PART SIX

St. John, Lancaster, Pine City, Malden

Western County

Born and Raised in Wheat Country

Scattered Abroad in Foreign Lands

Council on Aging & Human Services nominated Phyllis VanTine from Colfax to be Senior Services of Washington's Volunteer of the Year for 2001. SSOW selected her over a field of candidates from all across the state as winner of their prestigious award. The day I talked to Phyllis about the nomination and the volunteer work she's done in Whitman County, she mentioned she had worked as a Nurse.

I already had done the story on Dorothy Stanke, but on a whim I asked Phyllis if she knew anyone in Colfax who had been a military Nurse. She thought a half-moment, and, always the ready volunteer, picked up the phone and called Zennie Darnold, and asked her if she would talk to me. She would, and did. I asked Zennie if she had served in a foreign land, and she nodded seriously. "Which one?" I asked, my pen ready to make note. "Texas," she replied.

Here is Zennie's story including her foreign service and a little St. John history.

ZENNIE DARNOLD

Zennie Chesnut Darnold was born in Rosalia in 1920 and, along with two brothers and a sister. She was raised in St. John where her father, Z.M. Chesnut, was a garage man. "His place was just over the railroad tracks where the Grange now stands," said Zennie. "He sold Chevys, Fords, and Mercurys through the years in a great big cement brick building. He had mechanics in the back and a big show room across the front. My uncle, Andy Chesnut's father, worked with him before he opened his own motor shop in Colfax." Her mother was well know in town too. Lula Curtis Chesnut was a Cheney Normal School alumnae and published a single-sheet newspaper in St. John.

Zennie graduated from St. John High School in 1939. She fondly remembers playing basketball as she went through school. "Our big enemy was Pine City," she smiled, and pointed out that she was one of the modern basketball players. Her team wore shorts instead of skirts or bloomers.

While she and her siblings were growing up, her brothers attended Citizen Military Training Camp (CMTC) in Spokane during the summer. CMTC was a group designed for young men, offering some drill instruction plus a heavy emphasis on sports and competition. Her brothers inspired her early in life to take an interest in military life. One summer Sunday she visited her brothers at camp and saw all the young men in uniform, "And I fell in love with everyone of them," claims Zennie. Afterwards, she dreamed of herself in the military, even seeing the details of her barracks, and knew that someday she would get to be there. At that time in her young life, it would have seemed to be an impossible dream, since the military was clearly a "man's world."

When she finished high school she entered Nurse training at St. Ignatious Hospital in Colfax, then graduated from a small hospital in Spokane, but was unable to continue studies due to accreditation problems at that institution. By then the war was on and she signed up in 1944 with the Women's Air Corps. She was finally able to live her dream. She got her papers and notice from the Air Corps in a sealed envelope and hopped on a train headed east to Camp Attabury, Indiana for six weeks of Boot Camp and further training.

She had not told the Air Corps about her Nurse's training, since she had been a bit discouraged with the profession, having found herself unable to proceed as she planned. But when she went through the standard battery of tests, she ended up being assigned to a Surgical Division. "I shined the best in areas needed to qualify as a Surgical Nurse, both on the tests and in our training too," she admitted. The Air Corps also asked her if she preferred overseas or home front duty and she requested overseas duty. But at that time all the quotas were filled, so she was shipped to Scott Field in Illinois, then sent to Shepard Field in Texas. "That was my overseas duty," Zennie grimaced. "The bugs there were horrible."

She was assigned there for a year as a Surgical Nurse. A great many of her surgery patients were Cadets injured during flight training, but the base also received patients returning from combat. One time a night patrol of black trainees was hit by a truck and nearly filled the hospital with severely injured men. She gave shots to trainees and those going overseas, and also worked with many officers who had become hooked on the codeine they found readily available in cough syrup. One of her favorite duties was writing letters for the homesick young kids who ended up under her care. One of her least favorite duties was comforting those receiving "Dear John" letters.

Zennie talked about the times she and her friends would get all dressed up, looking sharp, and go into town to shop, and the treatment she and the other Air Corps Women received. She and her friends were shunned and denied service at the Red Cross Canteen in town where both workers and servicemen were rude to them. She tells of walking down the street and having people spit on her.

"Why?" I asked.

"Well, some women in the military early on had gained a bad reputation for the rest of us. And there were a lot of people, both military and civilian, who thought we shouldn't be taking men's jobs."

"We made our own recreation," Zennie said, moving away from a painful memory. "I played tennis, went bowling, we went on hay rides and went horse back riding. I smoked then. Always bought my own because I didn't know what was in the ones other people smoked. I got mine at the PX for, I think, twelve cents a pack. Everything was a bargain there. We also got to go on airplane rides with pilots in flight training. One time we ran out of gas, and the auxiliary tank wouldn't kick in. We were really scared. Finally the pilot rolled the plane and it shook something loose and we started getting gas to the engine. I got an idea of what it would be like to be in combat and lose power. Very scary."

After her year's commitment she was discharged at her request. Her Commanding Officer wanted her to stay on and get a degree, but she was ready to move on. She and three friends went to Chicago for discharge. "We stayed awhile and shopped, went out at night, had fun, in civilian clothes," she laughed.

When she got back to St. John she traveled a bit, then went to work for the Bryant Wiseman Clinic in Colfax. She found she had an interest in experimental issues. "Cancer was just coming on," she said, "and I wanted to do lab work, see what caused illnesses." She even thought of doing hobo nursing, traveling around until she found a place to work for awhile, making some money, then moving on.

Instead she met Irwin Darnold. They married, had three children, and settled down in Colfax. She worked at Whitman Community Hospital in Colfax for almost twenty years. She now spends time visiting her six grandkids and gardening. She also spent many years driving for Council on Aging & Human Services, making sure people got the medical attention they needed.

Zennie's cousin, Andy, sat still for an interview, then sat still at a typewriter and submitted the following detailed story that takes us on an extended trip with an Auxiliary Tug Rescue unit assigned in the Pacific.

ANDREW CHESNUT

Andrew Chesnut was born in St. John, Washington where his dad and uncle operated a garage until 1928. They moved to Colfax where Andy graduated in 1942. Some of his classmates dropped out to enlist but Chesnut felt it was important to graduate before he moved on. So in early December he enlisted in the Navy and was sent to Farragut Naval Training Station near Sandpoint, Idaho on December 31, 1942.

The navy had searched for an inland training site safe from possible Japanese attack. Rumor had it that Eleanor Roosevelt picked the site, but it was selected by three senior naval officers after a two day study. The President and some staff toured the site on September 30, 1942 while work was in progress.

During the war approximately three hundred and sixty thousand Navy personnel were trained at Farragut on its five basic training sites, separated by the forested geography of Northern Idaho for safety and security. Each site was self-contained with its own mess, rifle range, sick bay, parade grounds, drill hall, and barracks. Nearby Lake Pend Orielle was used for rowing instructions. About thirty thousand men were there when Andy reported for Basic Training on January 1, 1943 in snow three feet deep, but Basic Training commenced anyway. He learned first of all how to wash and stow his clothes according to the Bluejacket Manual which contained all it took to learn how to be a basic trained sailor, including being able to swim twenty-five yards before boarding ship.

Chesnut next was sent to Iowa State College at Ames, Iowa where Navy Instructors and college professors taught electricity. The first class each day was a math class. After graduating and being promoted to Petty Officer 3C (PO3C), he was sent to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay to Gyro Compass School where he graduated in October 1943 and was eventually sent to Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington to wait while his ship neared completion at Bellingham, Washington. During the wait, he was sent to Aerial Gunnery School at Pacific Beach, Washington, over-looking the ocean. Planes towed targets while all types of anti-aircraft guns practiced shooting at them.

His new ship was built out of wood, double hull, one hundred sixty-five feet long, fifteen feet draft with a crew of sixty-five. It was designated an Auxiliary Tug Rescue (ATR). On the second deck were two turbine-driven fire pumps each capable of delivering two thousand gallons a minute at two hundred and fifty pounds pressure. It was well equipped to fight fires on ships. It also carried one thousand gallons of a liquid to make foam to fight oil fires. The crew assembled and the ship was commissioned on October 30, 1943.

Having loaded their supplies aboard, the ATR crew took her to Lake Union to have a rear main shaft bearing replaced. While there, it was tied in front of a Russian ship where there was a custom agent at the gangplank at all times. Sixty percent of the crew were women. "No one wanted to mess with those women. They looked big and mean," smiled Andy.

They left for San Pedro, California with a barge in tow. Eight hours north of San Francisco they were letting out more cable when the sailor operating the towing winch failed to disengage the electric motor from the cable reel. They had about fifteen hundred feet of two and one half inch diameter steel cable out. As they played out the cable it spun the motor so fast it threw out all the windings on the rotor and tore the pole pieces off the frame of the motor. They put in to San Francisco to get a new one hundred hp motor.

