thedrifter
09-24-07, 07:39 AM
'The War' was all too real for these five Americans
By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY
World War II indelibly shaped the lives of millions of Americans, as Ken Burnsdocuments in PBS' The War (Part 2 tonight, 8 ET/PT, times may vary). USA TODAY spoke with five members of the "greatest generation" whose stories of war, military life and imprisonment are vividly told in Burns' film.
Quentin Aanenson
Aanenson's first day of work, so to speak, came over France on D-Day, where he flew ground support for the Allied invasion. The P-47 Thunderbolt fighter pilot would fly more than 50 missions by war's end, many low-level strafing runs, narrowly surviving two crashes, German air force rivals, sour weather and lousy luck.
On one mission, his plane caught flak, igniting a fire in the cockpit. Flak that lodged in the canopy prevented him from bailing out. Going into a steep dive snuffed the fire. Aanenson was able to make it back to base, where he crash-landed, was knocked unconscious and dislocated a shoulder. Others from Aanenson's 366th Fighter Group weren't as lucky: 85 died by war's end, including some of his closest friends.
"After being in combat a few weeks, I had come to peace with the fact that I wasn't coming home, but we had to make it count for something," says Aanenson, 86.
The Luverne, Minn., farm boy kept his sanity largely by thinking about Jackie Greer, the girl back home he'd soon marry. But in letters home, he kept the horrors of war and his growing despondency to himself.
"The killing we did and what we saw haunted us," Aanenson says. Even today.
John Gray
As a black teenager growing up in Alabama, Gray knew firsthand all too well about discrimination. Little did he know that would continue while he was in the Marines or that his wartime service would matter little when he returned home.
Drafted in 1943 while he was working in Mobile as a carpenter's helper, Gray eventually became part of an all-black unit trained for combat. The 51st Defense Battalion became so adept with artillery and anti-aircraft weapons that "we could shoot the sting off a bee," he says.
Sent to the South Pacific for 19 months, his unit never saw serious battle, Gray says, as it served reserve and subordinate roles. "People wouldn't let us die for our country," says Gray, 82.
After returning home, hatred against blacks continued, and Gray endured those same prejudices. "I was wearing a Marine uniform, but at that time, you still had to ride in the front of trains and the back of buses. It was humiliating," he says. A police officer even stopped him one evening for riding a bicycle without a light.
Gray eventually became an assistant school principal in the early 1970s. "We said we would fight segregation when we came back home to make this country our country," he says. "It was tough."
Sascha Weinzheimer
Talk about being stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. Weinzheimer was 8 and living with her parents, 3-month-old brother and 3-year-old sister on the family's sugar cane plantation on the island of Luzon in 1941. Despite the threat of war, they remained in the Philippines, encouraged by her grandfather, who was living in the USA, that they wouldn't be harmed.
After the Japanese takeover of the islands, the Weinzheimers would be imprisoned for the next four years, among 3,500, mostly Americans, who were confined within the walled Santo Thomas camp on Manila.
Weinzheimer lived in constant hunger; prolonged malnutrition hindered her recovery from polio. "People were dying from hunger. We had one ladle of a kind of porridge in the morning and one in the afternoon."
Family members would distract themselves, taking turns talking about what they'd like to eat. "Roasted lamb chops, baked potatoes, ice cream and cake — we talked about food every night," she says. "For some reason, it seemed to satisfy the hunger pains."
Fear permeated life. "The worst thing was not knowing what was going to happen to us from one moment to the next. We lived on rumors," says Weinzheimer, 74. "We were convinced they were going to massacre all the civilians."
By February 1945, the 12-year-old was liberated by American forces. She recalls Gen. Douglas MacArthur arriving in a staff car for a brief visit. Shortly after he departed, the Japanese shelled the camp, killing about 250 GIs and internees. By the time the family returned to the USA, her grandfather had died. "Everyone who knew him said he died of a broken heart, knowing he had made the mistake of telling us to stay in the Philippines."
