Showing posts with label Family Veterans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Veterans. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Don Dixon in US Army
I asked Uncle Don to send me a photo and some more info on his service in the Army. He had mentioned it in an email several years ago, but wanted to get some more info as I added a label for family veterans in the blog. He didn’t have a picture, but gave me some more info.
“Finished college in 1955 and a 5th year thesis program in June/1956 and during this time I was exempt from the US draft program. Following my education I was then eligible for the draft and I received my draft letter in September 1956 and had to go in the army in Oct. 1956. Had basic training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Mo. After basic training I was scheduled to go to Korea but at the last minute that order was cancelled and I remained at Ft. Leonard Wood. I helped coordinate the summer training of the National Guard and ROTC units. Was discharged Oct. 1958 and then had to serve two years of active reserve and two years of inactive reserve to complete my 6 year requirement.”
The armistice was signed July 27, 1953 setting up the “DMZ” or demilitarized zone. No peace agreement was ever signed. We know that things have been tense at the border as soldiers can literally see each other across the line and we have had troops in place continuously since. Interesting that troops were essentially placed on hold in the reserves just in case active war broke out again. So to put the timeline into perspective, he was still in the reserves after I turned 6 years old and was playing war games with my cousins at family picnics. Uncle Don always stayed in pretty good shape. I wonder if he could still fit into that uniform?
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Warren Thacker's Memories of World War II
I've shared information before about my uncle Warren's experiences in World War II, including articles from the Spencer, Indiana newspaper and information about a book that a member of his unit wrote about their experiences.
Uncle Warren has now put on paper a much more detailed memoir of his experiences. It is hard for me to imagine everything he went through by an age that I was just leaving Indiana University and starting a career. Although he was thankfully not seriously wounded, he had many close calls and was put into some amazing situations... sometimes alone or with one or two others on islands that were thousands of miles from home.
I'll eventually try to map out the places where he served, both in training and overseas.
I'd like to thank Uncle Warren for his service and the gift he has given to the family by sharing his wartime experiences.
Here's the memoir:
Memoirs of WWII
"My Story"
By Richard Warren Thacker, Veteran, US Army
October 2009
I was living in Anderson, Ind., with a family from Illinois on Dec. 7, 1941, and was walking up town when a newspaper boy started shouting that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I was working at Delco Remy, a G.M. plant that made auto parts. The plant quickly switched to making aircraft parts for the Army.
During the summer of 1941, my younger brother Wayne had been in Anderson working. That fall, he went back home and finished high school then came back to Anderson the next summer and worked in Gibson's ice house. He and I were living on Walnut St. across from Wilma (Dixon) and Wanda (Butler), who as you know eventually became our wives.
It wasn't long until I received my draft notice. As Wayne and I had always been close, he didn't want to be at home if I was in the Army, so he enlisted in the Navy and was quickly sent to Great Lakes Naval Base near Chicago.
Our cousin, (George) Delmar Franklin and I went up to see Wayne and came home with a very heavy heart for I could see Wayne was homesick, but we had to go on.
I worked until about a month before I had to report in, and we worked seven days a week. I sent my money home and told Mom to use it if needed as Dad (step-father Martin Gwaltney) had lost his eyesight. That was also the main reason I had quit high school and went to work. I had two years of high school education. Mom put the money in the bank and never used it.
I had a 1940 Plymouth that I drove home and parked in the barn for storage while I was away in the Army. I later sold the car to a schoolmate, which turned out to be a mistake for they quit making cars because of the war, and good used cars became very expensive. I got a thousand dollars out of it but when I came home three years later, the same car was selling for $3,000.
Entering the service, I left Carmi, Ill., on Jan. 30, 1943 on a train for Camp Grant in Chicago. We were given tests of all kinds, and I never knew how I came out on any of them, but from Camp Grant we were shipped to Ft. Devens in Mass., where we took gas mask training along with all the rifle and other things. I had never fired a stoker coal furnace before but they put me in charge of all three barracks. It was about 20 degrees below zero with a foot of snow on the ground, I let one furnace run out of coal and had a house full of men very unhappy but one older man helped me get it going again, and I kept them warm the rest of the night.
We were there for a while but I don't recall just how long it was. We were then moved out to an island called Camp Edwards. I was promoted to Corporal and put in charge of the guards. The island probably wasn't over 200 acres, so
we took turns on guard duty. At this time, I and a few other boys started training for scout duty. We learned how to make hand grenades out of explosives, how to blow bridges and use the different kinds of explosives we had at that time.
Three men were killed in fact, and there wasn't even a thread of cloth left where they had been sitting on a case of dynamite when it exploded. It almost blew our tent over, and we were close to a mile away.
The ocean was pretty there, and a lot of girls from Boston came looking for a husband. The sand was white as snow. While we were there, Joe Louis, the world boxing champion, came and put on a demonstration for us. He had never been beaten at that time. Later a boxer named Billy Conn out pointed him but could never knock him out.
We had some amusing things happen now and then. While I was corporal of the guard, I had to take people around and post them along the beaches. Our truck driver got very tired and we had trouble waking him when it came time for the next shift of guards so I told someone to get me some water, and I sprinkled a little in his face. He came up ready to whip me but two of the boys grabbed him and told him it was the only way we could wake him.
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We had a few fights (among the troops) as all the boys were homesick and not in a very good mood. But, for the circumstances we really got along pretty well and soon became like a family, which still holds true after 66 years. I feel close to some of the guys yet.
We left Camp Edwards on a train headed for Camp Gordon Johnson in Florida but they never told us where we were going, so we assumed we were being sent overseas. That must have been in the fall of '43. I spent most of my time with Lt. Conn training in the scouts. We had a hard physical workout every day. One day, we were down on the ground on our back with a big log at arms length. Behind us a guy would sit on our feet and we had to reach back and lift that log up to our chest four or five times. It made some hard stomach muscles.
We also crawled under machine gun fire, and all the other training with hand grenades, rifle fire and bayonet practice. I hate the thought of having to run a bayonet into someone's stomach and thank God I never had to do that. It seems to me now the Lord watched over us all the way for as many times as we could have been killed but had just moved out when the bombs fell.
At Gordon Johnson, we scouts were on the water quite a lot. I and two others were let over the side about a mile out from an island (Dog Island) after night and we swam in then directed the landing craft in to the beach the next morning. I talked about the wild hogs there in the book recently put together by the Spencer Evening World.
Florida was a good training ground for us as it was somewhat like the South Pacific with the mosquitoes, snakes and all. I had one boy in my barracks who was deathly afraid of snakes. I had to catch one in front of the door and take it out to the woods as he was afraid to come out with it there.
While I was a rifle range instructor, one of the older men was so afraid of a rifle be actually began crying. I tried to tell him he must learn to shoot for whatever he did in the service he might have to defend himself. He kept saying he was going to be a cook and he never came close to hitting the target.
We left Camp Gordon Johnson April 11, 1944 and arrived at Camp Stoneman in California April 16. We left there April 22 on the SS Fairland, a converted transport ship. I learned the hard way that salt water will not remove soap
from your body when you take a shower. All the way to New Guinea, I felt like I was wrapped in some kind of gum.
We passed the equator April 30 and crossed the International Date Line May 8, then on May 9 landed at Milne Bay, New Guinea. We left Milne Bay June 24 landed at Oro Bay June 25. We were in LCMs (landing craft, mechanized) from Milne Bay to Oro Bay. They are small boats for a rough ocean, and I wondered if we would make it as the ramp kept slipping down every time we hit a large wave.
In New Guinea, there were a few natives that still practiced head hunting when we were there.
We left Oro Bay Aug. 18 for a trip up in the Owen Stanley Mountains. I was the only scout from our company to go with about 15 Australians. It was quite a journey of about 120 miles. We got our water from the mountain streams and had pills to put in it to make it safe to drink. Some of the rivers we had to cross were so swift that we had to hold hands to keep our balance. One boy dropped his rifle and it washed right on down the river. I'm sure he was nervous without it the rest of the trip.
They dropped our food from an airplane and one time were a day late. I'm always hungry, so I was really getting worried. Anyway, I got back with my company Sept. 9 and got on a small ship with a few marines. We invaded the Japanese on Morotai Island, Sept. 15. We captured a Japanese naval officer for information and learned that we had a lot of Japanese on the main island of Halma Hera just eight miles across the bay. These islands were part of the Molucca Islands. The Japanese had hardly any ships to move the soldiers out, so we just left them sitting there. They did bomb us every few nights and we were very fortunate to be in a different place than where they thought we were.
