My Dad in The War

Today, Ken Burns will and PBS will air FUBAR on The War. It will discuss Peleliu.  My Dad was on Peleliu. He always pronounced it Pel-Lee-You.
It was always glossed over in the history books about the war in the Pacific. I would read about Midway. Or Iwo Jima which he missed. Or Tarawa which he also missed, but Peleliu was always kind of a footnote.

As a kid, I had figured that the reason he survived was because not much fighting went on. The War to me was in Europe.

I thought his great accomplishment in the war was guarding a Catholic Cemetery in China after the War. Or meeting a 12 foot cobra on the path on Pavuvu.

But I was wrong.

Peleliu was the scene of the 1000 mile stare. The picture of the young soldier with the hollowed eyes of an old man. You've seen it.
My mother told me that that picture was from Peleliu. I've seen it in ads for this session. Even Ken Burns said he had nightmares about Peleliu after working on this episode.

I am glad this is finally coming out. Statements like 6 out of 10 men died for a battle that didn't need to happen had no impact on my 14 year old mind. I couldn't corroborate them anywhere. The number of injured or dead were rarely posted about Peleliu and were often underreported as I found out later.

Tonite, I can see what my Dad actually did in the War. He told me that he was photographed often and in color....but I only ever saw one picture of him and one picture I thought was of him in Peleliu. In one picture, from an old paperback series about the war, my dad is standing near some wounded soldiers lying on the ground. He is skinny, because they all were and because he was only 17 or 18. He said that that was him and that he had lots of pictures taken of him.

The other I saw at the D-Day Museum but someone else's name was on the photo. It did look exactly like him and his buddy sitting in their foxhole. He was even holding his BAR. It really stopped me when I saw it and brought back all the memories of his stories which numbered only a few. They were not pleasant....but it took me until an adult to hear them.

On the landing, he was in an LCVP which was powered by an aircraft engine. However, the fumes made the troops sick and many were throwing up. my dad was hunkered near the top so he could breathe and not vomit. The sea seemed bumpy and the Sergeant told him, "Al, look over the side to see what is bumping into us." So he did and he saw bodies floating everywhere.
It took him a few seconds to realize that those bodies were marines and they were dead.

Another story he told was of he and his buddy in a foxhole toward the rear. There were cans of water everywhere so they gathered them in and put them in the bottom of their foxhole. The water was rusty but it was hot on Peleliu. Being a volcanic, flat island there were no streams or fresh water source os they thought they were lucky because they didn't have to go in to the base to refill their canteens. One time he did and he remembered standing looking at all the dead and wounded when the picture was taken. An officer called to him and offered him some water. Explaining that there was none on the island and he could only offer him a cup. Embarassed, my Dad said he refused. When he got back to his foxhole, he and his buddy covered up the cans. He said he was afraid what might be done when it was discovered they had all those cans under them.

He never liked to talk about the war. My Mom would tell me some of the stories when I was a kid. He only spoke about it when he was much older. About the time he was badly burned, about the time he shot a Lieutenant, about the time he almost got blown up by the Army Corps of Engineers, about Okinawa and China.

But now I get to see the famous pictures that were in color. Stuff I knew was out there but never before seen. Too damning because it was so bloody and so  wasteful. It was a mistake to fight it and it was covered up. The Government didn't want people to know about the real cost...but now it will be out. And I will be looking for my Daddy who has been dead for 8 years. He loved the old war movies, but he may not have loved this one.

If anyone is interested in more, read the Devil's Anvil; the Assault on Peleliu by James H. Hallas. My Dad is in there 4 times.

Thanks for reading. Watch FUBAR tonight on PBS.

•  Tips for all the soldiers and their stories...

  Thanks for reading.

  by Temmoku on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 08:19:51 AM PDT

•  My dad was a bombardier in Europe

  stationed in Sudbury, England. he did his requisite 30 missions and then stayed to become squadron bombardier. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air medal, with clusters. I think, in many ways, hard as it was, it was some of the most exciting years of his short life (he died when I was 3).
  I only wish he could have stayed around long enough to tell me what he did, what it was like, the real story.
  I thank Ken Burns for bringing that story home. I've talked to some folks who think Burns' film is long, drawn and boring. I couldn't disagree more.

  by MA Liberal on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 08:37:47 AM PDT

  •  I find it interesting too.

