Nebraska at War: Dispatches from the Home Front and the Front Lines
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About this ebook
“These missions lead us to distant places, may involve placing our very lives on the line, the life or death of our comrades, and the success or failure of our nation’s mission. These are the reasons our armed forces are maintained, and why military duty has such vast significance.”
– from the foreword by Mark A. Schoenrock, Lt. Colonel, USA (Ret.)
Newspapers are where history is recorded before it becomes history.
In times of war, newspapers are the emotional and spiritual lifeline between the home front and the front lines. For many in rural America, the small town newspaper was the best source of information about their friends and family on the battlefronts.
Over a century of reporting on the men and women of Nebraska who fought for their country are collected in this book. Included are both reports written at the time and profiles written years later, along with editorials and letters written by the soldiers themselves, telling the individual stories of those on the front lines and those at the home front, hoping and praying to see their loved ones safe again.
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Nebraska at War - The Fairbury Journal-News
NEBRASKA AT WAR:
DISPATCHES FROM THE HOME FRONT AND THE FRONT LINES
Written by the staff of The Fairbury Journal-News
Edited by Gordon Hopkins
Copyright © 2017 by The Fairbury Journal-News and Linscott Media, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Published by FJN Books.
Unless otherwise indicated, photographs are copyrighted by The Fairbury Journal-News.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or otherwise, without written permission from the copyright holder.
ISBN-13: 978-1979074049
ISBN-10: 1979074046
DEDICATION
This books is dedicated to all the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, and to all the men and women who report on their service for their country.
Editor's Note: I have chosen to edit these stories, letters and editorials with a light hand, preferring that they remain as close to how they originally appeared as possible. Some of these pieces date back over 100 years, so you may find the occasional comment that might seem culturally insensitive to contemporary eyes. Please keep in mind the context in which they were written as you read.
Also remember that editorials are opinions and not the same as news stories. Therefore, all the pieces in this book have been identified as news items, editorials, profiles, etc.
It should be noted that not every story carried a byline and, in some cases, it was not possible to identify the writer. Where possible, the writer has been credited.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD
INTRODUCTION: WAR IN PRINT
PART ONE: THE GREAT WAR
WORLD WAR I - 1914-1918
EDITORIAL: THE LESSONS OF WAR
NEWS ITEM: LETTER FROM GERMANY
NEWS ITEM: SAFE IN GERMANY
EDITORIALS: AMERICA AT WAR
EDITORIALS: THE JINGO PAPERS
NEWS ITEM: WAR GETS NEARER
LETTER: FROM BOYS IN NAVY
LETTER: A SOLDIER BOY WRITES
LETTER: ON THE BATTLE LINE
LETTER: LIFE AT FUNSTON
LETTER: FROM FRANCE
LETTER: BATTLEFIELD
LETTER: A FAIRBURY SOLDIER IN ENGLAND
NEWS ITEM: BARBED WIRE A WAR FACTOR
LETTER: NEAR PHILADELPHIA
FEW DETAILS TOLD
LETTER: BROTHER WRITES FROM FRANCE
LETTER: FROM WAR-TORN FRANCE
LETTER: FROM A ROSE CREEK SOLDIER
EDITORIAL: GO ON OR GO UNDER
NEWS ITEM: DUG FROM THE HILLS
NEWS ITEM: FIRST WAR VICTIMS
LETTER: RIGHT AT THE FRONT
NEWS ITEM: WAR CAUSES WAR
NEWS ITEM: DESERTER TAKEN IN
NEWS ITEM: THE CIRCUS IN WAR TIMES
EDITORIAL: AMERICA'S LESSION
LETTER: SHOT THROUGH A LUNG
LETTER: HIS LAST LETTER HOME
NEWS ITEM: A PRISON ROMANCE
NEWS ITEM: SOLDIER REFUSED RELIGIOUS RITES
LETTER: FROM OVER THERE
LETTER: FROM RED CROSS NURSE
NEWS ITEM: PEACE!
