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#4461439 - 02/15/19 12:17 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - It's with a heavy heart we announce the news that American Hero of World War II Mr. Alfonso Villa has died. He was 96.

Born and raised in Firestone, and joined the United States Army in 1943. Mr. Villa initially served with the 237th Combat Engineers Battalion and was in the 4th wave to hit Utah Beach on D-Day.

Mr. Villa made it through that day, but as the fighting moved inland, where he sustained wounds from a mortar receiving a head injury and quickly evacuated back to England.

After recovering in a hospital but still bandaged, he was returned to the front, serving this time with the 554th Engineers Heavy Pontoon Battalion finghting in the Battle of the Bulge and all the way to just outside Berlin when the war ended.

For his service in World War II, Mr. Villa received a Bronze Star and Purple Heart while serving his country in Normandy, Northern France; Rhineland; Ardennes-Alsace; Central Europe campaigns.

After the war, Mr. Villa worked for U.S. Mint, Postal Service and Union Pacific before capping it all off with a 25-year career with Western Paving. He has 11 children, 33 grandchildren, 37 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren."

On behalf of TGGF and its members, we salute Mr. Alfonso Villa for his dedication and service to our freedom. RIP dear friend. We will never forget you.

"Every Day is Memorial Day"
The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files Villa.jpg
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#4461447 - 02/15/19 12:51 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Salute Mr. Alfonso Villa Thank you for your service


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#4461473 - 02/15/19 05:41 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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My father was RAF and although a conscript he gave top dollar. He died in 2003, I still miss him. Ground crew largely servicing B-24s bombing the Japanese in the old Dutch East Indies. How the world has changed. I was born in 1945, but I was 18 months old before he came home and saw me for the first time.


"You'll never take me alive" said he,
And his ghost may be heard if you pass by that billabong
"Who'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me?"



#4463928 - 03/04/19 11:19 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Rear Admiral Edgar Keats, World War II veteran and oldest Naval Academy graduate, dies at 104

Retired Rear Admiral Edgar Keats, a decorated World War II veteran who served in the Pacific and was the Naval Academy’s oldest graduate, died of complications of a fall Saturday at Gilchrist Hospice Care. He was 104 and had lived in Guilford and Lutherville.

“He was an indomitable man. He was fearless and had the courtly manners of that era. He was such a gentleman,” said a daughter, Suzi Keats Cordish of Lutherville. “He was an unfailing optimist and often said, ‘Things are going to work out.’”

Born in Chicago, he was the son of Maxwell Keats, an advertising executive, and his wife, Clara, a homemaker who volunteered with charities. He was active in the Boy Scouts and achieved the rank of Eagle Scout at age 13. A Chicago Tribune article said he was the youngest Eagle in the area.

An Illinois congressman, Morton Hull, conducted an examination for candidates to the Naval Academy. Mr. Keats took the test, placed highest and at age 16 won his appointment to Annapolis. He entered the military academy in June 1931 as a member of the class of 1935. He won the Academy’s history prize awarded at his graduation.

Attached Files bs-1551559324-se2yc5ytzp-snap-image.jpg
#4463944 - 03/04/19 02:30 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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RIP sir


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#4463948 - 03/04/19 02:35 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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He won his appointment to Annapolis at age 16!

No doubt this man was special. RIP


“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
#4464814 - 03/10/19 12:35 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - Pearl Harbor survivor better known 'Uncle Al' died Sunday at the age of 99.

Al Rodrigues was one of the few remaining living veterans who survived the attack on Oahu more than 77 years ago.

He was posted at a station at Bishop Point on the mouth of Pearl Harbor — now a part of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam — as a chief storekeeper.

He was on watch duty on the Sunday morning of the surprise attack and saw firsthand the USS Ward dropping depth charges on a Japanese mini-sub that had attempted to enter Pearl Harbor before the attack commenced. USS Ward is regarded as the first U.S. ship to fire a shot in the Pacific during World War II.

