tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67354063705884745672010-04-06T11:14:58.674-04:00Veterans of Bucks CountyBucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.comBlogger88125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-57995303653269376352010-04-06T11:14:00.001-04:002010-04-06T11:14:58.738-04:00This blog has moved<br /> This blog is now located at http://veteransofbuckscounty.blogspot.com/.<br /> You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click <a href='http://veteransofbuckscounty.blogspot.com/'>here</a>.<br /><br /> For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to<br /> http://veteransofbuckscounty.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.<br /> <div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-5799530365326937635?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-90779925407315188332010-03-31T15:53:00.002-04:002010-03-31T15:58:53.910-04:00John F. Sandle<em><strong>Ex-Marine knows a thing or two about dedication and sacrifice.</strong></em><br /><br /><strong>By R. Kurt Osenlund</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 295px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/IMG_3654-715909.jpg" border="0" /><br />Former Marine and Perkasie resident John Sandle has a natural inclination to help others, which he admits has sometimes gotten him into trouble. An outwardly stoic man, but one with a clearly emotional center, Sandle, 64, says he tries hard to focus on positive things and leave bad memories in the past, but he does make it a point to mention that he was stabbed five times and shot once, all before graduating from Bloomfield Tech High School in Essex County, N.J. At least two of the incidents came as a result of Sandle attempting to help a stranger, and when Sandle told his father he was interested in joining the Marine Corps, the response he got was plain and simple: “There are two things the Marines can teach you better than I can,” his father, Frederick, told him, “defending yourself and running away.”<br /><br />Sandle did little of the latter throughout his military career, which began on Nov. 5, 1963 when he was still a senior in high school. He says he was the first guy in his class to go into the service and, as far as he knows, the fourth guy in his class to ultimately go to Vietnam. Sandle first enlisted with the Marine Corps Reserves, unable to jump right into active duty given his status as the sole surviving son of a WWII Army veteran. After appealing to the right people, Sandle was able to dodge the restriction, but before deploying he stayed home to tend to his father as he battled cancer. When Sandle was 19, his father passed away, and he reported to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.<br /><br />With his basic training already complete, Sandle stepped in as an armor, test-firing and repairing weapons. At roughly the same time, his wife Sandra, whom he’d married in 1966, gave birth to his son, Todd. And when Todd was one month old, Sandle received orders for Vietnam, one of many instances in which he’d be forced to choose work over family.<br /><br />“I knew I had a job to do and I knew I’d be going [to Vietnam] eventually, but it was unfortunate it had to happen right then,” Sandle says.<br /><br />Sandle first reported to Okinawa, where he initially spent much of his time as a file clerk while waiting for the recuperation of his left ear, which he injured by not wearing protective gear while test-firing weapons (to this day, the ear has never recovered, says Sandle, who’s 85 percent deaf in his left ear and 50 percent deaf in his right – the result of another injury in Southeast Asia). For the unit in Okinawa, his mission eventually became to repair all Marine Corps weapons in Southeast Asia, from handguns to tanks, and to send teams of men into Vietnam to repair weapons in the field.<br /><br />During his 13-month stay in Okinawa, Sandle’s second child, Pam, was born, and when he was reassigned to California’s Camp Pendleton, serving as a troop handler and pre-deployment instructor and training men who were bound for Vietnam, the workload began to take its toll on his family.<br /><br />“It was long, hard work,” Sandle says. “We worked six-and-a-half days per week for 19 months straight. That’s why I ended up getting a divorce. I think I had seven days off in 19 months. But it was a job that had to be done.”<br /><br />In 1970, when his wife finalized the divorce, Sandle signed a waiver to volunteer to go back to Vietnam. He served as company administration chief and platoon sergeant. When asked if he saw much action, Sandle says “not really” and “I saw enough” before revealing that, at one point, he inadvertently killed a 14-year-old native boy, who’d been holding a gun on him, and whom he meant to knock out with his weapon but accidentally shot.<br /><br />“It’s not something I’m proud of,” Sandle says with genuine remorse.<br /><br />Sandle was soon assigned to the 2nd Battalion 5th Marines, the most highly decorated battalion in the Marine Corps, and then to 1st Battalion 11th Marines, where he was promoted to Staff Sergeant. Soon after that he met his second wife, Kate, whom he married on Nov. 4 1972 – one day shy of his anniversary of joining the Marine Corps. In 1976 he was transferred to a Marine brigade in Hawaii, where he served as a casualty officer. In 1979 he transferred to Washington, D.C., where he worked closely with NATO and SEATO and where, he says, he was involved with the legislation of the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA), which stabilized officer manpower throughout the services.<br /><br />He eventually ended up back at Camp Pendleton, where his duties included the out-processing and discharging of Marine Corps personnel. He says he discharged about 40,000 people in 3 years and devised a way to save $1.4 million in administration costs via simple things like reduced paperwork. He received a Navy Achievement Medal for his efforts.<br /><br />Sandle retired in 1988, went to work for the now-defunct Globe Security in Philadelphia, and was then called back to active duty to serve in Desert Storm. When he was sent home once more, he worked for the Department of Agriculture, then a mortgage processing firm. He’d later work for a security company and postal service, but not before a pursuing a degree in criminal justice at Allentown College, which he’d have to forgo to take care of his dying mother and stepfather.<br /><br />In 2003, Sandle split with his second wife, with whom he had a daughter, Kristen. In 2007, he remarried again, this time to Phyllis, whom he’s still with today. In the Marines, he says he learned the value of growing up in America, to respect people of all walks of life and, of course, helpfulness, work ethic and sacrifice.<br /><br />“John F. Kennedy, when he was sworn in, stated, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country,’” says Sandle, who’s also commander of the Guardians of the Washington Crossing National Cemetery. “I have that on a plaque on my desk, followed up with the quote, ‘I can, I have and I will.’”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-9077992540731518833?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-68403311161310052682010-03-24T16:35:00.004-04:002010-03-24T16:48:21.528-04:00Steven Webb<strong><em>Sergeant served in Iraq after 26 years in National Guard.<br /></em></strong><br /><strong>By Matthew Fleishman</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br />A self-described “army brat,” Sgt. Steven Webb spent 26 years in the New Jersey National Guard before being deployed to Iraq in June 2008. That upbringing is what motivated him to join the National Guard in 1982, at age 18.<br /><br />“I’m what’s called an army brat,” said Webb. “My dad was a career officer who retired, after 26 years, as a captain. We lived in several places around the country, and the army has always been in my family and my blood.<br /><br />“It’s an honor and a pleasure being in the National Guard,” continued Webb. “Being in the National Guard has meant everything to me because not only do you have your military duties, but you have your civilian job and your responsibilities at home. It’s not just being part of the army, but also representing, protecting and defending New Jersey in times of trouble, like during floods and disasters.”<br /><br />In the National Guard, Webb has been part of a combat engineer unit. Before his unit was deployed for Iraq, it was sent to Fort Bliss in Texas, which is where Webb sustained an injury that would not prevent him from going to Iraq, but would prevent him from staying there for his entire tour of duty.<br /><br />“We were at Fort Bliss and were doing combative training, and I was trying to subdue someone larger than me, and I performed a move and injured my elbow and shoulder,” said Webb. “Nothing was broken so I was deployed to Iraq with the rest of my unit.”<br /><br />While this deployment was something that Webb knew was possible from when he first entered the National Guard, his feelings were mixed.<br /><br />“There were a lot of thoughts that came up,” said Webb. “First, this is what we trained for all of these years, and we would be putting all of our training and skills to the test. But there was also apprehension, too.<br /><br />“The flight was 26 hours from Texas to Iraq,” continued Webb. “You kind of start thinking about the potential bad things and whether or not you have everything taken care of in case God forbid you don’t come back. Once we got there though, I thought about my crew and my missions, and I just had to put the thoughts about my family in the back.”<br /><br />Once in Iraq, Webb’s unit was assigned to a cavalry unit, and he became a truck commander on a three-man crew. The crew would perform area security operations for eight to 12 hours at a time, looking for improvised explosive devices, clearing roads for convoys, or doing demolition work to create obstacles to prevent anyone from traveling on certain roads.<br /><br />It was during these missions that Webb’s shoulder injury began to worsen.<br /><br />“We would be out patrolling, looking for IEDs and working with locals around the base, but it got to the point where my shoulder started wearing down. I would come back at the end of the mission, pop some ibuprofen and be good for a few hours, but every day it would get worse.”<br /><br />The injury continued getting worse until Oct. 29, 2008, when he felt a “snap” in his shoulder.<br />“I felt a snap in my shoulder,” said Webb. “I tried to suck it up and keep going, but when that happened I couldn’t move my arm.”<br /><br />For Webb, the injury was a minor issue, but the thought of leaving his three-man crew was devastating.<br /><br />“The worst part about being injured was not being with my crew,” said Webb. “I was the truck commander, and I was concerned about who would be taking care of my boys and watching their backs. Every stop along the way, I would tell the doctors to patch me up so I could get back to my guys.”<br /><br />After being sent to Germany for treatment, it was determined that Webb’s injury was too severe for him to be sent back to Iraq, so he was sent to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where he received additional treatment for his injured shoulder.<br /><br />Currently, Webb is a fire inspector at Rutgers University and a volunteer firefighter with the Hopewell Fire Department. He proudly remains a member of the New Jersey National Guard.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-6840331116131005268?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-79340368505368892072010-03-17T14:47:00.001-04:002010-03-17T14:49:54.755-04:00Joseph Haak Sr.<strong><em>Late Bristolian devoted many years of service.</em></strong><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>By Tim Chicirda,</strong> <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 377px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/haag2-768424.jpg" border="0" /><br />Joseph Haak, Sr., of Grundy Commons in Bristol Borough, had always remembered conditions of the dramatic, worldwide economic downturn in the late 1920s known as the Great Depression.<br />His widowed mother Catherine was affected by economic conditions that were beyond her control and she cleaned offices for a living; and often times, cleaned the homes of the doctors on Radcliffe Street.<br /><br />Haak attended Bristol High School and Bristol Township High School in the Class of 1944. During his high school years, Joseph was a machine press operator in the Manhatten Soap Company, stamping the die to make “Sweetheart” soap, the streamlined pink oval bar with the filigree border.<br /><br />He also worked at the Grundy Mills as a pinsetter, replacing the damaged pins in the combing machine, making $15 a week.<br /><br />“Senator Grundy’s car broke down in front of our home and the chauffeur asked to use our phone and my mom let Senator Grundy come in to make a call and she made him a cup of tea,” Haak once shared. But, his career soon later took a turn into the military field.<br /><br />At the end of his junior year, Joe enlisted in the Army Reserve and was drafted in August 1943.<br />His first stop was Fort Meade, MD. Here he was given his uniform and the new recruits received instruction to provide a mission ready workforce to maximize efficiency and effectiveness, but his travel had just begun.<br /><br />He was sent to an Army training camp at Camp Gruber Military Reservation, Okla., which closed at the end of WWII and then reopened in 1977 for reserve and active unit training.<br /><br />He trained with the “Rainbow 42nd Division” before going overseas and returning to Fort Mead.<br />Twice in this century, the Rainbow Division has signaled to millions of people the end of tyranny and oppression and the beginning of new hope for a better world. These companies were used to defend against and attack and counterattack powerful German forces along a furious battlefront.<br />At this point, Joseph was on his way to Camp Myles Standish, outside of Boston, Mass., then to a temporary Army base in Liverpool, England in June of 1944 on the Wakefield ship, that in civilian life was a pleasure cruiser, the “Manhattan,” converted to a Naval transport ship.<br /><br />Haak recalled at this time, after singing the “Star Spangled Banner,” that he and the troops courteously remained at attention and remained saluting for the British National Anthem. England’s fields were “khakied,” jammed with American men, planes and weapons.<br />He invested well over two years of his life in the service and traveled to five countries, including England and the invasion area in Utah beach.<br /><br />Joe also fought in Normandy and in Belgium.<br />Haak was hospitalized in France in the 40th General Hospital for a month and a half after an artillery shell pummeled through a house in which they were sheltered. It went into the ground and detonated.<br /><br />He was shell-shocked after that ordeal long after his uniform was hung up in the back of the closet. Joe was one of the surviving 35 of the normal strength of 189 men. A soldier had gone limp and died in his arms and he had always had nightmares about this.<br /><br />He was reclassified “unfit for further combat duty” and was briefed very strongly in March 1945 in the 726th Military Police Battalion. His job then was to look out for high-ranking German officials leaving to go to neutral Spain or Switzerland.<br /><br />Pfc. Joe was on the small, 60-acre Mogmog Island when Germany surrendered.<br />“You never boasted, bragged or asked for adulation for your past,” said Haak. “You did the job you knew was right and quietly you cry at night.”<br /><br />Now it was time for Joseph to go home. His entire battalion boarded on trains and moved to Marseilles, France and then boarded ship to pass the Straits of Gibraltar, cross the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean and traveled through the Panama Canal.<br /><br />Upon returning home, Haak went out looking for work and secured a position in the Madsen Machine Company, with an apprenticeship to be a machinist under the G.I. Bill.<br /><br />His next employment was at the Tangent Tool Company in Morrisville to learn to be a custom specifically designed tool maker, engineering extreme precision and high performance tools and he completed his on-the-job training and apprenticeship.<br /><br />Joe returned to Bristol Borough and lived there for a few years until his recent death in February of 2010.<br /><br />In an interview with BucksLocalNews, just a year before his death, Haak stated that “Bristol has always been a great town” and that after all that he had accomplished in life: “[Now] I do what I want to do.”