They continued to San Diego for shakedown tests. Experts came aboard to test all the machinery to make sure it would stand Navy tests. The ship was the first one completed and it had to be tested to make sure that class of ship would do the required tests. While they were maneuvering, their sister ship made a close turn and rammed their ATR on the port side in back and damaged some timbers, which meant time in the San Diego shipyard for repairs. They then returned to San Pedro to accompany a Merchant Marine tug towing a dry-dock across the Pacific. The other tug had a range of fifteen thousand miles. Their ATR only had a range of four thousand five hundred miles, but it had armament.

They crossed the equator with suitable ceremonies to King Neptune, then crossed the date line on Easter Sunday, both tugs traveling at six knots. They stopped at Samoa to refuel, then steamed on to Milne Bay, New Guinea. A week later they picked up a dry-dock to tow to the small US Naval station at Cairns, Australia. There were two ten-gallon cans of fresh cool milk on the dock when they arrived. What a treat that was for them! They were at Cairns a month, giving the men time to look the area over, ride some horses, go to the horse races, and take a Red Cross excursion to the highlands above Cairns.

They went back to New Guinea to tow all kinds of barges -- repair, fuel, refrigerated -- all along the north coast of New Guinea. Andy and the other two electricians stood four-on eight-off watches on a piece of machinery called a vapor compression still. It made fresh water out of sea water. Their ATR was steam powered so they had to have fresh water for power as well as for the crew. One time going along the north coast of New Guinea, they noticed the water looked brown. It was a fresh water river, several miles wide, running into the ocean. On each side of the brown river was a line of coconuts, some sprouting small trees. Another time they were running low on fresh water as their still needed to be cleaned. When it rains in the tropics, it comes down hard, so they rigged some canvas and caught rain water to use in the boilers.

As the US Army moved north, the ATR followed with supplies and gasoline barges full of aviation gasoline for PT boats, arriving in the Leyte Gulf in the middle of November. They had to go to general quarters at dusk and sunrise since that is when the Japanese planes usually made their attacks. They were assigned to the Seventh Fleet Ship Salvage, Fire Fighting and Rescue Unit, in which there were ten ships.

The US Army had landed on the east coast of Leyte and tried to go inland over the hills, The Japanese had landed on the west coast. It was decided to fight them on the west side by invading it. They were part of that invasion. They pulled several landing ships out after they had discharged their cargo of men and material.

It was during the Philippine Island Campaign that the Japanese brought Kamikaze planes into use. They flew one-way trips to destroy American ships. During the invasion on the west side of Leyte at Ormoc Bay, the ATR crew stood by to assist. Andy was in the damage control party standing by in case they were needed.

As they stood alert, three single-engine Japanese planes came in low on the left side. The ATR shot down two of them but the third dove into the bridge of the USS Lamson, a destroyer. The officers and crew dove into the water to escape the flames and explosions. The ATR men received orders to pull alongside and assist with putting out the fires, rescuing the men in the water, and getting the injured men aboard. They used their fire monitors to put out the fires and their whaleboat to get the men out of the oil-soaked water around the ship. They also transferred the injured men and the Lamson's doctor aboard and placed the injured men needing surgery in their officer's ward room. The head quarter-master went through the ward and reported blood running six inches deep.

They took the destroyer in tow to the other side of Leyte, staying close to shore out of enemy sight. They passed off the ship to a fleet tug and took the injured men to the USS Mercy, a hospital ship. The men of the ATR received the Naval Unit Commendation award for that action.

A week later they were headed north for the invasion of Mindoro, an island south of Luzon, a staging place for the capture of Manila. They were at the back of the convoy to help any stragglers with engine trouble. They towed the LST-460 for seven miles until the ship's crew got her engines working and could proceed on their own. The convoy flagship, USS Nashville, a cruiser with the flag of the Admiral on board, steamed In the middle of the convoy. Two days before the invasion, they were moving north when a plane was seen way off to the right just above the water. It kept coming but no one shot at it for fear of hitting one of their own ships. When it got close it climbed up and dove into the Nashville, killing one hundred and twenty seven men. The ship pulled out of the convoy and the flag went onto another ship. Again at Mindoro the ATR assisted the invasion fleet as needed. That invasion was the first time Andy saw a rocket attack on a beachhead. He recalls it was terrifying to see and hear.

They continued to tow barges around the Philippines and were in Subic Bay when the A-Bomb was dropped signaling the end of the war. The ATR left the Philippines on December 29, 1945. When they had passed under the Golden Gate, the ship was rammed by an oil barge and had to go into dry-dock for repair. It then went through the Panama Canal to Galveston where it was sold to Peru for $32,000.

Chesnut joined the Ready Reserves, served in Korea, and was called in 1955 to attend a school that the Navy was setting up to qualify instructors to teach mobilization schools. He left the service as an E-6 First Class electrician, ready to pass that knowledge on to future Navy electricians.

The man who was the Colfax American Legion Commander first in 1958 is currently serving a third consecutive term in that office. When asked what his title is, however, he will tell you it is "Civilian."

Allen McSweeney, another St. John native, was one more veteran I visited with who was able to roll off dates, events, facts and figures like he'd been rehearsing for days. He also was able to tell some really good stories, ones unique in our collection, since he had the distinction of serving in the Seabees.

ALLEN McSWEENEY

Allen McSweeney enlisted the day before he would have been drafted. His desire for clean sheets and three meals a day led him to sign up with the Navy. However, that did change later. He was sent to Farragut, the U.S. Naval Training Center in North Idaho, where he quickly learned to take orders. After Basic Training he was transferred into the Seabees at Camp Parks, California where he went through more training, and his Seabee unit was born: Construction Battalion Detachment #1067 Automotive Repair Unit. They moved on to Port Hueneme near Oxnard, California where he underwent Marine combat training and was issued Marine combat gear but his unit really was preparing to be fighting Seabees, the branch of the service into which he was transferred.

Seabees, originally a Civil Engineering Corps, were trained to go in ahead of invasions and put in place the things it took to support the invaders, then keep the invasion force maintained and repaired. They also constructed landing fields, roads, and buildings. Men aged eighteen to about fifty could join the Seabees during World War II, the only restriction being they had to be experienced in some practical field like construction or automotive repair. The Seabee logo nicely represents what they did: it is a giant bee holding a hammer, a wrench, and a gun.

"The Seabees were military, but different. A different deal," McSweeney said. "There were 90-day wonders, just kids who were officers telling experienced guys what to do. Once we got to the Philippines and all of us got covered with mud, that kind of evened out."

"After my Marine training was completed," grinned Allen, "I got a big Uncle Sam ride to the Philippines."

His Construction Battalion Detachment (CBD) set up headquarters on Calicoan Island off the tip of Samar Island in the Leyte Gulf, near where General Douglas MacArthur returned, and also near the airstrip where the Enola Gay landed to refuel before heading for Japan. "We knew nothing about it," Allen noted.

Allen spoke of a difficult passage from the West Coast to the islands. The third day out, the refrigeration unit on their ship went out and the troops were limited to one meal a day. They were in a huge convoy, but had no way to get supplies from another ship. They ate food left over from the crew and officer's mess, digging it out of the garbage cans when the cans were set out at night to be dumped. They always threw the garbage and leftover food overboard at night so it left no visible trail since both Japanese submarines and planes regularly patrolled the seas.

They stopped at the Marshall Islands. The Seabees went ashore hoping to find food, but everything on the island had been leveled. All that was there was a Quonset hut that sold beer and a carton of cigarettes for fifty cents. Men from other ships also got off, most of them carrying sack lunches, so spirited trading ensued, Allen and his shipmates giving up their cigarettes for stale sandwiches. One of Allen's ship mates had somehow gotten a little dog on board with him, and found he had no food for the animal. All they could find had to go to the men on the ship. Allen saw him slit the dog's throat and throw him overboard rather than watch him die of starvation, a very difficult thing for the man to do.

Allen has a picture of his first home in the Philippines. It shows a large number of pup tents set up under palm trees in what appears to be a pool of thick mud. It was from such an ignominious beginning that Allen and about six hundred and fifty other men built repair shops so they could fix and put back into operation jeeps, trucks, and other vehicles and equipment. They also established a tent city composed of sixteen by sixteen foot tents, and even built a church which subsequently burned down.

McSweeney said, "There were two seasons. One, it rained every day. The other, it rained every other day. My folks sent a thermometer that I put up in the top of our tent and some days it registered one hundred and forty degrees. We had to build the tin buildings at night because the metal was too hot to handle during the day. We had showers on the beach with pull chains to turn them on. We were surrounded by scorpions, centipedes, monkeys, coconuts, bananas, and land crabs."

