But like so many of them, though he seldom talked about it, he could have told you one hell of a story. He won the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Purple Heart all in one fell swoop in the skies over Germany on December 31, 1944.
On the 14th of January our battalion received orders that on the following day it was to undertake an attack on the small German town of Nennig, located near the Moselle river. This would be part of a coordinated attack with the other battalions of the regiment, hitting adjacent towns in an attempt to drive the Germans out of the Switch area.
Although only three years old at the time, my sister, Mickey McNulty still remembers the news broadcast blaring from the radio on that fateful Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941. It was two pm in the small Brooklyn apartment but only 8 am at Pear Harbor, Hawaii.
Back at the miserable camp he was determined to make the best of his situation and settled into his new billet, which was a concrete single story structure with holes intended for a door and windows. No carpet, no furniture, no sheets, no pillowcases or pillows and only a potbellied stove for comfort.
I have no firsthand knowledge of the horrors my father witnessed on that foreign soil because he never spoke of his experiences to anyone, ever. I often asked what had mangled his hand, but a blank stare was always my answer. Those horrific images were locked away in his soul and like thousands of other young soldiers of a gruesome war, he never wanted to unlock that box and allow those nightmares to see the light of day.
As my father was driving down the highway, he passed a soldier in uniform hitchhiking home to his family. Deep in grief, my father had no inclination at that moment to do a good deed. Yet it was almost as if something outside himself pulled him to a stop,
The winter wind was biting but the soldier did not notice the cold. The pain all that his mind could focus on. The end for him was near, he could sense it. It was December 1944, in Neiderbroon, France, a time that would later be named the Battle of the Bulge. Some 80,000 soldiers lost their lives here. Karl Marion West was one of them.
At Pearl Harbor, all the ships that had been hit _ well, not all of them, but so many had been hit and were on fire and everything, and here we were in this little canoe all in the middle of this.
Now let me ask you this. There's a lot of side things, should I tell all of those? There are a lot of side things that are unusual, and nobody else had one exactly like I had
On Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, 23-year old J.W. "Bill" Simpson wasn't worried about much of anything. His mind was far from the growing world conflict that day as he sat in a car parked off Second Street in Monticello, KY, shooting the bull and drinking moonshine with one of his buddies.
It was at 6 am on February 19, 1945 that the Thurston began landing operations at Iwo Jima. The invasion of the small Pacific island turned out to be one of the bloodiest and most remembered battles of World War II.
Although the U.S. flag was flying above the island, the Japanese were far from relinquishing their territory. The battle continued for another 29 days.
n 1944, on Dalton's 19th birthday, he made a decision that would affect him for the rest of his life: he joined thousands of other young men and became a soldier to do his part for his country in the ongoing conflict, World War II. After he joined, he passed his physical examination at Fort McPherson, Georgia and on March 30 was officially inducted into the United States Army.