<br /><br />Well, whether he wanted to or not, growing up through the Great Depression and devoting years to our military, Joseph’s family can truly look back on his life and call it heroic.<br /><br />“[I was] not a good dancer, two left feet,” Haak once said. “Just a good marcher as a soldier.”<br /><br />****<br /><em>Cate Murway contributed to this article.</em></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-7934036850536889207?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-63202703653627469912010-03-03T14:06:00.002-05:002010-03-03T14:08:57.312-05:00Creed Palmer<strong><em>‘Country Boy’ supervised gun repair during Battle of the Bulge.</em></strong><br /><strong><em></em></strong><br /><strong>By Petra Chesner Schlatter</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 269px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/creed-horiz-shoulder-715963.jpg" border="0" /><br />At 91, U.S. Army Master Sgt. Creed Palmer has a strong memory of being part of the invasion of Normandy and the subsequent Battle of the Bulge. By the time WWII ended, Palmer had reached the rank of master sergeant.<br /><br />“I was in the ordinance company,” Palmer said, sitting at his kitchen table in Wrightstown Township. The Middletown Grange Fairgrounds back up to his small white house on Worthington Mill Road.<br /><br />He is in good health. Surprisingly, he still helps to mow the yard.<br /><br />Originally from North Carolina, Palmer graduated from the ninth grade. He and a friend, who was part Cherokee Native American, literally hitchhiked north, ending up at Bowman’s Tower in Washington Crossing, where his friend’s uncle lived. He was a full-blood Cherokee.<br /><br />Palmer, who once was a hired farmhand at a nearby farm, had a book written about him: “The Life Story of a Country Boy.”<br /><br />Being a farmhand, he worked to pay for food. “I made enough to eat,” he said.<br />“I went in the service,” Palmer said. “I figured that was better.”<br /><br />In 1941, Palmer and his future brother-in-law, Leon Worthington, drove to Ft. Dix to enlist.<br />Getting to Europe was a long road for Palmer. From Ft. Dix, he was sent to points throughout the country for training. He went to Tennessee, Louisiana, Missouri and Arizona. They were tested in 20 degrees below zero and 120-degree heat.<br /><br />He would take responsibility of 50 men, heading up a group who repaired guns. That meant working on everything from rifles to canons. His men worked on .50-calibre machine guns.<br />“I had charge of all the guns that needed to be fired,” Palmer said.<br /><br />“We did everything on the big guns (cannons),” he noted. “We stripped them all the way down and then put everything back together. We tested, fired it and it went back into position. We pulled it with a big truck.”<br /><br />Palmer remembered how he had to sign a paper, taking responsibility for repairing the guns. “That was my job,” he said. “We had to certify the weapon was done. If it wasn’t, I’d get in trouble.”<br /><br />The trip overseas to Europe was long, with ships of men packed like sardines. The hammocks were hung one on top of each other. They slept in shifts. When he would later return home by ship, he had learned that sleeping on deck was the way to go.<br /><br />“We landed in Ireland,” Palmer said. They went to little towns where they trained for six months. They went into the mountains and approached foxholes. “You’d crawl and they were shooting machine guns over you,” he recalled. “You literally had to keep down.<br /><br />“We went from there to Normandy,” he said. “The Germans had everything fortified. The Americans had to establish a beachhead to make sure the Germans were back far enough to make sure the troops could get in.”<br /><br />“We went in the second day of the invasion of Normandy,” Palmer continued. “That’s how we got started. We established the beachhead and kept right on going. We stopped once. We wound up in Le Havre. We stayed there two to three weeks. We cleared out Le Havre of Germans.<br /><br />“Once we got them out, we traveled a lot of time,” he said. “We went up through France up into Luxembourg. We traveled from there and went into Germany. We were riding in vehicles and walking.”<br /><br />The Germans bypassed Palmer’s company. “They went right by,” he said. “Some of their troops went around our flank. That’s when they had the Battle of the Bulge. We were surrounded for three days. Finally, our troops cleared us.”<br /><br />They headed to the Rhine River. “After we crossed the river — that was it. The war was over,” he said.<br /><br />“We came back and went into France and they said, ‘You can go home,’” Palmer said.<br />What stands out in his mind is how many of the towns were leveled in France. “They didn’t touch any churches,” he said of the Germans.<br /><br />“The people (the French) were nice,” he said. “The people were glad we got there.”<br /><br />Watching the German surrender was quite a sight to see, according to Palmer. “We just crossed the Rhine River,” he said. “All the German vehicles came. They surrendered. Seeing all the guys coming – they were glad to give up.”<br /><br />Palmer said he felt great, too. “I can get out of here now,” he remembered thinking. He was discharged in 1945.<br /><br />Upon returning home, Palmer worked for General Motors. Next, he was a clerk at the Newtown Hardware House on South State Street in Newtown, where he worked for three decades.<br />In town, Palmer gained a reputation for being able to fix anything that was brought into the store.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-6320270365362746991?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-20620747756075347972010-02-24T18:54:00.003-05:002010-03-03T14:04:36.530-05:00Leon Bass<strong><em>WWII combat engineer became a champion for peace and equality.</em><br /></strong><br /><strong>By R. Kurt Osenlund</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 282px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/IMG_2495-743713.jpg" border="0" /><br />Leon Bass is a fine storyteller, and he has an incredible story to tell. The extremely eloquent 85-year-old, who lives in an apartment in Newtown’s Pennswood Village, has lived a life that would warrant a feature film. A WWII combat engineer who grew up before the Civil Rights Movement, he’s seen and endured hateful atrocities at home and abroad, only to emerge victorious as a resolute soldier for peace, equality and enlightenment.<br /><br />Along with four brothers and one sister, Bass was raised by parents Henry and Nancy in a Philadelphia household. After graduating from West Philadelphia High School in 1943, Bass was voluntarily inducted into the Army and sent off to Camp Wheeler in Georgia for basic infantry training. He was placed in an all-black unit under the leadership of white officers.<br /><br />“It was horrendous,” Bass says. “I had never experienced the kind of racism I experienced there. It was present in Philadelphia, but nowhere near as blatant. My father used to want to take me back to his hometown in South Carolina, but my mother always advised against it. I understood why when I got to the South. It was a very painful experience.”<br /><br />Bass spent four months at Camp Wheeler before becoming a combat engineer and moving on to Camp McCain in Mississippi, a base that would send him out on long outdoor “maneuvers” to practice battle tactics. He then made his way to Camp Robinson in Arkansas to prepare for overseas duty, and soon found himself in Fordingbridge, a country town in Hampshire, England that would serve as a post to organize supplies. In December 1944, he crossed the English Channel into France and awaited orders in the bitter cold.<br /><br />“When orders came down, we were told we were going to be part of the third army under the command of General George Patton,” Bass says.<br /><br />Bass and the rest of the men in his unit were assigned the duty of repairing a bridge near the town of Martelange in Belgium. The bridge needed to be fixed so tanks, guns, men and ammunition could pass through and reach the adjacent town of Bastogne, where Americans were trapped by German soldiers.<br /><br />“We worked night and day,” Bass says, “in spite of the weather, in spite of the land mines we would encounter, in spite of that one plane that seemed to fly over every day trying to bomb the bridge. And we finished it on time. And all of those resources reached the other side and we were able to defeat the enemy. And that was all part of what we now know as the Battle of the Bulge.”<br /><br />Bass says he was very proud of the victory, but seeing the bodies of the men who died in the battle got him questioning what he was doing at war in the first place. Knowing full well he may also die in battle, he began wondering what he was fighting for, remembering all the times he was discriminated against in America: denied the privilege of drinking at a water fountain, unwelcome at a restaurant, forced to stand for 100 miles on a bus with vacant seats.<br /><br />“I was angry at my country,” Bass says. “I felt used and abused. I’m going to protect all these people with my life, should that become necessary? Fight to preserve all the wonderful things I’m not good enough to enjoy? But the war went on, and I had to keep my anger down inside.”<br /><br />Bass received new orders to report to Weimar in East Germany, and before long he saw something that would alter his life and outlook forever. A lieutenant drove him and a fellow soldier to Buchenwald, a concentration camp.<br /><br />“I was to have the shock of my life,” Bass says.<br /><br />At 19, Bass had never even heard of a concentration camp, and received the rudest awakening imaginable. Bass saw what he calls “the walking dead” – people who were skin and bone with skeletal faces. He says the stench of death and human waste was unbearable. He saw torture chambers, and human experimentation labs with body parts in jars of formaldehyde. He saw human skin stretched out on tables, crematoriums with human remains and stacks of corpses.<br /><br />“And I knew it was all because the Nazis were saying these people weren’t good enough and therefore could be terminated,” Bass says. “Something changed. I came into the camp angry, but now I could see more clearly. I understood that human suffering was not relegated to just me – it can touch all of us. I had seen the face of evil, and the hate I saw in the South couldn’t even compare to the hate of the Nazis. I realized I had something to fight for – I had to help to destroy that evil. I decided that if I made it home, I would do something to effectuate change.”<br /><br />Less than a year later, in January of 1946, Bass made it home, and he got busy. Using the financial benefits from his military service, he got into West Chester University, where he still had to face down racism, unable to stay in the dormitories or eat in the cafeteria. Only the second member of his family to attend college, he focused on his education, and began to adopt a non-violent protest mentality. After graduation he got a teaching job at an all-black elementary school in Philadelphia, and saw such landmark developments as the rise (and tragic fall) of Martin Luther King, Jr., the bold actions of Rosa Parks and the start of the Civil Rights Movement.<br /><br />Bass became an elementary school principal in South Philadelphia, then the principal of an all-white school in the Northeast. Finally, he was called upon to be the principal of Benjamin Franklin High School, “the toughest school in the city” that, at the time, was all-male.<br /><br />Bass has a knack for cleverly and dramatically unfurling the details as he recounts his life. There’s the sense he’s not only told this story before, but perfected the way he tells it. And then he explains how an Auschwitz survivor visited Benjamin Franklin High School one day, and wasn’t well-received by the unruly students until Bass told them to pipe down and listen, that he had seen the same things she did. After her presentation the survivor pulled Bass aside and told him he had a story to tell, too, and he needed to speak out.<br /><br />“That was 1971,” Bass says, “and I’ve been speaking ever since. I’ve spoken at colleges, universities, maximum security prisons, churches, places across the country, overseas in Ireland, Bermuda. I was just at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School and soon I’ll be at a high school in Chicago. Because that evil is still with us. People are still doing evil things to each other. It will take over our hearts and minds if we let it, but we must not let that happen.”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-2062074775607534797?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-86898651178296056532010-02-17T15:08:00.002-05:002010-02-17T15:11:47.930-05:00Ralph “Fluffy” Landolfi<strong><em>Former deli owner received three Bronze Stars in Korea.</em></strong><br /><div><strong></strong></div><br /><div><strong>By Matthew Fleishman</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com<br /></em></div><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 307px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/Landolfi-1951web-779728.jpg" border="0" /><br /><div></div><div>At 21 years old, Ralph “Fluffy” Landolfi was sent to Korea after being drafted into the U.S. Army.<br /><br />“I was stunned,” said Landolfi. “I didn’t know what to expect with the war going on. All I knew was that I would be away from home for two years.”<br /><br />Landolfi, who was born in Trenton in 1930, was working for Labor and Industry in New Jersey when he was drafted and sent to Fort Dix for a week. From there, he was sent to Camp Gordon in Georgia for eight weeks of basic training, and eight weeks of training for his duties in Korea, which were jobs in Army communications.<br /><br />In Landolfi’s first assignment, he was a courier dispatcher and would have to deliver information to the front.<br /><br />“I would deliver messages to R.O.C. outfits at the front,” said Landolfi. “All alone at night with just the cat eyes of the Jeep. The only time I wasn’t scared over there was when they sent me to Japan on ‘R and R.’”<br /><br />Soon after, Landolfi was assigned to the 937th Field Artillery B Battery, which was equipped with four M-40 self-propelled 8-inch guns. With the 937th, Landolfi was a radio jeep operator, which meant that he would go ahead of the unit to set up radio communication capabilities.<br /><br />“We would always have one artillery piece with us, and would go up with a convoy that would pick a spot,” said Landolfi. “My job was to set up communications with the FDC (Fire Direction Center). Then we would be sent to the observation post to report on enemy activity and call in fire power.”<br /><br />It was while with the 937th that Landolfi was injured, and subsequently received the Purple Heart. While scouting a new position for the outfit in September 1952, Landolfi’s truck was hit, injuring him and two other men in his unit, causing him to spend two weeks in the hospital with a leg injury.<br /><br />“I didn’t know I got wounded until I put my hand on my leg and it was hot from the blood,” said Landolfi. “I was in the truck trying to get my gear out, and then we ran for cover just as the truck got hit.”<br /><br />After recovering, Landolfi another nine months in Korea, and was sent home the day the truce was signed in 1953. He was honorably discharged from the Army on Sept. 16, 1953.<br /><br />For his service in Korea, Landolfi, who is a member of both VFW Post 6393 and American Legion Post 317, received three Bronze Stars, the Korean Service Medal and the United Nations Service Medal, in addition to the Purple Heart.<br /><br />Back at home, Landolfi opened the original Landolfi’s Deli in the Yardley Town Center in 1983 with his son, Steve. The Landolfi name was already famous in Trenton, as his father, Pasquale, owned Landolfi’s Frozen Food. The deli closed in 1988, but Steve later re-opened the deli in its current location on South Main Street in Yardley Borough.<br /><br />Landolfi lives with his wife of nearly 55 years, Loretta, and they have five children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-8689865117829605653?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-10800303072596865022010-02-10T14:23:00.002-05:002010-02-10T14:28:34.091-05:00Danny Quill<strong><em>World War II veteran turns 95 years old on Feb. 10.