He went on to serve at multiple locations during the war and in 1943 was transferred to the battleship USS Washington. The ship was responsible for sinking the Japanese battleship Kirishima and seriously damaging the destroyer Ayanami.

Rodrigues had nine children, nine grandchildren and three great-grand children.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest Generations Foundation

Attached Files Rodrigues.jpg
#4464862 - 03/10/19 06:52 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Jack Hinton , Typhoon pilot, gone to his eternal reward at 99. RIP sir.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calg...-vqvqNCXSpEu5Baa7LcYTnmAF0Vs6u5QYp_ORAtM


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#4465258 - 03/12/19 10:26 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - Marie Kemper, an Army nurse who lived through the horrors of war in the South Pacific during World War II, was proud of her service and committed to equal rights for women.

“She made it clear that women were as strong and powerful and as capable as men,” recalled her son Dr. Craig Kemper of Austin, Texas. “All of us kids had that attitude. She passed it on to her children.”

Marie Kemper of Anoka, and formerly St. Anthony, died Jan. 26 at the age of 97. Born near Wessington, S.D., she grew up in the Depression era and graduated from St. Mary’s School of Nursing in Pierre, S.D.

“We were all poor,” recalled Marcella LeBeau, 99, of Eagle Butte, S.D., who became a good friend of Marie’s. “We were recovering from the Depression. We wore the same pair of white leather shoes through the three years of nursing training.”

As WWII accelerated, Kemper and LeBeau volunteered for the Army Nurse Corps, Kemper wrote in a self-published autobiography, “The Springtime of Life.”

Kemper became a second lieutenant and was stationed in New Guinea and the Philippines where the Army set up field hospitals near the front lines. When the field hospital in the Philippines was shelled by the Japanese, the nurses, including Kemper, would climb on top of the patients to shield them from the artillery, Craig Kemper said.

For her bravery, Marie Kemper was awarded the Bronze Star. She later told family and friends that because they were short on medical supplies, the nurses would walk down a row of beds, using the same needle to inject 10 patients with penicillin, cleaning the needle each time with alcohol.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest Generations Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files Kemper.jpg
#4465262 - 03/12/19 10:33 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - World War II veteran involved in The Great Escape dies aged 101.

RAF pilot Jack Lyon captured by the Nazis and taken to a prisoner of war camp.

In 1941 Jack Lyon's bomber plane was struck by flak near Dusseldorf in Germany. All of the bomber's crew survived the crash-landing, only to be captured by the Nazis and taken to prisoner of war camps.

Mr Lyon, who was a flight lieutenant, ended up in the Stalag Luft III camp, where he was recruited by other prisoners to carry out surveillance of the compound ahead of the famed 1944 breakout which inspired the classic 1963 film The Great Escape, starring Steve McQueen.

The plot was uncovered by guards before Mr Lyon, who died on Friday, was able to make his escape.

In what is believed to be his last interview, which he did with the RAF Benevolent Fund in October ahead of the 75th anniversary of the Great Escape, he branded the mission "a success, but at great cost".

There was a "terrible aftermath" to the breakout because 50 prisoners were shot, he said.

Mr Lyon, who joined the air force aged 23, added: "We were allocated a position and told not to move until called. It was going to be a long night.

"After an hour or so of this, air raid sirens sounded and all the camp lights went out.

"We were left in total darkness until I heard a single shot.

"We guessed that probably meant the tunnel had been discovered so we did everything we could to destroy anything incriminating - there were maps, documents."

The odds of successfully breaking out of the camp were "slim", according to Mr Lyon.

He said: "In a mass breakout, with nationwide hue and cry and bad weather, I would say they were virtually nil.

"Well I suppose I was lucky."

Air Vice-Marshal David Murray, chief executive of the RAF Benevolent Fund, said: "Jack belonged to a generation of servicemen we are sadly losing as time goes on.

"His legacy and those of his brave comrades who planned and took part in the audacious Great Escape breakout are the freedoms we enjoy today.

"Their tenacity and determination spoke volumes about the values and bravery of the entire RAF, in helping to win the fight against the Nazis."

