The African Americans who served on the USS Mason destroyer had already endured 90 mph winds and 60 foot waves that split the Mason's deck as they shepherded convoys to safety in the Atlantic when their beloved Captain Blackford was replaced with a racist captain who claimed the African Americans sailors he led smelled, couldn’t swim, and were hard to educate . 1st Lieutenant Vernon Baker, also an African American, destroyed six machine gun nests, two observer posts and four dugouts at Castle Aghinolfi in Italy only to see Captain Runyon, his white commanding officer who abandoned the firefight, receive the Silver Star. An illegal immigrant to the US, Jose Lopez, a Mexican American, saved his company at the Battle of the Bulge by single handedly taking out over 100 German soldiers with his machine gun fire. Iva Ikuko Toguri, a Japanese-American who had the misfortunate of being in Japan when the war broke out, found herself nicknamed Tokyo Rose and accused of being a traitor even as she tried her best to help the American POWs and fighting force anyway she could behind enemy lines. Ira Hayes, a Native American, raised the American flag at Iwo Jima, but afterwards could not dispel the terrible combat memories that haunted him when he got home. Hattie Brantley joined the Army Nurse Corps to see the world, but was instead imprisoned under the harshest conditions in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines for almost the duration of the war. Their stories and more in this 10th podcast of Always Remember – WW 2 Through Veterans Eyes.

James Graham

Lorenzo Dufau (left) and James Graham (right)

Medal of Honor recipient Vernon Baker

Vernon Baker later years

Medal of Honor recipient Jose M. Lopez

Iva Ikuko Toguri

Ira Hayes

Hattie Brantley in the Philippines

Hattie Brantley's tombstone

As the Allies embarked on their island hopping campaign growing ever closer to the Japanese mainland, they soon discovered that their enemy in the Pacific was adept at presenting new challenges on every island. Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Leyte would all forever be ingrained in WW 2 veterans memories - and in their nightmares. Richard V. Morgan remembers Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman,, who stood atop a heavily garrisoned Japanese bunker directing demolition charges despite his being mortally wounded. Bonnyman would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously. For Dennis Olson, his poems helped him cope with the horrible losses he endured at Tarawa. Later, at Peleliu, 19 year old Arthur Jackson volunteered to secure a position in the shallow enemy trench system wiping out 12 pillboxes and killing 50 Japanese soldiers. He would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions from President Truman himself one year later. In the Philippines, a young L.W. Clark and his buddies lose their appetite as 100 Filipino villagers stumble across the rice fields towards their dispensary seeking medical help after having been bombed by the 11th Airborne, who believed Japanese soldiers were still hiding in the village. Amongst them, a soldier carried a still baby whose guts were hanging over the side of his body, his stomach ripped open by a mortar shell.

Richard V. Morgan

Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman, Jr.

Dennis H. Olson

Arthur J. Jackson

L.W. Clark and his wife Ella

Bloody Omaha Beach bore the brunt of D-Day’s savage fighting with more casualties than all of the other D-Day beaches combined. Aware that the men he led in one of the first waves to land on Bloody Omaha Beach had no prior combat experience, Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers single handedly took out several German machine gun nests even while he was in their crossfire. Ehlers was at first elated when he was told he would be receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions, but he was soon brought to his knees upon learning the terrible loss he suffered on Omaha beach. Trying to sleep after having witnessed so much death and suffering on Omaha beach, Charles Toole’s buddy told him that 24 hours from now there’d be a lot more dead in their own company. Toole’s buddy’s words proved eerily prophetic. Thanks to two Texas Rangers, there were far less dead on Omaha beach than there would have been otherwise. Leonard Lomell and his buddy Jack Kuhn climbed the 100 foot cliffs of Pointe du Hoc even as Nazi soldiers fired down upon them, threw grenades, and cut their ropes. Lomell and Kuhn knew the lives of countless Americans depended on them finding the huge 155 mm coastal howitzers the Nazis had hidden above, capable of firing five miles or more out to sea, far enough to hit the troop ships landing for the invasion. Nothing in their 18 years of life could have prepared Frank Caruk and Mark Wilson for all the suffering they witnessed landing in the initial waves at Omaha beach.

