World War II Veteran Cousins Looking Forward To First Trip To Nation’s Capital
by Michael Stanley
Staff Writer
(Fifth in a series)
Some World War II veterans of Owen County, who are able, will receive a memorable gift during the third full week of April as they will have the opportunity to fly to Washington, D.C. to see first-hand the memorial built in their honor as part of the second-annual Hoosier Honor Flight. A pair of Owen County first cousins will be making the trip to the nation’s capital for the first time.
Corporal Richard Warren Thacker served as a scout with the 534th Amphibious Tractor Battalion of the U.S. Army during the "Last Great War."
"I had a crew in the Philippines that ran bulldozers and made a place to put Japanese prisoners, but we didn’t even get that finished before the war was over," Thacker noted. "I was trained to be a scout, to go in and find out where the enemy is. When we were in the Philippines, there was one time that the Japanese scout plane flew over, and I could see them as plain as day, I believe I could have shot them, but we weren’t supposed to give away our position."
Thacker was drafted into the Army in Illinois, where his mother lived, while working in Anderson, Indiana and took military testing at Camp Grant in Chicago. From Chicago, Thacker traveled to Fort Devens, Massachusetts for three months of basic training, where Thacker was in charge of maintaining heat via a coal furnace for three barracks.
"I’d never fired a furnace, we had just had an old stove, and it was one of those where you’d shoot the coal in," Thacker said. "I let one of them go out, and boy you talk about a bunch of mad guys. I suppose they thought any dumbbell would know how to fire a furnace."
Additional training was undergone by Thacker on the island of Fort Edwards, before traveling to Camp Gordon Johnston, which would later become the second largest POW base camp in the state of Florida.
Thacker recalled when he and a friend of his finished basic training, they had heard how good the food was in the Army Air Corps, so the pair decided they would change branches of service.
"We went over and took the test and passed. I came home on furlough, and while I was home, he sent me a telegram, and it said, ‘hurry back, they’re calling us for the Air Corps,’" Thatcher explained. "I thought, ‘I’m not going to waste my furlough on going back there.’ It was a good thing I didn’t, because they took him in there, but during the Battle of the Bulge, they needed men so bad that they shipped him over there and he got knocked off a tank. He was behind the lines for a day or two before he finally got out. That’s where I would have ended up if I had gone back and went into the Air Corps. I would have been in the Battle of the Bulge."
From Florida, Thacker went to California, where he ended up departing Oakland aboard the S.S. Fairland, landing at Milne Bay in New Guinea. Thacker would later travel to Oro Bay, New Guinea.
"We went across the ocean on one of those LCM’s (Landing Craft Mechanized), I’m telling you, I was scared to death, I thought for sure we’d drown," Thacker said. "They couldn’t keep the ramp up. When we’d hit a big wave, the ramp would come down a little bit. I had all of my crew, about 25 men, grab those cables on each side, and we were holding on for dear life, but we made it to Oro Bay."
While his company departed, Thacker remained in Oro to serve as a scout in the Owen Stanley Mountains.
"I was up there with an Australian outfit, and we were looking for Japanese. By that time, they pretty well had them scattered out," Thacker explained. "They had found out that Americans were as big of pushovers as they thought they would be. That Australian commander had a guy with him playing bagpipes. I thought, ‘well you nut you, why are you letting them know where we are for?’ But I guess they knew what they were doing, they scattered; we didn’t see any Japanese at all. We made a 120-mile hike."
After a three-month stay on the Mortei Island, Thacker was sent to the Philippines, where he stayed until atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagaskai and Okinawa.
"We had our guns all greased up and ready to go in, but it was a great thing. We didn’t have to," Thacker said. "Some of these young people think it was cruel to drop those bombs, but it would have been a lot worse for both sides. They had taught the kids and women over there to fight. We settled there in the harbor for 30 days just to wait for them to get the mines out of the way. When we got in there, they were wanting to give me sergeant stripes, but I had already found out that I had enough points to go home, so I said, ‘Don’t bother with that. I’m going home!’ If I would have known better, I would have taken those sergeant stripes, because I would have made more money when I got out, but I wasn’t interested in that; I wanted to get home."
Thacker will make his first trip to Washington along with first cousin Mervin Franklin on Wednesday, April 22 as two of nearly 120 veterans aboard a 737 flight to the nation’s capital as a part of the second-annual Hoosier Honor Flight.