    I can't imagine my Dad being interviewed for it though...he wasn't a very good speaker. I think the series plays well.

    by Temmoku on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 08:48:33 AM PDT

•  My Dad had relative good fortune

  missed shipping out en route to the Phillipines and Bataan due to an infection, and ended up stateside training flyers on their radio equipment.  Missed more than one flight which crashed, and always spoke with deep respect for those who found themselves in combat.  When you consider not only the enormity of the task, but the fact that it was carried out by young men in and barely past their teens, the mind boggles.  Thanks for writing.

  by marykk on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 08:44:46 AM PDT

•  My Dad

  Had bad hearing in one ear, was an only son, but more than that - he was a sheep rancher.  Producing wool was a top priority so he never went.  He was very angry about it at first.

  by kfred on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 09:03:41 AM PDT

  •  My Dad was lucky

    he didnt have to 'fight' ...  he was a staff sargeant stationed in England and basically ran a pool that repaired fighter planes ..so he kept things working for the guys who flew the fighters in the army air corps.   thats about ALL of what I know about what he did.  

    He would never actually talk with us about the war,  I always thought it was because the 3 of us were girls and he didnt feel comfortable telling little girls about war.   when i reached teen years I would sometimes ask him questions but he always avoided answering them...he would say 'didnt they teach you about that in school" and I would let it drop.

    He has been gone for many years so I can't sit down now and watch the Burns film with him and perhaps finally have gotten his stories out of him...

    I wish I could have.

    by KnotIookin on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 11:46:58 PM PDT

•  I've corrected my misspellings, at least a dozen

  times, but if I hit publish...will I have 2 diaries posted? or one? will I lose the comments?

  I hope someone answers this question before this disappears.

  by Temmoku on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 09:16:40 AM PDT

  •  Don't think so.

    I think it (the site) knows you're just editing the original.
    Edit away!

    by MA Liberal on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 09:46:08 AM PDT

    •  Thanks...it worked!

      I was worried it might not....
      I think I missed one...but it is better now...we learn more eveery day!

      by Temmoku on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 11:05:41 AM PDT

      •  Yup. I'm still learning!

        I wish I knew more about photoshop and other creative software like OPOL and some others. One day!

        by MA Liberal on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 01:06:51 PM PDT

•  The best account of

  the Pacific War I've read is William Manchester's Goodbye Darkness. Here is a very large excerpt on Google Books. Manchester was a US Marine who was terribly wounded at the Battle of Okinawa. It is part history, part travelogue, part memoir and all wonderful.

  by Bouwerie Boy on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 09:30:42 AM PDT

  •  Thnks for the Manchester excerpt link

    It looks wonderful. I'm looking forward to it -- must buy the book.

    by samizdat on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 07:57:31 AM PDT

•  Thanks for this, Temmoku.

  Often, when we read/see accounts of war, perhaps especially "The War," we can forget that, at bottom, the endeavor is simply the disassembly of young men (now women, also), albeit for necessary ends.

  My dad, who might well have been your dad's tour operator, pushed an LST around the Pacific through a handful of campaigns, most notably the retaking of the Philippines.  He never said much about it, other than, "I've been shot at and bombed at and I'd rather not be again."

  by Crashing Vor on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 10:26:44 AM PDT

  •  Necessary, or unnecessary.

    Soldiers have to trust that their superiors, from whichever officer commands them directly all the way up to Washington, DC, will risk their lives only when it is necessary to accomplish certain military goals - whether in the best interests of the United States of America, or for some greater justice.

    So the conscientious commander must wonder, then, whether (when he orders soldiers to fight under him) he is doing the appropriate thing, and not throwing lives away or risking them needlessly.

    But since it all ultimately comes down from Washington, DC, even if all the officers were saints (which they are not) they are taking orders from politicians, who can as a class only be trusted to do what it takes to advance their agendas, regardless of how just and righteous or greedy and self-interested these might be.

    by Shaviv on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 07:57:21 AM PDT

•  My dad was in the 164th Infantry from

  North Dakota.  He was in the National Guard and was called up right after Pearl Harbor.  The 164th was nicknamed "the 164th Marines" because they fought with the Marines on Guadalcanal, losing 147 men killed in action there.  Then they moved on to Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.  During WWII, the 164th had 325 men  killed in action, and 1,193 wounded in action.  After the war my dad had several bouts with malaria.