</em></strong><br /><br /><strong>By Petra Chesner Schlatter</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><em></em><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 263px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/quill-795430.jpg" border="0" /><br /><em>*Editor’s note: Danny Quill was one of the first veterans to be profiled in our “Saluting Our Veterans” series. In honor of Mr. Quill’s 95th birthday, we spoke with him about a very interesting aspect of his life.*</em><br /><br />Looking back on his life, World War II veteran Danny Quill of Morrisville remembers when he had homing pigeons.<br /><br />“I flew pigeons in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Quill, who turned 95 years old on Feb. 10.<br />Homing pigeons, he said, have saved lives. He pulls out an article about “G.I. Joe,” a pigeon that saved the lives of 1,000 British soldiers during WWII because of a message it delivered.<br />“I’ve had that article for over 60 years,” Quill said.<br /><br />His life, in a way, previously centered on homing pigeons and racing them. He talked about how he had them since he was 16 years old. Quill reminisces as he sits in his easy chair with his cat, Queenie, on his lap. Quill said the cat sleeps on his feet to keep him warm.<br /><br />Quill is still a member of the Delaware Valley Pigeon Club in Horsham and the Bristol Homing Society. He has two white sweatshirts with pictures of homing pigeons on them.<br /><br />“Pigeon flying was good,” he said. “I had a lot of friends.”<br /><br />“When I got rid of my pigeons, they auctioned them off,” Quill said. “I took 70 up and brought three back and I got $1,600. Then the fellows that bought them two years later wrote me and said my pigeons were breeding winners.”<br /><br />“I had pigeons, chickens, golden pheasants and silver pheasants,” he recalled about raising birds while he and his late wife, Ann, lived in the Woodside section of Lower Makefield Township.<br /><br />“After my wife died, I was living alone,” Quill said. “I got rid of practically everything. She died in 1976. I got rid of them all. My buddies — a couple of them died. They used to train my pigeons.”<br />Quill said he raised and flew homing pigeons because “It’s a great, great sport and a lot of fun.”<br />“When you put them in the race — when that pigeon comes home — it has a counter mark on its leg,” he continued. “You drop that into the clock and you turn the key and it tells the time. We have a regular clock.”<br /><br />For a race to Minnesota, he would release his homing pigeons at 8 o’clock in the morning and they returned home at 4 o’clock.<br /><br />“There may be 1,500 or 2,000 pigeons in one big race,” Quill said.<br /><br />His homing pigeons had personalities of their own. He described what one of his favorites did. “I’d leave her out,” he said. “You’d call her and she’d fly up and sit on your shoulder. My wife used to call her. She’d land on top of my wife’s head. She didn’t like that too much.”<br /><br />Quill raised champion pigeons. “I won with them,” he said. Often, Quill would have about 150 homing pigeons at one time.<br /><br />“Today, it’s too expensive for training pigeons,” he said.<br /><br />Another reason he gave up the sport was the high cost of feed. “You’ve got to feed them a certain kind of feed — all different kinds of grain,” he explained. “It’s regular mixed-up grain with all kinds of seeds.”<br /><br />To prepare for baby pigeons, Quill would use tobacco stems to make a nest. Each female laid two eggs. “The male and the female take turns sitting on them,” he said. “Then the male feeds them. It’s something they throw up for their babies.”<br /><br />Quill described what homing pigeons do when they’re not racing afar, sometimes traveling 600 miles in a day. “You leave ‘em out every day to exercise and then you whistle to come back in the coop,” he said. “They’re looking for feed. You let them fly for a while and then they come in.”<br />Describing what the pigeons look like when they take flight, Quill said, “Oh, man – their speed I can’t explain. They spin and spin and go around and around in a circle.<br /><br />“They’ll go for a half mile in a big circle way up in the air and they’ll exercise,” Quill said. “Then, they’ll start coming down low to your coop and you whistle. You shake the feed and they’ll come into the coop to get their feed.”<br /><br />Quill said the homing pigeons “go way up – you can just about see them. But the real pleasure is to see that one come home, and it comes down VOOM!! They’re glad to get in the coop and glad to get home.”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-1080030307259686502?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-1458065020662469632010-02-03T12:15:00.002-05:002010-02-03T12:19:01.218-05:00Dominic “Brownie” Marino<strong><em>Bristolian and Purple Heart recipient loved to dance.</em></strong><br /><br /><strong>By Tim Chicirda</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 386px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/brownie-794237.jpg" border="0" /><br />Dominic Marino is more affectionately known as “Brownie,” but is also known as a military hero with a Purple Heart, a long-time husband, a dedicated man in the community, and one heck of a dancer.<br /><br />Staff sergeant Dominic “Brownie” Marino was drafted into the army when he was 21 and was sent for 16 weeks basic training to Camp Livingston in Louisiana.<br /><br />Home to the 28th Infantry Division, it was first known as Camp Tioga and renamed Camp Livingston in honor of Chancellor Robert R. Livingston, negotiator of the Louisiana Purchase.<br />Brownie's next assignment was in Camp Gordon Johnston. Acres of beaches and woods along the shores of North Florida were converted to a base with the sole purpose of training amphibious soldiers and their support groups.<br /><br />This Florida facility trained over a quarter million men for amphibious assaults during World War II, readying them to embark upon the Great Crusade.<br /><br />The next stop for Brownie was Camp Pickett located in Blackstone, Va., about 30 miles west of Petersburg where there was enough land, water and other resources needed to establish a post large enough to simultaneously train more than one infantry division. This site of logistical efficiency also offered easy railroad access to both mountain and coastal training sites.<br /><br />Brownie then left the U.S. for England and then Tenby, Wales, and most likely received one of history’s most discouraging pep talks, “Good bye and good luck.”<br /><br />His responsibility was to create the correct setting of the elevation, traverse and charge to position guns and establish an outpost line of resistance to cover an entire mile or more radius area with 60-mm mortar and machine guns. The results of a single, well-executed barrage could be decisive, and equally appalling.<br /><br />After the D-Day invasion, he ventured through France from July 19 until November 10 in 1944 when he was seriously injured in action by a sniper shot in the shoulder that traversed straight through his back. Battle in the dense impenetrable conifer Hürtgen Forest, barely 50 square miles east of the Belgian–German border was so costly that it has been called an Allied "defeat of the first magnitude." He was transferred from the front lines to a school house in Belgium where he was operated on and remained in a hospital in Paris for 2 weeks. He was awarded the Purple Heart.<br /><br />***<br />Brownie, the youngest of five children, grew up on Butler Street in Trenton’s famed Chambersburg neighborhood also known as “The ‘Burg.”<br /><br />Brownie played baseball and football in school and as a kid, he played hardball and pitched quoits, using real horseshoes “the ones you put on a horse; metal, steel.”<br /><br />Dominic was married to his wife, Yolanda, for 63 years from 1945 until her death in 2008. The couple was married in St. Ann Church and lived on Wood Street in the Zefferi home before moving to Winder Village. They moved back into the Borough, purchasing a home on Wood Street about 30 years ago.<br /><br />They had three children: Bristol Borough resident Dominic John Marino (Brownie, Jr.), Levittown resident Maryann, and Jennett.<br /><br />***<br />Brownie worked in the Fort Dix Army Camp carpentry shop for 26 years expertly woodworking for the GIs and their wives. He has designed handcrafted furniture in his small basement workshop for almost every family member.<br /><br />He also was an integral part of the construction crew for the Italian Mutual Aid-Fifth Ward Association building on Wood Street.<br /><br />***<br />Despite this busy life, Brownie, along with his late wife, had a true passion for dancing.<br />Brownie and Yolanda belonged to the Bordentown Elks and went dancing there. It was the Paso Doble Ballroom every Friday night for the foxtrot, jitterbug, Lindy Hop, and the Cha Cha, an offshoot of the Mambo.<br /><br />Brownie danced even through his service tenure. His favorite music is any music during the swing era, Big Bands and all the Sinatra songs,<br /><br />“You can dance to it," said Brownie. "I don’t know the words. I didn’t think about words!”<br /><br />***<br /><em>Correspondent Cate Murway contributed to this article. </em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-145806502066246963?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-77067270225753522252010-01-27T13:50:00.002-05:002010-01-27T13:56:12.187-05:00James J. Anderson<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Patrolling the Mediterranean aboard the USS Lowery.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">By Jeff Werner</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">BucksLocalNews.com</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/Veteran-Anderson-737824.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 331px;" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/Veteran-Anderson-737798.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Veteran James J. Anderson is about as patriotic as they come. He loves his country. He’s proud of his flag. He chokes up when he talks about freedom.<br /><br />And when a lot of guys were fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, he was looking for a way into the combat zone.<br /><br />The Philadelphia native volunteered for service in Vietnam not once, but numerous times. Each time, though, the answer from the U.S. Navy came back “no.” It was a huge disappointment for Anderson, who was eager to see combat at the young age of 17 back in 1963.<br /><br />“I was a hawk and you can’t be a hawk if you’re not willing to go,” he said. “But I also felt I owed something to this country. I’m a flag-waver. I always was. I felt like I owed it to the guys who went before me.<br /><br />“To me, it was unbelievable that they had the draft; that they had to grab somebody to serve their country. I grew up with all the war comic books, all the war movies. My father was in the war and my grandfather was in the war before that. I had a great-great-grandfather in the Civil War.”<br /><br />His father, James J. Anderson, served on the light cruiser Phoenix in the South Pacific. His grandfather, Frank McAdams, was in the Army Air Service in France during World War I. And his great-great-grandfather, Michael Denig, served with the 3rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Calvary in the biggest battles of the Civil War, including Antietam and Gettysburg.<br /><br />“I wanted to be like my father. He was in the Navy and I wanted to be in the Navy. He was on a cruiser during World War II. I wanted to do what he did,” he said.<br /><br />Born on Sept. 9, 1946, Anderson grew up in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. He spent his early childhood attending St. Veronica’s Grade School in Tioga and Cardinal Dougherty High School, graduating in June 1964.<br /><br />He joined the service and started his senior year of high school on his 17th birthday in 1963. He would have joined earlier, but his father insisted that he first finish high school.<br /><br />“During the Cuban Missile Crisis, when I went in to enlist, they said my father would have to sign. So I went home and I said to my father, ‘I’m joining the Navy.’ He laughed at me and said, ‘When you’re out of high school.’ So I said to him, ‘When I hit 17 I want you to sign my papers.’”<br />He was true to his word. When he turned 17, he returned to the recruiting office with signed papers from his father and volunteered his service.<br /><br />He spent his senior year of high school serving in the reserves, going to sea one weekend a month learning how to be a sailor. He served aboard the destroyer escort, Joseph Douglas Blackwood.<br /><br />He officially joined the service following graduation from high school and requested assignment in the South Pacific where his father had served. “If it was good enough for my father, it was good enough for me. There was also action going on there.”<br /><br />He never saw the South Pacific as a serviceman and he never made it to Vietnam despite his numerous attempts.<br /><br />In Oct. 1964, he was assigned to the 177-man crew of the U.S. destroyer Lowrey. He spent several years aboard her in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coasts of France, Turkey, North Africa, Spain, Greece, Italy and Lebanon.<br /><br />His served as a deck aid before being named personnel man. He was the guy who kept the ship’s records, including transfer orders and discharges.<br /><br />He also worked as a powderman and projectileman for the gun mount. “We fired every other day while we were at sea,” said Anderson. “We always had to be ready. And when we weren’t firing, we were replenishing ammunition.”<br /><br />The destroyer’s mission was to provide protection and support for American carriers and cruisers.<br /><br />“We were a killing machine from bow to stern,” said Anderson. “We had 5-inch ammunition. We had hedge hogs. We had torpedoes, aviation fuel and two Destroyer Anti-Submarine Helos (DASH). If anyone went after one of our carriers or cruisers it was our job to intercept the torpedo. We were there showing the flag and keeping the peace,” he said.<br /><br />While Anderson never saw combat aboard the destroyer, there were a few harrowing moments.<br />“We were refueling off an oiler and the seas were real choppy. A seaman from the oiler fell overboard. Our swimmer went over to get him with a line tied around him. He brought him along side the ship. The ship went up in the air, the line parted and they both went under the ship. They got the kid but our guy didn’t make it. He was a nice guy. It’s always the nice guys.”<br />Ironically, while Anderson never made it to Vietnam, his ship did. Three years after he left the destroyer, it was sent into the war zone.<br /><br />He completed his service in 1969 and took advantage of the GI Bill, earning a degree in industrial relations from La Salle University. He fell in love and married his sweetheart, Maureen. The couple raised three children, Jim, Karen and Kate.<br /><br />He worked at various companies through the years before finding a job as an industrial engineering supervisor for SPD Technologies.<br /><br />He worked for the Philadelphia manufacturing company for 26 years before being forced to retire at the age of 61.<br /><br />“Early retirement worked out well for me because my daughter had triplets,” said the proud Middletown Township grandfather. He’s now enjoying retirement with Madison, Abigail and Colten, and spending time with his wife of 39 years.<br /><br />He also devotes time to the Morrell Smith Post No. 440 of the American Legion in Newtown where he serves as adjutant.<br /><br />“These guys are all salt of the earth. You can find fault with none of them. Yeah, sometimes they’re a pain. But they’re good men with good hearts who did so much for our country,” he said.<br />To his fellow veterans and to his family, he’s known for his patriotism and his deep and abiding love this country.<br /><br />“The American flag is everything,” he said. “It’s the Alamo, Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg. It’s all those who went before to preserve freedom. You’ve got to feel it here,” he says, placing his hand over his heart.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-7706727022575352225?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-47483447580291002602010-01-20T12:31:00.002-05:002010-01-20T12:35:13.908-05:00Robert M. Davis<strong><em>Army veteran recalls his time in The Battle of the Bulge</em></strong><br /><div><strong></strong></div><br /><div><strong>By Petra Chesner Schlatter</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 299px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/vet-bob-davis-792150.jpg" border="0" /><br />U.S. Army Capt. Robert M. Davis of Newtown remembers Dec. 16, 1944 as if it were yesterday.