PROFILE: MEMORIES OF ARMISTICE DAY
PART TWO: THE GOOD WAR
WORLD WAR II - 1939-1945
PROFILE: PEARL HARBOR MEMORIES
LETTER: FIRST CLASS PRIVATE
NEWS ITEM: ACTION ON THE SOLOMONS
IN HIS OWN WORDS: FLYING IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC
IN HIS OWN WORDS: RADIO FREE GERMANY
IN HIS OWN WORDS: BROTHER AT ARMS
PROFILE: EARNED BRONZE STARS DESPITE FLUNKING PHYSICAL
PROFILE: BATAAN DEATH MARCH
PROFILE: THE FLYING DENTIST
PROFILE: POW REMEMBERS JOY OF HOMECOMING
NEWS ITEM: GUTS INCORPORATED
IN HIS OWN WORDS: SPECIAL DELIVERY
IN HIS OWN WORDS: THE FIGHT IN EUROPE
PROFILE: BOOBY-TRAPPED CASTLE
PROFILE: MT. FUJI ADVENTURE
PROFILE: VETERAN FEELS LUCKIER THAN MOST - WAS SINGLE DURING THE WAR
PROFILE: SOLDIER FINDS WIFE IN WAR
PROFILE: JOB WELL DONE
PROFILE: JAPANESE SURRENDER REMEMBERED
IN HIS OWN WORDS: WAR SUICIDE ETCHED IN VETERAN'S MEMORY
IN HIS OWN WORDS: ENDS WAR IN HAWAII HOSPITAL
PART THREE: THE FORGOTTEN WAR
THE KOREAN WAR - 1950-1953
LETTER: EASTER IN KOREA
NEWS ITEM: A SAILOR'S LONG JOURNEY HOME
PROFILE: SERVICE BUDDIES REKINDLE FRIENDSHIP
FEATURE: VALLEY FORGE
EDITORIAL: WAR IN KOREA A VICTORY
PART FOUR: THE TELEVISED WAR
THE VIETNAM WAR - 1955-1975
PROFILE: VIETNAM HONOR FLIGHT
LETTER: NAVY DOCTORS AND CORPSMEN CREATE WARD FOR VIET CHILDREN
LETTER: CHRISTMAS TRUCE IN VIETNAM
EDITORIAL: CAN'T SHED A TEAR
EDITORIAL: A WAY WE CAN HELP
EDITORIAL: THE SHOW IS ON THE ROAD
NEWS ITEM: SANTA IN VIETNAM
LETTER: LETTERS OF CONCERN MAY HELP U.S. POWS
NEWS ITEM: COUNTY HAS NO FATALITIES
PROFILE: GHOST RIDERS
PROFILE: REMEMBERANCE AT THE WALL
PROFILE: THE SAGA OF RICK RAY
PROFILE: GUEST
OF THE RUSSIANS
PROFILE: A HERO'S WELCOME…EVENTUALLY
PART FIVE: THE LONG WAR
THE WAR ON TERROR - 2001 to Present
NEWS ITEM: ATTACK ON U.S. HITS CLOSE TO HOME
EDITORIAL: MEDIA MEMBERS ARE TOO CLOSE TO THE WAR
EDITORIAL: FROM EARTH TO HEAVEN, WE SALUTE YOU
PROFILE: A FAMILY TRADITION
PROFILE: CALLING AN AMBULANCE IN IRAQ
EDITORIAL: OSAMA’S LAST STAND
AFTERWORD
ABOUT THE FAIRBURY JOURNAL-NEWS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD
When Tim Linscott asked me to write the foreword to this tribute to honor and remember the military veterans of Jefferson County, I was deeply honored and humbled. I am certain that what we say here will be wholly inadequate to truly honor the human effort, courage and bravery of the sons and daughters of Jefferson County who have answered their country’s call to defend freedom through the generations, but it is well worth our feeble human attempt to do so. To paraphrase a portion of the Gettysburg address, the world will little note nor long remember what we say here in these pages, but it must never forget what they who are remembered here did in their generations. I was reminded of a charge that is contained in the Army Officer’s Guide which was issued to us newly minted Army officers back in the 1970s; they apply equally to members of all the armed services through all generations: our efforts ensure the security of our nation, the protection of our people, the support of our nation’s policies in its relations with other countries, and even to the course of history. These missions lead us to distant places, may involve placing our very lives on the line, the life or death of our comrades, and the success or failure of our nation’s mission. These are the reasons our armed forces are maintained, and why military duty has such vast significance. As Thomas Jefferson observed at the founding of our country, the tree of liberty must be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots; such it has been and such it will ever be if we are to maintain that liberty. As we honor those who served, let us not forget their families and loved ones as well. The life of a military family has special hardships, sacrifices, and rewards that only those who have served can ever know.
General Douglas MacArthur in his farewell address at West Point said this about the American veteran, His name and fame are the birthright of every American citizen. In his youth and strength, his love and loyalty, he gave all that mortality can give. He belongs to history as furnishing one of the greatest examples of successful patriotism; he belongs to posterity as the instructor of future generations in the principles of liberty and freedom; he belongs to the present, to us, by his virtues and by his achievements.
And so now I too as a son of Jefferson County join that long line of American veterans who have served the United States of America down through the generations, to be remembered simply as an American Soldier:
I was that which others did not want to be.
I went where others feared to go,
and did what others failed to do.
I asked nothing from those who gave nothing and reluctantly accepted
the thought of eternal loneliness should I fail.
I have seen the face of terror; felt the stinging cold of fear; enjoyed
the sweet taste of a moment's love.