  Dad told us very few stories about the war--mostly he talked about interesting things that happened to him in Austrialia and the Fiji Islands.  In recent years, he's talked a little more about his experiences.  He's 85 now, and I guess he's thinking a lot about the past.  Guadalcanal was covered in the first installment of the The War, but the 164the wasn't mentioned by name.

  Thanks for sharing you dad's story.  You must miss him so much.

  by Boston Boomer on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 10:37:24 AM PDT

  •  Thannks for sharing your...

    It is getting late for all those guys, think of the stories that were lost. My Dad still did not like to talk about it. He would just tell the same ones over and over. A lot would just be alluded to or "Oh, yeah, that happened to me too."

    by Temmoku on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 11:09:14 AM PDT

    •  I'm trying to get my dad to tell me more.

      In fact I just called him.  He didn't say too much.  I asked him about the battle for Henderson Field (I looked up some stuff on line about Guadalcanal).  He said that they killed more than 1,000 Japanese, and they had to bury them in trenches with bulldozers.  How awful!  The next time I visit my folks I'm going to bring a tape recorder.

      by Boston Boomer on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 12:08:31 PM PDT

      •  Yep, just like my Dad.

        Just the facts, few details or descriptions.

        No wonder Dragnet was so popular during the 50s.

        I hope you can get his stories before they are gone forever. I tried video taping some of them, but he seemed more taciturn on video.

        by Temmoku on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 12:12:29 PM PDT

      •  Someone in a previous diary recommended

        this site from the Veterans History Project, for a brief guide on how to interview veterans.

        by BachFan on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 02:55:46 AM PDT

        •  Thanks!

          I'll check that out.  My brother is a filmmaker, and he has done some interviews with my parents.

          by Boston Boomer on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 03:43:42 AM PDT

•  My Dad

  I am glad that, before his eyesight abandoned him, my dad was able to write out his life story; and the last time he was up here, I took all of the old pictures of his that I had scanned a couple of years earlier, and we went through them together, with him peering and squinting until he could make out the image, and then telling me the what and where and when of each picture.

  Here's one of my dad (on the left) clowning around with captured German regalia outside his tent with one of his tent-mates, the semi-legendary Stanley C. Farr, who finished the war with a mind-boggling 267 discharge points (enough to rotate three men home from Europe) accumulated by flying 160 combat missions over five full tours of duty.

  

  by Ray Radlein on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 10:14:14 PM PDT

•  Quotations

  If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.
  Ruth Benedict (1887-1948), U.S. anthropologist. Patterns of Culture, ch. 1 (1934).

  We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives, that it is inside ourselves.
  Albert Camus (1913-60), French-Algerian philosopher, author. Notebooks, vol. 3 (1966), entry for 7 Sept. 1939

  The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

  by LNK on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 10:15:12 PM PDT

•  I watched part of tonight's episode...

  after being deeply engrossed in a program about Boticelli's illustrations of Dante...speaking of grotesqueries.

  War looks to me like mass psychosis, as my dear Uncle (WWII Pacific vet) would describe the phenomenon. My own father was stationed stateside, caring for wounded.

  When I was very young I remember my mother saying with big eyes about an older man at the end of our street---he was in The Battle of the Bulge. Something to be in awe of. As a little kid I somehow thought that meant World War One in the trenches....the standard horrors of war story line we knew.

  I can only sort of blink in astonishment at what some men want to do with Industrialization.  And explosives.

  Watching "The War" on TV made me feel sometimes like I would have been a Pacifist...sometimes that I'd like to try my hand at killing some bad guys and blowing stuff up....but often that I'd be one of the ones sitting and staring into space...or shooting myself in the foot.

  The only moment that made 'sense' to me was the Native American warrior stampeding the horses because he comes from that background which is so different from mine.

  I come from a long line of folks who wind up caught in the middle.........

  by LNK on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 10:26:35 PM PDT

•  My Dad

  I haven't watched Fubar yet, but have seen the first four parts.  Those photos of the dead are so sad.  And they said between 50 and 60 million people were killed in the war, most of them civilians.  That's often the way it works, more civilians, like in Iraq.

  My Dad was a side gunner in a B-24 flying out of Attlebridge, England (near Cambridge).  He was fortunate to only start his missions in August 1944, so he never had to shoot at enemy planes.  But they were hit by flak a lot and he saw some of his buddies in other planes go down.  He's been anti-war for a long time, against going into Iraq and the first Gulf war, too.  But he's a life long Republican (although he has voted for Dems now and then).