<br />First, Davis, then a lieutenant, was a forward observer in the field artillery. Then, he served as an air guard observer. “That means bringing the tactical air right in front of the tanks,” he explained. “Tactical air would mean bringing the P-47 where they would most benefit the advance of the tanks.<br /><br />“A lot of people would say I was under Gen. Patton. The way they moved divisions around, he was with the Third Army,” he said. “You might be in the Third Army one month and sometimes elsewhere. I was in Patton’s Army, but I was in other armies, too.<br /><br />“I was in the middle of ‘The Bulge’ in Belgium and Luxembourg – more Belgium,” Davis said.<br />“We were in the Saint Vith area in Belgium, about 25 miles north of Bastone,” he said. “I was wounded in France...in front of Metz and once in ‘The Bulge.’”<br /><br />Davis was outside of the tank the first time. “I was caught right in the middle of a mortar barrage, and a piece of shrapnel dug itself into my back right where the vital organs are. It missed all of them,” he said.<br /><br />The shrapnel measured three inches long and two inches wide. “They dug that right out of me,” Davis said. “It had a bunch of little fish hooks on it.”<br /><br />After six weeks of recovering from the serious wound, Davis joined his outfit again just in time for The Battle of the Bulge.<br /><br />“It was the Germans,” Davis remembered. “It was their last big thrust in the Ardennes Mountains and they attacked with approximately 20 divisions. Many of what would be armored Panzer divisions. It’s a German armored division and they pushed us back, and just put a big bulge in the line.<br /><br />“They didn’t break through, but they put a bulge in the lines and we had to fall back.<br />“It was over by the middle of January 1945,” Davis said. “After that with the coming of the spring of 1945, it was just a motor march through Germany.”<br /><br />“In the spring, we advanced with very little opposition,” Davis said.<br /><br />He was in Europe for about a year. “We did not cross ‘The Channel’ with the invasion and were in the dash across France,” he said.<br /><br />Davis was in Germany when peace was declared. “That’s when they dropped the A-bomb over in Japan,” he continued. “I can just say we were greatly relieved.<br /><br />“Whether that was morally correct or not, I can’t say. I can say it saved a lot of lives on both sides,” Davis said.<br /><br />Looking back, he has memories of good and bad times.<br /><br />“After you’ve been in a conflict, when it’s all over, it’s a great feeling when you talk about what different people did at the time.”<br /><br />One story that he shared was about sleeping in a tank. There were five men. “Somehow or another, I stuck my foot out and it hit the fire extinguisher,” Davis explained. “It made a sound like someone had shot a bazooka at us. </div><br /><div><br />“All of us jumped out of the tank,” he continued.<br /><br />“When we talked about that, we got a big bang out of it!”<br /><br />While in France, Davis was in “champagne country.” The French were so happy the Americans were there that they gave countless bottles of champagne to them. “I remember one of my friends saying, ‘I got so much, I was cleaning my teeth with champagne!”<br /><br />Before heading to Europe, Davis saw a lot of the U.S. — northern California was the most beautiful place for him.<br /><br />“I always said I was going to go back there. I have never gone back,” he said.<br />“It was in the Gold Rush country,” Davis said. “There were all sorts of rivers there that had many fish. There were pheasants galore and also ducks. That was a great place.”<br /><br />Though Davis did not return to California, he did return to Europe a couple of times.<br />“Bob and I have made several trips back,” said Dorothy, his wife. The couple now lives at Pennswood Village, a retirement center near The George School in Newtown. Another time, he traveled to Europe with a good friend.<br /><br />In France, the people hugged them, Dorothy recalled.<br /><br />“When we went to the beaches, we had a wonderful time,” he said.<br /><br />At one point, they were with a group of people in Belgium. “They toasted ‘The Liberation.’ We toasted the people of Belgium. We toasted. They toasted.”<br /><br />Davis has medals and photographs, which help him to remember his time in the service.<br />He has two purple hearts, three bronze stars and five battle stars, including The Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge.<br /><br />Davis, a graduate of Princeton University with a degree in geology, would later go into farming.<br />He had a ranch with Dorothy in Wyoming. Then they had a dairy farm in New Jersey. They bought the Newtown Hardware House on State Street and they lived down the street.<br />The couple ran the popular store, still a centerpiece in town, for three decades.<br /><br />Davis went into the Army in 1942. “I would have been 20 then,” he said. “I was discharged in October 1945. I was 25.”<br /><br />This month, Davis celebrated a milestone: turning 90. </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-4748344758029100260?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-10782037777327541322010-01-13T13:20:00.001-05:002010-01-13T13:25:49.089-05:00Michael Gavaghan<strong><em>Council Rock grad found growth, fulfillment in Air Force.</em></strong><br /><br /><strong>By R. Kurt Osenlund</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 256px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/Afghan_240-712831.jpg" border="0" /><br />Like most young men, Mike Gavaghan took part in his share of teenage mischief and rebellion. In addition to providing him with employment, excitement and a long-term career path, Gavaghan credits the U.S. Air Force for instilling in him some necessary post-high school maturity.<br /><br />“I wasn't too far off-course,” says the 27-year-old Council Rock North graduate, “but (the Air Force) definitely straightened me out, for sure. It taught me discipline and respect.”<br /><br />Born in Northeast Philadelphia and raised in Holland, Gavaghan says his interest in planes stretches back to his childhood, when he used to attend air shows with his father. He had that interest in mind when he graduated high school in 2001 and, knowing college wasn't for him, enlisted in the Air Force.<br /><br />“I wanted to travel and serve my country,” Gavaghan says. “I didn't want to be in the infantry, I wanted to get more involved in maintenance – that's what really appealed to me. So I signed up to be a maintainer.”<br /><br />Gavaghan's first stop was Lakeland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, where he stayed for seven weeks of boot camp. Regarding the famously rigorous breaking-in period, Gavaghan says the physical demands were easier than he expected, but the emotional toll was “10 times” more difficult.<br /><br />“It's really your first time leaving everyone you know,” Gavaghan says. “That was the hardest part: they really break you down, and you have no one to turn to. You're alone.”<br /><br />Gavaghan says such a feeling is common among first time soldiers – a universal experience that creates a camaraderie among peers and provides them with people to turn to after all.<br /><br />In November 2001, Gavaghan headed to Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, Texas, for a year of daily aircraft maintenance training. According to him, he went from knowing virtually nothing about airplanes to being able to “tear an airplane apart and pretty much know how to put it back together.” He later headed to a base in Tucson, Ariz., where he underwent more specialized training, learning the ins and outs of a machine he'd come to know quite well: the A-10 Thunderbolt II – or “Warthog” – jet aircraft.<br /><br />He says he was responsible for the upkeep of 25 of these single-seat, twin-engine, close air support planes while stationed in Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany, where he remained for two years. It was during that time when Gavaghan received orders to deploy to Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, a mission that filled him not with fear, but with excitement.<br /><br />“I was extremely excited to be part of a unit that was going to deploy,” Gavaghan says. “I had an opportunity to really serve my country and I was ready to get out there. I was a little nervous – it's hard to go to the desert and not be nervous – but the fact that we were actually going to be doing our job was fun. It was like practicing a sport and finally being able to play.”<br /><br />In fact, Gavaghan was so pleased with his new gig that after his first three-month rotation at Bagram ended, he volunteered for another. On maintaining planes used to provide cover and air support for soldiers stationed in particularly dangerous areas, Gavaghan says, “It was fulfilling. Working on the planes and knowing that they were flying combat missions, protecting the Army and stopping terrorism – because of us – was very satisfying.”<br /><br />The most exhilarating part of the job, Gavaghan says, was when an order to “Scramble! Scramble! Scramble!” would come over the radio, and he and his fellow maintainers would need to ready a plane for takeoff – a process that can normally take up to an hour.<br /><br />“Five minutes and that plane would be up in the air,” Gavaghan says, proudly.<br /><br />In June 2004, Gavaghan relocated to Florida's Eglin Air Force Base, where he remains stationed to this day after reenlisting twice. He says Eglin has been “a boring base and an extremely exciting base at the same time.” Boring, he says, because he only has two planes to take care of (and because anywhere must seem tame compared to Afghanistan), and exciting because his mission became the testing of new bombs and missiles.<br /><br />When new weapons are developed, Gavaghan and company ensure that they're compatible with the aircraft, and that they're firing and detonating properly. Once approved, the weapons are then shipped overseas. Gavaghan says the job creates a strong sense of urgency and an even stronger sense of pride, which also accounts for why he's chosen to remain in the military well after his initial tour of duty, and why he plans to continue to do so well into the future.<br /><br />“A lot of people think I'm crazy,” says Gavaghan, who now holds the rank of staff sergeant. “People say, 'Why stay in the military?' while other people see it as an easy way out. But any military member will tell you how satisfying it is – the honor in it. Some people might not understand it, but I love what I'm doing. I'm protecting our troops, I'm protecting America, I'm making my dad proud.”<br /><br />Gavaghan shares a house with a fellow soldier in Fort Walton Beach, a tourist town not far from the Eglin base. He says the area is nice and the scenery is gorgeous. Since new weapons aren't released every day, an average day of work for Gavaghan typically involves “keeping his skills sharp,” helping pilots with simulations and, of course, maintaining the planes.<br /><br />Gavaghan says, “We keep the planes in top shape so they can continue flying.” Ironically enough, one might say the Air Force has done the very same for him.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-1078203777732754132?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-6892929117536969792010-01-06T14:12:00.002-05:002010-01-06T14:15:55.640-05:00Josh Mellor<strong><em>Former college baseball player saw action in Africa and Iraq.</em></strong><br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>By Matthew Fleishman</strong>, <em>Yardley News</em> Editor<br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 258px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/Mellor-duty-737204.jpg" border="0" /><br />For Josh Mellor, enlisting in the Marines was simply something that he felt he needed to do.<br /><br />Mellor, who was a rightfielder for the University of Pittsburgh when they made the Super Regional of the College World Series in 1995, enlisted in the Marines in September 1999, and saw action in both Africa and Iraq after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.<br /><br />“I really felt there was something missing in my life,” said Mellor. “I always wanted to be a Marine. As a kid, I wanted to go to the Valley Forge Military Academy, but my mom said ‘no.’”<br /><br />When Mellor enlisted, he was sent to Paris Island, S.C., for 12 weeks of training, and he graduated first in his class of more than 400 Marine recruits. From there, he was stationed at Camp Lejeune in the 2nd battalion of the 6th Marine Regiment.<br /><br />Mellor was involved in work-ups, which are training missions, at Fort Bragg, preparing him for going on float for six to eight months in the Mediterranean Sea, when the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 occurred.<br /><br />“We were out in the field and were told that an airplane struck the World Trade Center, so we immediately started thinking that we were preparing for some type of urban warfare,” said Mellor. “Then the gunnery sergeant said ‘this is not a drill, we’ve actually been hit.’”<br /><br />Immediately, Mellor, and the fire team he was leading, got supplied and headed back to Camp Lejeune.<br /><br />“At first we really thought it was a drill, but after we found out what actually happened, we headed back to Lejeune, and still even had on our face paint,” said Mellor.<br /><br />After returning to Camp Lejeune, Mellor was supposed to head out on ship for the Mediterranean Sea, but his unit was called back. In February 2002, he did head out to sea, landing in Djibouti, where he encountered his first action of Operation Enduring Freedom.<br /><br />“We were the first U.S. forces to land in Djibouti since the first Gulf War,” said Mellor, who was supposed to take part in off-ship training in the African nation. “During the training, the French told us that everything was clear, but that’s where we had our first firefight of the mission. We got lit up pretty good there. People don’t realize that al-Qaeda was fighting in Africa at the time.”<br />After six months on duty, Mellor’s battalion was sent back to Camp Lejeune, and the unit was supposed to be part of the East Coast Homeland Security Force, but as Mellor was about to go on leave in late February 2003, the phone rang.<br /><br />Mellor, who was a sergeant at the time, was told by his superiors that he needed to call his men back from leave.<br /><br />“I was all set, ready to go,” said Mellor. “It was at that point I knew something was up. I had to call all of the men back from leave. I had to call back a guy who hadn’t seen his father in 10 years.”<br /><br />Mellor’s battalion was being sent to Kuwait, leaving on a C-4 jet, heading to Camp Commando in Kuwait, via Germany.<br /><br />“There were mixed feelings in the camp, but I kept telling my guys that they didn’t spend millions of dollars bringing us here just to send us home,” said Mellor.<br /><br />On March 20, 2003, Mellor had just sent his men to go eat when an Iraqi scud missile came over the mountain and landed in the camp. The men spent the next 10 to 12 hours in their chemical suits, and the next day, they went on patrol.<br /><br />“We were originally supposed to set up and be security for a POW camp,” said Mellor. “Let’s just say that the number of Iraqis to surrender were not nearly what they expected.”<br /><br />Mellor’s team was actually the group that went ahead, securing the road and site for the rest of the battalion.<br /><br />Later, Mellor was part of the unit that took down the airport in Al-Kut, which also served as a terrorist training camp.<br /><br />“We took down the airport in the biggest firefight we were involved in,” said Mellor. “It was also a terrorist training area, and instead of pictures of humans serving as targets, we found out they used the Star of David as a shooting target. It was a very disturbing sight to see.”<br /><br />After occupying the airport, which was on the Euphrates River, Mellor and his men washed their faces with the shockingly cold river water.<br /><br />“It was 110 to 115 degrees, and I remember putting my hands in the water and it seemed freezing cold,” said Mellor. “I splashed my face and it tingled for hours from the cold water, despite the temperature in the air. That has to be the strangest thing I have ever encountered.”<br /><br />Through Mellor’s four years in the Marines, he encountered a lot, but he has a lasting bond with his fellow Marines, in the form of a gasket worn on the ring finger of his left hand.