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Show NORTH COUNTY NEWSPAPERS Thursday, May 26, 2005 l Lee Bamgartner Leon R. Smith Page 4 WORLD 7 n",' i-x r'rps arc luhcn jrm Um Surlnn's mlcrviw nj Lee lUunnrtner t .Nov , 2001 I was aU)Ul one o'( :lx k in ih- afternoon when 1 heard atxnit Pearl Harbor. WV were going ;l rn;it i-!' i-!' a! the rnovie theater in Mt'iill. Somebody said, "'I be .laps h;ive bomljed I'earl Hartirr We finally got confirmation confir-mation that tins had hapened My remarks were something along the line, "Well, we'll take i arc of those little fellers in short order." I found out later thai the fx-tti-r part of the Navy had Ix-i-n destroyed When Hie draft came, I told t fie draft lxard, "I've already volunteered for a service." I still didn'l want to be a foot soldier. I lu- draft Ixfcird said, "Sorry, if vou re riot in active service, y ou've got to answer the ( all to V, So I said, 'Tort IXiuglas. riere I come." Alter I took rny physical, tin1 personnel officer asked trie, 'Vv'hu h branch of tlie vrvx do you want to go into'.'" I le said, "I you want to be a Marine'.''' I said, "No, I want to go into Malcolm KORL AN n ( "hnstmas l)ay 1952, American trxijs were dug into the hillside at Heart break Ridge Korea. ( ne of the new m- antrv arrivals was Malcolm II Beck of the 40th Infantry Division, Divi-sion, I'iOth Inlantry Regiment, Company I), a heavy weapons division Tlie year before he had Ix-eri attending Carbon College on a basketball scholarship. Now he wa.s a participant in tfie cold and bloody Korean War (called a police action at the time ) Mali recalls some experiences experienc-es in Korea "We were in bunkers bun-kers on the hill, just down the ridge from tfie top. We manned '.VU aliber. water-cooled ma ( hme guns. Water -cooled guns ( ould fire ntore rounds, but air-cooled air-cooled were lighter and easier to handle l-.vervone had their own rifles Our bunker held lour, with a rock top, just big enough for sleeping At night, two were awake all tfie time. During tfie day, you spent two hours manning man-ning the machine guns and four hours to do oilier duties. We ate mostly "(7 rations: Spaghetti, beans, crackers. To each U.S. veteran, the Utah County Republican Party expresses our sincere thanks and greatest admiration. Alpine Valley Care Center Providing quality therapy to seniors six days a week. !l VaK' ' ' K I x, - .V I N,ot. Max "The best thing about my hip surgerj' was the therapy at Alpine Valley". Ada Scott, American Fork WAh I the Navy." "OK." he said My eyes had improved enough with those car-rots car-rots tliat 1 passed t fie eye exam to go into tfte Navy. So I was in tfie Navy. ... I started out a! Keyport on tlx; freight wliarf, taking care of the wharf itself. A warrant of licer was in charge... I got involved with diving because be-cause the diving sdmol was right next door to wix re I was working. work-ing. I got acquainted wit h: some of the chief petty officers who were first lass divers. I had never had claustroplio-hia claustroplio-hia in my wfiole life, but I had it wfx-n tfiey snapped helmet on. All I could see was through a tiny porthole. 1 thought, "What am 1 doing'-'' I was ready to squeal, holler I was Ingfrtened to death, Tlie minute that I hit tfie water, tlie suit became a part of me, and I was fine. ... The elmric torpedoes were Mieffedive m tlx- If ulippine campaign cam-paign f ause the Jajjs couldn't see the wake There was no way to know where tfie torpedoes were coming from. The Japanese never had electric torpedoes. I went ashore m (;kinawa, and I was on the island when I heard tlie war was over. H. Beck WA H soup, candy etc. Food was all vacuumed sealed. One hot meal was served everyday at nxn (potatoes, ham, beef, hamburger) hamburg-er) The ( ninese would lob a lot of artillery shells at us every afternoon alxiut the time they thought we would be eating. It wa.s cold in Korea. There was snow all over, and the wind blew... from Siteria. A bright moon would shine at night. The Chinese camouflaged themselves, hid in trees and nolxxly would know they were there. They only moved on us at night. It was difficult to fight in that mountainous, cold country. We were in ridges that maybe were only 10 feet wide. We fought for the high ground to control the situation." Male wa.s also on Bloody Ridge, guarded prisoners on Koji l), took a train to Camp ( iifu, Japan, attended training at a ChemicalBiologicalRadiological ChemicalBiologicalRa-diological (CBR) Warfare School. Camp Gifu was used as a Kamikaze plane base during World War II. Male passed Hiroshima Hi-roshima and Nagasaki and saw-first saw-first hand the