"I’m glad to get this opportunity, because of course, we were out there on the East Coast training, and it was crowded then. I thought, boy, I wouldn’t drive out there for all of Washington," Thacker said. "It’s going to be interesting to get to see the place. I took my wife down to Florida and showed her where we trained at down there, but we’ve never done much running around. We trained on Dog Island. That’s where they dumped us off and had us swim back for scout training. There were three of us who swam in there, and of course, it was cold when you got out of the water, so we buried ourselves in the sand to get warm. There were some wild hogs on that island, and those hogs would come around there, and we’d throw sand in their face. They’d take off and then come back again. We tried to find them the next day, but apparently they were down in the swamp."
Franklin, a Seaman First Class (now referred to as Petty Officer Third Class) served onboard the U.S.S. Boise.
"I was just a green kid, but I was anxious to see what was going on," Franklin said. "I walked in the shower room one night, and there was just steam coming out, because there were kids running it, and they didn’t know what they were doing. One night, I heard a big boom, and one of those boys was blown up. It killed three boys."
Franklin picked up a troop ship on Treasure Island, California before boarding the Boise, which took General Douglas MacArthur on a 35,000-mile tour of the central and southern Philippines. MacArthur served as the Allied Commander in the Philippines.
"We took him down into those islands, and you could see the bottom of the ship in that water," Franklin said. "You could throw a penny over the ship, and a native kid would dive in and get that penny. Every night, they would have one of those flying boats come in and bring us information. It was kind of funny, because his sea cabin was just below my watch station on the 40-millimeter gun. Of all the times that he came out and stood there next to us, he never did say, ‘hi boys.’"
The cousins attempted to locate each other in the Philippines, just missing each other as Thacker watched the Boise sail over the horizon.
"I was there and watched them take back Corregidor, dropping paratroopers and the army coming in on Bataan. By that time, the Japanese Air Force didn’t amount to much, so us guys on the ship, all we had to do was sit and watch. That was nice," Franklin said. "We just had to worry about those damn suicide planes. That was our biggest worry. We put up with them just about every day. We’d go to our general quarters just before daylight and stay there until maybe eight or nine o’clock, and then we’d go again at sunset. Very few times there wasn’t one who came in; sometimes they came in during the day. That’s how they got the (U.S.S.) Nashville. We were going to Mendinilla with a small task force. We were going by a volcano with a low cloud, and I got to thinking, ‘man, that doesn’t look very good.’ I was sitting on the bow having breakfast, smoking a cigarette, and I had a friend of mine talking to me. He said, ‘Well, the Nashville got it.’ I turned around and looked; there was white smoke, and then it was black. I don’t know how many they got. They got a lot of the army, because they were on the top deck and a lot of sailors too. That afternoon, there were a couple of Japanese Betty’s (Mitsubishi Type 1 Bomber) coming around, and we had the Air Force, two Marine F4U’s, and then we had two P-53s. Those F4U’s would come in at that old bomber, and he’d shoot back and finally got him down. I looked up and that P-53 hit the back of that thing, and he was gone. That was the last we saw of them. We didn’t get any more that day, of course; they came around later. One thing about the Boise, every gun was shooting."
Franklin recalled the Battle of the Surigao Strait in October, 1944.
"I was in the powder magazine, and when they sounded general quarters, I went down there, and they dropped a three and an eight-inch door on your head and bolted it in. Me and this old Tennessee boy were down there looking at one another, wondering what the hell was going to happen, until midnight when it started," Franklin explained. "Of course, it wasn’t bad once it got started, because you were busy handing out powder. But boy, when they sounded all clear, secure battle stations, that was a relief."
The pair also recalled choosing their branch of service before entering basic training.
"When they asked me what branch I wanted, the navy or the army, I said, ‘I want the army. I want my feet on the ground; I can run," Thacker said. "I’m a coward; I can run. They put me in the amphibious outfit, because they were afraid I would run."
"I said, I want the navy; I don’t want to be in a fox hole with snakes in it," Franklin said.
Franklin noted that numerous amounts of American POW’s were lost sinking Japanese ships.
"There are a lot of stories that will never be told," he said. "The more books I read (about the war), the more I realize how lucky I was."
"We would have had a lot more fun if we knew we were going to live through it," Thacker said with a laugh.
Thanks to the author and the local paper for doing such a great job in featuring these veterans!
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