretty good there. People don’t realize that al-Qaeda was fighting in Africa at the time.”
After six months on duty, Mellor’s battalion was sent back to Camp Lejeune, and the unit was supposed to be part of the East Coast Homeland Security Force, but as Mellor was about to go on leave in late February 2003, the phone rang.

Mellor, who was a sergeant at the time, was told by his superiors that he needed to call his men back from leave.

“I was all set, ready to go,” said Mellor. “It was at that point I knew something was up. I had to call all of the men back from leave. I had to call back a guy who hadn’t seen his father in 10 years.”

Mellor’s battalion was being sent to Kuwait, leaving on a C-4 jet, heading to Camp Commando in Kuwait, via Germany.

“There were mixed feelings in the camp, but I kept telling my guys that they didn’t spend millions of dollars bringing us here just to send us home,” said Mellor.

On March 20, 2003, Mellor had just sent his men to go eat when an Iraqi scud missile came over the mountain and landed in the camp. The men spent the next 10 to 12 hours in their chemical suits, and the next day, they went on patrol.

“We were originally supposed to set up and be security for a POW camp,” said Mellor. “Let’s just say that the number of Iraqis to surrender were not nearly what they expected.”

Mellor’s team was actually the group that went ahead, securing the road and site for the rest of the battalion.

Later, Mellor was part of the unit that took down the airport in Al-Kut, which also served as a terrorist training camp.

“We took down the airport in the biggest firefight we were involved in,” said Mellor. “It was also a terrorist training area, and instead of pictures of humans serving as targets, we found out they used the Star of David as a shooting target. It was a very disturbing sight to see.”

After occupying the airport, which was on the Euphrates River, Mellor and his men washed their faces with the shockingly cold river water.

“It was 110 to 115 degrees, and I remember putting my hands in the water and it seemed freezing cold,” said Mellor. “I splashed my face and it tingled for hours from the cold water, despite the temperature in the air. That has to be the strangest thing I have ever encountered.”

Through Mellor’s four years in the Marines, he encountered a lot, but he has a lasting bond with his fellow Marines, in the form of a gasket worn on the ring finger of his left hand.

“The bond between Marines is a true brotherhood,” said Mellor. “It’s almost a marriage to each other. We all wear a gasket, and some guys incorporate it into their wedding ring, and others move it over to their right hand, but we all still wear it to this day.”

As part of that brotherhood, Mellor always told his men to do whatever they needed to do to survive.

“I always told them, ‘It’s better to be tried by 12 than carried by six,’” said Mellor. “Gunnery Sgt. Bryan Zickefoose was the first to say that to me, and I always said that to my men. I told them ‘I refuse to write any letters to your mothers, so do what you have to do to survive.’”

Mellor was honorably discharged from active duty in September 2003, and now is a member of VFW Post 6393 in Lower Makefield Township.

Robert Lebo

2009-12-30T13:01:00.004-05:00

Vet and long-time policeman is now Bristol’s Mayor.

By Tim Chicirda, BucksLocalNews.com

Robert A. Lebo, a graduate of Woodrow Wilson in 1966, has served Bristol Borough's community for years, living a patchwork of various experiences and careers.

Among these experiences were life as a Bristol Borough police officer spanning four decades, a D.A.R.E. officer for 10 years, a soldier for the United States Military, and most recently, the Mayor-elect of Bristol Borough.

A football lineman, cross country runner and track sprinter, Bob was also a member of the drama club. He performed in “South Pacific” as a “Navy guy” and also stage crew.

“I wasn’t a singer, so never had the lead role,” said Bob.

Three years after high school graduation, Bob was drafted into the Army, serving in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.

As supply Sergeant E-5 (Buck sergeant), he kept the troops supplied with C-rations, ammunition, water and mail, among other things.

Bob earned the Good Conduct medal for his years of service and achievements during his “expedition” into Southeast Asia in the 199th Infantry Brigade, a major combat unit of the U.S. Army serving in the Vietnam War.