<br /><br />“The bond between Marines is a true brotherhood,” said Mellor. “It’s almost a marriage to each other. We all wear a gasket, and some guys incorporate it into their wedding ring, and others move it over to their right hand, but we all still wear it to this day.”<br /><br />As part of that brotherhood, Mellor always told his men to do whatever they needed to do to survive.<br /><br />“I always told them, ‘It’s better to be tried by 12 than carried by six,’” said Mellor. “Gunnery Sgt. Bryan Zickefoose was the first to say that to me, and I always said that to my men. I told them ‘I refuse to write any letters to your mothers, so do what you have to do to survive.’”<br /><br />Mellor was honorably discharged from active duty in September 2003, and now is a member of VFW Post 6393 in Lower Makefield Township.</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-689292911753696979?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-34231996310456164932009-12-30T13:01:00.004-05:002009-12-30T13:12:26.104-05:00Robert Lebo<strong><em>Vet and long-time policeman is now Bristol’s Mayor.</em></strong><br /><strong></strong><br /><strong>By Tim Chicirda</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 299px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/lebo-725039.jpg" border="0" /><br />Robert A. Lebo, a graduate of Woodrow Wilson in 1966, has served Bristol Borough's community for years, living a patchwork of various experiences and careers.<br /><br />Among these experiences were life as a Bristol Borough police officer spanning four decades, a D.A.R.E. officer for 10 years, a soldier for the United States Military, and most recently, the Mayor-elect of Bristol Borough.<br /><br />A football lineman, cross country runner and track sprinter, Bob was also a member of the drama club. He performed in “South Pacific” as a “Navy guy” and also stage crew.<br /><br />“I wasn’t a singer, so never had the lead role,” said Bob.<br /><br />Three years after high school graduation, Bob was drafted into the Army, serving in Vietnam in 1969 and 1970.<br /><br />As supply Sergeant E-5 (Buck sergeant), he kept the troops supplied with C-rations, ammunition, water and mail, among other things.<br /><br />Bob earned the Good Conduct medal for his years of service and achievements during his “expedition” into Southeast Asia in the 199th Infantry Brigade, a major combat unit of the U.S. Army serving in the Vietnam War.<br /><br />His shoulder sleeve insignia was a blue shield that featured a white spear in flames. The red ball in the middle of the patch represented the splitting of the atom and was meant to be indicative of how Infantry fought alongside the sophisticated weaponry of the nuclear age.<br /><br />Bob still recalls the hours of boredom in the sun, mud and rain, punctuated with moments of sheer terror, physical and mental stress. He got out of the Army after his service obligation and proceeded to get on with his life.<br /><br />Upon returning from the service, Bob was hired in April 1974 as police patrolmen and was promoted to Corporal in 1997, still maintaining his beat from Mill Street to Mulberry Street.<br /><br />He was honored with the “VFW Policeman of the Year” in 1977 for saving six people from the Hayes street house fire, the Elks “Distinguished Citizen Award” and a letter of commendation from PA Governor Milton J. Schapp, among other recognitions.<br /><br />In 1998, he began an additional career as D.A.R.E. officer for St. Mark, St. Ann and Warren P. Snyder- John Girotti Elementary Schools and in 1999, he earned his certification as a middle school officer.<br /><br />“I always wanted to teach the youth the consequences of doing drugs and alcohol. There wasn’t a day that I went, that I didn’t love it,” said Bob, who had been the longest running D.A.R.E. officer in the Borough.<br /><br />Sergeant Lebo retired from the Bristol Borough Police Department in Febuary of 2007 after 33 years of service.<br /><br />Retired, Bob continued to drive the bus for the Borough school district, which he had been doing since 1988.<br /><br />Then Lebo moved to the world of politics.<br /><br />In what some deemed a surprise upset in an otherwise uneventful May primary election, Lebo defeated incumbent Mayor Joe Saxton, who was battling for another four-year term.<br /><br />Lebo edged Saxton 1150-1084, though they each carried five of the 10 borough voting districts.<br />These results did not mean that Lebo was necessarily the next Mayor of Bristol Borough at that time, but with his name on the Democratic ticket in a highly-Democratic town, it was very probable and in fact, Lebo was elected Mayor in the general election months later.<br /><br />Lebo won the mayoral race by a landslide, garnering 92.7 percent of the vote. He took 1,729 votes to Independent David J. Armitage Sr.’s 136.<br /><br />“I will try to lead Bristol to a brighter future and manage the town and its services to the best of my abilities. I will try continuing progressing the vision of Bristol of being a thriving waterfront town,” said the new Mayor-elect Lebo. “I will also try to bring harmony back to Bristol. I love Bristol because it is a great town with great people.”<br /><br />And nobody can argue with that statement, as history has shown one thing consistently: Bob Lebo has always been dedicated to Bristol Borough.<br /><br />And, on top of this, he has been dedicated to his country, and that is why we salute Bob Lebo.<br /><br />*****<br /><em>Cate Murway contributed to this article.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-3423199631045616493?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-16706260506114223082009-12-22T13:40:00.002-05:002009-12-22T13:47:32.096-05:00Dan and Tom Lawler<strong><em>Veterans of D-Day, Vietnam and the Gulf War.</em></strong><br /><br /><strong>By Jeff Werner</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><em></em><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 309px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/Veteran4-710224.jpg" border="0" /><br />Dan Lawler dreamed of traveling to Europe and becoming a portrait artist. But history had other plans for the 26-year-old from St. Paul, Minn., who now lives at Chandler Hall, Newtown.<br /><br />In 1942, while studying under famed portrait artist Paul Trebilcock, Lawler was drafted into the army and began training as an infantryman, even as Hitler and his Nazi Party were on the march through Europe.<br /><br />While completing his basic training at Camp Barclay in Texas, the graduate of the Minneapolis School of Art put his artistic talent to work, creating a mural inside one of the camp’s several battalion chapels. A photograph of his art and a short story appeared in the camp’s newspaper.<br /><br />From Camp Barclay, he was sent to Louisiana to study military maneuvers. While there, he received a two month furlough to return home to St. Paul, where he married his high school sweetheart, Jeanne.<br /><br />In April 1944, he boarded a troop ship in New York bound for Europe. Two months later, on D-Day (June 6, 1944), he joined 160,000 men as part of the largest invasion force the world had ever seen.<br /><br />With shells exploding everywhere and bullets whizzing past their heads, Lawler and his outfit stormed the shores at Utah Beach, the westernmost of the five landing beaches, located between Pouppeville and the village of La Madeleine.<br /><br />Lawler and his commanding officer were in one of the boats which landed about 100 yards out. “When we got out, the Major went down in the water over his head. He was only about five feet tall. So I held him up all the way in,” said Lawler.<br /><br />The beach, he said, was covered in artillery and machine gun fire. “A few didn’t make it,” he said.<br />After the landing, Lawler was sent ahead as part of a reconnaissance team tasked with making sure the road up ahead was safe for the troops as the Americans pushed toward Paris.<br /><br />“It was scary,” he said. “We’d come down the roads with hedges on both sides and they’d be hiding behind them.”<br /><br />On Aug. 17, while patrolling on a road near Alencon, he was hit by machine-gun fire and taken prisoner by the Germans.<br /><br />According to a newspaper account, “Lawler and nine others were captured when the rear German guard, perched on a hill above the Americans, began spraying them with machine-gun fire. One bullet caught Lawler in the leg, shattering his femur; others downed three more of the men. Before the entire platoon could escape, Germans closed in on the remainder from the woods lining both sides of the road, outnumbered and captured them.”<br /><br />He spent the next several months as a prisoner of the Germans and with an untreated, broken leg that had him in constant pain. “They treated us okay – no abuse or anything,” he said of his captors. “Of course, they were losing at the time.”<br /><br />He won his freedom when the allied troops marched into Belgium and liberated the town and hospital where he was a patient. “They (the Germans) just left us,” said Lawler. “They were busy trying to save their own hides.”<br /><br />After the liberation, he and other patients were showered with flowers and kisses by grateful residents. One Belgian asked Lawler as he prepared to leave for England, “Why go away from us? Here you are king. There you will just be a patient.”<br /><br />He was evacuated to England by way of France, where his leg was set in a Paris hospital. He returned to the States in Dec. of 1944 where he was admitted to Winter General Hospital.<br /><br />“As bad as the war was, he was lucky to have gotten out when he did,” said his son, Tom, who lives in Newtown. “His 90th Division went on to fight through Europe, including the Battle of the Bulge. There were many, many more opportunities to be in harm’s way.”<br /><br />Tom said as a kid growing up in New York City and then Long Island, he remembers his father showing his battle scar, but never really understanding the role he played in the war.<br /><br />“We knew he had been involved in the war, but my parents never talked about it,” said Tom. “He, like many others in the Greatest Generation, did his duty and then went on with his life,” said Tom.<br /><br />Looking back, the elder Lawler said he doesn’t often think about that time of his life, but he’s glad he was part of the invasion “because it was absolutely necessary to get the Germans out. You wouldn’t want someone like Hitler taking care of you.”<br /><br />“It’s pretty cool that he was a tremendous part of history,” said Tom. “We respect the fact that they were this generation that had to do what they did but did it with such grace and not really asking for anything in return. It was just something they needed to do.”<br /><br />Tom followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the U.S. Air Force as a pilot and becoming a veteran in his own right, flying a C-141 into Da Nang, Saigon and Thailand during the Vietnam War and missions to Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War in 1990-91.<br /><br />“The big difference was my service was voluntary. I went in because I needed to learn to fly,” said Tom. “Guys like my father, as patriotic as they were, had no choice in the matter. They did it with the best of intentions, but none of them really wanted to be there.<br /><br />“For me it was a means to an end and it was a good life for me,” said Tom. “I wanted to learn to fly and about the only way to do that was to go into the military.”<br /><br />He attended Officer Training School in 1970 and pilot training from 1970 to 1971 before learning to fly the C-141. He began active duty at McGuire Air Force Base, earning the title of 1st Lieutenant at age 23.<br /><br />He remained at MaGuire for 20 years, working as a pilot and flying C-141s all over the world. He retired as a Lt. Colonel from active duty in 1976 and the reserves in 1992. He now works as a commercial airline pilot for Delta.<br /><br />Following the war, Dan and his wife, Jeanne, settled in New York City and Long Island, N.Y., and raised four children.<br /><br />While he never realized his dream of becoming a portrait artist, he did put his artistic talents to use as an illustrator for <em>Parents</em> magazine in New York City. He also did covers for <em>Humpty Dumpty</em> magazine and completed numerous projects for <em>Time</em> magazine and <em>Reader’s Digest</em>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-1670626050611422308?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-5516523346415579762009-12-09T13:39:00.003-05:002009-12-09T13:43:22.798-05:00Ray O'Brien<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Former Army LTC is the man with the plan</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">By R. Kurt Osenlund</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Bucks Local News</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/obrien-1-774616.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 369px; height: 400px;" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/obrien-1-774591.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />When talking to former Army lieutenant colonel (LTC) Ray O'Brien, it doesn't take long to realize he's a very astute and organized individual, from the way he presents himself to his choice of words and relevant anecdotes. It's those qualities that have made O'Brien so proficient in logistics, an area in which he's excelled in both his military and civilian careers. Whether managing engineer equipment in Germany, arranging the railroad transportation of Sunoco products, or literally writing the book on how to run a successful Eucharistic Congress, this detail-oriented Richboro resident has long been the man with the plan.<br /><br />Born in Philadelphia in 1948 to parents Anne and Raymond, O'Brien grew up in the Olney area of the Northeast with his brother, Martin (who now teaches at a school for the deaf in Frederick, Md.). O'Brien graduated from Cardinal Dougherty High School in 1966, and then went on to study geology and join the ROTC at La Salle University. O'Brien says his unique, scientific major enabled him to select the Army Corps of Engineers as a career path, without actually being an engineer. He says he avoided the “grunt” combat branches of infantry, artillery and armor in favor a branch where he could foster his affinity for building things.<br /><br />Having completed the ROTC program, O'Brien was commissioned – or “knighted,” as he says – into the Army as a second lieutenant in 1970. He first headed out for intensive training at Fort Belvoir, Va., the official post for budding Army engineers. In 1971, he bought his first car and married Judy, who accompanied him to Germany that same year, and who is still by his side today.<br /><br />“They say there are two things you don't take with you to Germany because they have too many of them: wives and Volkswagens,” O'Brien says of the couple's unconventional honeymoon. “I brought both.”<br /><br />O'Brien and his wife shacked up in a small apartment in a village neighboring Zweibrucken, a town near the French border where O'Brien worked in the logistics headquarters during the Cold War.<br /><br />“Being in the Engineer Corps, you'd think I'd have been out in the field, training for a Soviet attack (which, thank God, never came),” O'Brien says. “But, no, they gave me a job in logistics, managing Army engineering equipment like bulldozers, backhoes and dump trucks.”<br /><br />He continues, “The word 'logistics' comes from the Greek word 'logistikos,' which means 'skilled in counting.' And that's what I was doing: counting things, making sure everyone had enough of what they needed.”<br /><br />Apart from finding exquisite, inexpensive French restaurants and interesting exotic gifts (“It wasn't all work,” O'Brien says), the event that stands out most in O'Brien's memory of his four years of active duty in Germany took place in 1973, when Israel was attacked by Egypt and Syria in what would eventually be known as the Yom Kippur War. O'Brien was deployed to Israel to provide its struggling troops with equipment, a mission he describes as “covert.”<br /><br />“There was a time when all of this information was classified,” O'Brien says of the mission, which, at that time, had no official U.S. involvement. “But (the Zweibrucken base) was the closest source of supplies, and if we hadn't got involved, (Israel) would have gone under.”<br /><br />O'Brien says his time in Germany, which ended when he was discharged in 1974, was “a great experience,” one in which he and Judy lived “on the economy, made a lot of friends and were immersed in the culture.”