CLARENCE "CLINK" LOCKHART
Clarence Lockhart was born June 21, 1922 and raised in Lancaster, Washington. His school days were spent in a two-room school taught by Mr. and Mrs. Walter Timm right there in his home town. He left the area in September of 1940 to travel with the newly formed E Company, 161st Army Infantry, 41st Division. All those E Company men were from the Whitman County area. They traveled by train to Fort Lewis where they spent six months at Camp Murray sleeping in tents before barracks were built. What he remembers about Basic Training is that every Monday morning they turned out with full field packs to march ten miles, rain or shine.
Clink's unit moved to San Francisco and was getting ready to go to the Philippines to strengthen the US troops there when war broke out. His unit's travel plans changed abruptly. They were shipped to the Hawaiian Islands directly after December 7, 1941. The Army booked him passage on the Lurline, a Matson Liner commandeered by the US government for military use. "It was quite a cruise," says Clink. "That was one beautiful ship."
Lockhart was stationed on Oahu, the site of Pearl Harbor, for a year drawing guard duty and walking post. The military apparently wanted to make sure there were no more sneak attacks on that installation.
After that year, he was shipped to Guadalcanal on a troop ship. "That was not near as much fun as the Lurline," Clink grinned. By the time he got there, the Marines had landed. "We had a mopping up operation to do," he explained. "There was quite a bit of combat, but I didn't get wounded. Got hit by malaria though. The Japs were still dug in. They had been there so long their bunkers were grown over so we couldn't see them. They had made some of their bunkers with coconut tree logs and you couldn't shoot through them. Coconut tree trunks are made of fibers, very thick fibers. You just couldn't shoot through them."
Next he was engaged in a combat landing on New Georgia. "We went in off a barge, got shot at pretty fair," he admits. After that they sent him to New Zealand for some R & R, then he was shipped to New Caledonia for training in invasion tactics. He trained with a lot of new recruits since combat had brought them low on personnel. Then they were on their way to the Philippines. As they moved north their convoy picked up extra troops until all he could see was ships clear to all horizons.
There was not much resistance when they first landed on the island of Luzon because the situation had been softened up before they hit the beach. At San Manuel, however, they lost a lot of guys. It was there that he earned his Purple Heart. He was hit in the knee with a piece of shrapnel. When asked what he did about it, Clink shrugged. "I put a band aid over it and moved out."
He moved out and headed up Balete Pass on patrol behind enemy lines. "My unit got shot up pretty bad, had to pull out. Then I was going to take a patrol out but I got hit by a sniper. He blew my carbine clip clean off," Clink said, "and messed up my hand and arm in the process." That messing up earned him a Silver Star and evacuation to a main field hospital in Leyte. The doctors there patched him up, fixing his tendons and nerves so he retained use of his hand and arm. He caught a cargo ship headed home, spending thirty days crossing the Pacific Ocean - a far cry from his trip to Hawaii on the Lurline.
Clarence Lockhart was discharged with a disability in August 1945, about the time the war ground to a halt in the Pacific. He since has lived and worked in Spokane as an equipment operator with the State Highway Department. He married a Marine, raised four children, was widowed, and now lives in Colfax. His best friend for the past nine years, Sonja Hansen, calls him "My hero!"
That hero added one more interesting note to his service record as he leafed through an old photo album looking for a picture for this book. Clink served as a Bugler in the Army. He had played a trumpet some when he was a kid, and when nobody else stepped forward, he volunteered to blow Reveille, Chow Call, and Taps. Asked, "Who wakes up the bugler?" he said, "Oh, they always have some guy standing guard at night and when he'd come in he would wake me up. The guys all loved me," he grinned, "I was real popular. Then I got promoted to mail clerk… they really did like me then!"