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biglakejake

Veteran POW

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Well I had the opportunity to shake the hand of one of our last remaining WWII veterans this morning. I thanked him for his service and noticed he had a POW license plate. He was an airborne soldier captured by the nazis in Sept 1944 during operation Market-Garden(A Bridge Too Far) and spent 6 months in a stalag. God Bless him.

lee

 

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Here is one WW ll vet, that I was glad to meet. Clarence (Bud) Ollum. The 82ND Airborne Division had 4 combat jumps in WW ll, Bud made all 4. One of his buddy's is in Brokaws book, Gagne, who didn't make it back, Bud is mentioned in Brokaws second book. Passed away in 2009. He also had an interview in Military History Magazine, and there is a couple of YouTube videos of him.

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still going strong.  helped publish a book about himself in april and started playing show low senior softball in june at 97 years old.  Eugene Metcalfe.

Thank You Sir for your service!

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My wife's grandfather served with a crew of anti-aircraft half tracks in WW2 in Europe. He was an amazing man, that I was proud to have known before his passing almost 5 years ago. He didn't talk about the war much, but he did tell us some of his stories, and we have many of his pictures and letters from when he was over seas. He was a rancher and farmer in normal life, and was as tough as they came. He worked every day on his ranch into his 90's. In his 90's he could not see very well, but he could still back up the tractor to the attachments with no help in 1 shot. 

Late in life he was at the VA with my mother in law and a nurse mentioned his file showed he received a bronze star. He would never tell anyone why or talk about it.

My older son was fortunate enough to meet him, but he passed 2 weeks before our younger son who is named after him. 

Lawrence Huntington, you are missed by so many. RIP.

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I have the honor of getting to see one of these hero’s every weekend. My Dad is 94 and landed in Normandy in August of 44. Got wounded twice and almost froze to death in the Battle of the Bulge. I’ve heard the funny stories but he almost never tells the other stories. I am truly blessed to still have him around.

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A world war and 76 years later, Charlie Hall is finally getting his high school diploma

 

My wife and I attended Charlies funeral a couple weeks ago....maybe just a week ago....I am amazed that these guys just dropped life and went to fight for what they thought was right! We could learn a ton from our VETS!!!

The diplomas at Snowflake High School are usually awarded in alphabetical order, but on Friday, Charlie Hall will go first.

He’s been waiting a long time.

Hall is 96, a veteran of World War II. He will walk across the stage, in his royal blue cap and gown, accompanied by three great-grandchildren, who also are graduating.

“I’m still a little bit in shock,” Hall said Thursday. “I didn’t think it was ever really going to happen.”

Hall left high school in 1943 to enlist in the Marine Corps. After the war, he ran a business, raised a family and was elected to the Town Council and the school board. But he never finished high school.

Now, after 76 years, with the help of family and a state lawmaker, Hall will finally receive his diploma.

Hall had finished his junior year at Snowflake High, where he was class president and a star football player. His coach thought Hall’s senior year would be their chance at a championship.

But many of Hall’s friends were fighting in the war or preparing to go. He enlisted, too, on July 27, 1943, choosing the Marine Corps because he liked the dress blue uniform.

“Everybody who was over 100 pounds went into service,” he said.

Hall didn’t have to go. He could have gotten a deferment because he was still in high school and worked as a logger, considered vital for the war effort.

But Hall wanted to do his part. 

“I’d worked around grown men my whole life. I knew I could hold my own,” he said.

Hall already was married, to his sweetheart Katie Willis, and had a daughter just a few months old. She would be almost 3 before he saw her again.

He was assigned to the 9th Amphibious Tractor Battalion, which landed the 6th Marine Division on the island in the Battle of Okinawa.

“We went with whoever needed us,” Hall said. 

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Got it, read it, ready to pass it on. An Eighty Deuce vet gets first dibs.  Lucafu1 do you want to read it?

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God Bless them is right. Had 2 Uncles in stalags one a Liberator pilot one a field surgeon 

the other uncle a forward artillery observer on The Canal and latter CO of most USMC arty ever put together, during Vietnam.

Grew up next door to an infantry man 44/45 and a P38 pilot same era. Old man volunteered to drive ambulances 44/45 when army medically disqualified him.  Old man had a co-worker lost a leg when a Japanese tank ran over him and another in pilot training when the war ended. My God Father was in flight training and his brother flying P47 in Europe. Thats the short list, when I was a pilot in the Navy a lot of other guys had similar backgrounds. All in All generally a great bunch bunch of guys.

 

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at work i met a udt frogman 3 years ago.  went in the water at Pearl, Normandy and Iwo Jima.  my dad was at Hickam field on dec 7 and landed with the marines on the guadalcanal' as 1 of 117 SeaBees on the first day.  he did the duration on guadalcanal and bougainville.  fellow here in show low i bought a pickup from was a sub driver on the USS Barwood.   it famously took a 4 inch jap shell right through the conning tower off taiwan and then sailed 2,000 miles back to Australia on the surface.  if they dove most of the electric systems would short out with the flooded tower.  he didn't tell me that-i read it in Clay Blairs' Silent Victory with all the patrol reports from the pacific war.  he was shocked-he thought ii was still top secret!!!  a Corsair pilot was in dad's carpool to Luke in the '60's but thats all i know of Mitch.  my uncle Cecil lost a leg on Heartbreak Ridge in Korea and drank himself to death.  Bless them All.  and they never had anything much to say about it all.

lee  

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My grandpa was a lowly grunt in the island hopping in the pacific.  He never talked about it, but he caught malaria twice and took a bullet that was lodged in his back.  That bullet and the effects from the malaria stayed with him for the rest of his life.  Those conditions plus the results of two cave-ins in the coal mines in Western PA made his later years tough and he died in his early 60's.

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