<br /><br />“History repeated itself,” says Judy, pointing out a noteworthy coincidence. “As a second lieutenant, he married me, and we lived in Germany. My mother married my father as a second lieutenant, and they also lived in Germany, where they had me. The only difference with us is we didn't bring home a baby.”<br /><br />Back in the States, however, they did give birth to their first son, Jonathan. It was 1975, roughly one year after O'Brien started working with the Catholic church, a gig that would last three years and allow him to put his logistic skills to use.<br /><br />With little to no direction, O'Brien helped to organize the 41st Eucharistic Congress, a week-long “spiritual Olympics” that draws in millions of Catholics and religious figures from around the world, and takes years to put together.<br /><br />After a number of high-ranking cardinals proclaimed that the 1976, Philadelphia-set event was the best of its kind, O'Brien was commissioned to write an instruction manual on how to properly coordinate a Eucharistic Congress. The manual, which O'Brien believes is still in use today, bought him his next car.<br /><br />In 1978, shortly after buying his current home, O'Brien also applied his training and talents to a job at Conrail, a now-defunct freight railroad company, where he says he felt comfortable since the structure of railroad corporations is similar to that of the Army.<br /><br />He stuck with Conrail for 20 years, “going down many different career paths,” and all the while remaining active in the Army Reserves. In the late '80s, he became a civil affairs officer, and in the '90s, during and after the Gulf War, he was deployed to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bosnia to interface with local suppliers for logistic purposes.<br /><br />In 1998, when Conrail was broken up and absorbed by Norfolk Southern and CSX, O'Brien briefly worked for a start-up Internet sales company before landing a gig with Sunoco in 2000. The position came just one year after O'Brien was forced to retire from the military due to his age and years of service. He still works for Sunoco today.<br /><br />“And what am I doing for them?” he asks, rhetorically. “Logistics. In fact, making sure the railroads that bought Conrail move Sunoco's products to Sunoco's customers.”<br /><br />Coming up on O'Brien's agenda is his 62nd birthday in February. Wife Judy, son Jonathan, son Jason, daughter Jennifer and granddaughters Anne-Sophie and Juliet may well help him celebrate, but it's safe to assume he'll be the one planning the party.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-551652334641557976?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-34057889367038782942009-12-02T11:56:00.002-05:002009-12-02T12:00:08.737-05:00Bill Craighead<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Navy veteran wrote two books, met Hollywood stars.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">By Petra Chesner Schlatter</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">BucksLocalNews.com</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/bill-craighead-with-his-book-785499.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 387px; height: 400px;" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/bill-craighead-with-his-book-785474.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />U.S. Navy Third Class Petty Officer William M. Craighead, of Newtown, was a radar operator on a landing craft during World War II.<br /><br />“I was drafted at the age of 18,” said Craighead, who later worked as a high school biology teacher at The George School in Newtown. He would go on to write two books about World War II, one with the late veteran Kingdon Swayne, also of Newtown.<br /><br />Craighead said he served on the U.S.S. LSM 215. The landing craft was commissioned in Philadelphia and decommissioned in San Diego. He said the ship was part of the U.S. Navy Amphibious Fleet.<br /><br />On Aug. 8, 1945, his ship arrived on Guam “just two days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on [Hiroshima] Japan. We unloaded our cargo of airplane parts and began preparing for the invasion of Japan…We had no idea of its significance at the time, for none of us were aware of the atomic bomb,” Craighead wrote.<br /><br />“On August 9th, the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. We began to hope that this would bring an end to World War II. There were repeated rumors of a Japanese surrender…on August 14; the war in the Pacific finally came to an end.”<br /><br />Craighead wrote, “I’m probably alive today because of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For that I am grateful, but on the other hand, I feel a great deal of remorse that so many died or were maimed for life.”<br /><br />On a lighter note from his time in the service, Craighead prides himself on meeting actress Angela Lansbury at the Hollywood Canteen during the war. In “All Ahead Full,” he explained how he was star-struck when he met the young English actress.<br /><br />In the book, Craighead included a picture of the movie star in her later years. She is perhaps best known for her role in the television murder-mystery series, “Murder, She Wrote.” He noted that she is the same age as he – 84.<br /><br />“It was there that I met Angela Lansbury,” he wrote of the Hollywood Canteen. “At that time, she was a starlet, only 18 or 19 years old, just my age. She had just made her first big movie hit, ‘Gaslight.’”<br /><br />“The Hollywood Canteen was inspired by two movie stars, John Garfield and Bette Davis,” Craighead wrote. “Garfield was known to have said to Davis, ‘Thousands of servicemen come to Hollywood without seeing any movie stars: something ought to be done about it.'<br /><br />“Davis agreed and the Hollywood Canteen was born,” he continued.<br /><br />“It was supported financially by guilds, unions, and movie stars themselves. More than a million servicemen passed through the canteen,” he wrote.<br /><br />“There was a special place in the Hollywood Canteen where movie stars greeted servicemen,” Craighead wrote. “It was a time and experience I shall always remember.<br /><br />“One night, I saw Anne Sheridan dancing with servicemen. I didn’t take advantage of the opportunity; guess I was too embarrassed. I took a good look at her though, and if I had had a picture of her, I would have made her my pin-up girl. Other shipmates visiting the canteen had stories of their own. One fellow was even invited to a movie star’s house for dinner.”<br /><br />Craighead and his wife, Betty, recently attended a celebration for The National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The museum celebrated the grand opening of three attractions, including the Stage Door Canteen.<br /><br />At the event, he was one of approximately 250 WWII veterans, representing each branch of the U.S. Armed Forces. He was escorted by active-duty military, Guard and Reserve, in a red carpet procession, which began the dedication ceremony. The ceremony featured actor Tom Hanks and broadcaster Tom Brokaw.<br /><br />Because Craighead had written about the Hollywood Canteen, he was included in a documentary about the place. He was driven to New York City by limousine and he met Angela Lansbury again.<br /><br />“When I met her, it was like greeting a long lost friend,” Craighead said. “She wouldn’t remember me from Adam. It was just delightful to see her firsthand.<br /><br />“They photographed us together,” he said of the documentary which was made about the Canteen for the museum’s celebration.<br /><br />About meeting Lansbury for the second time, Craighead said, “As a celebrity she appears to me to be very outgoing and so responsive to conversation. She’s a very attractive woman, and for 84, she’s exceptionally so, I might say.”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-3405788936703878294?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-69982377549717983772009-11-24T13:20:00.002-05:002009-11-24T13:24:43.270-05:00Rich McCune<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Penn State linebacker was drafted into the Marines.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold;">By Matthew Fleishman</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">BucksLocalNews.com<br /></span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;"><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/cannon-mccune-753529.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/cannon-mccune-753503.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Rich McCune was on the fast track to becoming a middle linebacker for Joe Paterno’s Penn State Nittany Lions when his birthday was selected seventh in the Vietnam War draft lottery in November 1969.<br /><br />“I was red-shirted that season, but when my birthday was selected, me and a million other guys were drafted, and I wound up in the United States Marine Corps as a teenager,” said McCune. “I spent 20 years in the military, but honest to God, I wish I could have played football for Joe Pa.”<br /><br />However, because McCune’s brother was sent to Vietnam just before he was set for deployment, McCune did not go to Vietnam. Instead, he spent the next four years in the Marines, serving in Guam, Japan, Guantanamo Bay, and in the Mediterranean Sea.<br /><br />“They had the Marines ready should we have been needed in the Middle East because of the escalating tensions at the time,” said McCune.<br /><br />After four years in the Marines, McCune finished college through the G.I. Bill in 1976, and then because there were no jobs available at the time, he spent 16 years as an officer in the Army, retiring with the rank of Captain.<br /><br />“I saw a billboard with the pictures of a sergeant, a college graduate in a cap and gown, and then a military officer, so I went back into the military,” said McCune.<br /><br />For his first assignment, McCune was a field artillery officer along the border between West Germany and East Germany, and at times, stood 10 yards from soldiers on the other side of the border.<br /><br />“It was very tense,” said McCune. “You never knew if war was going to break out. They were staring at you and you were staring at them. They would taunt you and point their tanks at you. You always wondered if they were going to start shooting.”<br /><br />While in Germany, McCune held the title of Nuclear Surety Officer, which meant that he had the security codes for the nuclear weapons in the region.<br /><br />“If the order came, I would have been the guy who pushed the button,” said McCune.<br />After Germany, McCune was sent to South Korea, where he says that people don’t realize it, but the war still was going on, even the 1980s.<br /><br />“I was in charge of sniper teams, and we would sometimes capture North Korean spies with pictures of our entire encampment,” said McCune.<br /><br />While McCune is proud of his 20 years of service in the military, he prides himself on his work as the service officer for VFW Post 6393, which enables him to help veterans of all ages receive the benefits and medical attention that they have earned.<br /><br />“I work with them one-on-one, take them to Philadelphia, and then to the hospital to make sure they know what they should do and what they are entitled to,” said McCune. “The work I do as service officer is where I pride myself. I would say that nine times out of ten, veterans don’t know about what benefits they are entitled to receive, but I get them set up in the system.”<br /><br />McCune said that it is not always easy to get veterans into the system because of how some have been treated upon returning home from serving overseas.<br /><br />“I see a lot of Vietnam veterans who were mistreated and don’t want anything to do with the system,” said McCune. “I earn their respect and get many to come back into the system to get the care and treatments they deserve and are entitled to receive.”<br /><br />While McCune spent 20 years in the military, and continues working with veterans, his son is following in his footsteps. Matthew McCune proudly serves his country, and on Oct. 27, was promoted to 2nd Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. Matthew served in both Iraq and Afghanistan doing refueling missions. After his promotion, Matthew was given orders to attend Flight School, with the intentions of flying a KC-10 jet after two years of training.<br /><br />Rich McCune currently lives in Langhorne, and is the junior vice commander for VFW Post 6393, and also serves as district officer in District 8.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-6998237754971798377?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-83535749991192874672009-11-18T12:43:00.002-05:002009-11-18T12:48:12.227-05:00Al Cordisco<strong><em>Bristolian was a hero for his country and his community.</em></strong><br /><br /><strong>By Tim Chicirda</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 310px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/al2-767309.jpg" border="0" /><br />Not only is Alfred (Al) Cordisco a member of the Bristol High School Class of 1940, but Air Force Staff Sergeant Al Cordisco has served for this country, while serving his community as part of a plethora of different organizations.<br /><br />Cordisco is a 6-year member of the Robert W. Bracken Post No. 382. In fact, he has committed a total of almost 20 years, including his tenure in the National American Legion Organization.<br />The Robert W. Bracken Post, No. 382, formed September 28, 1919 with 62 ex-servicemen members, is a supportive group, a social club and a type of extended family for former service men and women.<br /><br />In addition to organizing commemorative events, such as Flag Day, and marching in the Borough parades, manning a booth on Bristol Day and other volunteer activities, Legion members are active in U.S. politics.<br /><br />The primary political activity is lobbying for the interests of veterans, including support for veterans benefits such as pensions and the Veterans Affairs hospital system.<br /><br />One of the signers of the original charter was 1922-23 Commander/ Finance Officer, Jacob C. Schmidt, Jr., the grandfather of Horace P. Schmidt, Jr., owner of Schmidt’s Flowers. Also, Al's late cousin, Vincent Cordisco, directed the Bracken Cavaliers from 1944 to 1946.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the American Legion was chartered by Congress in 1919 as a patriotic, mutual-help, wartime veterans’ organization.<br /><br />Cordisco was born the fourth of six children, raised on Lincoln Avenue by his parents from Italy. Father John, a carpenter, married mother Assunta Pascuillo.<br /><br />Al retired as a mechanic who possessed many skills in technical, electrical and electronic areas.<br />Cordisco and his late wife, Tullytown resident, Frances (Cuchineal) worked together at Keystone / Kaiser. Their courtship began after meeting at a Fifth Ward dance.<br /><br />Al had another special bond with the Fifth Ward, as he held terms as both President and Secretary. He also co-founded the club in 1937.<br /><br />(It merged with the Italian Mutual Aid in 1954 and is now know as the Italian Mutual Aid-5th Ward Association.)<br /><br />Despite Al's many pre- and post-war accomplishments, one of his greatest life moments came while in the Air Force in the 1940s as the right waist gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress, the “Feather Merchant,” with a .50 caliber machine gun.<br /><br />Waist gunners held a very difficult position in the Air Force, as waist windows on the B-17 were open to a 200 m.p.h. and -50 degree slipstream of air. Exposure to this extreme cold for even a few seconds could leave one with a mild frostbite and this cold would also cause ice to form in the oxygen masks of the gunners.<br /><div><br />Depsite these difficulties, Staff Sergeant Cordisco was credited with destroying enemy aircraft over Augsburg, Germany. He was awarded an Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters and a Distinguished Flying Cross by General Ira Clarence Eaker of the 8th Air Force High Command, for heroism and extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.<br /><br />During Cordisco's European Theatre of Operations duty, he was based in Rattlesden, England in the 8th Air Force and flew missions over Germany and France. Here, he partook in a raid over Berlin’s military and industrial targets on March 6, 1944.<br /><br />According to Al, “I just did what I had to do.” Flight crews had a set number of missions, usually a tour of 30. Al is one of the fortunate 447th Bomb Group, self proclaimed “Lucky Bastards Club,” who rallied forward and returned no less than those 30 times.