Walter Ehlers

Walter and Roland Ehlers

Charles Toole and the podcast host John Ulferts

Frank Caruk and his wife Janet

Leonard Lomell

From landing on Utah beach amidst floating bodies in life preservers to a combat glider landing aboard one of the "flying coffins" at Operation Market Garden. Robert Bowen saw a lot of action in World War II before he was badly injured and taken prisoner of war at the Battle of the Bulge. As a POW a badly injured Bowen was nearly strangled by an enraged German doctor as Bowen lay on his operating table. Back home, Bowen's young wife Christine never gave up hope that her husband was still alive, despite being told that he had been killed in action.

Robert and Christine Bowen

Robert Bowen in WW 2

Robert Bowen's painting of a Great Blue Heron

Bowen's painting of Nags Head, North Carolina

While Winston Churchill believed an Allied invasion of Italy would find it the soft underbelly of the Axis, most GIs agreed with General Mark Clark's description of it as "One Tough Gut" as they faced ferocious fighting at Salerno and along the Gustav Line at Mt. Sammucro, Monte Cassino and Anzio. Episode 6 begins with Helen Callentine, a US Army Nurse whose hospital ship was bombed before she ever made it to Salerno; Russell Darkes who ordered his pinned down platoon at Mt. Sammucro to fix their bayonets before charging; Howard Fay who recalled the American dead that covered Monte Cassino's mountain slopes; Edgar Kuhlow and Leo Lawrence remembering the terror of Anzo Annie's 560 lb. shells that could fire for miles; Gunsmoke's James Arness, better known as Matt Dillon, who received a million dollar wound at Anzio days after the initial landing; B-25 pilot Jay DeBoer, show down over Italy, most of his crew executed by the SS, escaped capture by masquerading as an Italian soldier aboard a German troop train, and, finally, the liberation of Rome.

Helen Callentine

Russell Darkes

Howard K. Fay

Leo Lawrence

James Arness

Jay DeBoer

Arnold "Dutch" Nagel volunteered to be a paratrooper in WW 2 because of the extra $50 per month jump pay paratroopers received and the distinctive uniforms they wore. By war's end, he had participated in 4 combat jumps - Sicily, Maiori, Italy, Operation Market Garden in Holland, and on D-Day at Sainte Mere Eglise, France - and had fought in the invasion of Sicily, the liberation of Naples, Italy, D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge. Nagel was one of only three men from Co. C, 1st Squad, 1st Platoon of the 505th 82nd Airborne Division to survive the war. 45 years later he became perhaps the war's last casualty when he made a commemorative jump to mark the opening of the Airborne and Special Operations Museum back where his service began at the home of the 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

In August 1942 the US launched its first major amphibious landing of WW 2 in the Solomon Islands. The battle became a bitter war of attrition as both sides fought feverishly for months on land, sea and air for the strategically important islands. Jefferson DeBlanc became a fighter ace in just one day as he shot down six Japanese fighters before DeBlanc himself was shot down. With his back, arms, and legs wounded from shrapnel, DeBlanc still managed to swim six hours before he came ashore at Kolombangara, only to be captured by a tribe of headhunters. From his vantage point atop the control tower at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, Carl "Bud" DeVere watched daily dogfights as Joe Foss and Foss's Flying Circus shot down 72 Japanese aircraft during three months of bloody combat.

Jefferson DeBlanc

Map of Jefferson DeBlanc's fateful dogfight with the Japanese Zeros

Carl "Bud" DeVere

In the aftermath of the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and the declaration of war against Germany and Japan, millions of Americans didn't wait till their draft numbers were called upon. They immediately enlisted, including nearly 200,000 underage Americans. In the rigorous basic training that followed, young Americans learned that war was for keeps as they learned the fighting skills that would keep them alive in combat. As Colonel Sin, Commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, told his recruits, "Y'all ain't going over there to die for your country. You're going over there to make that other son of a bitch die for his!"

Photo below is of Milburn Henke, credited as the first US soldier to set foot on European soil in WW 2.

Samuel Erlick with his medals