devastation still evident from the atomic bomb dropped seven years earlier. t better Come and tour our newly remodeled facility and gym, with state-of-the art exercise equipment, and meet our highly trained therapy staff 25 E. Alpine Dr. Pleasant Grove, Ut (801) 785-3568 n Jan. 5, 1945, 1 boarded a train for the unknown, arriving arriv-ing at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. I was given a three day pass to New York City, where I was able to see Tommy Irs-ey's Irs-ey's Orchestra, partied at the Waldofal Hotel, and a tour of Times Square. By Jan. 17, 1945, 1 ended up at the Port of Embarkation in Brooklyn. I boarded the Mor-mac: Mor-mac: Moon, and waved goodbye good-bye to the Statue of Liberty, arriving in 1 Harve, I-ranee, on Jan 31. It was a dead city leveled by allied bombs. The train station had box cars that were called 40 by 8 (40 people or eight cows). Billeted at Corpuz, F ranc, in barns and stables, this site was a Robot launcher used by the (iermans. (Air water was collected col-lected from bomb craters in the area. We enjoyed the French bread we fxught in the nearest town, along with potatoes and fresh milk borrowed from the farmer. The beverages weren't very gtxxl, Calvedos was like drinking a mixture of TNT and gasoline, the apple cider was like rotten apples and vinegar mixed. I was assigned to drive the Battery Commander's Jeep. These World War recollections recollec-tions of Elwin Barnes were told to daughter-in-law Amy Barnes in May 200.5. Iwin Barnes was born Jan. 3, 1918, and grew up in Lehi. He was working for Ralph Hamilton, I a sheep rancher in Herrirnan, at the time he was drafted into the army. Ralph wanted him to defer for two years but Elwin wanted to go. Soon March 21, 1941, at the age of 23, Elwin began his military service. ... President Roosevelt had been trying to get support to strengthen and beef up the military, but he was labeled a "warmonger" and his pleas went unheeded. FJwin said as a nation we were absolutely defenseless when he first enlisted. en-listed. There weren't even guns to train wit h. Some men used broomstick handles to practice with FJwin had been in nine months when the news came abut the Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor Everyone was put on alert. I ks unit was ordered overseas over-seas and it took 12 days on a ship, zig-zagging to avoid enemy submarines. He arrived in Casa Blanca, North Africa, on Christmas Eve 1942. The assault as-sault teams went first followed by the support. They marched all night to Rabat, Morocco, worked their way up the coast to French Morocco and Tripoli (where thousands of Germans were captured), on to Sicily and Salerno, Italy. They endured several air raids and made amphibious am-phibious landing at Anzio. ... There was so much shelling shell-ing going on that there was no time to bury the dead. The bodies were stacked six or Nina Howard; Resident WORLD All drivers went to Belgium to get our vehicles. Our combat started in Alating, France, firing on Saarbrucken Germany. That afternoon and in to the night, we crossed the Sarr River through Sarrbrucken. I saw the destruction this city took, and onto Irankenhoftz. One of the largest coal mines in the Sarr. Under the buildings, we found thousands of dollars of miscellaneous miscella-neous merchandise taken from German occupied countries. Traveling through the mountains moun-tains and valleys it looked so much like the country side at home. We pulled into Trier, another an-other town that took a beating, but under the debris a huge storage of wine and champagne cham-pagne was found. The party was on. This beverage replaced the water in our five gallon water cans. ... At Mulheim we took position posi-tion along a row of buildings, after about 30 minutes, snipers began firing and then all hell broke loose. We opened up our ..'JO- and .50-caliber machines guns and four rounds of 105s into the buildings and then the firing ceased on both sides. This was one of the times I made a poor target because I was so close to the ground Elwin Barnes WORLD WAR eight bxxiies high "like cord-wood". cord-wood". Soldiers carried their mattress covers with them because be-cause this was to be their body bag. With the heat of the day, body fluids would run from the corpses. Flies and stench made it unbearable, but you become be-come callous and desensitized. He said experiences like this change you forever, but it is somdhiirig you have to work out eventually with help. Some handle it better than others. It was not unusual to go two or three months without a letter from home because they were f V jjtf M WAR II f I " nut. - M. praying 