I'm not sure where John Kennedy was in the PT boat and almost got hit but I think is was in that area. On Christmas eve, the Japs came in on a bombing run and were shot down mostly by our night fighters. They were called the black widows.
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We quickly built an airstrip and soon had crippled planes landing. They came in with all kinds of troubles such as on fire, landing gear shot out and all. My crew was strafed with machine gun fire from Jap planes a couple of times but we were lucky and never got hit. I peeled one leg getting into the bunker and the guys kidded me saying I should put in for a purple heart.
On Morotai, we lived for a while on wormy cereal. It was cooked so we just shut our eyes and ate it. I think I wrote somewhere else how we took quarter-pound blocks of TNT and killed ocean fish. We had a big mess (bunch) of fish and the first sergeant called all out to help clean them. Some of the guys from New York didn't like that but they sure liked the fried fish later.
This island was made up of volcanic ash and coral, so it was hard to dig a fox hole. I spent my 22nd birthday here on Morotai. We left Morotai and most of the Japs we had driven up into to the mountains.
On Dec. 30, we headed for Luzon, Philippians. We had some close calls from big guns the Japs had up on higher ground. We were here for about a month then we made another landing at Alacan, another town on the island of Luzon. I got malaria and almost didn't make it.
Mom had a feeling I was in trouble. She said she was afraid I had been killed in the landing, but I made it and her I am almost 87 years old and still going. God had to be watching over me. I'm sure I've done nothing good, but He has surely watched over me.
On a clear night, you could see the bombs after the enemy planes first turned them loose for just a short time before they got up to speed. The bombs always looked like they were headed right for where we were. They made a loud squall coming down and the bigger shells made a whoosh whoosh noise as they went past. If they hadn't gone past, I wouldn’t be here writing about this.
Some shells exploded near us and sprinkled metal all around us but we were lucky few were hit. Chuck Eckstine from Wisconsin got hit the worst when a piece of metal went through his hand and on into his stomach. That was the end of his service and they sent him home.
I received four bronze stars and a bronze arrowhead for doing what I was told to do (working in ammo and fuel dump).
A few hours after we landed on Luzon, we had a large pile of ammo and gasoline in 55 gallon drums stored on the beach. This was part of our job along with the boat battalion, which was expected to get the troops to the shore when making a landing. You have seen in the news I'm sure the boats come in and lower the ramps for the men to hurry off. That was like our boat battalion.
The Japs slipped in and set our ammo and gasoline dump on fire. You will never see a 4th of July display as great as that with the shells exploding and gasoline drums blowing up. I was a short distance from it and hardly closed my eyes all night.
I saw a soldier run into the middle of that, jump in his "duck" which was loaded with 55 gallon drums of gasoline and drive it through all those flames. He saved a lot of fuel and should have been awarded for bravery but those kinds of things were common in combat.
Shortly after this, I came down with a fever. I just remember walking along and all of a sudden, my legs just gave out. I don't know who took me back to the medic or how long it was. When I came to, they had me under a shower and I remember him saying if I had one more degree of temperature, I would have died.
I was in a tent with two Indian boys from the 158 combat team who were some of the code talkers. None of the three of us felt like digging a foxhole but every night the Japs would shell us, and we kept saying tomorrow we would dig, but never did. After about a week, we just walked out of there and went back to our own companies.
About two or three weeks later, we loaded up and made another landing further up the coast. The Freedom Fighters that fought underground all the time the Japs were there helped guide us in with a crank two-way radio. I have pictures of the victory parade later taken at this town. I was sitting on the right front fender of a jeep.
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Another soldier, Jim Cook from Boston, Kentucky, and I got all the way up to Baguio where they had gold mines and the dwellers lived. They were small people and built their homes in big trees. I tried to talk to them but they were not friendly. We found some of the best bananas up there. The bananas had black skin when they were ripe and they tasted good.
Jim and I met the mother and sisters of one of the Freedom Fighters and have pictures of them. We wrote to them for a while after I got home. The people had a hard time under Japanese rule as they took all of the food and would kill for no reason. One little boy came to camp crying, and the Japs had killed his whole family.
I found three women, one with a baby in her arms, who had been lined up and shot. One man was hung in his stairway. The people were very happy to see us come in.
The China Sea had been very rough as we came in. I slept on deck of the LST (landing ship tank). An Oxygen tank broke loose and was rolling back and forth. I caught it with my feet and hung onto the rail with my arms for the waves were coming up over the ship. During the night, a couple of sailors came running up looking for the tank of oxygen and said the ship was trying to break apart and needed welding. Again, I wondered if we would drown.
The waves were at least 50 feet so no one could go very long in that kind of sea. It turned several of our trucks over on deck. The LSTs were big enough to haul trucks and tanks.
I was in charge of a few men with bulldozers to make a prisoner compound at San Juan. We got the sand leveled and I don't know if the units were ever finished or not. It was right close to the family we had met and I hated that, for I'm sure they didn't want a Jap prison camp that close. Soon after this, they dropped the (atomic) bomb and then the second one, and the Japanese gave up.
We were all worried as we didn't know what all the bombs might kill. Some thought it might kill all the fish in the sea. Actually, when we got to Japan, I thought the fire bombs had been just as bad. It would burn through metal even. The town of Fukuoka where we landed after sitting in the harbor for about 30 days while the mines were cleared, was about half burned down from the jelly bombs. It was a Mitsubishi aircraft factory town.
We stayed in the housing that the Japanese workers had lived in. A few were not ready to give up, but as far as I know, no one was ever hurt.
I have a bunch of coins from all over I picked up in a warehouse in Japan.
We then moved on down on a train and stopped where they dropped the second bomb. We got off the train and looked around--all was gone except a concrete building, and maybe a post office or such. We set up in a TB camp but I was soon given my orders to go home so I wasn't there very long.
I came home on a ship with my favorite sergeant and we sat out on deck and talked about what we hoped for when we got home. I called him or tried to 10 or 15 years later and reached his sister-in-law, but she said he had died. He stayed in the Army and retired. He almost got killed on a patrol in the Philippines. He couldn't hear well and didn't hear the bullets hitting the ground. The others finally made him hear them and told him to get off the road.
I left Japan in December of 1945 and got home in January of '46. It was close to a year before I could really eat and enjoy it. I had gotten so used to eating just to stay alive that it took time to get back to normal.
I finally got settled somewhat. Wilma and I got married in May 1946. I worked back at Delco but had too much time to think as the job was very easy, so I quit and went to work at a filling station then got my own service station.
5
Note to readers: The next section was added a few days after the first part was completed.
It's hard to explain just what it was like in the jungle of New Guinea. The big trees made it almost like a cave. You never saw the sun unless you came to a spot bare of trees, and that was very few places. We had to swim one river and it had crocodiles in it but we made it okay. Two young native boys took our rifles across for us. They laid on their backs, held our rifles in the air and paddled across with their feet.
These two boys came up behind us playing with a Jap hand grenade. I explained with hand motions what it could do to them, and they gave it to me. I threw it out into the jungle. They stayed with us a while and helped us get across the river. It is slow swimming with jungle boots and clothes on. Thank God we could wade most of the way but had to swim maybe 50 yards or so.
We also had guys who were scouting for Japs who might have been hiding out along the beaches where they thought they might be rescued.
We found a U.S. bomber plane that the pilot had somehow set down in a small opening without tearing it up. I would like to have gone in it but the Japs were good at booby traps, and we were afraid to chance it.
Just recently I talked to a man who is taking those planes out and to Australia then putting them back together. He said the big problem is finding out who really owns them. He said the different tribes all say they own that plane, and he has a hard time getting them torn down and lifted out. This man happens to be the grandson of the man who was our mailman in Illinois when I was a boy.
The natives were very good at tracking in the jungle. I'm glad they were on our side. We were told to be very careful where we sat down due to poisonous snakes. I came close to getting bitten. I started to sit down between two big roots of a tree that would hide me from the sides when I leaned back against the tree. There was a small piece of bark on the ground, and as they told us use your bayonet to move everything. When I did, this little snake shot straight up at me but not high enough to bite me. It was a good thing he kept going for I struck at him but stuck my bayonet into a root.