<br /><br />But, like so many veterans, Al unsentimentally ventured back to his life after the war, marrying and raising a son, the late BHS grad, Michael Alfred. He also raised a daughter, Wal-Mart employee, Patricia Kervick, who has a son, BHS grad, Michael who currently resides with him.<br />He is also a member of the Knights of Columbus Council #906.<br /><br />Al also served as Sixth Ward (East Ward) Borough Councilman from 1956 to 1963. He has been a Democratic Committee Person for the past 25 years and has held Chairman positions on both the Police and the Street and Highway Committees.<br /><br />Al Cordisco is truly a Bristol Borough legend, devoting his entire life to his country and to his community.<br /><br />--<br /><em>Cate Murway contributed to this article.</em></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-8353574999119287467?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-82499988621473076012009-11-11T13:27:00.002-05:002009-11-11T14:31:15.636-05:00Gene Lioy<strong><em>“Flying Fortress” gunner recalls harrowing missions</em></strong>.<br /><div></div><br /><div><strong>By Jeff Werner</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /></div><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 356px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 400px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/veteran_revise-738159.jpg" border="0" /><br />At the age of 84, Bucks County veteran Gene Lioy still shudders when he recalls his harrowing missions over Germany, France, Belgium, and the Balkans during World War II.It was D-Day plus one when then 19-year-old Lioy took off in a B-17 from an airbase in England on the first of what would be about 30 bombing runs between 1943 and 1945.<br /><div></div><br /><div>Their mission was to bomb out ahead of the troops as they swarmed across the French countryside.But his first flight with the 544th Bomb Squadron of the 384th Bomb Group never made it to its destination. Lioy and his crew were forced to turn back when two of the plane’s engines failed. </div><div></div><br /><div>The plane barely made it home, dumping its bombs into the English Channel before setting back down in England.Subsequent missions into an almost endless barrage of flak would change Lioy’s life forever. Up until that moment he felt invincible. </div><br /><div>That changed when the realization of war came rushing home, stealing his youthful innocence away.“It was horrifying,” he said. “I was scared. We all were. I saw planes in front of me blow up with friends aboard. They were gone in an instant -- that’s all, that was it. The flak was exploding all around you. And you never knew if you’d be next.”</div><br /><div>As the top turret gunner, Lioy had an almost unobstructed view of the sky, as German Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts flew around the aircraft with one mission in mind - to shoot he and his crew from the sky.</div><br /><div>Just a year earlier Lioy had been a high school student in the western Pennsylvania town of Altoona, more concerned about girls and teen life than being killed. He graduated from high school in June 1942 at the age of 18. Six months later he was drafted into the service of a nation at war.</div><br /><div>The day he left home was emotional. His mother was in tears as her second son prepared to leave for war.</div><div></div><br /><div>“I will never forget that,” Lioy said. “My mother and grandmother were sitting in the kitchen and there I was - I was going away to war,” he said. “I can still see them crying. It was hard for them to take that. It was hard for me.”</div><br /><div>When Lioy entered the service, he was assigned to the air force. For about a year he trained as an airplane mechanic, attending engineering school in Oklahoma and working briefly at a Boeing Aircraft plant where he learned about engines and how they’re put together.</div><br /><div>“The next thing I knew, no more mechanic,” said Lioy. “They needed air crew. So there I go - over to Las Vegas where I learned air gunnery. The next thing you know I’m in Oklahoma again where I trained with the crew.”</div><div></div><br /><div>From Oklahoma, the crew flew to Georgia to pick up a new plane. After a one-day stop over in New Foundland, they were bound for England and the war.</div><div></div><br /><div>“We were having a good time,” recalled Lioy of those training and pre-war days. “In our minds we never thought of what it could be like. Now when I think of what we did, I’m really scared. But back then you weren’t. You just did what they told you to do,” he said.</div><br /><div>Lioy and his crew flew campaigns over Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central Europe, dropping bombs on strategic targets -- submarine pens, oil fields, cities, and factories. Their longest mission was to the Balkans, near the Russian border, where they dropped a load of bombs on oil refineries.</div><div></div><br /><div>Lioy credits the B-17, affectionately known as the Flying Fortress, with saving his life on more than one occasion.</div><br /><div>“That was the best plane they ever built,” he said. “The fire power of it was great. It was protected all over, better than the B-24.”</div><div></div><br /><div>Following Germany’s surrender, the B-17s were transformed into transport planes and Lioy, then stationed in France, helped fly troops home from Germany.</div><br /><div>“We took all the guns and bombs out of our planes and it became a troop transport,” said Lioy. “We brought the boys out and dropped them in Marseilles. That was my job until I got out.”</div><br /><div>During those transport missions, Lioy saw the damage wrought by the allied bombing campaigns.</div><br /><div>“I can never forget Leipzig - just totaled. All you could see was rubble all over,” he said. “It’s a shame we had to go over there and do that. But if we hadn’t of stopped Hitler at that point, the world would be in a very different position today,” said Lioy. </div><div></div><br /><div>For his participation in World War II, Lioy received the Air Force Medal with two clusters, Good Conduct Medal, America Theatre Service Medal, European, African and Middle Eastern Service Medal and five Bronze Stars.</div><div></div><br /><div>Following the war, Lioy met and then married his wife of nearly 60 years, Henrietta, in 1951. They made their home in Clifton, N.J., for 32 years, raising two daughters, Janet Lioy, of Upper Makefield, a physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Linda, a Registered Nurse from Wayne, N.J. Ten years ago, the couple retired to Buckingham Springs.</div><div></div><br /><div>“At first I never thought too much of it,” said Henrietta, of her husband’s service. “The older I got the more I realized what he went through. And it was hell. “Communism under Hitler’s regime? It would have been horrible,” she continued. “Our life would have been horrible. My husband and the men and women who went over there fought for our freedom and made the ultimate sacrifice. How can we ever thank them?”</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-8249998862147307601?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-50460884944894284052009-10-21T13:19:00.002-04:002009-10-21T13:24:40.727-04:00Sanford Kaplan<strong><em>A teenage aviation hobby turned into a military profession</em></strong>.<br /><br /><strong>By Petra Chesner Schlatter</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 299px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/standing-near-sky-raider-750068.jpg" border="0" /><br />Warrant Officer 2 Sanford “Sandy” Noel Kaplan, 70, served in both the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He flew helicopters in the Army, but surprisingly was not permitted to fly aircraft in the Air Force because he did not have a college degree. However, he was a trained pilot.<br /><br />Ironically in the Air Force, he taught the use of full pressure suits (space suits).<br /><br />Kaplan started flying when he was 13 in the early 1950s. He said in those days, you could rent a plane for $35 and your age didn’t matter. He was designing model aircraft before that. Flying was in his blood. It still is.<br /><br />In his retirement, he spends countless hours in his basement meticulously constructing large model aircraft from as early as the World War I era.<br /><br />In 2002, Kaplan retired from Dow Jones. He made a career as a professional pilot. “I became their chief pilot and general aviation manager,” he said, noting he flew 26 years and was chief pilot for 13 years.<br /><br />Today, he prides himself as being a member of the motorcycle group, the American Legion Riders, and part of the committee to build a veterans’ monument in Lower Makefield Township.<br />In fact, two of his model aircraft will be auctioned to benefit the monument and park at Makefield Highlands Golf Course on Saturday, Nov. 7 from 7 to 10:30 p.m.<br /><br />The aircraft, a Mohawk and a Sky Raider, are both hand-painted by Kaplan in Vietnam color and markings. Other models constructed by Kaplan were donated to museums. The first model he donated was valued at $10,000.<br /><br />Looking back, Kaplan said he enlisted in the Air Force “to avoid the draft.” He was with the Air Force for 2 1/2 years. “My profession was physiological training instructor,” he said. “You teach essentially space suits, ejection seats, parachutes, oxygen equipment, low pressure chambers and hyperbaric chambers.<br /><br />“One of my students was a general in the Army,” Kaplan said. He knew of Kaplan’s flying experience, and that he had all of the credentials and certification prior to the Air Force.<br /><br />The general offered Kaplan a “job” in the Army as a pilot. “One day I was an Airman 2nd [with two stripes] and the next day I was in the Army as a warrant officer,” he said, chuckling. “Specialized officers have only one specific job. In my case, it was Flying/Warrant 2.<br />“I flew helicopters when I was in the Army,” Kaplan said. “I [had told the Air Force that] I was an airplane pilot, but they ignored that. That’s typical military stuff.”<br /><br />He had joined the Air Force “to stay away from what they called the grunt army which was infantry – carrying a rifle.<br /><br />“I agreed in doing whatever they told me to do,” Kaplan said. “All I knew was I wanted to fly...Essentially, I volunteered in the Army under the direction of this general.”<br /><br />Kaplan remembers the Battle of Ira Drang Valley in November 1965. “It was probably one of the first large battles that we encountered the Vietnamese army,” he said. “That was probably the most notable battles that they had in Vietnam. The 1st Air Cavalry was interested in getting into battles. They made a mistake going in prematurely.<br /><br />“The 52nd Aviation Batallian had to rescue the 1st Air Cavalry and in short we got our butts shot off,” he said. “That battle is when I received my order that I could go back to the United States. We were all required to serve 12 months in Vietnam and mine was completed in ‘65.<br /><br />“When I first went into Vietnam, we were doing one combat mission a day,” he noted. “When I completed my tour in Vietnam, we were doing three a day — all kinds of ground fire. The activity picked up substantially.<br /><br />“We did what we were supposed to do — either single ship missions or full-company which was 25 helicopters,” he continued. “We brought troops in. We used armed helicopters...We shot up the ground.”<br /><br />The enemy, the Viet Cong, “kept their heads down...They wouldn’t ‘raise their heads’ to shoot back at you.”<br /><br />From time to time, Kaplan flew as a Medivac pilot. “Just bringing out the wounded and dead Americans was not only very sad, but it made you feel like you were accomplishing something,” he said.<br /><br />Kaplan said he is “absolutely” patriotic. “Part of it is I was in the military and you form relationships,” he noted. “They call it comeraderie with other pilots or GIs. Because of the threat of harm each and every day, it’s a very special relationship. You feel very proud to be one of the group who serves their country.”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-5046088494489428405?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-68591557463582989562009-10-14T13:43:00.001-04:002009-10-14T13:46:38.479-04:00Larry Kerwood<strong><em>Penns Park man trained Afghan soldiers to fight against the Taliban.<br /></em></strong><br /><div></div><div><strong>By R. Kurt Osenlund</strong>, BucksLocalNews.com<br /><br /><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 300px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/Mountain-climb-087-743648.jpg" border="0" /><span style="font-size:78%;">Photo courtesy of Larry Kerwood.</span><br /><br />Larry Kerwood is a fine exemplar of “practice makes perfect.” Or, at the very least, “practice makes effective.” After enlisting in the National Guard in 1982, the Warminster-born, William Tennent High School grad spent roughly 20 years serving in a handful of infantry units and bouncing around to various army bases along the East Coast. During his regular Guard duty (which typically consists of one weekend per month and two weeks per year), Kerwood frequently trained with active duty units at Fort Indian Town Gap in Lebanon, Pa., and engaged in what he calls “Army hand-me-down stuff” like running training modules with limited resources. While climbing the ranks from his initial status as an E1 private, Kerwood participated in his fair share of flood, hurricane, and snow storm relief efforts, but never saw any real military action. That is, until Sept. 11 arrived and changed the world.<br /><br />“For the first 20 years of my military career, it was like practice,” Kerwood, 45, says. “Then, after 2001, I was ready for the big game. My superiors had always tried to instill in me how important my training was, but (Sept. 11) was when I truly realized it had been for a reason and that it was time to put it to use.”<br /><br />In 2002, Kerwood, who'd been busy conducting the training programs designed by his commander, was put on active duty in Philadelphia, assigned to run a family assistance center for soon-to-be-deployed soldiers and their loved ones. For two years, he helped to support troops headed for Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, while also providing their spouses, significant others and children with comfort and counsel. Kerwood says that during his stay, the center offered assistance to families dealing with anything from financial hardships to relationship issues, and also helped soldiers find or reclaim jobs upon returning to the U.S.<br /><br />“Any problem you could think of, really – we were there to help,” Kerwood says.<br /><br />That desire to help would soon become a running theme of Kerwood's military service. In 2004, an opportunity arose for Kerwood to go to Afghanistan. He seized it and volunteered. By that time, he'd become the superior to other troops and enlistees, and his lack of overseas field experience wasn't sitting right with him.<br /><br />“I thought, 'it's my turn to go,'” Kerwood says. “If I'm leading troops, I should have the same experience in the combat zone. I planned on staying (in the service), and I couldn't be a leader without leading from the front.”<br /><br />Kerwood's mission landed him in an Embedded Tactical Training (ETT) team, a small group of soldiers who were charged with training members of the primitive Afghan National Army on how to effectively combat a common enemy: the Taliban. Only in its second year of existence at the time, the ETT program required that the American soldiers live among the Afghanis in remote, dangerous places like the Herat Province and Kandahar, both of which Kerwood inhabited. There was no military base. No sanitary conditions. No runnning water. The only things the Army gave to Kerwood and company were M-16 ammunition and money to purchase food, fuel and other supplies.<br /><br />“The Army told us, 'as far as you're concerned, you're part of the Afghan army now,” Kerwood says.<br /><br />Supporting themselves and living in mud huts, Kerwood and his fellow soldiers – including two interpreters – began teaching the Afghanis hygiene, discipline, marching, weapons usage, you name it. Kerwood says he was mainly the mentor for the local military's Command Sgt. Major, and as he and his men moved from unit to unit, he also worked with the the army's battalion commander, medical officer and supply officer.<br /><br />One of Kerwood's first responsibilities after arriving in Afghanistan was to help break up a tank battle between two warlord groups, who were successfully appeased. He also trained the Afghan soldiers on how to conduct weapons searches, find smuggling routes, raid villages and look for Taliban terrorists. He'd then accompany the soldiers on their missions as an advisor. In addition, Kerwood and his ETT team members presided over weapons collection sites, where “acres” of found and surrendered guns and ammo would be gathered to be destroyed.