I have cried, pained and hoped, but, most of all,
I have lived times others would say were best forgotten.
At least someday, I will be able to say that I am proud of what I was, an American Soldier.
Mark A. Schoenrock
Lt. Colonel, USA (Ret.)
Fairbury, Nebraska
October, 2017
INTRODUCTION:
WAR IN PRINT
There is no sense in the struggle, but there is no choice but to struggle.
- Ernie Pyle
In times of war, newspapers are the emotional and spiritual lifeline between the home front and the front lines. The function of a newspaper is to provide information. Simple. What is happening and when and where and why. When a nation is forced to send its youth into battle, the need for that flow of information increases a thousandfold.
There are, of course, different sorts of newspapers. Those national and even international rags concern themselves primarily with a broad, global view. Especially on the subject of war. Understandable, but for the family and friends and loved ones of a soldier from a small town, there is little interest in combat strategies and supply lines and diplomatic envoys meeting with heads of state, except for signs of encouragement that the war may soon be over. For the readers in the sparsely populated, rural enclaves of, for example, southeastern Nebraska, their primary concern is for their children, their spouses, their parents and friends and neighbors. This isn't something they're apt to find out about in The New York Times.
It is precisely this that makes the small-town newspaper indispensable to so many Americans. Small-town newspapers are often viewed as a source for farm reports and high school football scores and, on occasion, how many mailboxes were destroyed by last week's tornado. Admittedly, this view is not entirely off the mark. But the very fact that the big dogs in the news industry can't be bothered to cover events in a town with a population of 1,000, or 500 or 100 or 50, is why these papers exist.
Jefferson County, Nebraska, has had a strong newspaper presence for nearly 150 years. At one point, during the early 1890s, Fairbury alone boasted no less than four papers. I was hired by The Fairbury Journal-News in 2016. One of my assignments was the Looking Back
pages. Those are the historical pages that tell readers, here's what happened on this date in 2005, in 1979, in 1891, etc.
As a result, I get to spend many hours perusing the dusty pages of old issues in our archives, most bound into massive, unwieldy volumes. Newspaper writing is by nature ephemeral. It is something intended to be read once and discarded with the morning's eggshells and coffee grounds. Though, of course, I hope you recycle. Yet, time and time again, I find some damn good writing hidden among the city council meeting minutes and school lunch menus. Many of these stories are worth reading again, and worth preserving. That was the thinking behind this book.
My models were the columns of Ernie Pyle and Studs Turkel's book, The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two. Ernest Taylor Pyle was the most famous war correspondent of his time, and quite possibly of all time. His stories weren't about battles. He told the stories of the people in those battles. He wrote from England, Italy, France, North Africa and the Pacific. He wasn't writing about the war. He was writing about what war did to people.
Ernie Pyle wrote from the scenes. Studs Terkel would write about the war after the fact, but his intention was the same. Tell the stories of the people. His book came out in 1984 and contained firsthand accounts of World War II from the people who were there.
This book contains both stories written at the time and retrospectives written years, sometimes decades later. All were published in The Fairbury Journal-News and its predecessors. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive history of the citizens of Nebraska in wartime. There are far more qualified writers than myself for a task like that. All I am interested in doing is ensuring these stories are not forgotten.
Office and staff of The Fairbury Journal. Photo taken sometime in the early 1900's.
Printing Press of The Fairbury Journal, 1910.
PART ONE:
THE GREAT WAR
WORLD WAR I
1914-1918
There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.
- Ernest Hemingway, in A Farewell to Arms
The War to End All Wars
is rarely spoken today in any manner except irony but, at the time, it seemed to many entirely possible. The newspapers of the time usually referred to the first World War as the Great War. Thanks to new technologies and methods of warfare, as well as the sheer scale of the conflict, the First World War led to an unprecedented amount of casualties and destruction.
World War I began in 1914, after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and lasted until 1918. However, the United States did not enter the war until 1917. President Woodrow Wilson held a policy of neutrality and hoped to keep the U.S. out of the war. Not all the newspaper coverage and editorials of the time reflected a desire to remain on the sidelines, however, and there was much debate about which side the U.S. should be on. Still, most Americans would have preferred not to get involved at all. Germany's aggression at sea against even neutral ships carrying passengers, including those of the U.S., made it impossible to remain an impartial observer. In May of 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania was sunk while traveling from New York to Liverpool, England, with hundreds of American passengers onboard, leading to widespread protest and turning the tide of American public opinion against Germany. In the end, over 115,000 Americans died in the First World War.
EDITORIAL: THE LESSONS OF WAR
by W. F. Cramb
Published Sept. 3, 1914 in The Fairbury Journal
The president advises all Americans to be neutral while the war is on in Europe, for upon expressions of public opinion will largely rest the ability of this nation to keep the peace. This is sound advice and easily followed, for it is difficult to place the blame for the war on any particular nation. We shall, however, reserve the privilege of discussing popular government using this war as a horrible example. We hope to point out, as we can, the folly of sustaining a government where special privileges are permitted and the error that a large standing army is a guarantee of peace.