Later, when I left New Guinea, one of these small snakes got in my pack, and I carried him to Morotai. When I got a chance to wash some clothes, probably about a week after we landed, I found him in my pack almost dead from the dirty socks. It's a wonder I didn’t get bitten. They were small and liked to get into clothes where it was warmer.
There on Morotai, I looked up from my foxhole and thought there was an alligator, but it was just a large lizard. It was close to three feet long. Later, we saw bats as large as our crows. There was also a volcano on the main island just eight miles across the sea from us, and some days the black smoke would be rolling way up in the air then it would turn quiet for a while. It never blew while we were there.
Morotai was a beautiful place. The ocean was real blue and usually quiet. I remember thinking this would be a perfect place if we weren't fighting a war and Wilma was here with me. Down where we were staying, the palm trees were spread out so it wasn't like a jungle. But up where we drove the Japs was much like New Guinea.
Of the guys wading ashore there, three of us came in on the other side of the island where I had the arrow. The main force came in between the small island. I and another scout were with First Lieutenant. He had a bad case of jungle rot and had to be sent home after a few weeks. He had a company in the state of Maryland where he lived.
I got a package in the mail from him after we arrived in the Philippines but most of it was destroyed. I think a few crackers was all I could eat. I found out later he died young.
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I never explained how we boarded a large ship from the smaller LCM. They would throw a big net over the side and the LCM would pull under it then we would grab the net and climb up. With the waves lowering and raising both ships, it was rather dangerous, especially if you didn’t wait until the LCM got as far as the waves were taking it.
I thought sure one of our boys was going to get crushed between the ships. He jumped on the net while it was on the low side, and the side of the ramp smacked the other ship right by his head. The LST had to have pretty deep water to get close to shore, but the LCM could get up close in shallow water. The boat CO in our outfit had that job. We also had some PT boats they were real fast, smaller boats.
I have to brag a little. Wayne and I had been killing game with a 22 rifle since we were very young, so when we got on the rifle range, they soon put me on as an instructor. The secret to hitting the target is getting sighted in then holding your breath as you squeeze the trigger.
Wayne worked on the guns on the navy planes during WWII then had to parachute out over Japan while he was in the Koran War. His plane was about to catch fire. He was a tail gunner and had to see that the rest of the crew was out before he could jump. One boy was afraid to jump, and Wayne had to hurry him but they made it okay. The pilot made it down without the plane exploding. A gas line had been shot or something, and the plane was full of gas fumes.
I was still in Japan when Wayne got home from WWII. He signed up in the reserves, which was why he got called up for the Korean War after Danny was born. I'm sure it was awfully hard for him to go again. They had people at Camp Atterbury trying to talk us into signing back up, but I don’t think many did.
I remember sleeping out under the stars there in New Guinea, looking up and thinking that it is the same moon that is shining back home so many miles away. We slept in the open a good part of the time. We made lean-tos for cover out of poles and big leaves that would keep the rain off and were hard to spot from the air. They blended right in with the other trees. We also had to watch for those little snakes because they liked to get where it was warm and if you happened to roll over on one, it would bite.
I really missed fresh milk, for we didn't have any kind of fresh food except what the natives brought is like bananas and papaya. When we got back to California, they met us with jugs of milk so I guess a lot of the guys were like me. The K rations were drier than the C rations. Charles Musfeldt and I would split a can and add water to make it more like soup, and it also made our food go farther.
We got awfully thirsty sometimes up in the mountains as it was several miles between some of the water and the temperature was over 100 degrees most of the time. We had pills to put in the water to make it safe to drink, and we were supposed to wait 10 minutes or so for it to work. One time I was so thirsty that I drank right out of the river.
I was sure glad I went to the Pacific instead of Europe for I could handle the heat better than frozen feet like a lot of those poor boys did in Europe.
I remember in grade school reading about places wild and thinking I'd love to go see those places. New Guinea still had some head hunters when we were there so I got my wish.
A wild boar chased me once when I was digging a foxhole. He missed my leg and didn’t come back. I had my rifle against a tree so I grabbed it but he didn’t return. I found out that is how they do their damage. They get up speed, come by and catch you with a tusk and rip your leg open. I saw a native man that had been hurt that way, and the other men were carrying him in.
We had boots that went almost to our knees so that may have fooled the one that started after me. The natives were all bare except for a little grass skirt. The men would just have a loincloth made from grass, I think.
I would say I was the most nervous when they sent me in alone to look for roads the Japs might have on Morotai Island. Before, there was always at least two of us to watch out for each other. I halfway expected a machine gun to open up on me, but I made it okay.
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Two of us covered a lot of ground in new Guinea where I told you of finding that American bomber down in the jungle. I went in on Morotai with Lt. Fraiser
and another boy but they went one way and I went another. Twice, Jap planes came in strafing with machine gun fire but we took cover behind logs and trees.
Since the China Sea going into Luzon was so rough, I was glad to get on land, even with the machine gun fire and big shells coming at us. Three different times I thought we might drown.
End
Uncle Warren has now put on paper a much more detailed memoir of his experiences. It is hard for me to imagine everything he went through by an age that I was just leaving Indiana University and starting a career. Although he was thankfully not seriously wounded, he had many close calls and was put into some amazing situations... sometimes alone or with one or two others on islands that were thousands of miles from home.
I'll eventually try to map out the places where he served, both in training and overseas.
I'd like to thank Uncle Warren for his service and the gift he has given to the family by sharing his wartime experiences.
Here's the memoir:
Memoirs of WWII
"My Story"
By Richard Warren Thacker, Veteran, US Army
October 2009
I was living in Anderson, Ind., with a family from Illinois on Dec. 7, 1941, and was walking up town when a newspaper boy started shouting that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I was working at Delco Remy, a G.M. plant that made auto parts. The plant quickly switched to making aircraft parts for the Army.
During the summer of 1941, my younger brother Wayne had been in Anderson working. That fall, he went back home and finished high school then came back to Anderson the next summer and worked in Gibson's ice house. He and I were living on Walnut St. across from Wilma (Dixon) and Wanda (Butler), who as you know eventually became our wives.
It wasn't long until I received my draft notice. As Wayne and I had always been close, he didn't want to be at home if I was in the Army, so he enlisted in the Navy and was quickly sent to Great Lakes Naval Base near Chicago.
Our cousin, (George) Delmar Franklin and I went up to see Wayne and came home with a very heavy heart for I could see Wayne was homesick, but we had to go on.
I worked until about a month before I had to report in, and we worked seven days a week. I sent my money home and told Mom to use it if needed as Dad (step-father Martin Gwaltney) had lost his eyesight. That was also the main reason I had quit high school and went to work. I had two years of high school education. Mom put the money in the bank and never used it.
I had a 1940 Plymouth that I drove home and parked in the barn for storage while I was away in the Army. I later sold the car to a schoolmate, which turned out to be a mistake for they quit making cars because of the war, and good used cars became very expensive. I got a thousand dollars out of it but when I came home three years later, the same car was selling for $3,000.
Entering the service, I left Carmi, Ill., on Jan. 30, 1943 on a train for Camp Grant in Chicago. We were given tests of all kinds, and I never knew how I came out on any of them, but from Camp Grant we were shipped to Ft. Devens in Mass., where we took gas mask training along with all the rifle and other things. I had never fired a stoker coal furnace before but they put me in charge of all three barracks. It was about 20 degrees below zero with a foot of snow on the ground, I let one furnace run out of coal and had a house full of men very unhappy but one older man helped me get it going again, and I kept them warm the rest of the night.
We were there for a while but I don't recall just how long it was. We were then moved out to an island called Camp Edwards. I was promoted to Corporal and put in charge of the guards. The island probably wasn't over 200 acres, so
we took turns on guard duty. At this time, I and a few other boys started training for scout duty. We learned how to make hand grenades out of explosives, how to blow bridges and use the different kinds of explosives we had at that time.
Three men were killed in fact, and there wasn't even a thread of cloth left where they had been sitting on a case of dynamite when it exploded. It almost blew our tent over, and we were close to a mile away.
The ocean was pretty there, and a lot of girls from Boston came looking for a husband. The sand was white as snow. While we were there, Joe Louis, the world boxing champion, came and put on a demonstration for us. He had never been beaten at that time. Later a boxer named Billy Conn out pointed him but could never knock him out.