While he was in the Philippines there were about one hundred thousand men on Calicoan alone, including Army, Navy, Marine, and Seabee personnel. It was the inlet area for the Leyte Gulf invasion. The United States sunk more Japanese Navy ships there than anywhere else during the entire war. The battle centered around those islands was the largest naval battle the world had ever seen.

Allen spoke about ammunition the Japanese used. The bullets they fired were "all powder" with the lead part being very small. "They wanted to put a hole in you, not kill you. If they killed you, your buddies just had to bury you and go on. But if they injured you, which they did with their high-powder bullets, then it took three men to take care of you. So they got four with one bullet," Allen explained.

Life wasn't all work for the men of CBD#1067. Sometimes they would go to the airstrip to look at the planes or they would go into Guiuan, a village on Samar, to watch cock-fights. The Americans would trade leather shoes for goods, and the local folks would use the leather as a sharpening strop to put a very sharp edge on a small blade. They would attach that blade to their rooster's spur and with one slash a winner was declared. The Philippine peso was worth fifty cents at the time, and there was a lot of betting going on among the Seabees as well as the locals. They had little else for entertainment. The USO only entertained once while Allen was stationed there.

Allen, a Motor Machinist Mate and head of maintenance of the camp, was not directly exposed to combat. They had been set up far enough from the front lines so they could maintain their repair function. Yet, they were under constant surveillance by Japanese snipers, guys who remained hidden away after the Japanese military had withdrawn, guys who didn't know they were beaten. When the Seabees first got to the tip of Samar there were a lot of those snipers, but then the US government offered to pay one hundred dollars per head to Philippine guerrillas for each one they brought in. And so they brought in heads, hacked off unceremoniously, and collected their bounty. It did resolve the problem of snipers picking off Americans working on the base.

That is not what won the war, however, according to McSweeney. "What made the difference was the large supply of equipment and goods that came to the Philippines from America. The people at home did a tremendous job of keeping us in materials. That made the difference."

The biggest push Allen's unit experienced came when General Douglas MacArthur returned to Tacloban, Palo, and Dulag on the Leyte Gulf with a huge invasion force. The ensuing battle did tremendous damage to many, many pieces of equipment which the Seabees promptly repaired and returned to the war zone.

When the war was over, the CBD#1067(ARU) was no longer needed so the outfit was decommissioned and McSweeney was transferred to the NCB143rd Advanced Base Construction Depot (ABCD). The depot's inventory of ninety-three million dollars worth of parts had been stockpiled for use in the Pacific Theater of Operations. McSweeney was told that back in the United States, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and other manufacturers had all been building war material that, by an Allied agreement, was not to be brought back to the US once it was sent overseas. So, the ABCD was faced with disposing of all that material. Allen recalls seeing a French Navy air craft carrier being loaded totally full of American jeeps, weapons carriers, 6x6 trucks, and parts, all accepted without payment to the United States.

Allen McSweeney returned home in June of 1946, back to St. John where he had been born on April 17, 1926. He developed a retail farm equipment business, the McSweeney Tractor Company, which he sold upon retiring in 1980.

He married in July of 1946. Frances Ratliffe, whose mother was an operator for the St. John telephone office, also worked there on the night shift for four years while going to high school. Allen and Frances had two children, five grandchildren, and inherited two more.

Allen returned to the Philippines, as had MacArthur, doing so to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the General's promised return. While those who organized the event expected thousands to show up, only about two hundred and fifty American veterans plus many locals attended the ceremonies.

Allen McSweeney was selected as one of three veterans who, from the deck of the U.S.S. Belleau Wood, participated in casting a wreath upon the water in honor of the brave souls who had lost their lives there fifty years before. The three veterans were joined by Admiral Ronald J. Zlatoper, Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet; the Honorable John Dalton, Secretary of the Navy; and Richard Lau who, on the morning of October 20, 1944, had the privilege of piping General Douglas MacArthur aboard the invasion site. The celebration included a re-enactment of the landing. Zeros flew over, coconut trees were blown up, and Marines landed on the beach.

A memorial has been placed at the landing site. It is a group of larger-than-life bronze statues representing the General and a dozen or so of the people who walked on shore with him. His promise to return will not be forgotten by those who visit the site or by Seabee Motor Machinist Mate Allen McSweeney.

One of the reasons I decided not to run these Part Six stories in alphabetical order is that would have put Norm Zorb last once again. With a name like Yettick, I think about things like that. Norm loaned me a book about the USS Washington and told me, "I went where she went." Here is where they went.

NORMAN ZORB

Norman Zorb was born and raised in St. John on what is now the Hollingsworth place out toward Ewan. He went to school in St. John first through fourth grade, then completed fifth through eighth at Kamiak School near Rock Lake. Norm spent his first year of high school in Ewan, and when that school closed he finished back in St. John. His dad farmed back in the days when everything was done by horses.

Zorb went to join the Navy in 1942 along with George Wagner and Bill Brophy, two other St. John boys. "The Navy didn't seem too interested in us," Norm said, "So we went across the hall and joined the Marines." The day after the three boys joined the Marines Zorb was off to three months of Boot Camp in San Diego. He was moved to "Frisco" then shipped out to Hawaii March 7, 1943. He was assigned to the Washington and stayed on her until the end of the war.

When I asked him where he saw action, he replied, "I didn't see any at all. I spent my time behind a steel wall."

It turns out that steel wall was a five inch gun mount, one of five on the Battleship USS Washington. What was going on beyond his range of vision was, however, a very vital part of the war in the Pacific. Norm seemed to want to tell the story of that ship rather than talk about his own service in the Marines. He handed me a book titled U.S.S. (BB-56) Washington from which the ship's detail below was drawn. Largely, the ship's story is Norm's story.

He spoke sadly of the demise of his ship. It was decommissioned after the war and offered to the State of Washington to be used as a memorial, but the offer was refused. The State of Ohio wanted the movable goods aboard her, but a museum in Olympia claimed them, then stored them in a basement never to be seen in public. Her hulk was sunk out in the Pacific. It seems the old battleship was outdated and it was easier to sink her than to cut her up for scrap. Norm talked about some ships that had found permanent harbor along the East Coast and wished the Washington had found such a berth.

The USS Washington served thirty-eight months in combat zones after being commissioned May 15, 1941. During that time she sunk the Japanese Battleship Kirishima and Destroyer Ayanami in night battles on November 14 and 15, 1942. She set a record, steaming for 31,494 miles in seventy-nine straight days, sinking more combat tonnage than any other U.S. Battleship in World War II. She also shot down twelve enemy planes, bombarded ten enemy islands, and repelled fifty-three air attacks. She fired 3,535 rounds of sixteen inch shells; 28,062 rounds of five inch projectiles; and over 350,000 rounds of twenty millimeter machine gun bullets. The Washington was never hit nor did she lose a man to the enemy. In her remarkable history she earned fifteen Battle Stars.

The Washington was a North Carolina Class battleship, one of the first "fast battleships" built to compete with all of the post World War I capital ships constructed by foreign Navies. Her distinctive design incorporated an innovative hull shape, propulsion system, and layout design. The maximum beam of her hull was not directly amidship as with most battleships, but at about three quarters aft. Machinery spaces were concentrated in that region, making her sufficiently compact to pass through the Panama Canal. She was propelled by two inboard propellers mounted on a skeg, a narrow vertical extension of the hull that extended from aft of the third turret to nearly the stern. Skegs were added for hydrodynamic reasons, the skegs forming a channel to direct the flow of water under the ship, reducing drag and increasing its maximum speed, which was thirty-two knots at full steam. The most important advance on the Washington was the layout of the main battery. No ship before it had mounted nine 16-inch rifles, in triple turrets, each weighing nearly three thousand tons. This configuration provided some of the most powerful weapons ever put to sea.

The main battery could fire a one ton shell nearly twenty miles. Its SG surface search radar, used to obtain fire control information, limited the need for visual references to a target. The main battery was supported by a secondary battery of twenty 5.38 guns mounted in ten twin turrets distributed on both sides of the Washington's superstructure. That battery was used against both surface vessels and aircraft. The skill with which they were fired contributed as much or more to their success as did the weapon. The gunners built up their skill to firing twenty-two rounds per minute, preventing even the Japanese Kamikaze aircraft from penetrating the intense barrages created by the 5.38s.

From behind the steel wall of the front right turret of the five turrets on the left side of the ship, Norm Zorb fired his share of those 28,062 rounds of five inch projectiles.

The Washington started out in the Atlantic, setting out from Casco Bay, Maine on March 26, 1942 heading for the North Atlantic. She returned to New York City on July 21, 1942. Then, in August, she moved through the Panama Canal and headed west with a three destroyer escort destined for three years of the greatest sea and air battles in history. When she reached Hawaii, Norm Zorb got on board.

