Class of '71 Family of Veterans - Thank You For Your Service

Turns out that my dad wanted to join the US Army and lied about his age to start his basic training.  Like most members of his generation, he very rarely talked about his time in the service and when he did, it was a very short snippet of what happened to him.  After reading your heart felt stories in the email thread, I took the time over the last few days to find his picture.  I remember one incident; he was to fly on a mission and had responsibilities in the rear of the plane to manage the cargo – which he never disclosed exactly what he was protecting.  After the successful mission, he became ill and was grounded – this was a huge disappointment.  Yet, he had a great comradery with his buddies in the troop.  And once he was better, even though he did not have clearance, his buddies snuck him on the plane for another mission with them. 

A great day to go to Mass and pray for our fallen soldiers and their families. Well, my Dad’s WWII story is a little different. The short version!  In the fall of 1939, he got his pilot’s license in St Louis. He had a little too much fun one afternoon and started flying under Mississippi River bridges and had his license revoked. My grandparents were so upset they sent him to live with his relatives in Quebec. (Long history leading up to his exploits that I won’t not bore you with).

Arrived in Canada and the cousins go out and meet up with a bunch of Royal Canadian Air Force (recruiters Oops!)  Well, we now pick up the story in England flying Spitfires in 1940.  The stories are true pilots hang out in bars a lot.  Got back one night and decked his CO. Oops not good.  Now moved to a transport pilot, a fate almost worse than death for a fighter pilot. Good news he missed the Battle of Britain where I think more than 70% of the spitfire pilots were killed.  Spent most of his time flying back and forth to North Africa. He had a few interesting stories, but one was when he delivered chests of jewels with a British delegation to gain Arab support. When he returned to Chicago, he was thrown in jail for evading the draft. It took a couple months for it to be resolved.

My father served in the Army Air Corp in WWII - ball turret gunner on a B17. He flew 25 combat missions- most were eastern European countries but to Berlin a couple of times- his plane crashed in Adriatic Sea several days after the war- they parachuted from 500 feet - my father broke his leg and two of crew died - he saved part of his parachute and I had it reframed and gave to my oldest daughter on Christmas 2021.

My older brother Leigh served in Navy for 3 years during Vietnam.  He had orders to go to Vietnam, but they changed them when he was home on leave - epic party - he went to the Mediterranean - 6th Fleet - and screws with the Soviets for 18 months.

One of my younger brothers went to medical school and joined the US Navy.  They paid all his education tuition, and he became a lieutenant.  He was assigned to a Marine air squadron at Cherry Point Naval Air Station.  The first night he showed up, he was checking into the Bachelor Officer Quarters (BOQ), a military motel for people just getting to base or are in transit, when he heard everyone screaming.  In the common area and all these pilots were yelling, it was the first night of Desert Storm and we were bombing Baghdad.  My brother never questioned his decision to enlist.  After 2 years of various deployments, he became flight surgeon for the Blue Angels for 2 years and remains in Florida today working at Mayo Clinic.

I was in the Army for three years - did basic at Ft Knox Ky - did advanced training at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville Al’s. Very nice but very hot, it was home of Werner Von Braun NASA Propulsion Center.  I was being taught how to maintain Nuclear Warheads, anything from 0.2 kilotons up to 450 kilotons.  I deployed to South Korea for a year, primitive, I have thousands of stories about that place.  Chong Dong Ny was as 3rd world as it gets…from there I went to Athens Greece - culture shock.  Athens would have been perfect if wasn’t for the Greeks, sunny warm 300 days a year, the tourist capital of Europe, had off base housing, it was great.  There is lots of pollution, but who cares, it is still in the army, it was fine.  There are 450 army personnel in country, and I became the training MCP for the whole country- we gotta do what?  It was a very positive experience, I got out and despite all… life still happens.  Afterwards, I was married and had 2 daughters, but I learned 2 things in army, one, how to clean and two, how to maintain a nuclear warhead.  Cleaning is much more important, and women love it.  

