For some reason I thought of an old man I met several years ago that had been in the 442nd RCT. I'd run into him at odd times and he never failed to make me laugh. He's been gone now for quite some time. When we met I asked him if he was a Buddhahead or a Katonk.
His daughter turned purple like I had called him a racial slur but the old man said, "I was born in California. I was a Katonk. I'm surprised you knew about that." Buddhaheads were Hawaiian born.
I grinned and said, "You bums were my heroes. You're badasses and Honorary Texans by proclamation of the Governor."
His daughter stared at him wide-eyed. I guess he never told his kids much about his service in Europe.
They're almost all gone now and even the youngest of them are nearly a full century old. Time flies.
I miss those guys. They were my mentors and they all had interesting stories to tell. Their tales ranged from being scared still in combat to being bored to tears in a rear echelon job.
I remember one humorous story about one of them that was in Europe in 1944-45 that said he never slacked off for a minute and pitched in and volunteered for practically everything in the supply unit he was a part of. He said he did that because every so often someone would be reassigned to a combat unit headed up to the front and he wanted no part of that.
He said his plan worked and he got to stay in the rear with the gear.
Can't say I blame him. He did his part.
Another one of my mentors spent well over a year as a weather observer in the Aleutians. He told a couple stories about some of the things they did out of sheer boredom. Once he was handed a long pole to put holes in the snow before new guys arrived so they could warn newbies about 'snow snakes'. Still, the weather in the Aleutians gave evidence of upcoming weather in Japan which by 1944 was very useful to aviators. All in all it was a miserable, boring tour.
A waist gunner that had been shot down over Europe and spent alost two years in a PW camp taught me to build a simple radio out of a safety pin, wire and a pencil lead. It worked.
All of them contributed one way or the other.
My scoutmaster hit Europe in mid 1944 as a 2LT and was a company commander and a captain when they entered Germany. Later retreaded for Korea.
A very interesting WW2 vet I met was Mr. Schwartz. He was an immigrant that had fought in the Wehrmacht. When I mentioned him to Dad he blew up and told me to be good to Schwartz because he was just some poor sad bastard that got drafted and had no say in the matter. I got a talking-to about how wars are started by governments and fought by ordinary citizens.
Later I found out that Mr. Schwartz had been a POW that had been shipped to the States and immigrated after the war. His kids were younger than I was so I had little reason to run into him very often.
They all had different stories to tell.
These people were my mentors and I miss them.
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