Bill Lansford
Lansford was a member of Carlson's Raiders, an elite Marine combat unit that used guerrilla tactics to harass the Japanese after American forces invaded Guadalcanal.
It was Lansford's first battle experience. "It was hairy being behind enemy lines, fighting against forces five times our size," says Lansford, 85. "When we came out of it 30 days later, the average guy had lost 15 pounds. Physically, that was the worst."
The raiders killed nearly 500 Japanese while losing 16 of their own.
Lansford, a Mexican-American who enlisted in 1940, would later fight on other enemy-held islands. His memories are most vivid of Iwo Jima. "The morning of the landing was probably the worst experience of my life," says Lansford, who became a screenwriter and novelist. "The intensity of the shelling made you nuts."
Two weeks into the fight, Lansford was wounded in the back and both hands. "One of my hands was the size of a football. But we were the walking wounded. You got patched up and went back out there." Lansford's unit lost so many men, it was taken off the front line. Iwo Jima would be their last fight.
Ray Leopold
Leopold considered himself a pacifist and nearly too old to fight when he went into the Army at age 28 in 1943. A good shot from his stint on his Waterbury, Conn., high school rifle team, he was a natural for frontline duty.
"The truth is, a bullet never left my rifle," he says. While serving guard duty one night, he got up to stretch and was shot by a German sniper. With his unit's medic dead, Leopold managed to pull the bullet from his leg and bandaged it on his own.
Impressed, superiors persuaded him to turn in his rifle and become a combat medic. Later in the war, when he was surrounded during the Battle of the Bulge, Leopold raided a German supply truck for medical supplies, treating scores of GIs and later, German prisoners. One took him aback.
"In perfect English, the first guy I treated said he knew Waterbury," Leopold said. "He was in training for city administration under Hitler's plan to take America. My blood ran cold. I couldn't imagine that Hitler figured he'd control America."
Leopold, 92, died of a heart attack in July, two days after talking to USA TODAY.
www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-09-23-war-profiles_N.htm?csp=34
Ellie
By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY
World War II indelibly shaped the lives of millions of Americans, as Ken Burnsdocuments in PBS' The War (Part 2 tonight, 8 ET/PT, times may vary). USA TODAY spoke with five members of the "greatest generation" whose stories of war, military life and imprisonment are vividly told in Burns' film.
Quentin Aanenson
Aanenson's first day of work, so to speak, came over France on D-Day, where he flew ground support for the Allied invasion. The P-47 Thunderbolt fighter pilot would fly more than 50 missions by war's end, many low-level strafing runs, narrowly surviving two crashes, German air force rivals, sour weather and lousy luck.
On one mission, his plane caught flak, igniting a fire in the cockpit. Flak that lodged in the canopy prevented him from bailing out. Going into a steep dive snuffed the fire. Aanenson was able to make it back to base, where he crash-landed, was knocked unconscious and dislocated a shoulder. Others from Aanenson's 366th Fighter Group weren't as lucky: 85 died by war's end, including some of his closest friends.
"After being in combat a few weeks, I had come to peace with the fact that I wasn't coming home, but we had to make it count for something," says Aanenson, 86.
The Luverne, Minn., farm boy kept his sanity largely by thinking about Jackie Greer, the girl back home he'd soon marry. But in letters home, he kept the horrors of war and his growing despondency to himself.
"The killing we did and what we saw haunted us," Aanenson says. Even today.
John Gray
As a black teenager growing up in Alabama, Gray knew firsthand all too well about discrimination. Little did he know that would continue while he was in the Marines or that his wartime service would matter little when he returned home.
Drafted in 1943 while he was working in Mobile as a carpenter's helper, Gray eventually became part of an all-black unit trained for combat. The 51st Defense Battalion became so adept with artillery and anti-aircraft weapons that "we could shoot the sting off a bee," he says.
Sent to the South Pacific for 19 months, his unit never saw serious battle, Gray says, as it served reserve and subordinate roles. "People wouldn't let us die for our country," says Gray, 82.
