Local World War II vet did what he was told

[thedrifter]

Local World War II vet did what he was told
By Chris Buckley
VALLEY INDEPENDENT
Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Wilbur Caldwell was still a senior at Monongahela High School in March 1943 when he tried to join the U.S. Marines.

"They said "you go home and get your diploma. Then come back,'" Caldwell recalled.

By June, Caldwell was a high school graduate, and a Marine recruit.

He was one of five Monongahela High School Class of 1943 graduates to enlist in the Marines.

Caldwell, John Neill, Lynn Barber, Lou Frye and Eddie Rach all joined together and went through boot camp at Paris Island, S.C.

They would then be split up into different units and saw little of each other until they came home after the war.

Caldwell received additional training at Pearl Harbor.

The Hawaiian military base showed little signs of the Japanese surprise attack that occurred more than two years earlier and precipitated the U.S. entrance into World War II.

That attack motivated young men like Caldwell to join the service as soon as they were of age.

"We were just all mad and wanted to get even," Caldwell said.

Caldwell served in the Marine Air Corps. Specifically, he was in charge of supplying ordinance, such as machine gun rounds, for a single-seat FU4- Corsair.

He served in various islands throughout the South Pacific.

The most horrific action took place during the battle for the island of Okinawa in April 1945. He was sent in on the third day of the battle.

"You realize you're in a war when you're in a place and you see them dropping bombs and they're coming down, down, down," Caldwell said. "And when it hits, it knocks your helmet off."

Caldwell recalled Japanese fighters overhead during the battle.

"And when the shells came down at you, it was like rain falling from the sky," Caldwell said.

It was at Okinawa that Caldwell met up with Neill as well as Monongahela native Don Hollowood.

After Okinawa, Caldwell was shipped home.

He had seen enough action to earn sufficient points for discharge.

By that time, he had earned three Bronze Stars and countless other medals and ribbons.

He boarded the USS Shangri-La for home. By December 1945, he was discharged.

On Feb. 15, 1946, he married his high school sweetheart, the former Elizabeth Ann Kelley, a 1942 graduate of Monongahela High School.

The couple today has one son, Wilbur Caldwell Jr. and two daughters, Connie Caldwell and Susanne Schock.

He worked at the former U.S. Steel Donora Works for 12 years. After that plant closed, he worked for 29 years at the former Combustion Engineering plant in Forward Township, retiring in 1984.

He now resides in Carroll Township. He is a member of the Mon Valley Leathernecks.

Although he has always wanted to attend a service reunion, he has never got the opportunity.

He humbly looks back at his service.

"When you're in the service, you just do what you're told to do," Caldwell said. "You're just glad to do it."

Chris Buckley can be reached at cbuckley@tribweb.com or (724) 684-2642.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

03/05/2006
Bolus, veterans on way to Iwo Jima burial site
BY BILL WAGNER STAFF WRITER

After a year of preparation and research, a Scranton man is taking the next step in his quest to locate the grave site of the man who filmed arguably the most famous war footage in American history.

On Friday, Bob Bolus departed Los Angeles International Airport with dozens of Marine veterans on a nine-day trip as part of their annual pilgrimage to Iwo Jima — the site of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, which claimed 6,000 Marines and 21,000 Japanese soldiers.

Marine Corps Sgt. Bill Genaust, the photographer whose motion-picture film of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi thrilled movie audiences across the nation in 1945, was killed a little more than a week after he filmed the dramatic event when Japanese troops fired on him and another soldier as they ventured into a cave where the troops were holed up.

Fearing the cave was booby-trapped, Marines demolished the cave with explosives, and Sgt. Genaust’s remains were never recovered.

A search effort in 1948 was unable to locate the cave.

However, Mr. Bolus said a modern Global Positioning System should be able to do that with the help of a military map he obtained from Scranton veterans of the battle.

He said there are four major caves, but, with his GPS device, he has narrowed the search site to one.

“It’s on the west slope of Hill 362,” Mr. Bolus said, verifying that the cave where Sgt. Genaust apparently died, 362A, is in that area.

The island is mainly deserted now but remains Japanese territory. The Japanese government permits U.S. veterans on Iwo Jima for one-day, once-a-year visits without visas.

Mr. Bolus, who has not received a visa to visit the island on his own, is limited to the one-day visit with the veterans. But he is hopeful of later being able to bring in heavy equipment if this week’s visit provides any evidence of Sgt. Genaust’s resting place.

“He’s somebody who needs to come home,” Mr. Bolus said.

The veterans were to have arrived in Guam on Saturday. They will be touring battlefields there Monday and Tuesday before flying to Iwo Jima on Wednesday.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

WWII Marine hopes Iwo Jima visit will wash away memories


By Fred Zimmerman, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, March 11, 2006

IWO JIMA, Japan — Sixty-one years have passed since George Nowacki last set foot on this island — years filled with daily memories of what happened here. He thought maybe, just maybe, if he visited, those memories would fade.

“It comes to your mind every day, all the [crap] we went through … maybe it will go away now,” Nowacki said as his eyes filled with tears. His wrinkled hands quickly wiped the tears away.

Nowacki first landed on the island on Red Beach 2 with his fellow Marines of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 27th Marines. He was a young private first class serving as a Browning automatic rifle gunner. When they hit the black-sand beach with the first wave, he was surprised.

“We didn’t get too much resistance,” he said. “The Japanese were waiting for more people to land. When the second and third waves hit, they were tore up … the Japanese were zeroed in on the beach.”

The unit punched straight across the island in about four hours, Nowacki said. That’s where they hit their first heavy resistance.

“They killed a couple of Marines so we holed up and stayed on the other side for about a day,” he said.

In a short time, Nowacki said, Japanese snipers were learning to aim at two-man machine gun teams.

“If you had a machine gun, you were dead,” he said. “So after a couple days, they were starting to hang back.”

While he was able to stay safe for 21 days, being too close to a machine gun team may have cost Nowacki. He said a team was setting up about 10 yards to his right when the assistant gunner was hit in the arm. Then, he said, the Marine manning the machine gun was hit.

Nowacki said he looked forward and saw Japanese troops waving a white flag in a cave.

“I think they were just trying to get my attention,” he said.

Then it happened: Nowacki was shot in the chest.

“It just felt like someone reached out and touched me, but when I pulled my hand away, it was covered with blood,” he said.

The Marines were told to get out of the area, and Nowacki was able to get up and run about 40 feet.

“I fell down and when I woke up they were already bandaging me up,” he said.

The doctor told Nowacki he didn’t know how the bullet missed his heart but it did. The bullet exited his back, breaking two ribs along the way.

Nowacki was transported to a hospital ship after about a week in a field hospital, then stayed in hospitals in Guam, Hawaii and San Diego.

Sixty-one years later, Nowacki said the island looks nothing like he remembered.

“This is so different,” he said, sitting on a stool on a hill overlooking one of the invasion beaches. “When we landed here there was nothing here — everything was either blown up or burned. Now it’s full of trees.”

Nowacki said he can’t be sure his daily battle memories will ease but, “It’s nice to be back in a way. It’s nice to see it in a different, peaceful state.”