Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans’ Eyes

Ep.9 - Sand in Our Shoes: Island Hopping in the Pacific Theater

As the Allies embarked on their island hopping campaign growing ever closer to the Japanese mainland, they soon discovered that their enemy in the Pacific was adept at presenting new challenges on every island.  Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Leyte would all forever be ingrained in WW 2 veterans memories - and in their nightmares.  Richard V. Morgan remembers Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman,, who stood atop a heavily garrisoned Japanese bunker directing demolition charges despite his being mortally wounded.  Bonnyman would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously.  For Dennis Olson, his poems helped him cope with the horrible losses he endured at Tarawa.  Later, at Peleliu, 19 year old Arthur Jackson volunteered to secure a position in the shallow enemy trench system wiping out 12 pillboxes and killing 50 Japanese soldiers.  He would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions from President Truman himself one year later.  In the Philippines, a young L.W. Clark and his buddies lose their appetite as 100 Filipino villagers stumble across the rice fields towards their dispensary seeking medical help after having been bombed by the 11th Airborne, who believed Japanese soldiers were still hiding in the village.  Amongst them, a soldier carried a still baby whose guts were hanging over the side of his body, his stomach ripped open by a mortar shell.

 

Richard V. Morgan

Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman, Jr.

Dennis H. Olson

Arthur J. Jackson

L.W. Clark and his wife Ella

Ep. 8 - Bloody Red - Blood-soaked Omaha Beach Remembered

Bloody Omaha Beach bore the brunt of D-Day’s savage fighting with more casualties than all of the other D-Day beaches combined.  Aware that the men he led in one of the first waves to land on Bloody Omaha Beach had no prior combat experience, Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers single handedly took out several German machine gun nests even while he was in their crossfire.  Ehlers was at first elated when he was told he would be receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions, but he was soon brought to his knees upon learning the terrible loss he suffered on Omaha beach. Trying to sleep after having witnessed so much death and suffering on Omaha beach, Charles Toole’s buddy told him that 24 hours from now there’d be a lot more dead in their own company.  Toole’s buddy’s words proved eerily prophetic.  Thanks to two Texas Rangers, there were far less dead on Omaha beach than there would have been otherwise.  Leonard Lomell and his buddy Jack Kuhn climbed the 100 foot cliffs of Pointe du Hoc even as Nazi soldiers fired down upon them, threw grenades, and cut their ropes.  Lomell and Kuhn knew the lives of countless Americans depended on them finding the huge 155 mm coastal howitzers the Nazis had hidden above, capable of firing five miles or more out to sea, far enough to hit the troop ships landing for the invasion.  Nothing in their 18 years of life could have prepared Frank Caruk and Mark Wilson for all the suffering they witnessed landing in the initial waves at Omaha beach.

Walter Ehlers

Walter and Roland Ehlers

Charles Toole and the podcast host John Ulferts

Frank Caruk and his wife Janet

Leonard Lomell  

Ep7 Robert Bowen D-Day to Operation Market-Garden to Battle of the Bulge

From landing on Utah beach amidst floating bodies in life preservers to a combat glider landing aboard one of the "flying coffins" at Operation Market Garden. Robert Bowen saw a lot of action in World War II before he was badly injured and taken prisoner of war at the Battle of the Bulge.  As a POW a badly injured Bowen was nearly strangled by an enraged German doctor as Bowen lay on his operating table.  Back home, Bowen's young wife Christine never gave up hope that her husband was still alive, despite being told that he had been killed in action.