We had some amusing things happen now and then. While I was corporal of the guard, I had to take people around and post them along the beaches. Our truck driver got very tired and we had trouble waking him when it came time for the next shift of guards so I told someone to get me some water, and I sprinkled a little in his face. He came up ready to whip me but two of the boys grabbed him and told him it was the only way we could wake him.
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We had a few fights (among the troops) as all the boys were homesick and not in a very good mood. But, for the circumstances we really got along pretty well and soon became like a family, which still holds true after 66 years. I feel close to some of the guys yet.
We left Camp Edwards on a train headed for Camp Gordon Johnson in Florida but they never told us where we were going, so we assumed we were being sent overseas. That must have been in the fall of '43. I spent most of my time with Lt. Conn training in the scouts. We had a hard physical workout every day. One day, we were down on the ground on our back with a big log at arms length. Behind us a guy would sit on our feet and we had to reach back and lift that log up to our chest four or five times. It made some hard stomach muscles.
We also crawled under machine gun fire, and all the other training with hand grenades, rifle fire and bayonet practice. I hate the thought of having to run a bayonet into someone's stomach and thank God I never had to do that. It seems to me now the Lord watched over us all the way for as many times as we could have been killed but had just moved out when the bombs fell.
At Gordon Johnson, we scouts were on the water quite a lot. I and two others were let over the side about a mile out from an island (Dog Island) after night and we swam in then directed the landing craft in to the beach the next morning. I talked about the wild hogs there in the book recently put together by the Spencer Evening World.
Florida was a good training ground for us as it was somewhat like the South Pacific with the mosquitoes, snakes and all. I had one boy in my barracks who was deathly afraid of snakes. I had to catch one in front of the door and take it out to the woods as he was afraid to come out with it there.
While I was a rifle range instructor, one of the older men was so afraid of a rifle be actually began crying. I tried to tell him he must learn to shoot for whatever he did in the service he might have to defend himself. He kept saying he was going to be a cook and he never came close to hitting the target.
We left Camp Gordon Johnson April 11, 1944 and arrived at Camp Stoneman in California April 16. We left there April 22 on the SS Fairland, a converted transport ship. I learned the hard way that salt water will not remove soap
from your body when you take a shower. All the way to New Guinea, I felt like I was wrapped in some kind of gum.
We passed the equator April 30 and crossed the International Date Line May 8, then on May 9 landed at Milne Bay, New Guinea. We left Milne Bay June 24 landed at Oro Bay June 25. We were in LCMs (landing craft, mechanized) from Milne Bay to Oro Bay. They are small boats for a rough ocean, and I wondered if we would make it as the ramp kept slipping down every time we hit a large wave.
In New Guinea, there were a few natives that still practiced head hunting when we were there.
We left Oro Bay Aug. 18 for a trip up in the Owen Stanley Mountains. I was the only scout from our company to go with about 15 Australians. It was quite a journey of about 120 miles. We got our water from the mountain streams and had pills to put in it to make it safe to drink. Some of the rivers we had to cross were so swift that we had to hold hands to keep our balance. One boy dropped his rifle and it washed right on down the river. I'm sure he was nervous without it the rest of the trip.
They dropped our food from an airplane and one time were a day late. I'm always hungry, so I was really getting worried. Anyway, I got back with my company Sept. 9 and got on a small ship with a few marines. We invaded the Japanese on Morotai Island, Sept. 15. We captured a Japanese naval officer for information and learned that we had a lot of Japanese on the main island of Halma Hera just eight miles across the bay. These islands were part of the Molucca Islands. The Japanese had hardly any ships to move the soldiers out, so we just left them sitting there. They did bomb us every few nights and we were very fortunate to be in a different place than where they thought we were.
I'm not sure where John Kennedy was in the PT boat and almost got hit but I think is was in that area. On Christmas eve, the Japs came in on a bombing run and were shot down mostly by our night fighters. They were called the black widows.
3
We quickly built an airstrip and soon had crippled planes landing. They came in with all kinds of troubles such as on fire, landing gear shot out and all. My crew was strafed with machine gun fire from Jap planes a couple of times but we were lucky and never got hit. I peeled one leg getting into the bunker and the guys kidded me saying I should put in for a purple heart.
On Morotai, we lived for a while on wormy cereal. It was cooked so we just shut our eyes and ate it. I think I wrote somewhere else how we took quarter-pound blocks of TNT and killed ocean fish. We had a big mess (bunch) of fish and the first sergeant called all out to help clean them. Some of the guys from New York didn't like that but they sure liked the fried fish later.
This island was made up of volcanic ash and coral, so it was hard to dig a fox hole. I spent my 22nd birthday here on Morotai. We left Morotai and most of the Japs we had driven up into to the mountains.
On Dec. 30, we headed for Luzon, Philippians. We had some close calls from big guns the Japs had up on higher ground. We were here for about a month then we made another landing at Alacan, another town on the island of Luzon. I got malaria and almost didn't make it.
Mom had a feeling I was in trouble. She said she was afraid I had been killed in the landing, but I made it and her I am almost 87 years old and still going. God had to be watching over me. I'm sure I've done nothing good, but He has surely watched over me.
On a clear night, you could see the bombs after the enemy planes first turned them loose for just a short time before they got up to speed. The bombs always looked like they were headed right for where we were. They made a loud squall coming down and the bigger shells made a whoosh whoosh noise as they went past. If they hadn't gone past, I wouldn’t be here writing about this.
Some shells exploded near us and sprinkled metal all around us but we were lucky few were hit. Chuck Eckstine from Wisconsin got hit the worst when a piece of metal went through his hand and on into his stomach. That was the end of his service and they sent him home.
I received four bronze stars and a bronze arrowhead for doing what I was told to do (working in ammo and fuel dump).
A few hours after we landed on Luzon, we had a large pile of ammo and gasoline in 55 gallon drums stored on the beach. This was part of our job along with the boat battalion, which was expected to get the troops to the shore when making a landing. You have seen in the news I'm sure the boats come in and lower the ramps for the men to hurry off. That was like our boat battalion.
The Japs slipped in and set our ammo and gasoline dump on fire. You will never see a 4th of July display as great as that with the shells exploding and gasoline drums blowing up. I was a short distance from it and hardly closed my eyes all night.
I saw a soldier run into the middle of that, jump in his "duck" which was loaded with 55 gallon drums of gasoline and drive it through all those flames. He saved a lot of fuel and should have been awarded for bravery but those kinds of things were common in combat.
Shortly after this, I came down with a fever. I just remember walking along and all of a sudden, my legs just gave out. I don't know who took me back to the medic or how long it was. When I came to, they had me under a shower and I remember him saying if I had one more degree of temperature, I would have died.
I was in a tent with two Indian boys from the 158 combat team who were some of the code talkers. None of the three of us felt like digging a foxhole but every night the Japs would shell us, and we kept saying tomorrow we would dig, but never did. After about a week, we just walked out of there and went back to our own companies.
About two or three weeks later, we loaded up and made another landing further up the coast. The Freedom Fighters that fought underground all the time the Japs were there helped guide us in with a crank two-way radio. I have pictures of the victory parade later taken at this town. I was sitting on the right front fender of a jeep.
4
Another soldier, Jim Cook from Boston, Kentucky, and I got all the way up to Baguio where they had gold mines and the dwellers lived. They were small people and built their homes in big trees. I tried to talk to them but they were not friendly. We found some of the best bananas up there. The bananas had black skin when they were ripe and they tasted good.
Jim and I met the mother and sisters of one of the Freedom Fighters and have pictures of them. We wrote to them for a while after I got home. The people had a hard time under Japanese rule as they took all of the food and would kill for no reason. One little boy came to camp crying, and the Japs had killed his whole family.
I found three women, one with a baby in her arms, who had been lined up and shot. One man was hung in his stairway. The people were very happy to see us come in.
The China Sea had been very rough as we came in. I slept on deck of the LST (landing ship tank). An Oxygen tank broke loose and was rolling back and forth. I caught it with my feet and hung onto the rail with my arms for the waves were coming up over the ship. During the night, a couple of sailors came running up looking for the tank of oxygen and said the ship was trying to break apart and needed welding. Again, I wondered if we would drown.
The waves were at least 50 feet so no one could go very long in that kind of sea. It turned several of our trucks over on deck. The LSTs were big enough to haul trucks and tanks.