His shoulder sleeve insignia was a blue shield that featured a white spear in flames. The red ball in the middle of the patch represented the splitting of the atom and was meant to be indicative of how Infantry fought alongside the sophisticated weaponry of the nuclear age.

Bob still recalls the hours of boredom in the sun, mud and rain, punctuated with moments of sheer terror, physical and mental stress. He got out of the Army after his service obligation and proceeded to get on with his life.

Upon returning from the service, Bob was hired in April 1974 as police patrolmen and was promoted to Corporal in 1997, still maintaining his beat from Mill Street to Mulberry Street.

He was honored with the “VFW Policeman of the Year” in 1977 for saving six people from the Hayes street house fire, the Elks “Distinguished Citizen Award” and a letter of commendation from PA Governor Milton J. Schapp, among other recognitions.

In 1998, he began an additional career as D.A.R.E. officer for St. Mark, St. Ann and Warren P. Snyder- John Girotti Elementary Schools and in 1999, he earned his certification as a middle school officer.

“I always wanted to teach the youth the consequences of doing drugs and alcohol. There wasn’t a day that I went, that I didn’t love it,” said Bob, who had been the longest running D.A.R.E. officer in the Borough.

Sergeant Lebo retired from the Bristol Borough Police Department in Febuary of 2007 after 33 years of service.

Retired, Bob continued to drive the bus for the Borough school district, which he had been doing since 1988.

Then Lebo moved to the world of politics.

In what some deemed a surprise upset in an otherwise uneventful May primary election, Lebo defeated incumbent Mayor Joe Saxton, who was battling for another four-year term.

Lebo edged Saxton 1150-1084, though they each carried five of the 10 borough voting districts.
These results did not mean that Lebo was necessarily the next Mayor of Bristol Borough at that time, but with his name on the Democratic ticket in a highly-Democratic town, it was very probable and in fact, Lebo was elected Mayor in the general election months later.

Lebo won the mayoral race by a landslide, garnering 92.7 percent of the vote. He took 1,729 votes to Independent David J. Armitage Sr.’s 136.

“I will try to lead Bristol to a brighter future and manage the town and its services to the best of my abilities. I will try continuing progressing the vision of Bristol of being a thriving waterfront town,” said the new Mayor-elect Lebo. “I will also try to bring harmony back to Bristol. I love Bristol because it is a great town with great people.”

And nobody can argue with that statement, as history has shown one thing consistently: Bob Lebo has always been dedicated to Bristol Borough.

And, on top of this, he has been dedicated to his country, and that is why we salute Bob Lebo.

*****
Cate Murway contributed to this article.

Dan and Tom Lawler

2009-12-22T13:40:00.002-05:00

Veterans of D-Day, Vietnam and the Gulf War.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Dan Lawler dreamed of traveling to Europe and becoming a portrait artist. But history had other plans for the 26-year-old from St. Paul, Minn., who now lives at Chandler Hall, Newtown.

In 1942, while studying under famed portrait artist Paul Trebilcock, Lawler was drafted into the army and began training as an infantryman, even as Hitler and his Nazi Party were on the march through Europe.

While completing his basic training at Camp Barclay in Texas, the graduate of the Minneapolis School of Art put his artistic talent to work, creating a mural inside one of the camp’s several battalion chapels. A photograph of his art and a short story appeared in the camp’s newspaper.

From Camp Barclay, he was sent to Louisiana to study military maneuvers. While there, he received a two month furlough to return home to St. Paul, where he married his high school sweetheart, Jeanne.

In April 1944, he boarded a troop ship in New York bound for Europe. Two months later, on D-Day (June 6, 1944), he joined 160,000 men as part of the largest invasion force the world had ever seen.

With shells exploding everywhere and bullets whizzing past their heads, Lawler and his outfit stormed the shores at Utah Beach, the westernmost of the five landing beaches, located between Pouppeville and the village of La Madeleine.

Lawler and his commanding officer were in one of the boats which landed about 100 yards out. “When we got out, the Major went down in the water over his head. He was only about five feet tall. So I held him up all the way in,” said Lawler.

