JOHN MABE
John Mabe was on his way back home from Spokane to Colfax about 6 p.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941. He and the people with him in his car were talking about the attack on Pearl Harbor when they were hit head-on by an oncoming car. The State Patrol arrived at the scene at 9 p.m. to find John's wife broken and trapped in the car and another passenger nearly scalped. Yes, Johnny Mabe remembers where he was the day Pearl Harbor was hit.
Mabe was born February 24, 1919 and raised in Colfax, one of thirteen children in his family. He left school to work for Fresh Laid Farm, a chicken hatchery just east of Colfax. "It's all gone now, but at that time I was mother to ten thousand chicks a week," he grinned.
After he recovered from that horrible accident, John tried to volunteer for the draft. "I figured if this country was good enough to live in, it was good enough to fight for." The draft board didn't see it his way since he was married and had a little girl, Donna. After he had pestered the woman running the Colfax draft board long enough she told him to go home and she would call him when his number came up. He remembers her telling him how hard her job was. "I feel like I am sending people to their death," she said.
When his number came up in the first part of 1943, he joined the Army's 75th Infantry Division, 275th Combat Engineers. "Nobody wanted that job," Johnny said. "We had to go in in front of the infantry and dynamite mine fields."
"Wasn't that really dangerous?" I asked.
"Not if you know how to do it," was his simple reply.
Seeing the doubtful look on my face, Johnny said, "No, it's really not dangerous. Sometimes we'd dynamite buildings, blow up mine fields. We'd go in with a detector and then string prima cord, an explosive, around the mines we'd find, just kind of string it around the field," he explained as he drew an imaginary line on the table in front of him. "Then we'd tie a square knot where the two ends came together, attach one cap, then go back a ways and blow 'em up. It was quick. The prima cord ignited at nineteen thousand two hundred fifty feet a second."
Turns out Mabe had done some dynamiting before he joined the Combat Engineers. As a young man he had blown stumps, had blown ice out of bridges and river channels, and had done some pre-splitting dynamiting for Whitman County, using ten thousand pounds of dynamite over by Rock Lake, and ninety boxes near Oakesdale. Although Mabe had done a lot of explosives work, the Army set about training him. "I never did do it their way," he confided. "They didn't know how to do it safely. I just went in and did it right."
His training started after he was inducted at Fort Douglas, Utah. When he first got there he found a towel tied to his bunk one night and learned that meant he would be awakened early for KP. "I told them, not me. I don't want dish pan hands!" He knew he was being shipped out at midnight that night, so felt free to decline the offer. When he got to Fort Leonard Wood the barracks there were not yet completed. He had one advantage though, the First and Second Lieutenants had to do KP because Mabe and the rest of the enlisted men had not yet been officially attached since there were no officers on duty. Finally, a cadre of officers from Iceland were brought in and the 75th Division was activated. The men had no idea where they would end up, but they did travel to Texas and Louisiana for maneuvers, spending three months in Louisiana. He was assigned to deliver supplies all over the area, through swamps where the Coral snakes roamed. He and another guy were sent out once to find specimens of snakes, spiders, scorpions, and rodents so the new recruits would know what they looked like.
He was sent to Breckenridge, Kentucky for more training, then to Camp Shanks, New York where he boarded the Aquitania, the third largest ship in the world at that time. The ship was too fast to go with a convoy, so they set out alone, changing course every seven minutes, dropping depth charges "every little bit," as they sailed across the Atlantic in seven days. The Aquitania could change course much more quickly than could German submarines, so they changed course constantly, zig-zagging to prevent a sub from being able to line up and shoot at them.
They anchored a mile out from Glasgow, Scotland at night. Next day they shuttled in, picked up trucks and equipment, and proceeded to South Wales, then across the channel to Belgium.
Mabe fought in The Battle of the Bulge, in weather thirty-five to forty degrees below zero. His unit had been issued mummy bags. They liberated some OD - olive drab or order of the day - blankets which they sewed into those bags to help keep them warm through France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and into Germany.
Mabe blew up mine fields all the way, the right way, so it was not dangerous. The Americans, he said, didn't lay down mine fields at the front lines because they intended to move ahead and didn't want to have to cross their own mine fields to get to Berlin. He and the other men had been given instructions to throw all caution to the wind, not to think about any bullet but the one with his name on it.
"I told the young 90-day wonder who told us that that I wasn't concerned about the bullet with MY name on it, it was all those that said 'to whom it may concern' that I was worried about. He didn't seem to like that so much."
Johnny told about one time when he had been sent out in a truck on a reconnaissance mission toward Strasbourg, Germany to locate mine fields. He had a map, but had trouble following it due to the changes caused by warfare. All of a sudden he drove into a German village where German troops were lined up for chow with their mess kits in their hands. They all stood and stared, totally surprised to see an American truck drive into town. Johnny quickly did a U-turn and drove out. No shots were fired. He later found out he had been twelve miles behind enemy lines. When he tried to get back to his outfit, they had moved out and it took him two weeks to rejoin his unit. During that time, his family at home was told he was missing in action.
When it was time to head home, he boarded a Rockhill Victory Ship and sailed out of Marseilles over rough seas that rolled the ship fifty-two degrees, so far over the stacks dipped water at one point and only a wave hitting the side of the ship kept them from capsizing. It was on that trip he learned to prevent sea sickness by keeping a jar of green stuffed olives in his pocket and never looking down. They only got two meals a day, mostly sea water oatmeal, but when they got to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey he had a big steak he still remembers. He was flown to Fort Lewis on June 6, 1946.
He then hopped a bus to Portland, Oregon where his sister lived. He called her and it was then that he found out his family had been notified he was missing in action, but never was told otherwise. They had a joyful reunion in the Portland bus station.
He also had a not so joyful reunion with his wife. When he got stateside he called her only to hear from her that she had divorced him, remarried, and was expecting a child. And, from that day on he was prevented from seeing or contacting his daughter, Donna, because her mother wanted her to grow up thinking her new husband was the girl's father. Johnny Mabe spent thirty years wondering where his little girl was, what she looked like, how she was doing, was she well. From February of 1946 until June of 1976 he had no idea what happened to his daughter.
Then the phone rang and a man's rough voice began asking him questions about his life. He grew angry and nearly hung up when the man said, "There is someone here who wants to talk to you."
"Daddy? This is Donna," said that someone.
His daughter had been looking for him all over the country. She lived in Spokane with her husband and family, and finally had found him in Colfax. She had seen his picture and when she came to see him on June 13, 1976, she knew immediately she had found the right John Mabe, her father.
John Mabe now has three grandchildren, four great grandchildren and three great great grandchildren. The man who had determined he would die in combat to keep America free, has lived to enjoy that freedom with his family.