The names of the battles the Washington fought in, with Zorb at his post, are names that screamed from the headlines of newspapers all over America at that time: Okinawa Gunto, Guadalcanal, Savo Island, Solomon Islands, Gilbert Islands, Kwajaelein-Majuro, Marianas, Coline Islands, Leyte, Luzon, Shoto-Iwo Jima, and the China Coast.

Japan had taken a wild run, gaining an empire of over twenty million square miles of Asia and the Pacific, an area five times greater than that taken by Germany at the height of its conquest. That rush of power continued until the Marines landed on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in the first American offense of the Pacific war. The tactics it would take to win the war were forged and enforced there: the US would land Marine and Army assault troops, supported by ground attack aircraft and Naval gunfire, on island stepping stones to Japan. The Seabees would follow ashore and build docks, roads, and airfields to support the next rung up the ladder. The success of that tactical plan is the history of the war in the Pacific.

It would have been fitting for the Washington to finish her wartime career in Tokyo Bay. However, after a major overhaul at Puget Sound Navy Yard in July and August 1945, she passed through the Panama Canal arriving in Philadelphia October 17, 1945. She then became part of the Navy's magic carpet carrying veterans home from Europe. On her second trip she weathered eight terrific storms in as many days. After that valiant service, she was decommissioned and sent to her watery grave.

Meanwhile, Norm had returned to Bremerton and remained there until the end of the war. Once released from the Marines he went to work in a veneer plant in Olympia . He met Shirley Junge who had worked there during the war to replace men who had enlisted in the military. He and Shirley were married June 1, 1946 and raised two boys and three girls while Norm first worked for a Ford agency, then went back to farming.

John Gordon has the distinction of being the only one of our World War II generation people who graduated from Pine City High School. His wife, Dode, offered some local history to add to John's story, a story that makes you wonder how he survived. Maybe, just maybe, it is because he too is one of those "tough old devils" he spoke about.

JOHN GORDON

John Gordon was born and raised near Pine City, about seven miles out from St. John. He went to Pine City High School, graduating in 1939. One of the oddest things about John's military history is how frequently he ran into people from Pine City in far-flung places in the South Pacific. One time, for instance, he was umpiring a Seabee baseball game on Guam. He was second base umpire and got to talking to the shortstop of one of the Seabee teams. John told the guy he knew a Seabee who was supposed to be in Guam, then asked him, "Do you know Bob Charles?"

The shortstop replied, "You mean Bob Charles from Pine City?"

It seems the shortstop worked in a military sports-equipment check out place there in Guam with the very Bob Charles John was asking about. John later met up with Bob, hopped in a Jeep with the shortstop and ran around the island to visit several other Pine City boys, a real treat for John.

John ended up in Guam by enlisting in the Marines along with his friend Jack Charles on September 22, 1942. When asked why they chose the Marines, he responded, "There was nobody standing in that line, and they took us." That line was in an office building in Spokane across the hall from the Navy recruiting office where the line was long and moving slowly.

Boot Camp was really rough. He spent a lot of time on the rifle range and a big drill field where they would march, fall out, run, and holler, all done to teach them to obey orders, become disciplined, and to create unity. "It worked," said John simply, "It worked."

He chuckled thinking about a reunion he attended in recent years. They were given a tour of Camp Pendleton and stopped for awhile to watch some new recruits going through drill. "They are still doing it the same way," he laughed. "I guess it still works."

On November 11, 1942, he and Jack joined the 3^rd Parachute Battalion at Camp Elliott. But after about three weeks John was sent home due to a death in his family, leaving his friend there to proceed in training without him. When he returned, the parachute unit had already departed for jump school, and that was the last Marine parachute outfit to be trained. So John was assigned to the 17^th replacement battalion for training while awaiting shipment to the First Marine Division in the Pacific.

On June 5, 1943 John shipped out to Melbourne, Australia on the Rochambeau, a very crowded ship. The Marine Corps was reorganizing and reinforcing the First Division after the battle at Guadalcanal. There were lots of new guys going in because very few had come back. Gordon was assigned to the 3^rd Company, 1^st Battalion, 5^th Regiment of the First Division as a Private First Class. "The Marines were way behind on rank," he explained. "They just wanted to get us there to get the job done."

The "there" John got to first was a staging area in Milne Bay, New Guinea where he arrived on October 8, 1943. Then, on December 24 they moved up to Cape Gloucester, New Britain, arriving there December 29 on the USS Kiley. On his first combat mission he was in a rifle company that moved in on foot. It was a long mission with several landings and real rugged terrain.

At one point they experienced three days of continual downpour of rain that actually stopped the war. Ten to twelve inches of rain fell each day for those three days. "There was no fighting," he said. "No enemy fire. We were just soaked. After a few days of that when I took my socks off they just fell apart." He and four other guys in his platoon got under a tree for some protection from the torrential rainfall, but when lightening struck, they moved out into the middle of an open space.

They made two more landings on New Britain. Casualties were pretty high and enemy opposition was strong. Having secured the island, they remained on New Britain until May 4, 1944, then sailed on the President Hayes. Four days later they arrived at their next staging area, Puvuvu, for replacements and training in preparation for an assault on Peleliu, their next destination. It took about four months for them to get up to full strength. In the meantime they built roads and a camp on that tiny island.

On September 15^th the Marines landed on Peleliu under a lot of opposition. John didn't get very far that first day. They were just able to move up to the edge of the airstrip. Things were very bad. The Japanese were just on the other side of the strip firing heavily, but the Marines had planes strafing for them. The next day, the 16^th, they received orders to cross the air strip. John had gotten out into the middle of the airport when he was hit by gun fire. He went down, out of breath, and realized he had a hole in his chest which actually turned out to be four holes. He crawled to a bomb crater, not far away, to catch his breath. From the crater he was evacuated to the beach and taken out to a hospital ship. The Sergeant responsible for moving him to the ship still attends reunions. John learned that after the war the Sergeant went to school on the G.I. Bill and became a teacher. He has spent his life bringing street kids in, getting them to go to school, and telling them, as he used to tell his Marines, "Get out there and fight!"

John Gordon was sent on the hospital ship back to the staging area on Puvuvu. The first medical attention he got was from a sweaty doctor who had been on duty for "lots of hours." When he saw John's injuries he started to clean the wounds with a cotton swab. When John reacted to the sudden pain, the doctor said, "Didn't they shoot you?" Well, no he had not received any anesthetic, but the doctor had no time to fool around because John was generally in good shape compared to most of the men that doctor had to see. He went ahead and cleaned the wounds, bandaged him and sent him on his way.

John stayed on Puvuvu until February, recuperating, and again the 1^st Division absorbed replacements for their next mission. On February 21, 1945 the Marines did a practice landing operation on Guadalcanal before going to Okinawa on April 1 for what was, for John, a little over a month-long combat mission. During that mission they got word on April 12, 1945 that President Roosevelt had passed away.

"We went in and headed north, but didn't run into much," John said of their landing on Okinawa. "Then we headed south and ran into lots of stuff. The Japanese had quite a few planes there. And they were holed up in the mountains. They were going to die there."

On May 11, John Gordon was once again thrown out of action. What he believes was a hand grenade blew up in front of him leaving his arms and face a bloody mess. He had to walk out of the combat zone and in fact was assigned as guard for two stretcher bearers and the injured man they were carrying as they moved back over a hill the Marines had just taken. As they walked along in the dark, they had a conversation typical of military men under tremendous stress.

"If they open up on us, I'm not waiting for you, I'm running out of here," claimed John.

"We're dropping this stretcher and taking off if anything happens," the stretcher bearers insisted.

"You'll have to outrun me," the guy on the stretcher said.

They all made it out to where an ambulance took them to a field hospital. John was flown out in an airplane after the medics took his bloody clothes, cleaned him up, and carried him to the plane, which had bunks five high on either side. "It was the worst ride I ever had," said John. There was a guy below him with three guys working on him. John was so crammed in he couldn't breathe and kept telling the medics he wanted to get up. They wouldn't let him move because they needed room to work on the other man, who died before they got to the hospital at Guam. John's arm began to turn black and swell badly, so much so he feared he would loose it. A buddy got him to a different doctor than the one who had stitched him up and he began to improve immediately.

After recuperating he boarded the General Bundy and sailed to Bremerton. After all the time he'd spent in the islands, he contacted malaria after he got back. He had been out with his buddies one evening. He was the only one with money, but they had gotten into a poker game. He started feeling sick so he left his money with the boys and headed back to his bunk. He got so sick he couldn't get up, and the barracks was due for a brass inspection the next day. "It was real bad. I was just as sick as you could get. There wasn't much to do for malaria back then. You just had to wear it out." Someone called an ambulance that took him to a hospital on October 4, 1945. After a few days rest he was discharged from the hospital.

He was then put on a train and sent to San Diego. After filling out some papers in San Diego, he once again returned to Bremerton and was free to go home.