The beach, he said, was covered in artillery and machine gun fire. “A few didn’t make it,” he said.
After the landing, Lawler was sent ahead as part of a reconnaissance team tasked with making sure the road up ahead was safe for the troops as the Americans pushed toward Paris.

“It was scary,” he said. “We’d come down the roads with hedges on both sides and they’d be hiding behind them.”

On Aug. 17, while patrolling on a road near Alencon, he was hit by machine-gun fire and taken prisoner by the Germans.

According to a newspaper account, “Lawler and nine others were captured when the rear German guard, perched on a hill above the Americans, began spraying them with machine-gun fire. One bullet caught Lawler in the leg, shattering his femur; others downed three more of the men. Before the entire platoon could escape, Germans closed in on the remainder from the woods lining both sides of the road, outnumbered and captured them.”

He spent the next several months as a prisoner of the Germans and with an untreated, broken leg that had him in constant pain. “They treated us okay – no abuse or anything,” he said of his captors. “Of course, they were losing at the time.”

He won his freedom when the allied troops marched into Belgium and liberated the town and hospital where he was a patient. “They (the Germans) just left us,” said Lawler. “They were busy trying to save their own hides.”

After the liberation, he and other patients were showered with flowers and kisses by grateful residents. One Belgian asked Lawler as he prepared to leave for England, “Why go away from us? Here you are king. There you will just be a patient.”

He was evacuated to England by way of France, where his leg was set in a Paris hospital. He returned to the States in Dec. of 1944 where he was admitted to Winter General Hospital.

“As bad as the war was, he was lucky to have gotten out when he did,” said his son, Tom, who lives in Newtown. “His 90th Division went on to fight through Europe, including the Battle of the Bulge. There were many, many more opportunities to be in harm’s way.”

Tom said as a kid growing up in New York City and then Long Island, he remembers his father showing his battle scar, but never really understanding the role he played in the war.

“We knew he had been involved in the war, but my parents never talked about it,” said Tom. “He, like many others in the Greatest Generation, did his duty and then went on with his life,” said Tom.

Looking back, the elder Lawler said he doesn’t often think about that time of his life, but he’s glad he was part of the invasion “because it was absolutely necessary to get the Germans out. You wouldn’t want someone like Hitler taking care of you.”

“It’s pretty cool that he was a tremendous part of history,” said Tom. “We respect the fact that they were this generation that had to do what they did but did it with such grace and not really asking for anything in return. It was just something they needed to do.”

Tom followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the U.S. Air Force as a pilot and becoming a veteran in his own right, flying a C-141 into Da Nang, Saigon and Thailand during the Vietnam War and missions to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War in 1990-91.

“The big difference was my service was voluntary. I went in because I needed to learn to fly,” said Tom. “Guys like my father, as patriotic as they were, had no choice in the matter. They did it with the best of intentions, but none of them really wanted to be there.

“For me it was a means to an end and it was a good life for me,” said Tom. “I wanted to learn to fly and about the only way to do that was to go into the military.”

He attended Officer Training School in 1970 and pilot training from 1970 to 1971 before learning to fly the C-141. He began active duty at McGuire Air Force Base, earning the title of 1st Lieutenant at age 23.

He remained at MaGuire for 20 years, working as a pilot and flying C-141s all over the world. He retired as a Lt. Colonel from active duty in 1976 and the reserves in 1992. He now works as a commercial airline pilot for Delta.

Following the war, Dan and his wife, Jeanne, settled in New York City and Long Island, N.Y., and raised four children.

While he never realized his dream of becoming a portrait artist, he did put his artistic talents to use as an illustrator for Parents magazine in New York City. He also did covers for Humpty Dumpty magazine and completed numerous projects for Time magazine and Reader’s Digest.