<br /><br />Kerwood says that by the end of the year he spent in Afghanistan, he saw a huge improvement in the Afghan army.<br /><br />“When we got there, they didn't want to wear their uniforms,” Kerwood says of the Afghan soldiers. “When we left, they were proud to wear them. We kept increasing their abilities to conduct themselves as soldiers within a unit, and then a unit within an army. A lot of them joined to see change because they hated the Taliban. This was their way to change something. We felt as though our mission had been accomplished.”<br /><br />Kerwood's tour ended in late July of 2005. He came home, and not long after, as his 25th year with the military was approaching, he retired. He still follows the progress of the army training in Afghanistan, as other ETT team members have followed in his footsteps. He's able to devote more time to his job as a medical researcher with Bristol Myers-Squibb in Lawrenceville, where he's been employed for the last 18 years. He's able to see more of his wife, Sandra, to whom he's been married for 24 years. The couple has two sons, Andrew and Sam, who are both off at college.<br /><br />Throughout his time in the military, Kerwood was awarded a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Bronze Star (for a rocket attack rescue), Army Commendation with Valor, a Meritorious Service Medal, an Afghan Campaign Medal, a Global War on Terrorism Medal, a Good Conduct Medal and a Humanitarian Service Medal, which was earned for his volunteer involvement with a Hurricane Katrina relief operation in a city just north of New Orleans.<br /><br />Shortly after retiring, Kerwood says he considered returning to active duty, and then, he reconsidered.<br /><br />“I thought about re-enlisting,” he says, “but I also thought, 'I like being home.'”</div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-6859155746358298956?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-62378084484350597232009-10-07T14:13:00.002-04:002009-10-07T14:22:43.933-04:00David Wood<strong>Army sergeant returns home after three tours of duty in Iraq.</strong><br /><br /><strong>By Matthew Fleishman</strong>, <em>Yardley News Editor</em><br /><em></em><br /><br />After finishing up his third tour of duty in Iraq, Sgt. First Class David Wood was welcomed home with a gathering of family and friends at the VFW Post 6393 on Sunday, Oct. 4.<br /><br />For the previous 13 months, Wood was part of an 11-man Military Transition Team (MTT), which had the job of training the new Iraqi military force on how to protect their country from insurgents.<br /><br />While Wood has seen action all around the world, and made 93 paratrooper jumps, he said that “dumb luck” was the reason he was able to make it home to his family this time.<br /><br />“There was a 10,000-pound truck full of explosives that got into the camp that morning,” said Wood. “It came through the gate and wouldn’t stop. Rounds were fired at the truck to stop the driver, but the explosives were on a timer and exploded.”<br /><br />Wood said that five Americans and nine Iraqi trainees were killed, and three buildings were completely leveled in the explosion.<br /><br />“Our 11-man team was supposed to be there that morning,” said Wood. “It was just dumb luck we weren’t there because we had to do maintenance on our vehicles that morning so we decided to do the training in the afternoon. It blew up right where we would have been.”<br /><br />Wood’s first tour of duty in Iraq occurred during the first Gulf War, in which he was assigned to work convoy security, helping protect convoys heading from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait.<br /><br />In the second tour of duty, Wood made a jump into Iraq on March 26, 2003, less than a week into the invasion.<br /><br />“I had just completed jumpmaster school, and we got the alert,” said Wood. “We didn’t know if we were going to make the jump because of a storm, but there was a two-hour window and we made the jump into Northern Iraq to seize an air field. We were supposed to be there for 30 days, but it wound up being 14 months.”<br /><br />In between his first and second tours of duty in Iraq, Wood made a jump into Kosovo to seize and air field near the Serbian border.<br /><br />“We jumped onto a snow-covered mountain, did our job, and then jumped on a helicopter and were sent out on patrol on a different mountain,” said Wood.<br /><br />In his most recent tour, Wood and the rest of his MTT unit were supposed to be stationed in Baghdad, but because of the improvement in safety in that area, and the increase in violence in Mosul, the unit was sent to the area with the greatest need. Wood’s unit taught the Iraqis how to properly clear buildings, search vehicles and plan out operations.<br /><br />“When we got there, there would be flare-ups four or five times each day,” said Wood. “It’s now once or twice per day. The police are doing a much better job because of our training.”<br />Now that Wood is home, his family could not be happier.<br /><br />“It’s awesome!” said Colleen, David’s wife. “We’re truly blessed to have him back once again. He returned to us mentally and physically sound, just as when he left.<br /><br />“It’s been very hard for us,” continued Colleen. “The one part that has always made it easier is that no matter what he was doing or where he was, he has never missed a birthday or holiday because he always sent us a card to tell us that he was okay.”<br /><br />After 17 years of marriage, David and Colleen, along with their three children, are going to be stationed near their families, at Fort Dix, N.J. The family has lived in Italy and Germany, in addition to having been stationed around the United States.<br /><br />“This is the first time they have been close to home,” said Bob Baxter, David’s father-in-law. “Having them at Fort Dix is wonderful.”<br /><br />Now that Wood is home, he is hoping he won’t have to go on another tour of duty overseas, but due to a potential promotion, he might have to make one last tour. In the meantime, he said that he is enjoying being with his wife and their three sons.<br /><br />“It’s incredible!” said Wood. “After being away from them for almost 19 months, it’s great to be back. It’s also great being stationed up north. I was able to have a long visit with my dad for the first time in nine years.”<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-6237808448435059723?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-39669059208641915002009-09-23T13:10:00.002-04:002009-09-23T13:15:29.474-04:00Joseph Cuttone<strong><em>Bristolian finds new calling after Naval discharge.</em></strong><br /><br /><strong>By Tim Chicirda</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><em></em><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 297px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/cuttone_shop-796694.JPG" border="0" /><br />One of the most impressive things about many of the veterans profiled on this page over the past years is the fact that many of them did not let their military career define them.<br /><br />These noble defenders of freedom eventually all come back to being a regular "civilian" sooner or later. And, making that transition from the battlefields to the business and/or working world should truly be applauded.<br /><br />Soldiers need to adapt back to normal life and no one has done so with more success than Bristol Borough's own, Joseph Cuttone.<br /><br />Cuttone's military career was very short. In fact, in the early part of the second world war, Cuttone was a turret lathe operator, which is a form of metalworking lathe that is used for repetitive production of duplicate parts, at the Hunter Manufacturing Company.<br />There, he also performed the duties of staff photographer for their newsletter, the “Hunter Projectile.”<br /><br />Joseph was drafted in 1943 to the Navy Seabees, the Construction Battalions of the US Navy, and was sent to Williamsburg, VA.<br /><br />This is where his military career outlook became very bleak. As Cuttone entered the service, he no sooner entered then he had to leave.<br /><br />Joseph received a medical discharge from the Navy because his “eyes were not good enough” and it prohibited him from performing some of the required duties.<br /><br />While the armed forces were sad to see him go, the Bristol Borough community were thrilled to welcome a future local staple into town.<br /><br />The 92-year-old Cuttone remembers his early days in Bristol, a town that barely resembles the modern version that we are all accustomed to seeing today.<br /><br />“When I was a kid, Bristol was not what it is today, there was lots of open land," said Cuttone. "I was raised on goat’s milk and most of the food that we ate was raised in our yard.”<br />Joe’s dad, Andrew, was a farmer and his mother, Francesca, worked at the [Keystone] Steel’s Woolen Mill. Cuttone helped his parents, by kneading the bread and collected eggs from the hen house and picking the best good green grass for the goats so the milk was richer.<br /><br />“When my dad said something, I listened.”<br /><br />Right around the time Cuttone's life was uncertain with his military, something great happened: Joe met his wife, Catherine R. Vitale, at a picnic in New Jersey. Their first date was sharing a sundae in an ice cream parlor in Camden.<br /><br />Catherine died just last year, only a month before her and Joseph's 66th wedding anniversary.<br />So after marriage, Cuttone attempted to enter the political world. Joseph ran for public office as Fourth Ward councilman, five times. He also for the School board and as tax collector. His cousin, Anna Bono Larrisey, is the current Borough tax collector. Anna’s grandfather and Joe’s grandmother were brother and sister.<br /><br />But, Cuttone's true calling was yet to come.<br /><br />Joseph now runs an old-fashioned barbershop.<br /><br />Barber Cuttone learned his trade in Brownie’s Barber School in Trenton. He cut Senator Joseph Ridgway Grundy’s hair there, in fact. This has now been his career for over three quarters of a century.<br /><br />Joseph has been barbering for almost 75 years and continues to do what he loves.<br /><br />So much for that eye problem, as Cuttone has continually performed a great service to many generations of Bristolians.<br /><br />Cuttone also gave much of his time back to the community in other ways.<br /><br />"Joe was on the committee of the Columbus 500 organization and we did several projects together," said local sculptor Joe Pavone. "We produced an Italian Immigration documentary film and Joe played a very important part, very verbal and such a keen memory. He is really a Bristol Borough character."<br /><br />***<br /><em>Cate Murway contributed to this piece.</em><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-3966905920864191500?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6735406370588474567.post-15577445338389250342009-09-16T13:46:00.002-04:002009-09-16T13:52:38.788-04:00Cora Wehmeyer Henderson<strong><em>Newtown woman was a pioneer during World War II.</em></strong><br /><br /><strong>By Petra Chesner Schlatter</strong>, <em>BucksLocalNews.com</em><br /><br /><em></em><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 400px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 299px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://www3.allaroundphilly.com/blogs/intercounty/veterans/uploaded_images/cora-henderson-726930.jpg" border="0" /><br />U.S. Air Force Senior Master Sergeant Cora Wehmeyer Henderson of Newtown was one of the first women to enlist in the Armed Forces at the time of World War II.<br /><br />At age 90, Cora thrives on being independent. As she talks about her time in the service, Cora does so with great detail. She sits at her kitchen table, showing vintage photographs of her as a WAC (Women’s Army Corps.) Before the WACs, she explained, there was the WAAC (The Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps).<br /><br />“I’m probably one of the only ones who are still alive,” Cora joked.<br /><br />What strikes you about Cora is her keen memory. People find her to be witty and intelligent. She has been described as “a remarkable woman.”<br /><br />Cora made a career of the Air Force, serving more than two decades and retiring as a Senior Master Sergeant.<br /><br />In her collection of memorabilia, Cora has a copy of a 1951 Parade magazine cover. She is one of four in uniform, along with three other women, each from a different branch of the service.<br />“I was with the first group of enlisted women,” Cora said. She was working at the former Budd Company’s Wheel and Locomotive facility in Philadelphia. Budd later became a defense plant.<br />“We were painting Bazooka guns. You wore a mask and overalls. I worked the swing shift – 3 to 11,” she said.<br /><br />Cora had read in the Philadelphia Bulletin that an organization for women in the military was forming. “The first day you could apply, I was down there,” she recalled. “People thought I was crazy. My pay was $21 a month in the service.”<br /><br />She went in as a private first class. The women officers, who had gone to college, went to training first. “They had to train us,” she explained. “We were sworn in September, 1942.” Basic training, which took four weeks, was in October 1942 in Des Moines, Iowa.<br /><br />During her first assignment, she lived in a hotel in Miami, Fla. “We were with an aircraft warning service in November 1942.<br /><br />“In March 1943, we went to Orlando to the Army Air Corps Base where the work had to do with training fighter pilots,” she remembered.<br /><br />Next, it was overseas to England with the 8th Air Force until V.E. (Victory in Europe) Day in May 1945.<br /><br />“I was in communications,” she noted. In a picture, she is sitting with three other “operators.” These women were connecting teletype machines with the bomber bases in England.<br />She worked in an underground facility right outside of London. She described it like a switchboard. There was another one for the Prime Minister. “We were in the one at High Wycombe,” she said. Her shift started at 11 p.m. and ended at 7 a.m. “We kept rotating,” she noted.<br /><br />Cora would later become the base chief operator at the telephone exchange at Eglin Base in Florida because she had some practice on a switchboard.<br /><br />One of her favorite pictures is of her receiving a commendation medal. “They gave me a review,” she said. “I was escorted up to the presenting officer.” A general pinned the medal on her.<br />“After we won the war, I was shipped to Germany. The only way we could stay in was civil service. Six months later, they wanted us back in,” she maintained.<br /><br />“They needed help with the demobilization [in 1945] – that’s why I went back in,” she said. She worked in administrative training and recruiting.<br /><br />For four years, Cora worked at the Pentagon as an administrative assistant to the director of the Women in the Air Force (WAF).<br /><br />She continued climbing the ladder. One of the rungs was working in Baltimore at the Third Army recruiting headquarters. She served there from 1948 until 1950 and later transferred to Philadelphia as a recruiter, where she was stationed until 1952.<br /><br />Next stop was Weisbaden, Germany and in 1954 she went to San Antonio, Texas. Then, it was time to head back to Pennsylvania where she could live in Hatboro to be with her mother.<br />The next assignment took her to McGuire Air Force Base. Going there was a major turning point in her life, Cora noted. “I met John,” she said of her late husband. They were married in the chapel on the base. Three hundred people attended.<br /><br />Cora is a charter member of the Women in Military Service for America Memorial, which is located at the entrance to Arlington National Cemetery.<br /><br />When the memorial was dedicated in 1998, people came from all over the country. “It was quite an event and I was lucky to be there,” Cora said.<br /><br />Because of the memorial, people will be able to see her military history on the computer for years to come.<br /><br />She likes that idea.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/6735406370588474567-1557744533838925034?l=www3.allaroundphilly.com%2Fblogs%2Fintercounty%2Fveterans%2Fblog.html' alt='' /></div>BucksLocalNewshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16410333009742583656noreply@blogger.com0