I was in charge of a few men with bulldozers to make a prisoner compound at San Juan. We got the sand leveled and I don't know if the units were ever finished or not. It was right close to the family we had met and I hated that, for I'm sure they didn't want a Jap prison camp that close. Soon after this, they dropped the (atomic) bomb and then the second one, and the Japanese gave up.
We were all worried as we didn't know what all the bombs might kill. Some thought it might kill all the fish in the sea. Actually, when we got to Japan, I thought the fire bombs had been just as bad. It would burn through metal even. The town of Fukuoka where we landed after sitting in the harbor for about 30 days while the mines were cleared, was about half burned down from the jelly bombs. It was a Mitsubishi aircraft factory town.
We stayed in the housing that the Japanese workers had lived in. A few were not ready to give up, but as far as I know, no one was ever hurt.
I have a bunch of coins from all over I picked up in a warehouse in Japan.
We then moved on down on a train and stopped where they dropped the second bomb. We got off the train and looked around--all was gone except a concrete building, and maybe a post office or such. We set up in a TB camp but I was soon given my orders to go home so I wasn't there very long.
I came home on a ship with my favorite sergeant and we sat out on deck and talked about what we hoped for when we got home. I called him or tried to 10 or 15 years later and reached his sister-in-law, but she said he had died. He stayed in the Army and retired. He almost got killed on a patrol in the Philippines. He couldn't hear well and didn't hear the bullets hitting the ground. The others finally made him hear them and told him to get off the road.
I left Japan in December of 1945 and got home in January of '46. It was close to a year before I could really eat and enjoy it. I had gotten so used to eating just to stay alive that it took time to get back to normal.
I finally got settled somewhat. Wilma and I got married in May 1946. I worked back at Delco but had too much time to think as the job was very easy, so I quit and went to work at a filling station then got my own service station.
5
Note to readers: The next section was added a few days after the first part was completed.
It's hard to explain just what it was like in the jungle of New Guinea. The big trees made it almost like a cave. You never saw the sun unless you came to a spot bare of trees, and that was very few places. We had to swim one river and it had crocodiles in it but we made it okay. Two young native boys took our rifles across for us. They laid on their backs, held our rifles in the air and paddled across with their feet.
These two boys came up behind us playing with a Jap hand grenade. I explained with hand motions what it could do to them, and they gave it to me. I threw it out into the jungle. They stayed with us a while and helped us get across the river. It is slow swimming with jungle boots and clothes on. Thank God we could wade most of the way but had to swim maybe 50 yards or so.
We also had guys who were scouting for Japs who might have been hiding out along the beaches where they thought they might be rescued.
We found a U.S. bomber plane that the pilot had somehow set down in a small opening without tearing it up. I would like to have gone in it but the Japs were good at booby traps, and we were afraid to chance it.
Just recently I talked to a man who is taking those planes out and to Australia then putting them back together. He said the big problem is finding out who really owns them. He said the different tribes all say they own that plane, and he has a hard time getting them torn down and lifted out. This man happens to be the grandson of the man who was our mailman in Illinois when I was a boy.
The natives were very good at tracking in the jungle. I'm glad they were on our side. We were told to be very careful where we sat down due to poisonous snakes. I came close to getting bitten. I started to sit down between two big roots of a tree that would hide me from the sides when I leaned back against the tree. There was a small piece of bark on the ground, and as they told us use your bayonet to move everything. When I did, this little snake shot straight up at me but not high enough to bite me. It was a good thing he kept going for I struck at him but stuck my bayonet into a root.
Later, when I left New Guinea, one of these small snakes got in my pack, and I carried him to Morotai. When I got a chance to wash some clothes, probably about a week after we landed, I found him in my pack almost dead from the dirty socks. It's a wonder I didn’t get bitten. They were small and liked to get into clothes where it was warmer.
There on Morotai, I looked up from my foxhole and thought there was an alligator, but it was just a large lizard. It was close to three feet long. Later, we saw bats as large as our crows. There was also a volcano on the main island just eight miles across the sea from us, and some days the black smoke would be rolling way up in the air then it would turn quiet for a while. It never blew while we were there.
Morotai was a beautiful place. The ocean was real blue and usually quiet. I remember thinking this would be a perfect place if we weren't fighting a war and Wilma was here with me. Down where we were staying, the palm trees were spread out so it wasn't like a jungle. But up where we drove the Japs was much like New Guinea.
Of the guys wading ashore there, three of us came in on the other side of the island where I had the arrow. The main force came in between the small island. I and another scout were with First Lieutenant. He had a bad case of jungle rot and had to be sent home after a few weeks. He had a company in the state of Maryland where he lived.
I got a package in the mail from him after we arrived in the Philippines but most of it was destroyed. I think a few crackers was all I could eat. I found out later he died young.
6
I never explained how we boarded a large ship from the smaller LCM. They would throw a big net over the side and the LCM would pull under it then we would grab the net and climb up. With the waves lowering and raising both ships, it was rather dangerous, especially if you didn’t wait until the LCM got as far as the waves were taking it.
I thought sure one of our boys was going to get crushed between the ships. He jumped on the net while it was on the low side, and the side of the ramp smacked the other ship right by his head. The LST had to have pretty deep water to get close to shore, but the LCM could get up close in shallow water. The boat CO in our outfit had that job. We also had some PT boats they were real fast, smaller boats.
I have to brag a little. Wayne and I had been killing game with a 22 rifle since we were very young, so when we got on the rifle range, they soon put me on as an instructor. The secret to hitting the target is getting sighted in then holding your breath as you squeeze the trigger.
Wayne worked on the guns on the navy planes during WWII then had to parachute out over Japan while he was in the Koran War. His plane was about to catch fire. He was a tail gunner and had to see that the rest of the crew was out before he could jump. One boy was afraid to jump, and Wayne had to hurry him but they made it okay. The pilot made it down without the plane exploding. A gas line had been shot or something, and the plane was full of gas fumes.
I was still in Japan when Wayne got home from WWII. He signed up in the reserves, which was why he got called up for the Korean War after Danny was born. I'm sure it was awfully hard for him to go again. They had people at Camp Atterbury trying to talk us into signing back up, but I don’t think many did.
I remember sleeping out under the stars there in New Guinea, looking up and thinking that it is the same moon that is shining back home so many miles away. We slept in the open a good part of the time. We made lean-tos for cover out of poles and big leaves that would keep the rain off and were hard to spot from the air. They blended right in with the other trees. We also had to watch for those little snakes because they liked to get where it was warm and if you happened to roll over on one, it would bite.
I really missed fresh milk, for we didn't have any kind of fresh food except what the natives brought is like bananas and papaya. When we got back to California, they met us with jugs of milk so I guess a lot of the guys were like me. The K rations were drier than the C rations. Charles Musfeldt and I would split a can and add water to make it more like soup, and it also made our food go farther.
We got awfully thirsty sometimes up in the mountains as it was several miles between some of the water and the temperature was over 100 degrees most of the time. We had pills to put in the water to make it safe to drink, and we were supposed to wait 10 minutes or so for it to work. One time I was so thirsty that I drank right out of the river.
I was sure glad I went to the Pacific instead of Europe for I could handle the heat better than frozen feet like a lot of those poor boys did in Europe.
I remember in grade school reading about places wild and thinking I'd love to go see those places. New Guinea still had some head hunters when we were there so I got my wish.
A wild boar chased me once when I was digging a foxhole. He missed my leg and didn’t come back. I had my rifle against a tree so I grabbed it but he didn’t return. I found out that is how they do their damage. They get up speed, come by and catch you with a tusk and rip your leg open. I saw a native man that had been hurt that way, and the other men were carrying him in.
We had boots that went almost to our knees so that may have fooled the one that started after me. The natives were all bare except for a little grass skirt. The men would just have a loincloth made from grass, I think.
I would say I was the most nervous when they sent me in alone to look for roads the Japs might have on Morotai Island. Before, there was always at least two of us to watch out for each other. I halfway expected a machine gun to open up on me, but I made it okay.
7
Two of us covered a lot of ground in new Guinea where I told you of finding that American bomber down in the jungle. I went in on Morotai with Lt. Fraiser
and another boy but they went one way and I went another. Twice, Jap planes came in strafing with machine gun fire but we took cover behind logs and trees.