Ray O'Brien

2009-12-09T13:39:00.003-05:00

Former Army LTC is the man with the plan

By R. Kurt Osenlund, Bucks Local News

When talking to former Army lieutenant colonel (LTC) Ray O'Brien, it doesn't take long to realize he's a very astute and organized individual, from the way he presents himself to his choice of words and relevant anecdotes. It's those qualities that have made O'Brien so proficient in logistics, an area in which he's excelled in both his military and civilian careers. Whether managing engineer equipment in Germany, arranging the railroad transportation of Sunoco products, or literally writing the book on how to run a successful Eucharistic Congress, this detail-oriented Richboro resident has long been the man with the plan.

Born in Philadelphia in 1948 to parents Anne and Raymond, O'Brien grew up in the Olney area of the Northeast with his brother, Martin (who now teaches at a school for the deaf in Frederick, Md.). O'Brien graduated from Cardinal Dougherty High School in 1966, and then went on to study geology and join the ROTC at La Salle University. O'Brien says his unique, scientific major enabled him to select the Army Corps of Engineers as a career path, without actually being an engineer. He says he avoided the “grunt” combat branches of infantry, artillery and armor in favor a branch where he could foster his affinity for building things.

Having completed the ROTC program, O'Brien was commissioned – or “knighted,” as he says – into the Army as a second lieutenant in 1970. He first headed out for intensive training at Fort Belvoir, Va., the official post for budding Army engineers. In 1971, he bought his first car and married Judy, who accompanied him to Germany that same year, and who is still by his side today.

“They say there are two things you don't take with you to Germany because they have too many of them: wives and Volkswagens,” O'Brien says of the couple's unconventional honeymoon. “I brought both.”

O'Brien and his wife shacked up in a small apartment in a village neighboring Zweibrucken, a town near the French border where O'Brien worked in the logistics headquarters during the Cold War.

“Being in the Engineer Corps, you'd think I'd have been out in the field, training for a Soviet attack (which, thank God, never came),” O'Brien says. “But, no, they gave me a job in logistics, managing Army engineering equipment like bulldozers, backhoes and dump trucks.”

He continues, “The word 'logistics' comes from the Greek word 'logistikos,' which means 'skilled in counting.' And that's what I was doing: counting things, making sure everyone had enough of what they needed.”

Apart from finding exquisite, inexpensive French restaurants and interesting exotic gifts (“It wasn't all work,” O'Brien says), the event that stands out most in O'Brien's memory of his four years of active duty in Germany took place in 1973, when Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria in what would eventually be known as the Yom Kippur War. O'Brien was deployed to Israel to provide its struggling troops with equipment, a mission he describes as “covert.”

“There was a time when all of this information was classified,” O'Brien says of the mission, which, at that time, had no official U.S. involvement. “But (the Zweibrucken base) was the closest source of supplies, and if we hadn't got involved, (Israel) would have gone under.”

O'Brien says his time in Germany, which ended when he was discharged in 1974, was “a great experience,” one in which he and Judy lived “on the economy, made a lot of friends and were immersed in the culture.”

“History repeated itself,” says Judy, pointing out a noteworthy coincidence. “As a second lieutenant, he married me, and we lived in Germany. My mother married my father as a second lieutenant, and they also lived in Germany, where they had me. The only difference with us is we didn't bring home a baby.”

Back in the States, however, they did give birth to their first son, Jonathan. It was 1975, roughly one year after O'Brien started working with the Catholic church, a gig that would last three years and allow him to put his logistic skills to use.

With little to no direction, O'Brien helped to organize the 41st Eucharistic Congress, a week-long “spiritual Olympics” that draws in millions of Catholics and religious figures from around the world, and takes years to put together.

After a number of high-ranking cardinals proclaimed that the 1976, Philadelphia-set event was the best of its kind, O'Brien was commissioned to write an instruction manual on how to properly coordinate a Eucharistic Congress. The manual, which O'Brien believes is still in use today, bought him his next car.

In 1978, shortly after buying his current home, O'Brien also applied his training and talents to a job at Conrail, a now-defunct freight railroad company, where he says he felt comfortable since the structure of railroad corporations is similar to that of the Army.