  There's a memoir call Attlebridge Arsenal that came out a year or so ago; it's a complete compilation of all the crews that flew out of Attlebridge and what happened to them.  There are writings from crew members who are still alive now, like my Dad. It's really interesting to look over all those crews and hear their stories and sad to see how many didn't come home.

  Thanks for this posting.

  by dgb on Sun Sep 30, 2007 at 10:31:44 PM PDT

•  Wow

  Speechless.

  by AllisonInSeattle on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 01:48:53 AM PDT

•  Thanks

  Thanks for remembering and sharing what your Dad told you.

  I watched last night (and all four of them last week), and the overall impact for me was one of sadness for all the waste. We're often told how WW II was a necessary war, and I believe it was, but the battles weren't all necessary, nor all the deaths. Burns does a good job of illustrating that, he doesn't let it go all glorious and heroic, despite all the actual heroism which he rightly celebrates.

  I kept thinking about that general on Guadalcanal, the American jungle fighter who let his troops share in consensus decision making -- what a nut, eh? Maybe he had the right idea -- if the troops had to approve strategy (even though in combat tactics can't be decided by a parliament), there would be fewer Pelelius and Market Gardens. Of course, it would never work -- war would become impossible. How about that, then? I do believe that the end of war will only come when all potential soldiers are guaranteed a free choice about whether to fight in it or not -- and a way out, if they change their mind. That ought to be in the constitution, and an article of international law. Conscription? Banned worldwide, like slavery.

  You should let the D-Day museum know about the error in that photo caption. They would appreciate it. If you don't, who will? And then it will be another error of history forever.

  by samizdat on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 07:50:58 AM PDT

•  Thank you for this

  I'm so sorry I'm too late to recommend...

  by sj on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 09:23:23 AM PDT

•  Thank you for telling this story

  I grew up knowing that one Grandpa had been an Army medic stationed in France, and my other Grandpa was in the Army, in the Aleutians.

  The Aleutians, Alaska, eh, nothing happened there... we'd have heard about it if there was something, right?

  Oh, so wrong...

  My Grandpa H was one of the soldiers sent to recapture Attu and Kiska, after the Japanese invaded the Aleutian Islands. It was bloody and horrible, and all done in a blizzard.

  Initially his unit had been training for desert tank warfare at Fort Ord in California. Word came down, and they were transferred to Arctic training, before being sent to Attu.

  After that, they were shipped to Hawaii for tropical warfare training, and sent to (among other battles) Leyte and Okinawa.

  Grandpa H died before I was born, and the only time he ever talked about what he went through was when his son, my uncle, was leaving for a tour of duty in Vietnam. He was one of the Army personnel who ran the landing boats. (I can't think of the proper name - were those the LCVPs?) He also spent time on the ground on the various islands.

  We don't really know anything more than that, because he never talked about it... and his records were among those lost in the 1973 St. Louis National Personnel Records Center fire.

  Off the top of my head, I know he was a corporal (can't remember the unit), 32nd Infantry, 7th Infantry Division.
   

  My other Grandpa, who was the medic stationed in France, is still alive, and on rare occasions you can get him to talk about it. I do know he's been writing his memoirs, bit by bit, for several years. (One of his brothers was KIA at Okinawa.)
   

  I haven't been watching the Ken Burns series as it airs; I'll be borrowing the DVDs.
   

  Have you seen any of the History Channel's series, The Color of War? It's all based on color film footage from WWII - very powerful stuff.

  by Lashe on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 10:16:05 AM PDT

•  The Peleliu part was certainly riveting

  However, another part also got my attention and is also a relatively little known incident of WWII.

  This was the segment about the rescue of the Texas 'Lost Battalion' by the Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

  As a child growing up in Hawaii in the 50s, many of my friends and classmates had fathers who were in the 442nd.  It was only much later in life that I became aware of the extraordinary sacrifices made by this group of Japanese Americans, many of whom had parents and siblings in the internment camps.

  In order to save about 200 Texans, as many of the 442nd lost their lives or were wounded in the Vosges forest.

  I suspect there was an undercurrent of racist behavior on the part of the commanding general John Dahlquist who cavalierly ordered the rescue mission regardless of the cost.

  by Ammo Hauler on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 10:55:15 AM PDT