Dear Dave:
The article on Navy boot camp and why you included it hit very close to home for me. On the 21st of April my oldest friend died. He and his wife Ina were World War Two veterans, and I knew Joseph Potter for 30 years. He was 90, and his wife had died last year. Joe was drafted in 1940 and served in the 7th Infantry Division. He lived most of his life in the San Diego area, and had been released from active duty a few weeks before Pearl Harbor. On a night shift as an armed guard at a factory, Joe heard of the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor and knew that he was going to be reactivated very soon -- he was a "trained soldier" and America was short of everything at the time.
Joe was recalled to active duty and sent to Desert Center for training under Patton, tagged to participate in the North African campaign. Suddenly, his unit was ordered to cease its training maneuvers and go to Long Beach. They loaded aboard transport ships and were told nothing. In a few days, they saw icebergs -- Joe participated in the Aleutian campaign, that sideshow of Japan's Midway operation (the stepping stone to invading Hawaii, which is what Yamamoto wanted to do on 7 December 1941 instead of a simple air raid.) Joe spent the next two years on Attu, built the airbase there, then went to Fort Benning, Georgia as a drill sergeant. His infantry regiment had many men with construction trades background and men who had taken FDR's massive national construction/economic recovery programs when jobless during the depression.
Joe met his wife at Fort Benning, and they moved to Chula Vista after the war. Yes, the memories of World War Two are dying off. I've been fortunate to have known several veterans of that war. Of course, the veterans may have "seen the elephant," but they were products of their background -- they weren't monks in monasteries, they didn't live in a vacuum, cut off from the rest of Planet Earth. It will be impossible to put the war and a veteran's experience of war in context without knowing something about the culture, time period, and conditions that produced the veteran. Some of the background information is not politically correct now, such as racism and sexism -- but that was the reality of the times. How many times have you heard of the attempts to suppress "sin" in the World War One U.S. Army and the "pro stations" and sex education and canteens with "warm 3.2 beer?"
When I told young soldiers that the C-rations of the 1970's had a pack of three cigarettes in every meal, I'm met with disbelief. I don't remember much about them because I don't smoke, and because I didn't get very many C-rations as a Marine Corps avionics technician. It seems that we'll soon have a new generation of dying memories: Korea. That war is still on-going. There's Vietnam, and the Cold War actually began in 1918 for the United States -- but those are other stories. Thank you for doing the Ernie Pyle thing, telling the "ordinary sailor" story of the biggest "hot" war ever.
Dearest Julie & Dave,
I recv'd #30 the other day and have spent the intervening time trying to thank you both for the great job in editing and writing the story for me! There are of course some things that I had left out of the story, but we can chalk that up to my memory and I do hope that I didn't leave out something that will hurt someone's feelings or think I have lied about anything deliberately. It seems that I left out Saipan and Guam somehow but that's what happens with Old Poops! May 11th I'll be 75 years of age and just the recipient of a surprise Party with all my children and a good number of friends and right this moment I am a very proud and yet humble man...
Thank you so much for telling a story about the war I was able to survive and Thank you for your comments about things I have said that I would never have confessed myself!! Again, thanks to both of you and you have made me very proud!! I certainly hope some of the other guys or gals will respond and keep you in good stories for a long time to come! I am extremely grateful!
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© Copyright 2000 by David W. Tschanz.
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