He stuck with Conrail for 20 years, “going down many different career paths,” and all the while remaining active in the Army Reserves. In the late '80s, he became a civil affairs officer, and in the '90s, during and after the Gulf War, he was deployed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bosnia to interface with local suppliers for logistic purposes.

In 1998, when Conrail was broken up and absorbed by Norfolk Southern and CSX, O'Brien briefly worked for a start-up Internet sales company before landing a gig with Sunoco in 2000. The position came just one year after O'Brien was forced to retire from the military due to his age and years of service. He still works for Sunoco today.

“And what am I doing for them?” he asks, rhetorically. “Logistics. In fact, making sure the railroads that bought Conrail move Sunoco's products to Sunoco's customers.”

Coming up on O'Brien's agenda is his 62nd birthday in February. Wife Judy, son Jonathan, son Jason, daughter Jennifer and granddaughters Anne-Sophie and Juliet may well help him celebrate, but it's safe to assume he'll be the one planning the party.

Bill Craighead

2009-12-02T11:56:00.002-05:00

Navy veteran wrote two books, met Hollywood stars.

By Petra Chesner Schlatter, BucksLocalNews.com

U.S. Navy Third Class Petty Officer William M. Craighead, of Newtown, was a radar operator on a landing craft during World War II.

“I was drafted at the age of 18,” said Craighead, who later worked as a high school biology teacher at The George School in Newtown. He would go on to write two books about World War II, one with the late veteran Kingdon Swayne, also of Newtown.

Craighead said he served on the U.S.S. LSM 215. The landing craft was commissioned in Philadelphia and decommissioned in San Diego. He said the ship was part of the U.S. Navy Amphibious Fleet.

On Aug. 8, 1945, his ship arrived on Guam “just two days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on [Hiroshima] Japan. We unloaded our cargo of airplane parts and began preparing for the invasion of Japan…We had no idea of its significance at the time, for none of us were aware of the atomic bomb,” Craighead wrote.

“On August 9th, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. We began to hope that this would bring an end to World War II. There were repeated rumors of a Japanese surrender…on August 14; the war in the Pacific finally came to an end.”

Craighead wrote, “I’m probably alive today because of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For that I am grateful, but on the other hand, I feel a great deal of remorse that so many died or were maimed for life.”

On a lighter note from his time in the service, Craighead prides himself on meeting actress Angela Lansbury at the Hollywood Canteen during the war. In “All Ahead Full,” he explained how he was star-struck when he met the young English actress.

In the book, Craighead included a picture of the movie star in her later years. She is perhaps best known for her role in the television murder-mystery series, “Murder, She Wrote.” He noted that she is the same age as he – 84.

“It was there that I met Angela Lansbury,” he wrote of the Hollywood Canteen. “At that time, she was a starlet, only 18 or 19 years old, just my age. She had just made her first big movie hit, ‘Gaslight.’”

“The Hollywood Canteen was inspired by two movie stars, John Garfield and Bette Davis,” Craighead wrote. “Garfield was known to have said to Davis, ‘Thousands of servicemen come to Hollywood without seeing any movie stars: something ought to be done about it.'

“Davis agreed and the Hollywood Canteen was born,” he continued.

“It was supported financially by guilds, unions, and movie stars themselves. More than a million servicemen passed through the canteen,” he wrote.

“There was a special place in the Hollywood Canteen where movie stars greeted servicemen,” Craighead wrote. “It was a time and experience I shall always remember.

“One night, I saw Anne Sheridan dancing with servicemen. I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity; guess I was too embarrassed. I took a good look at her though, and if I had had a picture of her, I would have made her my pin-up girl. Other shipmates visiting the canteen had stories of their own. One fellow was even invited to a movie star’s house for dinner.”

Craighead and his wife, Betty, recently attended a celebration for The National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The museum celebrated the grand opening of three attractions, including the Stage Door Canteen.