John Gordon returned to Pine City to farm. On December 28, 1946 he married Dorothy Wagner from St. John.

Dode, as she is called, had attended the one-room Cottonwood School from the first to the fourth grade where she was taught by Mrs. Smick, Bryant Smick's mother. While she was at Cottonwood, there were about fourteen kids in the school. They all learned the basic three-R fundamentals and good penmanship, plus they received strict discipline from their teacher. Dode walked one and a half miles each way to school. "No one ever worried about us walking all that way," she laughed. "We just did it, even in the winter." She recalled how Mrs. Smick was boss of the school, served as janitor and fire starter, and even gave spankings as needed. Dode once fell through the ice on the creek. Mrs. Smick put her own coat on her while she dried her clothes so she could wear them to walk home. "She took good care of us," Dode said.

The Gordons have been to seven First Marine Division annual reunions in recent years, having missed them for many years while they farmed since they were always scheduled during harvest. At a recent reunion John ran into a "kid" he had gone through boot camp with. "It is really fun to see the guys, but the last year or so we have noticed there are more Korean War and Vietnam vets there. We are rapidly losing the World War II vets," he observed. "But a lot of the guys keep coming even when they are sick and can barely get around," he said of his fellow Marines. "They are all still tough old devils."

I've always liked the song "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy From Company B" and so was very pleased to meet Clink, a real live Bugler from Company E! He saw a lot of action too and was willing to tell us about it. Here's a Lancaster boy's story.

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, 161^st Army Infantry, 41^st 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!"

This next story is about a man who traveled clear around the globe, then came back to St. John where he was born and raised. Halfway through his round the world journey he stopped to serve as a fighter plane Crew Chief on the China-India-Burma front.

TED FREEMAN

Ted Freeman was born just east of St. John in November of 1919. He graduated from St. John High School in 1938, just a year ahead of his brother Joe. Ted and Joe both went to work in St. John grocery stores.

Joe worked at the Red and White Market and Ted worked for Tommy and Hazel Williams at Cold Storage. Tommy kept his store until Ted and Joe came back from the service, then he retired and they took it over, no money down. Ted had five hundred dollars in military pay saved up, he says Joe had none, so they used the five hundred dollars to open the till. Tommy didn't want to bother with an inventory, so they just went to work. In the next few months three people came to them, each paying fifty dollars in advance for groceries to make sure they were able to keep the store open, and Fred Kirkman did needed carpentry work for them. He wouldn't take pay for it, just told Ted and Joe, "You put in your time for me, I'm just giving you back a little of mine." Ted and Joe worked hard, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day and had the store paid off in two years.

Ted married Cleona in 1948. They have three children and two grandchildren. Ted's given name is Harold, but an uncle called him "Teddy McMechan" for no particular reason when he was a kid, and it stuck, at least until Ted went into the service and had to use his official name, Harold.

Ted knew he was going to be drafted into the Army eventually and didn't want to be, so he went to Spokane in the summer of 1941and, like many Whitman County men, signed up for the Air Force. He was refused because he had hay fever, so he waited until October and went back again.

"They felt my pulse, checked to see if I had a warm body, and signed me up," Ted smiled. That was November 17, 1941, just a few weeks before the Japanese changed the course of history. He took his first train ride to Salt Lake City, which as it turned out was the first leg of a four-year-long round the world trip. First stop after SLC was Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis, Missouri where he had a couple of days of Basic Training before Pearl Harbor happened, war was declared, and the picture changed.

Freeman took a battery of tests in three days, instead of the standard three months, and then moved on to Illinois to Chanute Field to Air Mechanic's School where he was instructed for thirteen months, particularly in Instruments. The Army needed teachers at Goldsborough, North Carolina, and since they were taking the top ten percent of all classes nationwide to use as instructors, Ted was sent there to teach. Again getting on a train, he headed east.

He arrived to find himself assigned to brand new barracks made of 1x12s with cracks between the boards. And snow was falling. There were two little pot-bellied stoves to burn coal for heat - if they could find coal. The men were all freezing, literally, even though they were wearing all the clothes issued to them.

Ted met a guy on base named Jim Sproul and was telling him about their situation in the barracks. Sproul's answer was that he knew Franklin D. Roosevelt and he was going to call him and get some action on the matter. Ted smiled as he told the story. "I thought the guy was nuts, but when he asked me to come to the pay phone with him while he made the call, I went along."

Sproul dropped a nickel in the phone slot and asked the operator to get him Franklin D. at the White House. Ted could hear the phone ring and someone answer, and heard Sproul ask to speak to Franklin D., saying that Jim Sproul was on the line. Ted heard another voice come on, then Sproul began to talk.

"These guys are freezing in barracks with holes in the walls and they have no coal to burn," he said with authority. Then he went on to explain the situation fully. When he finished he hung up and Ted thought, "This guy is really pulling my leg."

But the next day coal trucks came running into camp, the stoves got bigger, plumbers fixed the plumbing, and carpenters insulated the walls and finished the buildings. As Ted got to know Jim Sproul better he learned that Jim, Franklin D., and Jimmy Roosevelt, who were good friends, used to "ride the range" together when they were younger. He disappeared from the base in a couple of weeks, rumor having it that he was a Secret Service Agent. Ted never saw him again.

"But we sure did get action," Ted said.

Being sufficiently warm, Ted then taught Aircraft Instrument Classes for eight months. He felt he was not getting ahead, since he was only a corporal, so he volunteered for overseas duty. He was sent back to Jefferson Barracks and more training and also a lot of open base time so he could get into St. Louis where there were lots of clubs, places to go, and, as he put it, "friendly girls at the USO club."

In 1943 he went to China in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations, sometimes referred to as the Forgotten War.

Freeman left Camp Patrick Henry at Newport News, Virginia in the fall of 1943 on a Liberty Ship carrying a load of dynamite. They sailed east in a convoy, due to the number of German submarines patrolling the Atlantic Ocean. Their trip over was fraught with peril. Three days out the Andrew Hamilton broke her prop shaft and had to drop out of the convoy to fix it, leaving the ship without escort. Also, Ted lost twenty-one pounds in twenty-one days between Virginia and Africa.

When asked why, he replied, "They didn't feed us. We got salt water coffee and salt water oatmeal, about a coffee cup full, each morning, and maybe a sea biscuit, and then the food went down hill from there the rest of the day." Not only were they not fed, Ted saw men throwing rotten quarters of beef overboard, supplies that had not been cooked, by order of the Commander of the ship, to save money which he kept for himself.

"The sharks ate better than we did," he chuckled. "But, they caught him and the Commander of the Andrew Hamilton ended up in jail over that forced starvation diet," Ted said with a great deal of satisfaction.

They finally arrived in Oran, North Africa just after there had been a big battle there. He saw cement ships which had been built in the US to haul merchandise one way, then to be disposed of. They had been dynamited and left in the bay to protect it from enemy attack. From Oran they sailed on through the Mediterranean where they saw some action off Crete when their convoy had a brush with some German planes carrying aerial torpedoes. Ted saw a torpedo flash by his ship, one that looked like it was going to hit him. But it swerved and hit the ship behind him. There were twenty-five hundred men on that ship; only five hundred survived.

They sailed on through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal into the Arabian Sea and on to Bombay. There they were loaded onto rail cars known as "forty or eight" cars. They could hold forty men or eight horses. They rattled on through Delhi and New Delhi to Karachi all the time seeing lepers begging for money along the railways. Then they flew a C-47, which held twelve to fourteen men, up the Assam Valley to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, to a major military staging area. From there they flew into Burma to a place where they fueled up to fly the Hump into China.

Ted recalls the Burmese people as clean, very neat, small people who had perfectly groomed hair and wore white clothing that they kept immaculate. They would sweep the dirt floors in the Americans' quarters, serve excellent food, and make them "real tea from fresh tea leaves." Leaving those fine folks behind, Ted flew over the Himalayas, at eighteen thousand feet without oxygen, into Kunming, China.

They landed at the first American base over the Himalayas. It had been the headquarters for the Flying Tigers before Ted got there. They then flew to Hengyang, the base for the 14^th Air Force, 23^rd Fighter Group, 75^th Fighter Squadron. He served under Commander Tex Hill, a Flying Tiger and, according to Ted, "One of the finest officers I ever saw or heard about. He led his men. He didn't just tell them 'You go do it.' It was more like 'Follow me.' He also had eighteen kills, or downed enemy planes, to his credit."

One of the officers took Ted to the flight line and asked him what he did. Ted answered, "I'm an Instrument Specialist."

The guy asked, "Yeah, but what do you do?"

They ended up making him a ground crew chief on a P-40. The P-40 was a fighter, interceptor, ground strafer, dive, level, and skip bomber, bomber escort, and reconnaissance air craft. The P-40 was hard to work on. If one plug went bad, he had to change the whole bank. But he did enjoy taxiing them down the runway at fifty miles per hour. They were outnumbered forty to one in the war area over the Hump, yet their kill rate was twenty to one over what the Japanese flew in the area.