Robert and Christine Bowen

Robert Bowen in WW 2

Robert Bowen's painting of a Great Blue Heron

 

Bowen's painting of Nags Head, North Carolina

Episode 6 One Tough Gut: Monte Cassino, Anzio, Gunsmoke's James Arness, and a German Troop Train Escape

While Winston Churchill believed an Allied invasion of Italy would find it the soft underbelly of the Axis, most GIs agreed with General Mark Clark's description of it as "One Tough Gut" as they faced ferocious fighting at Salerno and along the Gustav Line at Mt. Sammucro, Monte Cassino and Anzio.  Episode 6 begins with Helen Callentine, a US Army Nurse whose hospital ship was bombed before she ever made it to Salerno; Russell Darkes who ordered his pinned down platoon at Mt. Sammucro to fix their bayonets before charging; Howard Fay who recalled the American dead that covered Monte Cassino's mountain slopes; Edgar Kuhlow and Leo Lawrence remembering the terror of Anzo Annie's 560 lb. shells that could fire for miles; Gunsmoke's James Arness, better known as Matt Dillon, who received a million dollar wound at Anzio days after the initial landing; B-25 pilot Jay DeBoer, show down over Italy, most of his crew executed by the SS, escaped capture by masquerading as an Italian soldier aboard a German troop train, and, finally, the liberation of Rome.

Helen Callentine

Russell Darkes

Howard K. Fay

Leo Lawrence

James Arness

Jay DeBoer

 

 

 

 

Episode 5 - Combat Jumps of All American Panther Arnold "Dutch" Nagel

Arnold "Dutch" Nagel volunteered to be a paratrooper in WW 2 because of the extra $50 per month jump pay paratroopers received and the distinctive uniforms they wore.  By war's end, he had participated in 4 combat jumps - Sicily, Maiori, Italy, Operation Market Garden in Holland, and on D-Day at Sainte Mere Eglise, France - and had fought in the invasion of Sicily, the liberation of Naples, Italy, D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge.  Nagel was one of only three men from Co. C, 1st Squad, 1st Platoon of the 505th 82nd Airborne Division to survive the war.  45 years later he became perhaps the war's last casualty when he made a commemorative jump to mark the opening of the Airborne and Special Operations Museum back where his service began at the home of the 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

 

Episode 4 - Aerial Dogfights and Headhunters - The Amazing Story of Jefferson DeBlanc and the Battle for the Solomon Islands

In August 1942 the US launched its first major amphibious landing of WW 2 in the Solomon Islands.  The battle became a bitter war of attrition as both sides fought feverishly for months on land, sea and air for the strategically important islands.  Jefferson DeBlanc became a fighter ace in just one day as he shot down six Japanese fighters before DeBlanc himself was shot down.  With his back, arms, and legs wounded from shrapnel, DeBlanc still managed to swim six hours before he came ashore at Kolombangara, only to be captured by a tribe of headhunters.  From his vantage point atop the control tower at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, Carl "Bud" DeVere watched daily dogfights as Joe Foss and Foss's Flying Circus shot down 72 Japanese aircraft during three months of bloody combat.

Jefferson DeBlanc

Map of Jefferson DeBlanc's fateful dogfight with the Japanese Zeros

Carl "Bud" DeVere

Episode 3 We're In the Army Now - America Goes to War in WW 2

In the aftermath of the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and the declaration of war against Germany and Japan, millions of Americans didn't wait till their draft numbers were called upon.  They immediately enlisted, including nearly 200,000 underage Americans.  In the rigorous basic training that followed, young Americans learned that war was for keeps as they learned the fighting skills that would keep them alive in combat.  As Colonel Sin, Commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, told his recruits, "Y'all ain't going over there to die for your country.  You're going over there to make that other son of a bitch die for his!"

Photo below is of Milburn Henke, credited as the first US soldier to set foot on European soil in WW 2.

Samuel Erlick with his medals

Episode 2 World Set Afire - John McGoran's Day of Infamy aboard the USS California

As he looked into the USS California's CL compartment located on the ship's lower level, John McGoran "...saw pure horror, my first realization that the game was now for keeps.  I saw bodies, many bodies, some of which I knew, just by their eyes, were lifeless."  Like the rest of the US Pacific fleet battleships moored at Ford Island's "Battleship Row", the USS California had been hit by torpedoes in the massive surprise attack against the US Naval base of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.  The surprise attack shattered the fragile peace the US had precariously maintained amid gathering war clouds.  In the aftermath of the blood attack, loss of life was staggering - 2,638 officers and enlisted men including 68 civilians.  McGoran's buddies were among the dead.