At the event, he was one of approximately 250 WWII veterans, representing each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. He was escorted by active-duty military, Guard and Reserve, in a red carpet procession, which began the dedication ceremony. The ceremony featured actor Tom Hanks and broadcaster Tom Brokaw.

Because Craighead had written about the Hollywood Canteen, he was included in a documentary about the place. He was driven to New York City by limousine and he met Angela Lansbury again.

“When I met her, it was like greeting a long lost friend,” Craighead said. “She wouldn’t remember me from Adam. It was just delightful to see her firsthand.

“They photographed us together,” he said of the documentary which was made about the Canteen for the museum’s celebration.

About meeting Lansbury for the second time, Craighead said, “As a celebrity she appears to me to be very outgoing and so responsive to conversation. She’s a very attractive woman, and for 84, she’s exceptionally so, I might say.”

Rich McCune

2009-11-24T13:20:00.002-05:00

Penn State linebacker was drafted into the Marines.

By Matthew Fleishman, BucksLocalNews.com

Rich McCune was on the fast track to becoming a middle linebacker for Joe Paterno’s Penn State Nittany Lions when his birthday was selected seventh in the Vietnam War draft lottery in November 1969.

“I was red-shirted that season, but when my birthday was selected, me and a million other guys were drafted, and I wound up in the United States Marine Corps as a teenager,” said McCune. “I spent 20 years in the military, but honest to God, I wish I could have played football for Joe Pa.”

However, because McCune’s brother was sent to Vietnam just before he was set for deployment, McCune did not go to Vietnam. Instead, he spent the next four years in the Marines, serving in Guam, Japan, Guantanamo Bay, and in the Mediterranean Sea.

“They had the Marines ready should we have been needed in the Middle East because of the escalating tensions at the time,” said McCune.

After four years in the Marines, McCune finished college through the G.I. Bill in 1976, and then because there were no jobs available at the time, he spent 16 years as an officer in the Army, retiring with the rank of Captain.

“I saw a billboard with the pictures of a sergeant, a college graduate in a cap and gown, and then a military officer, so I went back into the military,” said McCune.

For his first assignment, McCune was a field artillery officer along the border between West Germany and East Germany, and at times, stood 10 yards from soldiers on the other side of the border.

“It was very tense,” said McCune. “You never knew if war was going to break out. They were staring at you and you were staring at them. They would taunt you and point their tanks at you. You always wondered if they were going to start shooting.”

While in Germany, McCune held the title of Nuclear Surety Officer, which meant that he had the security codes for the nuclear weapons in the region.

“If the order came, I would have been the guy who pushed the button,” said McCune.
After Germany, McCune was sent to South Korea, where he says that people don’t realize it, but the war still was going on, even the 1980s.

“I was in charge of sniper teams, and we would sometimes capture North Korean spies with pictures of our entire encampment,” said McCune.

While McCune is proud of his 20 years of service in the military, he prides himself on his work as the service officer for VFW Post 6393, which enables him to help veterans of all ages receive the benefits and medical attention that they have earned.

“I work with them one-on-one, take them to Philadelphia, and then to the hospital to make sure they know what they should do and what they are entitled to,” said McCune. “The work I do as service officer is where I pride myself. I would say that nine times out of ten, veterans don’t know about what benefits they are entitled to receive, but I get them set up in the system.”

McCune said that it is not always easy to get veterans into the system because of how some have been treated upon returning home from serving overseas.

“I see a lot of Vietnam veterans who were mistreated and don’t want anything to do with the system,” said McCune. “I earn their respect and get many to come back into the system to get the care and treatments they deserve and are entitled to receive.”

While McCune spent 20 years in the military, and continues working with veterans, his son is following in his footsteps. Matthew McCune proudly serves his country, and on Oct. 27, was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. Matthew served in both Iraq and Afghanistan doing refueling missions. After his promotion, Matthew was given orders to attend Flight School, with the intentions of flying a KC-10 jet after two years of training.

Rich McCune currently lives in Langhorne, and is the junior vice commander for VFW Post 6393, and also serves as district officer in District 8.