The group Ted was with evacuated bases frequently. "The plan was to draw the Japanese who occupied eastern China as far into China as they could, bomb behind them so they couldn't retreat, and then starve them out," Ted explained. "But, it didn't work."

It seems the Chinese were not good fighters and had virtually no training in what was then modern warfare. Plus, the US would take in food and arms and the locals would loot it and disappear, leaving their villages undefended from the Japanese who were overrunning China.

The Japanese bombed at night. Ted and the other ground crew personnel would put the P-40s in hiding at dusk in revetments, which were holes dug in the hillsides by the Chinese. When Japanese bombers would strike, leaving huge holes in the ground, the villagers would immediately come with baskets and refill the holes so by morning no one could tell where they had been hit.

About a year later the P-51s came in. "The P-51 was a dream," Ted said. "When they first came over the Hump we had them all lined up on the air field. Tokyo Rose sent in thirty-eight planes, the P-51s took off to meet them, and only seven Japanese planes returned to base - no losses for the US. When she came on that night Rose said, 'So, you have new airplanes. We took a beating, but we will be back.' "

Tokyo Rose, a Japanese-American who was born and raised in Los Angeles, broadcast radio messages to the men in the Pacific, always telling them things like, "Don't you wish you were home with your wife and family?" She always seemed to know exactly what had happened as it happened. She later was convicted of treason and served a long prison term. Ted's buddy took a radio from a wrecked plane, rewound it to get her station and, with the help of a rebuilt battery, they enjoyed the music that came along with her unwelcome yet informative propaganda.

When the war was over Ted was still in China. Orders came to pack up and head for home. He flew into Calcutta, India, then boarded the ship Marine Robin where he got real milk and lots of food on the journey home. He again sailed east then north along the coast of China up to the Aleutian Islands. The sea was so rough there were many moments when the ship was just five degrees from turning over. They finally docked in Tacoma and Ted once more took a train ride, this time home to St. John.

"I traveled around the world, free of charge. It only cost me four years of my young, innocent life," Ted smiled. "It wasn't so bad, though. I did the easy part. I loved to work on airplanes. I missed the airplanes much more than I missed the war."

The first time I sat down with Bryant he had a pile of papers in front of him, mostly typed, some hand written. He said he had been working on his memoirs since about 1944, the year he started a diary while in a prisoner of war camp, and he wasn't quite finished yet. Turns out Bryant is quite a writer, which I discovered over the next couple of months as he, his wife Marjorie, and I wrestled his manuscript through to completion, photos included, so his family now has a published record of his life in the "Wild Blue Yonder."

The Smicks told me I was welcome to use any of his work I wanted to in TRIBUTE. I worked it down to either of two missions, then decided to include them both. The first mission won Smick's crew a Silver Star. The second one won him almost a year in a German POW camp. The diary he wrote while in prison is included in its entirety in Part Seven. Here, in his own words, are two of Bryant Smick's memorable missions.

BRYANT SMICK

It was his twenty-third mission, again to Wiener Neustadt deep in Germany, on a fine day in the last part of May. The Belle was down with a leaky gas tank, so he and his crew were in a brand new replacement plane, the Sweet Chariot, flying at twenty-one thousand feet over the Alps. Their jagged beauty, unparalleled by any mountain chain in the world, was crystal clear below them.

They had passed over the mountains and were flying over the checkerboard farms of Austria when at least forty German fighters hit them head on. They weren't shooting at the group, they were shooting at Bryant's squadron of twenty-five planes. All of their fifty-caliber machines guns were making an unbelievable racket. Over the intercom someone was crying for his mother to help him. Smick shouted for him to shut up so they could call off the positions of the fighters. After the bastards went through them, they came around and were attacking their rear, picking off the stragglers and raising hell in general.

Smick watched a buddy, John Lane, go down burning on his right wing. He could see no chutes. What went through his mind was how amazing the guy was on the piano. He could play good music on just the black keys.

He could feel the vibrations as they were taking hits from the German 20 millimeter cannons and their machine guns.

"Lord, get us out of this and I'll be a better guy!" he said under his breath.

He wasn't scared yet because he was so busy. All of a sudden they found themselves alone except for one other plane. The rest of the squadron had been shot down. That made them stragglers. He knew the other plane was on its first mission so he didn't expect much help from him.

Then he saw one of the German fighters flame and go down. One of the guys shouted, "I got the bastard!"

Another fighter to the right exploded.

Someone shouted, "Brown's down." Brown was their Engineer.

Jo-Jo in the tail said, "I'm hit bad and one of my guns is blown off, but I'm staying here."

All the gunners were busy so he sent Propwash to help Brown.

He just about bent the throttle and RPM controls forward on that new plane trying to catch up with the rest of the group.

The new guy, the other straggler, salvoed his bombs and pulled away from them. But Smick was mad. "We brought the damn bombs this far," he said to himself, "I'm going to drop them on the target."

The Germans were still at their rear taking turns at making passes at their plane, but they wouldn't go down. "Maybe the Lord IS watching out for us," he thought as he watched another fighter go down.

Propwash came back and said, "Brown is dead and Jo-Jo is really smashed up, but he is still in his turret." He reported two more gunners were wounded but still at their guns.

Smick told Prop, "Take over Brown's gun."

About then the fighters stopped making passes at their rear as it was getting too costly for them. They then grouped out to the side, just out of effective range of their 50 calibers and were making deflection shots at them with their 20 mm cannon. Smick felt like taking off after them, but instead he lowered his left wing so the top gunner could get a shot at the Germans. He had Ted take over and opened the window on his side and emptied his forty-five pistol at them. He knew it wouldn't do any good, but it sure made him feel better.

They were slowly catching up to the group. The fighters were just about gone because German flack was coming up from the target area. Smick had just caught up to the group when it was time to drop their bombs.

Ted said the bomb bay doors wouldn't open. That meant all the hydraulics were out. Bryant grabbed the emergency handle and dropped them through the doors.

The flack was heavy but he couldn't tell if they were hit with any of it because they already had fifteen holes in the aircraft, including every blade of the four propellers, twelve blades total.

"Boy!" he said to no one in particular, "Am I flying a mess! Bomb bay doors hanging down. Streamers of aluminum and fabric flying. Smoky engines. But… no fire!" The self-sealing gas tanks must have worked because they were not losing gas.

They turned south for home and started to seriously assess the damage. The hydraulics were out, which meant heavy controls, no brakes, and no flaps. He started to worry about how to get the beast stopped when they landed. Since she was a tricycle plane, he thought the best bet was to put everyone in the rear end. He would drag the tail on the runway, using it as a brake. He figured if the Sweet Chariot would just hang together for another hour, they would make it. There was no chance of bailing out. There were too many wounded guys who couldn't pull a rip-cord.

It sure made him feel better to know a few minutes ago they had had it, with no chance of making it out alive, then all of a sudden they had half a chance of living another day.

They were almost there. He dropped out of formation to take the short cut to the air field. The radio was out, so he had Roven, his top turret guy, stand by with a bunch of red flares. He knew he'd have to keep speed up to at least 160 mph because of all the weight in the back.

He made a long, slow approach. He was a mile from the runway, speed 160 mph, and everybody was way in the back of the plane. He was over the runway and felt the plane start to stall. He pulled back on the wheel with all his strength, but even then needed Ted to help him pull. The wheels touched. They were just a hair too fast, but O.K. They bounced about a foot, then settled down for good. Ted turned off all the engines and power switches in case of a crash burn. Bryant heard a very satisfying grind as the emergency tail skid tore itself up on the steel-matted runway.

"Sweet Jesus!" he shouted, "We're going to make it!"

The plane slowed down and coasted right off the end of the runway. He could even guide it to the side so they were out of the way of landing planes.

He and Ted shook hands and just sat there for a little while. Then the medics, ambulances, and a crowd of curious people came running. The bomb bay was awash with blood. He couldn't make himself go back there.

Dying for a smoke, he climbed out and walked away from the plane, lit up a cigarette, sat down, and shed a few tears as they unloaded the wounded guys. Damn! He was proud of them. He didn't want to see Brown, but after they took him away Smick went over to the ambulances and told the guys how proud he was of them. At de-briefing they heard the story and turned it over to a P.R. man who put them in for the Silver Star, the third highest award for bravery.

The entire crew was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in action against the enemy, the first crew in the 47^th Wing to be so decorated and the fifth in the history of the 15^th Air Force. The citation stated that in bringing the plane back home the pilot and co-pilot "displayed superb airmanship and courage in regaining control of the aircraft after the controls had jammed, and safely landed the plane without the use of flaps or brakes."