1 would get home safely. One of our half-tracks nearby had two bullet holes tlirough its radiator. In route to Hilden, we encountered en-countered some resistance, after a short time, we started to receive a lot of shelling and pulled to a rear sector, we were firing most of the night. The next day, the German POWs attested to the destruc-tiveness destruc-tiveness of the firing. As we moved further into Germany, the roads were jammed with POWs, all lacking the snap and polish of the once proud Warmacts. The campaign in the Ruhr always on the move. Elwin was discharged on July 21, 1945. He flew from Pisa, Italy, then to north and south Africa, on to Brazil, then Florida and finally home. This is just a small representation represen-tation of his experiences. He has a greater appreciation for this country and the freedoms that are taken so much for granted. It irritates him at the lack of respect shown for it, especially es-pecially by the younger people who really have "no idea" how blessed they are to live in the free country. "1 "'11 W I! , IWllllllllfcl, "I It 'The therapists really helped me with my recovery, and helped me return home independently Margaret Danielson, Pleasant Grove was ending. We went through 1 Dussekiorf, a beautiful city I without a lot of destruction. On the road to Bad Ord the column was bombed, by German Ger-man planes, but we escaped unharmed. The Germans were retreating rapidly and we were traveling day and night. After leaving Maushein it had been raining, leaving the roads impassable im-passable sloughs of mud. At Lohstadt, we crossed the famous Blue Danube River using a pontoon bridge. The river didn't look at all blue, but a muddy green. The morning of April 29, we arrived at the Isar River, again unable to cross, the batteries fired across the river at enemy troops and gun positions. We moved into Worth and were shelled upon so heavily, we were forced to withdraw. John Drexei and I went to a church nearby and climbed up into the steeple to observe where the enemy was firing from, just as we got to the top they started firing at the steeple, there were a lot of steps going up, but there were a lot less coming down. Twenty Allied Prisoners were liberated, one was a major from the Air Force who had been shot down, the others were Australians. Harvard Hinton WORLD WAR II was born and reared in Hurricane, Washington County, Utah. I graduated from Junior College in 1941 from Branch Agricultural Agricul-tural College (called BAC, now Southern Utah University) in Cedar City, and then in October Oc-tober of that year went on a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the Central States Mission. I was assigned to labor in East Oklahoma. About six weeks later, Pearl Harbor was bombed and America Amer-ica became involved in World War II. As a missionary, I was classified as a minister until my two-year mission was up. The December draft quota of 1943 was already filled by the time I arrived home, so I was drafted the first part ot January 1944. I was sent to a The trip was uneventful new army r , r , post, camp for the first Kohler, near r i Sacramento, T6W nOUS. Calif, and Ti was placed 1 11611 SU(J- in the Army i i ,i signal corps deniy, the ra- and trained . asacryp- fJIO OperatOf lograpner (one who decodes incoming rushed back to our area messages i . M and encodes and excitedly rnSgl).i said, 'Roos was shipped overseas to the South Pacific Area in December Decem-ber and stationed on a small island at the equator named Biak in the Dutch East Indies. evelt's dead. Roosevelt's dead!'" Harvard Hinton HURRICANE NATIVE The heavy fighting was over on this island and conditions were relatively calm there. In April, I was assigned to report for duty in the Philippine Islands. I went aboard a large cargo plane along with a few other soldiers. It was not comfortable, com-fortable, since there were no seats provided, we had to sit on boxes which were a part of the cargo. The trip was uneventful for the first few hours. Then suddenly the radio operator rushed back to our area and excitedly said, "Roosevelt's dead! Roosevelt's dead!: This was tie eventful time when President Franklin D. Roosevelt Roos-evelt died, and Vice-president Harry Truman was sworn in as President. The rest of the flight was uneventful, but somber. We landed on the Island of Leyte in the Philippine Islands, and from there I was assigned to the Island of Mindoro, where I served until Japan surrendered and the war ended. About the author Harvard R. Hinton is age 84 in 2005, and was born in Hurricane. Hur-ricane. His parents were one of the first dozen families to settle Hurricane. |