The Germans may be at fault or the English, the French or the Russians – they shall all stand alike, but we do not hesitate to condemn the greed for power, the lust for glory, the desire to rule or ruin, upon the part of aristocratic classes of all these nations, which is the real cause of this war.
Again, we reserve the right to show how religion and false patriotism is also largely responsible for the awful carnage now being witnessed. How religion, a form, a false and shallow thing as existing not only in Europe but more or less everywhere, causes men to offer themselves a sacrifice to lust and greed when they should be at home, caring for their families. A religion which teaches that man can kill and despoil and wreak vengeance and hate those he has never seen and yet do no wrong, is worse than the most barbarous heathenism.
A religion which saves the souls of those who nurse their hatred from generation to generation is false. A religion which saves the soul released from a body that has just been engaged in making widows and orphans and filling graves and hospitals is damnable.
The Christian religion must teach love and not hate; peace not war; joy not sorrow and heaven on earth, not hell, or it is no better than any other religion. The religion of the day is a mixture of the old Jewish doctrine of blood atonement and a latter-day idea of soul-saving at the last minute – an incongruous combination which is largely responsible for this terrible war.
A little more of the religion of the Quakers, the Mennonites, of our mothers and ourselves when our better nature prevails, and mingled with this a calm common sense, and the world would be a whole lot better.
We have this in a large measure in America and to a certain extent in Europe, but it is not by any means always in the majority.
Again, we reserve the right to denounce that kind of patriotism which teaches that Our Country
is right no matter what those who are temporarily in power may do. How far would Russia get in its desire for more territory if the Russian peasants were but dimly conscious of what a true patriotism is? Who is fool enough to believe in love of a country – a government – like that of Russia?
Let people love that which treats them well. Let patriotism – love of country – be natural, a true desire, springing from the heart, bursting with gratitude for favors given, not a false and artificial thing of the flag, the national hymn and the band playing in the street.
Patriotism should be just as much a matter of common sense as sawing a board. A fool would be he that puts the smooth edge of the saw to the board and the teeth to his body and because the band plays a stirring air, shouts with glory while the blood flows and the board is not even dented. Is war for empire, upon the part of the private citizen, less foolish?
Science has made great advancements because science is nothing but brains applied. Let us apply brains to government, to religion, to social life, and we will leave behind suffering and toil and pain and the useless shedding of blood even as we have left behind the crooked stick for a plow, the donkey for a common carrier and our mothers for a beast of burden. Superstition, fear, ignorance and hate never made a delicate, wonderful, useful machine out of a dirty mass of iron and a pine stick; neither will these relics of the Stone Age give us perfect government or a practical social existence.
Our lesson from this Great War is to beware of hatred, fear, ignorance, prejudice and greed, and to nourish love, courage, common sense, broad-mindedness, generosity.
As the president cautions us to be neutral, so can we also be thoughtful, so we can be brave to strike out freely with new ideas and a wider understanding. As the world rumbles with war, Americans, shocked, distressed and moved to the deepest emotions, can think seriously and in these profound reflections find further cure for their own ills.
* * * *
The country editor seems likely to be hit by the war. The price of paper, which he must use to print the news on, is going up. Cost of living will be higher; the babies will have to have shoes, and at the same time there will be no chance to make a corresponding increase in what the editor sells. However, he will have lots of company, like the preacher, the doctor, the school ma'am, and those who work on fixed salaries.
* * * *
The Fairbury women won't lose anything by the European war. The Paris fashions in Fairbury were worn in France two years before the war began.
* * * *
With the exception of Japan, all the nations at war are Christians. If the preachers can explain this, we will agree to go to church the first cool Sunday, sit on a front seat and say Amen
every time the pulpit gets hit.
* * * *
Here's a good guessing game; How high will wheat go? How long will the war last? What will the corn crop be next year? No prizes offered for correct answers.
NEWS ITEM: LETTER FROM GERMANY
Published Sept. 10, 1914 in The Fairbury Journal
Mrs. H.H. Todt received a letter this week from her sister in Hamburg, Germany. The letter was dated Aug. 24 and was fifteen days coming over, the usual time being ten days.
Mrs. Todt has a son, 19 years old, who was in college when the war broke out. He immediately volunteered and is now at the front. She also has four nephews who were members of the regular Army.
The letter states that crops are good in Germany and that there are sufficient inhabitants left from the war to harvest them in good shape. The wheat and rye were cut about Aug. 1. Instructions were given by the government for all Germans to treat foreigners with respect and kindness.
Reports had reached Hamburg that untruthful stories of the