In an article about the Silver Star award written by Sergeant Mortimer Metchik, he stated, "The citation, awarding this entire crew the Silver Star, stresses the extraordinary individual heroism of the men and their exceptional co-ordination and air discipline as a fighting team."

In their case, a lot of skill on everybody's part was needed to survive that mission. They were credited with five kills that day. Even so, they lost almost all twenty-five of their Squadron.

The next day, the guys who could got in a Jeep to go look at Brown in his coffin. Smick couldn't make himself go, so he stayed home and tried to get drunk. He'd take a strong drink and then run outside and throw up. He kept trying to get drunk until the guys got back. He found out he was more affected mentally than he thought he was.

And Bryant Smick's final World War II mission…

On 9 June 1944 Bryant Smick got up, strapped his knife to his leg, had the usual powdered eggs and raw bacon, and went to briefing. He groaned when he saw the target. It was Munich, Germany. He checked out his survival kit, parachute, and flack vest, then jumped on a truck and headed to the Flight Line.

The Liberty Belle was still down and they had drawn one of the oldest planes on the field. The name painted on the side was Tung Hoy, which roughly translates to Tough Shit in English.

A Jeep drove up just after they got to the Tung Hoy. A photographer got out, one of those guys who took pictures of bomb strikes. He said he was on his last mission and because Smick had a reputation for always getting back, he had chosen him.

Then Smick found out another bad thing. They were the last group in the whole wing, which meant the German Anti-Aircraft would be well sighted-in when their group passed over. The only good thing was that it was a beautiful, perfect day, bright and clear, without a breath of wind.

They stood around talking until it was time to fire up. They started engine number one on the left, number two, then number three. But something was wrong with engine number four. It turned over, but just wouldn't fire. They tried and tried. He called the tower and told them his engine wouldn't start. They sent two or three mechanics who decided they needed a new carburetor.

Meanwhile, all of the group had taken off. They tried again and nothing happened. Then they decided to change the plugs.

By that time the group had formed in the air and was long gone. He fully expected the Colonel to have them stand down or abort the flight. They tried the engine one more time and it caught. He waited for orders. Somebody from the tower said to take off and catch their group.

He told them he didn't think that was a very good idea, as they had been gone too long. The tower said to give it a try. That meant they were going to be alone an awful long time.

He taxied out, poured on the coal, and made an uneventful take off. He knew the only way to catch the group was to go all out, full bore. It was going to take a lot of gas fueling the old Tung Hoy to do that.

"Will we have enough to get to the target and back?" he wondered. Then he thought, "I'll worry about that later."

As they got more altitude the nose gunner and bombardier called on the intercom and said the nose wheel doors were blowing open and they were freezing to death.

Smick told them, "Find some wire and wire the damn things shut."

Of course that meant they couldn't use it as their bail-out hatch. They would have to come up and use the front escape hatch, which was the bomb bay.

They were half way up the Adriatic when he saw some tiny little dots far ahead. "Now," he said to himself, "If I can just get some speed out of this old dog, maybe I can catch the group."

He was full throttle. They were really gulping down the gas and the engines were being overworked, but they were gaining.

They got to the top of the Adriatic without being caught by fighters and the group was only ten miles ahead. They would catch them somewhere over the Alps.

When he finally caught up with the group, he got ready to slow down and slip into formation.

Then, over the intercom came the message, "Waist to Pilot. You better check number four engine. It's got an oil leak you wouldn't believe."

Bryant got up and went to the window and watched the oil streaming back. If he lost too much oil he wouldn't be able to feather the prop. He couldn't slide back to a new group because they were the last one. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place!

He decided to break radio silence to call Major "Stinky" Davis, the group leader and tell him he couldn't keep up, that he was losing an engine.

He said, "You will either have to turn back or go to Switzerland."

Switzerland was a pretty attractive destination since it was only fifty miles away. A guy could sit out the war in safety in a neutral country, drawing per diem and chasing women. He quickly put that idea out of his mind.

He reasoned, "They wouldn't let me come back to St. John if I did that!"

So, they aborted for home and again he was full throttle. Down the line the photographer called on the intercom and begged him to hit some target so he could get credit for the mission.

"What do you think?" he asked the crew.

They agreed it was a good idea.

He thought maybe they could slip over to Trieste and lay a string of bombs in their harbor. He also thought all the fighters would be after the main stream of planes.

He was wrong on both counts.

He had just turned toward Trieste when four 109s hit them from all sides. He didn't think anyone saw those suckers coming out of the sun and did they do a job on them!

He had read somewhere that if you slowed down, crossed controls, then sped up and veered to the other side, it would be hard for a fighter to sight in on you. He tried that, and everything else he had ever heard.

By that time they were right over the center of the Bay of Trieste. Large sections of the left wing were peeling off and he couldn't control the plane anymore.

"Bail out! Bail out!" he shouted over the intercom.

It was strangely silent. The intercom must have been shot out.

Frick rushed by and out the bomb bay.

The left wing was slowly dipping down.

He rang the bail-out button, but realized it must have been shot out too.

"Lord, get me out of this one," he prayed.

He reached out and flicked on Auto-Pilot, thinking maybe that would give them more time to bail out.

From the corner of his eye he could see the wing start to tear off.

He jumped off the deck.

He saw the top turret gunner was still there. He grabbed his feet and pulled. He stared down at Smick who saw he was either dead or frozen into immobility. He was still pulling on him when the plane went upside down and entered into a spin. The centrifugal force tore the gunner's feet from Bryant's hands. He ended up on the deck looking out the bomb bay.

It looked good to him even if they were up about twenty thousand feet. He crawled out. He could hear the roar of the wind. He stayed in pre-natal position with his eyes tightly closed, hoping to get clear of the plane.

"God, I wish they had taught us something more about bailing out except count to ten and pull the rip cord," he thought.

His body was really spinning. He pulled the rip cord. Wham! He was pulled up short. Lord, it hurt. His chest pack chute didn't fit and he was bent backwards with a long fall ahead. Besides, he was still spinning. He would wind up until the chute was real little then spin the other way. He was glad he had altitude because when the chute was small, he was really falling fast.

After about ten thousand feet, he got the spinning stopped by grabbing the shroud lines when they reached neutral. He could hear shots along the shoreline. He would hear a hiss or a whiz and then the booms on the ground. Then he got it straight in his mind.

"Those rotten bastards are shooting at me," he gasped. It was against the rules of war to shoot at a man in a parachute, but they were doing it anyway. "Thank God they are missing me," he thought. But they were sure hitting the chute. He guessed they weren't leading him enough. He was falling through the air at about 15 MPH.

He saw that he was going to land pretty far from shore on the Yugoslavian side of the Bay of Trieste instead of near the Italian side. It was time to prepare for landing. He was supposed to have everything unbuckled and drop the last five feet into the water.

The sea was calm and glassy with no wind at all. It was completely impossible to tell how high he was. Besides, he was still bent backwards and his hands weren't working very well. He did manage to unbuckle one leg strap. He was guessing he was about two hundred feet high when suddenly he hit the water with a big splash.

The parachute very gracefully settled over the top of him and he found himself completely surrounded by shroud lines and the chute. He tried to unbuckle his chute, but he just wasn't strong enough. He panicked because he couldn't breathe very well and then remembered he had forgotten to check his Mae West flotation vest after some guy had sneaked up on him and inflated one side. He pulled the one side of the vest that was still powered by a CO2 cartridge. It inflated and of course that made his chute buckle tighter still. It was a good thing he didn't have a cartridge for the other side, because he would have pulled it too and really tightened that buckle. Still fighting the chute and swallowing water, he kicked off his forty dollar Natal boots.

He finally got out from under the chute but the shroud lines were tangled around his body. He reached for the knife strapped to his leg and discovered it was gone. It was the only thing he lost when he bailed out and it was the thing he needed most. He finally got the lines off his body and started working on his buckle.

"Why won't my hands work?" he wondered as he looked down. The water was crystal clear and he could see the chute slowly opening under water.

"My God! It's pulling me under!"

He fought feebly to the top and got a breath of air only to be pulled under again.

For the second time that day he said, "Help, Lord! Get me out of this one!"

He was under water a long time but made it to the top again for what he knew was going to be his last time.

He went under again thinking, "What a rotten way to die after getting out of the plane alive and escaping bullets on the way down."

He had swallowed most of the Adriatic , so it was time to start inhaling. He remembered thinking that drowning wasn't as bad as he thought it would be.

Everything was getting black and darkness closed in.

He stopped struggling and kind of relaxed. He felt at peace with the world. He felt bad for the folks and Marge, but he let go.

His last thought was, "And you thought you were so strong. Couldn't even get a little buckle undone."

Then he was completely unconscious.

He hated to wake up, but there was a bright light in his face.

It was the sun!

He was free of the chute and floating on top of the water.

"What happened?" he wondered.

