War Stories

Throughout my 65 years I have had many conversations with men and women who have experienced war personally. Some of the stories I’ve heard are poignant; some are terrifying; some are sad; some are undoubtedly apocryphal; most I suspect are true. I have learned from all of them.

I’ll start with combatants. As a reporter and historian, I want to know all the facts. Unfortunately, I don’t have all the facts in these stories. I won’t name anybody because I don’t have permission to use names. Rest assured though that all these stories came from real people whom I’ve encountered.

After some prompting, I learned the story of a young man from northern Minnesota. At 18 he entered the U.S. Army during World War II. A Norwegian-American, the young man travelled to California for infantry training, Camp Roberts I believe. Having grown up in the north woods of Minnesota, using a firearm came naturally to the young man. He was an excellent marksman.

Soon the young soldier left for the Pacific theater and was deployed as part of a joint effort between the Army and Marines on Bougainville. He was part of the U.S. strategy of island hopping on the way to the Japanese mainland. After deploying he described days of unrelenting combat as Japanese soldiers threw themselves at the American lines. Their fanatical charges were terrifying. But U.S. Army artillery, along with the stubborn resistance and marksmanship of the defenders, made the charges futile and deadly for the attackers.

It was a terrible baptism of fire for the young soldier from Minnesota who witnessed horrible scenes of carnage after an attack. He described with horror and regret having to shoot a Japanese soldier who was trying to dig his way toward his position. Throughout the rest of his life, he never forgot that act, or the terror of those frontal assaults.

Another elderly man I encountered spoke of taking a bus to Albert Lea, Minnesota the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor to join the U.S. Marine Corps. Like generations of Marines before him and after him, he ended up at the USMC Recruit Depot in San Diego. In the time-honored USMC tradition, he was schooled in what it takes to be a Marine, to stay in the fight and to win.

In August of 1942, he found himself on Guadalcanal with the legendary 1st Marine Division. With bolt-action Springfield rifle in hand, wearing the flat World-War I style helmet and olive-drab utilities, the young Marine from Blue Earth, Minnesota battled Japanese Imperial Marines who were determined to kill all the Americans they could find. I had never spoken with a Guadalcanal veteran before and I was awestruck at his story of simple courage and patriotism.

I had an unforgettable conversation with a former World War II German soldier who fought with Army Group South in Ukraine. A farmer from Ingolstadt in Bavaria, the former member of the Ostheer proudly told me in German, “I was an engineer.”

He told me he was taken prisoner and spent a decade as a POW in Kazakhstan where he nearly starved several times. His brother, he told me, surrendered to the Americans and gained 20 pounds during his captivity. Undoubtedly, I could have learned a great deal more from this kindly former pioneer but he leaned over and quietly told that he couldn’t tell me more because his wife didn’t like him talking about the war.

A native of New Hampshire I knew, a tanker in Korea, lost half of his foot after a North Korean mortar round exploded in the doorway of his bunker, killing the soldier in the doorway and spraying shrapnel inside. He also told me about a Soviet anti-tank round that came through the soft side of his Sherman tank and lodged under his driver’s seat, fortunately a dud that did not explode.

Another Minnesotan I interviewed served in South Vietnam with a regiment of the 4th Infantry Division in the Central Highlands. Elements of the 4th Division endured savage combat with units of the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN).

When asked about what it’s like to be in combat, the former U.S. Army grunt spoke of the fear that causes some to lose control of their bowels; he spoke of mortar attacks that caused soldiers to hunker down in their fighting holes, praying that the next round did not land on top of them.

He also talked of the differing experiences U.S. forces had in Vietnam. Some had it good (in the rear with the gear) while some endured awful hardship in the field. This former soldier was “definitely in the bush.” He lamented the REMFs (rear-echelon m—-r f—–s for those of you unfamiliar with Vietnam-era Army lingo) who unforgivingly stole the goodies sent from home to line infantry soldiers in the field.

I have spoken with many civilians too who have suffered so terribly during war. I know an elderly Pilipina who described her terror as a young girl when having to walk past Japanese soldiers doing occupation patrols in occupied Cebu. I’ve spoken with a Korean-American who old tales of the hardships of fleeing with her family to evade marauding North Korean communist soldiers. They slept under blankets on the road until they reached American lines near Pusan.

Finally, I had a brief conversation with a diminutive Vietnamese-American woman from Hue. When I asked what it was like to be in Hue in 1968 as a tiny, five-year old girl she remembered being petrified with fear at the large, combat-hardened U.S. Marines she encountered. I can only imagine what it must have been like for this innocent little girl to see the big, battle-scarred Marines, wearing tattered jungle fatigues, sporting bandoliers of M60 ammo and expressions of fear and exhaustion after the merciless combat to retake Hue from the PAVN occupiers.

I am honored to have spoken with all these people and I recount their stories out of sense of humanity for all who have suffered and fought during wars.