In early October 2009 my brothers and I met my father in DC - just us guys - taking Dad to the WWII Monument.  My brother Perry (Blue Angel) got my father an exact replica of the bomber jacket he would have worn flying combat missions with the 15th Air Force in Italy 1944/45 - same unit patches every thing.  Off to the WWII Monument we went, a father and his five sons, celebrating his service.  Dad was a rockstar that afternoon, everyone wanted to talk to him because he had been there and their father had passed.  Later we all went to a nice steak house for dinner.  Not many perfect days on this planet but that day was one of them.  My father passed 6 months later, but we all had one more perfect day together.  

I never talk this much but a parting comment, know that if the US decides to nuke someone, it’s a good-looking bomb, nothing dirty about our bombs.

Happy Veterans Day!

My father-in-law, David Trueblood Steere served as an air traffic controller in England for the US Air Corps until 1945, when his unit was transferred to assist is the evacuation of concentration camps and transportation of the survivors.  He freely spoke of his service in England but would never speak about the camps.

My father was a captain in the army in charge of training infantrymen in hand-to-hand combat, so I was told.  I was also told that his bad feet in his later years were a combat wound from shrapnel.  But, at his 80th birthday party, a relative divulged that he tripped over a munitions box, and he never was sent overseas. Proud of him no matter.

Springtime 1970, junior year I am on the mound pitching. I see my parents and Father Knapp having an intense conversation along the sidelines. I can tell it’s not a jovial one by the look on their faces. When the game was over my parents informed me that they received a telegram starting that my brother Richard had been wounded in Viet Nam and was airlifted to a hospital in Tokyo. No other information. We subsequently found out his patrol was ambushed and only he and one other soldier survived. He suffered numerous machine gun fire and mortar wounds. He spent 1 ½ years in hospitals recovering. He devoted his life to government service becoming Assistant Attorney General under Ronald Reagan, and a Federal Judge. He died prematurely and is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

The greatest generation.  My dad served in the South Pacific in New Guinea.  He was a stevedore loading/unloading supply ships.  Went in as a private and discharged as a Sergeant.  Funny story.  My mother was working for a general in the War Department in DC.  He would have occasion to send officers to New Guinea.  When an officer was in his office prior to a trip there, he would stick his head out the door and say, Mrs. Beebe, do you have that letter for New Guinea?  She would then write my dad a letter under the Generals office seal and the General would ask the officer to take it with him to deliver.  One day my dad was in the bowels of a ship and word came down that there was a mad colonel looking for him.  He went up to the dock and this colonel said ‘“Goddammit Sergeant, why am I delivering a letter to you halfway around the world”.  My dad looked at him and said, “Colonel did the General explain this to you?”  He replied, “He did not!”.  My dad then said “Sir, this is a need-to-know operation and apparently you have no need to know” and turned around and left to thunderous applause from his crew mates.

My father, William F Leahy was a Lieutenant Commander on the USS Texas during WW2 and a proud member of the US Navy. He was played football and baseball at the US Naval Academy from the class of 1944. Because of the war he entered active duty at the end of his junior year. He was assigned to the US Texas in the position as Gunner. Eisenhower arrived on the Texas the night before our attack at Normandy to pump up the troops. My dad's assignment was to fire the first shot aiming at a cross on a church above the cliffs beyond the beach. He told me he fired 1 minute early but didn't get in any trouble. 

In March of 1943, my dad, Alexander Baran left a good paying job at Bethlehem Steel making nearly $70 per week, to join the US Army with the 106th Reconnaissance Troop, 106th Infantry Division.  He had a number of assignments in the US, England, and France, before finding himself on the outskirts of St. Vith in Belgium in December 1944 – a few miles from the Siegfried Line.  The 106th Division had been brought up to the front lines days earlier to replace the 2nd Infantry Division.  The 2nd Division was to join the US 1st Army for a planned Allied attack into Germany. 