He knew he didn't do it.

Then he realized who did.

He said, "Thank you, Lord!"

I knew I had to stop sometime, somewhere. Someone had to be my last interview. I thought I was through. Then I was visiting Herb Bacon who handles the Council on Aging & Human Services' commodity distribution in Malden, when a guy stopped by. We got to talking about TRIBUTE and he told me, "You have got to talk to Charlie Parker." He even pointed to the hill where Charlie lives. So, Okay, this is the LAST one.

I was sure glad I listened. Charlie and Doreen had a great story with which to close our series of stories.

CHARLES AND DOREEN PARKER

Charles and Doreen Parker make their home in Malden, but they met in England during World War II, far away from Whitman County. Charley was born in 1920 eight miles out of Pine City at a place called Hole In The Ground. When he was still little, his family moved near the Ewan Cheney Road east of Chapman Lake. He went to school at Rock Lake School District School #59 which still stands along the Williams Lake road just before you get to Badger Lake. When he was sixteen he moved to Rosalia where he worked for the Maley brothers wheat farming for four and a half years. In October of 1941 he and some other guys headed for Libby, Montana to try their hand in the lumber trade.

It was while he was in Montana that he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Two days later he enlisted. Had he reported to the draft board the day before or the day after he would have been assigned duty in the Pacific, since men were sent to those two major theaters on alternate days. However, on December 9^th the call was to Europe in the United States Army Air Force with a Construction Engineer Group.

First stop for Charlie Parker was Fort Douglas, Utah where he was issued a uniform. A week later he arrived at Keesler Field, Mississippi for Basic Training and six weeks of Equipment Schooling. His next training was at Brookley Field in Mobile, Alabama where his company was formed and they received the equipment they would need for air strip construction. Charlie was assigned to a TD14 Tractor and a C2 Wrecker, which he met up with in Ireland.

Charlie tells about the opportunity he had to make three trips to Heil Company, an automotive engineering company at West Alice, Wisconsin, a manufacturing area out of Milwaukee. Those trips took him away from Mobile on a train for three week-long trips over a six week period. He drove three gas trucks with trailers back to Brookley Field.

It all started one Monday morning during roll call when an Officer appeared and asked for twenty-five volunteers, men who could drive trucks, to fall out at 8 a.m. in fatigues at the barracks. His Sergeant pointed to Charlie, so he fell out and was loaded onto a truck and taken to nearby Mobile Bay. The volunteers were issued wheel barrows (the trucks they were to drive!) and shovels and set to work building a recreational park for the base. "It was nice work," said Charlie. "Better than policing the area around the barracks."

Well, Tuesday about twenty of the same men fell out again, as they also did on Wednesday. "They brought us a nice lunch and it was pleasant work," Charlie again affirmed. Thursday they were still there running their "trucks," but, said Charlie, "Around noon, here came that same Officer and the Sergeant in charge. They pulled out all twenty of us from the park, told us to jump in the truck, go back to the barracks, dress in Class A uniforms, and report to the orderly room at 1600 hours. And that's how we got to go to Wisconsin."

In July of 1942 Parker was on a train to Fort Dix, New Jersey. On August 1 he boarded the South American pleasure ship Uruguay, a boat built for 800 passengers. There were eight thousand G.I.s aboard, all of them headed for Halifax, Nova Scotia to join a large convoy, the largest that had assembled up to that point. When that convoy reached Iceland it was joined to yet another huge convoy. "All you could see was boats, boats," recalled Charlie. "We changed course every seven minutes to avoid torpedo attack, but we had no sub scare going over."

The convoy approached Swansea, Wales where part of it broke off, including the Uruguay, and went on in at night. At the docks they were loaded into something like a canal lock which raised them up to dock level. At that point, about 10 p.m., a German air raid hit. The Uruguay was lowered back down and went back out into the bay. That was the only time Swansea was bombed. "The Germans knew we were coming," Charlie said.

They took a train to Canada Hall where for two weeks they awaited the arrival of their supplies which were to come into North Ireland. They ate a lot of what Charlie called "Billy Goat Stew," beet root and black bread sandwiches, and tea provided by the Naffies, Britain's version of Red Cross ladies. They finally reached their destination, Langford Lodge, which was about fifteen miles from Belfast. There they built two metal surface airstrips out of reinforced steel mats, strips designed for the P-38s that were just coming in.

Parker had to spend six weeks in a British Hospital, the Fifth General, for some surgery and said he had "beautiful care" during that stay. Since his unit had moved on he was sent to England as a casual replacement at the second largest rear echelon American air base in England, Air Depot Number Two in Lancashire County. Air Depot Number Two was where new planes from the United States came in to receive armor and parachutes and generally get ready to go on to combat bases. "They came in by the thousands and it took about six week to get an airplane ready to go," Charlie remembers.

Air Depot Number Two had no use for Charlie's construction skills so he was assigned "light duty" which varied until the day an officer asked him, "Charlie, have you ever tended bar in an Officer's Club?" Well, he hadn't but he did for the next two years. "It was a beautiful bar and I turned out to be a pretty good bartender," Charlie admitted. "I learned so much from listening to all those educated people talk about all kinds of things. It really was quite an education." In his spare time Charlie developed a business selling and renting bicycles. The business thrived as outfits rotated in and out of the base. He also pressed clothes for people like "twenty-year old Captains."

Charlie tended bar until the European war was over on May 7, and then General Miller took all "non-essentials" to France to Camp Philip Morris where he was attached to the 75^th Infantry. That unit was getting ready to go to Japan. "We were one happy bunch when the A-Bomb fell, because until then we were going to be part of the big invasion."

Charlie was sent stateside in November of 1945 to New York City, than to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. He then returned to Fort Dix, then flew from La Guardia to Fort Lewis, arriving home in Cheney the last day of November, 1945.

There was, however, one major complication in his travel plan. He had to leave behind Doreen Hodgson Parker, the English girl he had married November 11, 1944.

Born in Carlise, Cumberland County, England in 1922, Doreen was one of four surviving children out of ten born to her parents. Her dad, a railroad man, died at the age of forty-six. Her mother contributed to the war effort by taking in children from London who were forced to leave their homes during the Blitz.

Doreen finished school at age fourteen, as was customary. Faced with having to pay to continue her education, she worked for a couple of years in a bakery, then went into apprenticeship in a beauty shop located above a haberdashery, where she also worked. When the war came along she, and all young women her age, had to find a government job to help the war effort. There were applications all over town for all kinds of jobs including work in the "Land Army." Since there were very few men available to mind the land, England made farmers out of young girls. "I was so afraid of animals, even chickens, I just couldn't work for the Land Army," Doreen laughed. She applied to the Motor Pool Office and served doing paper work in the allocation of parts all over England. She rode her bicycle seven miles each way to her job.

Doreen met Charlie at the Tower Ball Room in Blackpool while she and her entire family, twenty-six of them, were on holiday there in the summertime of 1944. "Our whole town took the same week off each year so we could have holiday together," she explained. They had been to Blackpool for many years, enjoying that Coney Island-style seaside resort's lovely, spacious accommodations. One of those accommodations was the Tower Ball Room where entertainment was available as well as dancing.

Charlie and Doreen met at a dance in the Ball Room. She was standing with three of her family members when he first saw her. He had developed a rapport with the Master of Ceremonies at the Tower by bringing along cigars with him when he came to dances. With the MC's approval, he asked Doreen to dance, and met her entire family within minutes of their first dance together. Over the next few days Charlie spent a lot of time with the family. He and Doreen's brother, a Royal Air Force pilot, decided to switch uniforms and visit a local pub for some Black and Tans. He had a great time picking on the G.I.s who were in the pub and was glad none of them were military police.

Parker was stationed at Blackpool which was 180 miles from Carlise where Doreen lived. He remembers that distance well because he traveled it frequently between June and November 1944 when Charlie and Doreen were married.

After being separated from Charlie for about a year, Doreen sailed to America on the Willard Holbrook in April of 1946. She crossed the United States by train all by herself, but Charlie was there to meet her in Spokane. They have stayed in the area for the fifty years they have been married. They raised two children, a boy and a girl.

Her first day in Washington State she and Charlie drove to Cheney to his Grandma's house. "His whole family was just wonderful to me," she smiled. "The first morning we were there, when I came in for breakfast I was asked what I would like and I said a boiled egg on toast would be nice. Well, I was served a boiled egg in its shell rolling around on a plate with a piece of toast. I wondered how on earth I should eat it. I had always had an egg cup! Charlie came in and I asked him what I was to do. He told me to just break it open and eat it! So right away I started learning how to be an American!"

Well, that is the last of the stories told by Whitman County people. The last Part, Part Seven, is a collection of essays and documents collected from various sources which I will explain as we go along. They kind of add a bit of flavor and texture to our tribute to Whitman County folks.