Since the China Sea going into Luzon was so rough, I was glad to get on land, even with the machine gun fire and big shells coming at us. Three different times I thought we might drown.
End
Sunday, May 24, 2009
H-Hour Plus Three
Whoa!
I decided to do a little background searching on the places where my Uncle Warren trained and served during World War II.
Nothing complicated. Just pull up Wikipedia and type in a location name.
In some cases, I got a lot. In others, not so much.
And then about halfway through this exercise... I found this letter.
And then (I'm not sure how) I realized that this letter was part of a larger work.
It was, in fact, a book, found on Google Books, and all of the places Uncle Warren told a Spencer, Indiana newspaper reporter about were shown as links in the Google Books preview. Camp Edwards, Fort Deaver, Carabelle here in the Florida Panhandle, New Guinea, the Phillipines.
Sure enough, a fellow soldier in Uncle Warren's unit wrote a book about their WWII experiences. The book covers a few places where Uncle Warren did not serve. This is because the author, Henry Allan, entered the service in his native Iowa. "Hal" Allan also continued with the unit all the way to occupied Japan after Uncle Warren had mustered out.
The "About This Book" page has many links which take you to the sections of the book that connect with places Uncle Warren has mentioned. The "Preview This Book" allows you to essentially read the entire book.
Uncle Warren mentioned yet another memorable escapade to Curt when telling him about the book. Here's Curt's email:
Hi Lee -- I've been tied up in federal court jury duty much of the past 1 1/2-weeks and am sorry I haven't gotten back with you sooner. I spoke with Mom and Dad about the book and they do have a copy. They bought it about 2 years ago at one of the Army reunions. The author was there and had books for sale.
I want to get a copy of my own as well so I appreciate you sending me that info. Dad does remember several of the names of the fellows he served with but I don't know how many of them were mentioned in that book.
He said at one point--while they were in New Guinea I think--the ship with their supplies and rations had been delayed in arriving so they were running short on about everything. They decided to do some fishing in the bay and first tried using handmade poles with line I think but soon elected to use dynomite sticks instead. They had all the fish they wanted after lighting a stick and tossing it into the bay as far away from their boat as possible--the fish floated to the top after being stunned/killed by the pressure of the blast.
Gotta run for now. Talk to you later.
Curt
It's hard recognize Uncle Warren in the pictures. But we have to realize that he was much younger then than when we baby boomers and gen-Xers first got to know him... and they weren't particularly well fed like soldiers today. There's no mistaking, from some of the photos, that they were in the jungle. Some of the photos have "National Geographic" written all over them! Oh... and that hip guy in the picture on page 146?.... the second guy from the left who is leaning on the jeep?.... Warren Thacker!
I decided to do a little background searching on the places where my Uncle Warren trained and served during World War II.
Nothing complicated. Just pull up Wikipedia and type in a location name.
In some cases, I got a lot. In others, not so much.
And then about halfway through this exercise... I found this letter.
And then (I'm not sure how) I realized that this letter was part of a larger work.
It was, in fact, a book, found on Google Books, and all of the places Uncle Warren told a Spencer, Indiana newspaper reporter about were shown as links in the Google Books preview. Camp Edwards, Fort Deaver, Carabelle here in the Florida Panhandle, New Guinea, the Phillipines.
Sure enough, a fellow soldier in Uncle Warren's unit wrote a book about their WWII experiences. The book covers a few places where Uncle Warren did not serve. This is because the author, Henry Allan, entered the service in his native Iowa. "Hal" Allan also continued with the unit all the way to occupied Japan after Uncle Warren had mustered out.
The "About This Book" page has many links which take you to the sections of the book that connect with places Uncle Warren has mentioned. The "Preview This Book" allows you to essentially read the entire book.
Uncle Warren mentioned yet another memorable escapade to Curt when telling him about the book. Here's Curt's email:
Hi Lee -- I've been tied up in federal court jury duty much of the past 1 1/2-weeks and am sorry I haven't gotten back with you sooner. I spoke with Mom and Dad about the book and they do have a copy. They bought it about 2 years ago at one of the Army reunions. The author was there and had books for sale.
I want to get a copy of my own as well so I appreciate you sending me that info. Dad does remember several of the names of the fellows he served with but I don't know how many of them were mentioned in that book.
He said at one point--while they were in New Guinea I think--the ship with their supplies and rations had been delayed in arriving so they were running short on about everything. They decided to do some fishing in the bay and first tried using handmade poles with line I think but soon elected to use dynomite sticks instead. They had all the fish they wanted after lighting a stick and tossing it into the bay as far away from their boat as possible--the fish floated to the top after being stunned/killed by the pressure of the blast.
Gotta run for now. Talk to you later.
Curt
It's hard recognize Uncle Warren in the pictures. But we have to realize that he was much younger then than when we baby boomers and gen-Xers first got to know him... and they weren't particularly well fed like soldiers today. There's no mistaking, from some of the photos, that they were in the jungle. Some of the photos have "National Geographic" written all over them! Oh... and that hip guy in the picture on page 146?.... the second guy from the left who is leaning on the jeep?.... Warren Thacker!
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Spencer IN Newspaper Features Warren Thacker and Cousin
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!
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!
Monday, April 27, 2009
Uncle Warren Honored Part 2
From the Bloomington newspaper:
More than 100 WWII vets make trip to see monument
By Brady Gillihan 349-1420 bgillihan@heraldt.com April 23, 2009
More than a hundred World War II veterans from Monroe and surrounding counties were flown to Washington, D.C., Wednesday to see the memorial that was built to honor what they and their comrades did decades ago.
The Hoosier Honor Flight also took along 60 people to serve as guardians for the veterans, many of whom were in wheelchairs or otherwise in need of assistance for the one-day trip.
“It’s absolutely heartwarming to see the donations come in for these veterans to go do something that they otherwise would never have been able to do,” said Mike Pate, the treasurer of the committee organizing the trip. “Time and time again, these veterans told me today that they so appreciated what they were seeing.”
What they saw was the Arlington Cemetery, as well as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. But the main focus of the trip was visiting the World War II memorial that was built some 60 years after the last bullet was fired in that conflict.
“The Vietnam vets have theirs, the Korean vets have theirs, but these guys, they just got theirs not long ago and it’s great that they got to see it,” Pate said. “And now that we’re home, we’re heading to the American Legion to feed them well. After which, I imagine they will sleep pretty well; it was a long day.”
Pate said a chartered airplane left the Monroe County airport with the veterans and their assistants Wednesday morning around 6 a.m. and returned to Bloomington about 8 p.m.
I've included some more pictures from those sent to me by Theresa and Kim. Looks like the vets went first class to D.C.!
Congratulations Uncle Warren!
Here is a somewhat dry, but good narrated video describing the WWII Memorial done not long after it was unveiled.
Warren Thacker Honored
My Uncle Warren served in World War II. I don't know much about what he did or where he served, but I'm sure it was an unforgetable experience. All my generation knows about World War II is what we read or heard about in history classes or saw on TV or in the movies. Most of the TV shows and movies we saw as kids downplayed the violence and misery that our soldiers and sailors experienced. Think of Hogan's Heroes or John Wayne movies.
More recently, the movies made by Spielberg and Eastwood are almost too real, but they point out that service in World War II was not all about drinking with your buddies and soaking up the sun on a Pacific Island.
Even if military service during wartime did not result in being fired upon, the potential for being killed or wounded, and the pure loneliness of being so far from home for such a long time, must have been difficult. Remember that they couldn't make long-distance calls back then... let alone internet video calls. Even letters might take months to get back and forth, if they weren't lost in route.
Warren and his fellow Indiana vets were honored for their service in conjunction with the new World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. As mom used to say, "better late than never". And it looks like they went first class, with jet service right out of Bloomington.
The pictures above include a priceless welcome back shot with several generations, a group shot of the honorees at the memorial, and a shot of a sign which commemorated the occasion. I'll add another post to publish a few more pictures, as I'm limited to three pictures per post.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
The Dixon Family and Military Service
Dustin DixonI would like to know who in our family served in the military. So far, I am aware (vaguely) of Uncle Warren Thacker's service, plus a little from Uncle Don and more about my cousin Rich Thacker's service in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
Hopefully, Uncle Warren himself or one of his boys will provide details of his service.
I don't believe that our grandfather George ever served in the military. Nor did my dad.
