thedrifter
07-23-07, 06:35 AM
Veteran recalls memories of service, movie, Ted Williams
By RON SELAK JR. Tribune Chronicle
NILES — The Maltese Falcon was screening at the Auburn Theater when the manager stopped Humphrey Bogart as the famed Sam Spade from unraveling the mystery of the priceless life-size falcon statue.
A young usher at the movie house thought since his boss had formerly worked the Vaudeville stage, he was planning a comedy act.
Boy, was Ted Comeau wrong.
‘‘He got up, stopped the movie and said, ‘the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor,’’’ Comeau of Niles said.
The next thing Comeau knew, he was at the local Marine recruiter’s office with another theater employee, trying to sign up.
But there was a snag: he was only a 16-year-old high school junior, an issue the recruiter tried working around.
‘‘The recruiter wanted to change my birthday, but my parents weren’t too keen on the idea,’’ Comeau said.
Six months and a handful of days later, Comeau was 17 years old. He was sworn in the corps on his birthday and whisked away to Paris Island, which was the beginning of a 23-year military career that had the Niles man in all corners of the world, mostly in the air as a cargo/transport plane crew member.
Inside his office at Comeau’s Tripodi Circle home are memories on the wall, in scrap books filled with photos of his old service buddies and planes he flew on, even on a computer slide show of his military service in World War II, the Korean Conflict and after his retirement of his activity in the Niles VFW Post 2074.
‘‘We flew anything anywhere, cargo, ammo, bodies,’’ Comeau said. ‘‘We flew seven days a week, 24 hours a day.’’
And he never was seriously hurt, but life in the air provided a couple bumps and bruises.
Two planes he was on crashed. One, the landing gear was up. The other cartwheeled down the runway, he said.
‘‘We blew a tire on landing and got all shook up,’’ he said smiling, with the hint of his old Maine accent coming back.
And Comeau can thank the Marines for his movie debut and meeting and getting to know one of baseball’s greatest players.
It was 1951 and a Comeau said he was part of the crew transporting a colonel, who was advising on the movie set of the ‘‘Flying Leathernecks,’’ starring John Wayne. He was asked, and accepted, to be an extra in the movie.
‘‘Of the eight or nine scenes, six or seven were cut from the movie,’’ Comeau said.
And when not in the air, Comeau spent four years in a Marine recruiting office in Boston, helping young men become Marines and getting to know Boston Red Sox great, Ted Williams and former Minnesota Twins manager Sam Mele (1961-1967).
In 1963, Comeau was part of the crew that helped Hurricane Flora victims in Haiti, airlifting out people and dropping in almost 500,000 pounds of clothing, food and medical supplies.
A year later, while on a cruise in the Mediterranean, he was commanding a helicopter squadron when two of his kids were killed.
A service for the two fallen soldiers was held on a beach in Greece and the U.S. flag used in the ceremony, he said, was handed over to him because he was the gunnery sergeant.
He kept the flag, taking it everywhere he lived. This year, it was destroyed in a proper flag-burning ceremony at the Niles VFW, because it had began to deteriorate.
‘‘For 43 years, I held onto that thing,’’ he said.
Ellie
By RON SELAK JR. Tribune Chronicle
NILES — The Maltese Falcon was screening at the Auburn Theater when the manager stopped Humphrey Bogart as the famed Sam Spade from unraveling the mystery of the priceless life-size falcon statue.
A young usher at the movie house thought since his boss had formerly worked the Vaudeville stage, he was planning a comedy act.
Boy, was Ted Comeau wrong.
‘‘He got up, stopped the movie and said, ‘the Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor,’’’ Comeau of Niles said.
The next thing Comeau knew, he was at the local Marine recruiter’s office with another theater employee, trying to sign up.
But there was a snag: he was only a 16-year-old high school junior, an issue the recruiter tried working around.
‘‘The recruiter wanted to change my birthday, but my parents weren’t too keen on the idea,’’ Comeau said.
Six months and a handful of days later, Comeau was 17 years old. He was sworn in the corps on his birthday and whisked away to Paris Island, which was the beginning of a 23-year military career that had the Niles man in all corners of the world, mostly in the air as a cargo/transport plane crew member.
Inside his office at Comeau’s Tripodi Circle home are memories on the wall, in scrap books filled with photos of his old service buddies and planes he flew on, even on a computer slide show of his military service in World War II, the Korean Conflict and after his retirement of his activity in the Niles VFW Post 2074.
‘‘We flew anything anywhere, cargo, ammo, bodies,’’ Comeau said. ‘‘We flew seven days a week, 24 hours a day.’’
And he never was seriously hurt, but life in the air provided a couple bumps and bruises.
Two planes he was on crashed. One, the landing gear was up. The other cartwheeled down the runway, he said.
‘‘We blew a tire on landing and got all shook up,’’ he said smiling, with the hint of his old Maine accent coming back.
And Comeau can thank the Marines for his movie debut and meeting and getting to know one of baseball’s greatest players.
It was 1951 and a Comeau said he was part of the crew transporting a colonel, who was advising on the movie set of the ‘‘Flying Leathernecks,’’ starring John Wayne. He was asked, and accepted, to be an extra in the movie.
‘‘Of the eight or nine scenes, six or seven were cut from the movie,’’ Comeau said.
And when not in the air, Comeau spent four years in a Marine recruiting office in Boston, helping young men become Marines and getting to know Boston Red Sox great, Ted Williams and former Minnesota Twins manager Sam Mele (1961-1967).
In 1963, Comeau was part of the crew that helped Hurricane Flora victims in Haiti, airlifting out people and dropping in almost 500,000 pounds of clothing, food and medical supplies.
A year later, while on a cruise in the Mediterranean, he was commanding a helicopter squadron when two of his kids were killed.
A service for the two fallen soldiers was held on a beach in Greece and the U.S. flag used in the ceremony, he said, was handed over to him because he was the gunnery sergeant.
He kept the flag, taking it everywhere he lived. This year, it was destroyed in a proper flag-burning ceremony at the Niles VFW, because it had began to deteriorate.
‘‘For 43 years, I held onto that thing,’’ he said.
Ellie