On the morning of December 16, 1944, the full force of a massive German attack - the Battle of the Bulge - was thrown against the 106th Infantry Division.  My dad would describe that morning, “…we were being shelled with 88’s, rockets, buzz bombs, V1 rocket planes, everything came at us.  After about an hour of shelling, the German Army began to come at us, we fired back with a machine gun and our rifles – somehow, we held them back…”  As it turned out, two regiments, the 422nd and 423rd, with the 589th and 590th Field Artillery Battalions were cut off and surrounded by the sheer weight and power of the concentrated German attack. The 424th Regiment was driven back.  And my dad's 106th Reconnaissance Troop, along with the 331st Medical Battalion, and the 81st Engineering Combat Battalion suffered heavy casualties.

The next day, the remaining 106th Reconnaissance Troop was ordered back to the town of St. Vith.  However, with German troops advancing, more shelling, and German paratroopers emerging from behind them, my dad and his Troop were captured outside a barn on a local farm.  Lining the US soldiers up against the side of the barn, the German’s prepared a machine gun, however, a German medic stopped the killing, as the American soldiers were needed to carry German wounded back to the Siegfried Line.  Afterward, they were marched into Germany to a nearby train station. 

The American soldiers boarded a train to the Limburg POW Camp in Hesse, Germany, where they stayed through Christmas.  And by New Year’s Eve, they were transferred to Stalag III-A the prisoner of war camp at Luckenwalde (about 30 miles south of Berlin).  For the most part, my dad spent the rest of the war at Luckenwalde on work detail in a railroad yard, avoiding the constant Allied bombing in the area.  In early April 1945, he was diagnosed with diphtheria, a disease that was feared by the German soldiers/commanders in the prison camp and was moved to a local hospital.  He always said, he was fortunate and blessed to have gotten sick and to spend the remaining two weeks of the war, safe in the hospital, until freed by the US Army.  

From Major General Donald A. Stroh, Commanding the 106th Infantry Division: At St. Vith, the 106th fought against superior forces, with pulverizing artillery battering them from all sides; it was men against tanks, guts against steel. Their heroism gained precious time for other units to regroup and strike back.  In one of the bloodiest battles of the war, the 106th showed the Germans and the world how American soldiers could fight — and die.

Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery (Monty) would later say, “…The American soldiers of the 106th Infantry Division stuck it out and put up a fine performance, by jove, they stuck it out, those chaps…”  to defend their position, despite inadequate reserves, supplies and lack of air support, the valiant men of the 106th took a tremendous toll of enemy shock troops, and wrote a story in blood and courage to rank with the Alamo, Chateau-Thierry, Pearl Harbor and Bataan. They never quit.

Thanks Corc for this idea, been wanting to finalize the research on my dad’s time in the war. Makes this a very special Veterans Day. 

My dad was drafted out of Malvern Prep and spent 4 years in a submarine accepting U-boat surrenders and scuttling those boats in order to keep allied shipping lanes open. In the 90's he and I went to see Das Boot, the German film about one of their subs at the end of WW2, of which he said it was extremely accurate. Usually, they would take a surrendered crew back to a base in Greenland or Newfoundland, where the Germans would be taken to Red Cross POW camps. In 1945, it became shocking to him how young the German sailors were, and in one surrender, there was a kid who was 13. The kid was scared to death, totally frightened, almost hysterical. The crew, and Dad in particular, took pity on the guy, assured him he would be well looked after. The last time Dad saw him, he escorted the kid to the Red Cross off the docks in Gander.

My father never told us that story., It was told to me by that German man at my father's funeral. His life had turned out well for him. He was adopted by a Canadian family, educated at Ryerson and became an engineer for Air Canada. On a business trip to Boeing, he saw the notice I'd written for the Inquirer about Dad and came out to the church on Boot Road in WC, introduced himself to my mother and the 5 of us, told us this story, hoping he'd come to the right family to say thank you. Gobsmacked is a good word. Danny and I agreed, that was the sort of thing my dad would do. That man passed a few years later and when I received a letter from his daughter, I wrote back to tell her, her father had profoundly touched us.  Dad said Malvern was the best thing to happen to him growing up. I'd have to agree. It gave one a sense of what ought to do. Very Kantian.