Uncle Don emailed me to say that he served in the US Army from October 1956 to October 1958 and spent the two yrs at Ft Leonard Wood, Mo. I'm not sure if the draft was in effect because of the Korean War. He was drafted after finishing college at GMI. It's interesting that he was drafted despite being trained to serve as a manager by General Motors, one of the largest defense contractors of the time. After active duty, he had to spend two years on active reserve and two years on inactive reserve. That reminded me of a picture of Uncle Don in uniform that was on the desk in the living room of our grandparents home. I hope he'll tell us more about his assignments.
Rich's service is outlined in Shirley's letter (posted as Who Is This Kind Man?).
Dustin Dixon, Bruce's son, also served in the military and gave me some details of his service:
As far as military service, mine is a lot more recent than the history you are probably looking for. I served on active duty with the U.S. Army from 1995 to 1998 in Fort Sill, OK and Fort Hood, TX. I was assigned as a Forward Observer in a field artillery unit attached to an infantry company in the 2/8 Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. Fortunately, we were never deployed to combat. One near miss, but the other division went to Iraq and I was able to stay and enjoy another hot summer in Texas (instead of Iraq). I was considered an inactive reserve until 2003 when I (finally) received my honorable discharge. Just in time, eh? The only interesting story I can think of is that my mother wouldn't sign the papers to let me enlist when I was 17 (I enlisted early to obtain some guarantees from the military, and then actually went to training after graduation), so I went with the recruiter and did the enlistment on my 18th birthday.
Have other family members served in the military?
Please supply details by emailing me or leaving a comment on the blog.
Turning 18 just as the Vietnam War ended, I did not face the draft. At the latter stages of the war, a "lottery system" was introduced to bring more fairness to the draft process (previously deferments were granted... for being in college for example... in higher numbers to boys who tended to come from wealthier families). To my knowledge, women have never been drafted. My best friend Randy Yust, just 8 months older than me, drew a decent number, and was not drafted. My cohort was not assigned numbers and the draft was replaced at the end of the Vietnam War with the all-volunteer military. In our Florida home town of Okeechobee, military service was a significant career path for many of the kids. Both boys and girls joined the service, particularly if they were not going to college.
Hopefully, Uncle Warren himself or one of his boys will provide details of his service.
I don't believe that our grandfather George ever served in the military. Nor did my dad.
Uncle Don emailed me to say that he served in the US Army from October 1956 to October 1958 and spent the two yrs at Ft Leonard Wood, Mo. I'm not sure if the draft was in effect because of the Korean War. He was drafted after finishing college at GMI. It's interesting that he was drafted despite being trained to serve as a manager by General Motors, one of the largest defense contractors of the time. After active duty, he had to spend two years on active reserve and two years on inactive reserve. That reminded me of a picture of Uncle Don in uniform that was on the desk in the living room of our grandparents home. I hope he'll tell us more about his assignments.
Rich's service is outlined in Shirley's letter (posted as Who Is This Kind Man?).
Dustin Dixon, Bruce's son, also served in the military and gave me some details of his service:
As far as military service, mine is a lot more recent than the history you are probably looking for. I served on active duty with the U.S. Army from 1995 to 1998 in Fort Sill, OK and Fort Hood, TX. I was assigned as a Forward Observer in a field artillery unit attached to an infantry company in the 2/8 Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. Fortunately, we were never deployed to combat. One near miss, but the other division went to Iraq and I was able to stay and enjoy another hot summer in Texas (instead of Iraq). I was considered an inactive reserve until 2003 when I (finally) received my honorable discharge. Just in time, eh? The only interesting story I can think of is that my mother wouldn't sign the papers to let me enlist when I was 17 (I enlisted early to obtain some guarantees from the military, and then actually went to training after graduation), so I went with the recruiter and did the enlistment on my 18th birthday.
Have other family members served in the military?
Please supply details by emailing me or leaving a comment on the blog.
Turning 18 just as the Vietnam War ended, I did not face the draft. At the latter stages of the war, a "lottery system" was introduced to bring more fairness to the draft process (previously deferments were granted... for being in college for example... in higher numbers to boys who tended to come from wealthier families). To my knowledge, women have never been drafted. My best friend Randy Yust, just 8 months older than me, drew a decent number, and was not drafted. My cohort was not assigned numbers and the draft was replaced at the end of the Vietnam War with the all-volunteer military. In our Florida home town of Okeechobee, military service was a significant career path for many of the kids. Both boys and girls joined the service, particularly if they were not going to college.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Who Is This Kind Man?
Top: Rich at his dad's service station.
Middle: Rich with grandson AJ (the one in the Purdue sweatshirt!)
Bottom: Rich with his grandparents in 1968 or 1969.
Some family members may have seen this tribute to Rich before. I just read it for the first time. I might have never seen it except for the blog. I learned so much about Rich reading it. A lot of gaps were filled in for me. I knew the essence and most important point... that Rich was a kind man. Of course, Shirley says it in a way that only she could have done.
Thank you Shirley!
Who Is This Kind Man?
By Shirley Thacker
Who was this kind man? They compared him to a prince, a great man that had fallen in Israel. (Samuel II: 3:38) They said his time of departure had come. (Timothy II: 4:6) They said that he had fought a good fight, and finished the course. They said he was a good friend, a great American. Who was this kind man? He was a husband and father of two, grandfather of one. He was the eldest son, brother to four brothers. He was uncle, cousin, and friend to many. Who was this kind man? Was he king, dignitary, famous? He was an ordinary man that lived and walked on this earth for a few years, fifty seven to be exact. He had been a teacher, a caring man who wanted his students to be respectful, hard working, and know the basics of all subjects. Who was this kind man? He would be the first to say that he had many faults. Having somewhat of a temper from now and then, being prone to love money, and being too quick to judge would be three that he would mention first. He would be the first to say that he was just a sinner boy that he hoped would be saved by God’s grace and mercy. Who was this kind man?
He wanted his brothers to be proud of him. He wanted to be strong and a leader to them. He felt the pressure of being first born, and hoped they could learn from some of his mistakes. He told wonderful stories of the brothers. Curt (Helene Curtis) and his love for school, his bow tie at Christmas, his sharing a room with him was the brother next to him. He chuckled when he talked of Tim and his rag, disintegrating elastic in his shorts, and his sailor hat. He smiled when he talked about Jim and first grade, his boots, and of coarse the fan capturing story. And then he fondly remembers John, his littlest brother. He was so proud to fix a bike for him that he had taken apart and put back together. And the worst part of going to service was that John was grown up when he got back. That little guy that fell asleep on his lap while watching TV, he carried up to bed, had grown up those four years. Who was this kind man?
He loved being the eldest son, and working with his dad at the filling station. The life lessons he learned there were many. He was champion at making change, changing tires, fitting in with the chat and chew cronies that found time to come and spend time. He got to go more than the other boys and that made he feel very special. He loved the Cat House story, and grandma watching his dad whiz by with her car. Who was this kind man?
He had to repeat first grade. He always hated that, but he just didn’t figure out the game, called school. He knew there was much more fun going on at home. He learned and did well after that. He said, he really didn’t get the meaning of school until fifth or sixth grade, when the competition gene kicked in. No girl was going to outscore him. Studying became important. Chemistry was when he learned he needed glasses. He couldn’t see the periodic table. The teacher thought he was playing him for a sap. He asked if he needed this credit to graduate. A smart remark was handed to the teacher, but he realized that he couldn’t see it. Who was this kind man?
He went to Vincennes after high school because he thought his family wanted that. He thought about being a forest ranger. The other alternative was service. The economics’ professor was always reminding them to do well or they would be out, and service would no longer be a choice. He tired of the threats and decided to enlist. The Air Force was his choice. It was a long trip to Indy that day with his dad. One part wanted to be ruled 4F, the other wanted to serve. Several in front of him were turned down for one reason or another, but he was chosen. Who was this kind man?
He went to Lakeland,Texas; Biloxi, Mississippi; Naha, Okinawa; Ubon Thailand; Cam Rahn Bay and Tan San Nhut, Vietnam; Minot, North Dakota. He was a radar repairman. He tried to fix things with old parts, put things back together. He scavenged the planes that were down in Vietnam, and brought back the good parts. He didn’t go to work one day because he was sick. The hanger was hit that day; his chair had holes in it. He didn’t worry, he said, about being killed. He was just young and stupid was his comment. Maybe it was his faith in God, more than he knew. Who was this kind man?