After returning home, hatred against blacks continued, and Gray endured those same prejudices. "I was wearing a Marine uniform, but at that time, you still had to ride in the front of trains and the back of buses. It was humiliating," he says. A police officer even stopped him one evening for riding a bicycle without a light.
Gray eventually became an assistant school principal in the early 1970s. "We said we would fight segregation when we came back home to make this country our country," he says. "It was tough."
Sascha Weinzheimer
Talk about being stuck in the wrong place at the wrong time. Weinzheimer was 8 and living with her parents, 3-month-old brother and 3-year-old sister on the family's sugar cane plantation on the island of Luzon in 1941. Despite the threat of war, they remained in the Philippines, encouraged by her grandfather, who was living in the USA, that they wouldn't be harmed.
After the Japanese takeover of the islands, the Weinzheimers would be imprisoned for the next four years, among 3,500, mostly Americans, who were confined within the walled Santo Thomas camp on Manila.
Weinzheimer lived in constant hunger; prolonged malnutrition hindered her recovery from polio. "People were dying from hunger. We had one ladle of a kind of porridge in the morning and one in the afternoon."
Family members would distract themselves, taking turns talking about what they'd like to eat. "Roasted lamb chops, baked potatoes, ice cream and cake — we talked about food every night," she says. "For some reason, it seemed to satisfy the hunger pains."
Fear permeated life. "The worst thing was not knowing what was going to happen to us from one moment to the next. We lived on rumors," says Weinzheimer, 74. "We were convinced they were going to massacre all the civilians."
By February 1945, the 12-year-old was liberated by American forces. She recalls Gen. Douglas MacArthur arriving in a staff car for a brief visit. Shortly after he departed, the Japanese shelled the camp, killing about 250 GIs and internees. By the time the family returned to the USA, her grandfather had died. "Everyone who knew him said he died of a broken heart, knowing he had made the mistake of telling us to stay in the Philippines."
Bill Lansford
Lansford was a member of Carlson's Raiders, an elite Marine combat unit that used guerrilla tactics to harass the Japanese after American forces invaded Guadalcanal.
It was Lansford's first battle experience. "It was hairy being behind enemy lines, fighting against forces five times our size," says Lansford, 85. "When we came out of it 30 days later, the average guy had lost 15 pounds. Physically, that was the worst."
The raiders killed nearly 500 Japanese while losing 16 of their own.
Lansford, a Mexican-American who enlisted in 1940, would later fight on other enemy-held islands. His memories are most vivid of Iwo Jima. "The morning of the landing was probably the worst experience of my life," says Lansford, who became a screenwriter and novelist. "The intensity of the shelling made you nuts."
Two weeks into the fight, Lansford was wounded in the back and both hands. "One of my hands was the size of a football. But we were the walking wounded. You got patched up and went back out there." Lansford's unit lost so many men, it was taken off the front line. Iwo Jima would be their last fight.
Ray Leopold
Leopold considered himself a pacifist and nearly too old to fight when he went into the Army at age 28 in 1943. A good shot from his stint on his Waterbury, Conn., high school rifle team, he was a natural for frontline duty.
"The truth is, a bullet never left my rifle," he says. While serving guard duty one night, he got up to stretch and was shot by a German sniper. With his unit's medic dead, Leopold managed to pull the bullet from his leg and bandaged it on his own.
Impressed, superiors persuaded him to turn in his rifle and become a combat medic. Later in the war, when he was surrounded during the Battle of the Bulge, Leopold raided a German supply truck for medical supplies, treating scores of GIs and later, German prisoners. One took him aback.
"In perfect English, the first guy I treated said he knew Waterbury," Leopold said. "He was in training for city administration under Hitler's plan to take America. My blood ran cold. I couldn't imagine that Hitler figured he'd control America."
Leopold, 92, died of a heart attack in July, two days after talking to USA TODAY.
www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2007-09-23-war-profiles_N.htm?csp=34
Ellie