He wrote letters and said little about his service life. There wasn’t much point in talking about it. He didn’t receive any awards, he was just an ordinary man doing his job, and counting the days that he could come home to Indiana and be normal again. I loved those letters and have kept them all these years. I wanted to get married when he came back home, but he didn’t want a service life for his family and he knew that I had one more year of school. So he wisely, took charge and we waited for his discharge. I wrote his first letter on February 29, 1968. He gave me my diamond on February 29, 1972. I gave him credit for being a romantic and remembering the important date. He said he was just lucky.
We were married on July 15, l972. He wasn’t sure what to think about all the girl moods and idiosyncrasies. Not having a sister was a disadvantage he thought. Even though he was not a romantic in one sense of the word, he was kind, caring, and gentle. He always put my feelings and needs first. We grew up from similar backgrounds which was a huge help in our marriage. We had the same religious background which was also a blessing. Who was this kind and gentle man?
He was so excited about being a daddy. First, Kimberly Richelle was born on December 29, 1973 and then Anna Kristin on August 31, l977. He would speak sternly, but he didn’t spank. He knew his own strength and didn’t want to hurt them. He left the disciplining to me. He loved to read to them. He loved to help them with school. He loved to ride bikes and take walks with them. He said on many occasions that he wished he could have done better. He wished he could take away all their hurts. He wished that he could have been healthier and stronger. He was most proud of them. Who was this kind and gentle man?
His greatest battle came on August 31, l981 (Kris’ fourth birthday). We were told that he had testicular cancer. Two days later, he had surgery, and the next day he began chemo at IU. Those were the darkest days of our lives, and yet they were the best of times too. We fell in love all over again, knowing we were in the battle of our lives. We put our trust in God, put on the armor, and fought the battle at hand. He just took it all, the poking, the meds, the throwing up, the loss of hair, the radiation, the exhaustion. At one point he gave up and said he couldn’t fight any more. About 15 min later there was a beautiful rainbow that we could see from Kim’s window. He said that was his sign from God and he would fight as long as God gave him breath. And he did just that, he fought until he had no breath left. He took three last breaths on June 8, 2005 and then he soared with the eagles. He had fought the fight, he had run the race, he had stayed the course. Who was this kind and gentle man?
He was my joy, my life, my soul mate. He was my true north, the center of my world; he was my life partner. Who was this kind and gentle man?
Richard Allen Thacker
Thank you Shirley!
Who Is This Kind Man?
By Shirley Thacker
Who was this kind man? They compared him to a prince, a great man that had fallen in Israel. (Samuel II: 3:38) They said his time of departure had come. (Timothy II: 4:6) They said that he had fought a good fight, and finished the course. They said he was a good friend, a great American. Who was this kind man? He was a husband and father of two, grandfather of one. He was the eldest son, brother to four brothers. He was uncle, cousin, and friend to many. Who was this kind man? Was he king, dignitary, famous? He was an ordinary man that lived and walked on this earth for a few years, fifty seven to be exact. He had been a teacher, a caring man who wanted his students to be respectful, hard working, and know the basics of all subjects. Who was this kind man? He would be the first to say that he had many faults. Having somewhat of a temper from now and then, being prone to love money, and being too quick to judge would be three that he would mention first. He would be the first to say that he was just a sinner boy that he hoped would be saved by God’s grace and mercy. Who was this kind man?
He wanted his brothers to be proud of him. He wanted to be strong and a leader to them. He felt the pressure of being first born, and hoped they could learn from some of his mistakes. He told wonderful stories of the brothers. Curt (Helene Curtis) and his love for school, his bow tie at Christmas, his sharing a room with him was the brother next to him. He chuckled when he talked of Tim and his rag, disintegrating elastic in his shorts, and his sailor hat. He smiled when he talked about Jim and first grade, his boots, and of coarse the fan capturing story. And then he fondly remembers John, his littlest brother. He was so proud to fix a bike for him that he had taken apart and put back together. And the worst part of going to service was that John was grown up when he got back. That little guy that fell asleep on his lap while watching TV, he carried up to bed, had grown up those four years. Who was this kind man?
He loved being the eldest son, and working with his dad at the filling station. The life lessons he learned there were many. He was champion at making change, changing tires, fitting in with the chat and chew cronies that found time to come and spend time. He got to go more than the other boys and that made he feel very special. He loved the Cat House story, and grandma watching his dad whiz by with her car. Who was this kind man?
He had to repeat first grade. He always hated that, but he just didn’t figure out the game, called school. He knew there was much more fun going on at home. He learned and did well after that. He said, he really didn’t get the meaning of school until fifth or sixth grade, when the competition gene kicked in. No girl was going to outscore him. Studying became important. Chemistry was when he learned he needed glasses. He couldn’t see the periodic table. The teacher thought he was playing him for a sap. He asked if he needed this credit to graduate. A smart remark was handed to the teacher, but he realized that he couldn’t see it. Who was this kind man?
He went to Vincennes after high school because he thought his family wanted that. He thought about being a forest ranger. The other alternative was service. The economics’ professor was always reminding them to do well or they would be out, and service would no longer be a choice. He tired of the threats and decided to enlist. The Air Force was his choice. It was a long trip to Indy that day with his dad. One part wanted to be ruled 4F, the other wanted to serve. Several in front of him were turned down for one reason or another, but he was chosen. Who was this kind man?
He went to Lakeland,Texas; Biloxi, Mississippi; Naha, Okinawa; Ubon Thailand; Cam Rahn Bay and Tan San Nhut, Vietnam; Minot, North Dakota. He was a radar repairman. He tried to fix things with old parts, put things back together. He scavenged the planes that were down in Vietnam, and brought back the good parts. He didn’t go to work one day because he was sick. The hanger was hit that day; his chair had holes in it. He didn’t worry, he said, about being killed. He was just young and stupid was his comment. Maybe it was his faith in God, more than he knew. Who was this kind man?
He wrote letters and said little about his service life. There wasn’t much point in talking about it. He didn’t receive any awards, he was just an ordinary man doing his job, and counting the days that he could come home to Indiana and be normal again. I loved those letters and have kept them all these years. I wanted to get married when he came back home, but he didn’t want a service life for his family and he knew that I had one more year of school. So he wisely, took charge and we waited for his discharge. I wrote his first letter on February 29, 1968. He gave me my diamond on February 29, 1972. I gave him credit for being a romantic and remembering the important date. He said he was just lucky.
We were married on July 15, l972. He wasn’t sure what to think about all the girl moods and idiosyncrasies. Not having a sister was a disadvantage he thought. Even though he was not a romantic in one sense of the word, he was kind, caring, and gentle. He always put my feelings and needs first. We grew up from similar backgrounds which was a huge help in our marriage. We had the same religious background which was also a blessing. Who was this kind and gentle man?
He was so excited about being a daddy. First, Kimberly Richelle was born on December 29, 1973 and then Anna Kristin on August 31, l977. He would speak sternly, but he didn’t spank. He knew his own strength and didn’t want to hurt them. He left the disciplining to me. He loved to read to them. He loved to help them with school. He loved to ride bikes and take walks with them. He said on many occasions that he wished he could have done better. He wished he could take away all their hurts. He wished that he could have been healthier and stronger. He was most proud of them. Who was this kind and gentle man?
His greatest battle came on August 31, l981 (Kris’ fourth birthday). We were told that he had testicular cancer. Two days later, he had surgery, and the next day he began chemo at IU. Those were the darkest days of our lives, and yet they were the best of times too. We fell in love all over again, knowing we were in the battle of our lives. We put our trust in God, put on the armor, and fought the battle at hand. He just took it all, the poking, the meds, the throwing up, the loss of hair, the radiation, the exhaustion. At one point he gave up and said he couldn’t fight any more. About 15 min later there was a beautiful rainbow that we could see from Kim’s window. He said that was his sign from God and he would fight as long as God gave him breath. And he did just that, he fought until he had no breath left. He took three last breaths on June 8, 2005 and then he soared with the eagles. He had fought the fight, he had run the race, he had stayed the course. Who was this kind and gentle man?
He was my joy, my life, my soul mate. He was my true north, the center of my world; he was my life partner. Who was this kind and gentle man?
Richard Allen Thacker
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