Mr Lyon, who lived in Bexhill-on-Sea in East Sussex, died shortly before the 75th anniversary of the breakout, which is on March 24.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest Generations Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files Lyon.jpg
#4467163 - 03/23/19 11:58 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - Domingo Los Banos, a well-known Hawaii educator, World War II veteran and advocate for fellow Filipinos who fought in the war, died Friday morning at age 93, family said.

Born in Wahiawa, Los Banos was one of five brothers who served in the U.S. Army. He went to the University of Hawaii for a year before following his brother Alfred into the service.

Three of the Los Banos brothers served in World War II, one in Korea and another in Vietnam, said his son, Todd.

Domingo Los Banos, then 19, was sent to the Philippines with 300 other recruits from Hawaii as part of the 1st and 2nd Filipino Infantry Regiments.

He faced Japanese soldiers in jungle combat late in the war — at one point topping a hill and coming face to face with an enemy soldier. Los Banos shot first and lived.

Todd Los Banos said his father’s greatest purpose was to promote recognition of Filipino World War II service.

“My Dad was constant ‘go,’ and he had many projects that he’s done through his life,” the son said.

On March 9 he was at Waipahu Elementary School for its 120th anniversary, Todd Los Banos said. The same day, he met friends at the Waipahu Cultural Garden Park.

Serving in 1945 in the Philippines during mopping-up operations, Domingo Los Banos made a promise.

“I said, ‘God, get me out of harm’s way and I’ll become a teacher,’” he recalled in 2018. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, “so I said, ‘Well, I better keep my commitment,’” he said.

Los Banos attended Springfield College in Massachusetts — where he sang with fellow student Don Ho. Todd Los Banos said his father was a Fulbright scholar and spent part of his time in Thailand coaching a Thai basketball team and interacting with the Thai royal family.

Springfield College’s logo included the words “spirit,” “mind” and “body” in a triangle.

“So that’s where I get my guidance about a good life — a balance between your spirit, your mind and your body,” Domingo Los Banos said in 2018.

He took his first teaching job at Waimea Elementary on Kauai, where the family had moved when he was a preteen. He became a principal and eventually a district superintendent in the Leeward area on Oahu.

More than 260,000 Filipino and Filipino-American soldiers responded to President Franklin Roosevelt’s call to duty and fought under the American flag during World War II, including more than 57,000 who died.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files Banos.jpg
#4467164 - 03/23/19 12:01 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Fort Worth’s last member of elite black Tuskegee Airmen dies at 96

Fort Worth’s last surviving member of the Tuskegee Airmen died Tuesday at the age of 96.

Robert T McDaniel was one of the elite black airmen who flew combat aircraft in World War II at a time when the military was segregated.

McDaniel, along with about 330 other surviving Tuskegee Airmen, were invited to Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. The group was also commemorated in the George Lucas movie “Red Tails” in 2012.

“He is the last of the Mohicans if you will,” said Sarah Walker, president of Tarrant County Black Historical and Genealogical Society.

Walker said McDaniel was one of her teachers at I.M. Terrell Elementary School.

McDaniel joined the war at a time when black men were not welcomed into service. At the first screening of “Red Tails,” McDaniel spoke at the reception about the squadron he served in 75 years ago.

“There were no blacks at all in the Air Corps. None. Didn’t want them there. They said, ‘They don’t have the dexterity to work these planes,’” he said at the screening in 2012.

McDaniel was valedictorian and president of his 1940 class at I.M. Terrell High School and was drafted in 1943. He was one of the 922 pilots trained in Tuskegee, Alabama, between 1941 and 1946.

“It created a sense of pride in the community,” Walker said. “It created a sense of a young man giving back, giving his life really, to all of America.”

In 2007 while Obama served Illinois in the U.S. Senate, he thanked the airmen when the group received the Congressional Gold Medal.

“My career in public service was made possible by the path heroes like the Tuskegee Airmen trail-blazed,” Obama said in a statement at the time, according to the New York Times.

However, Walker said McDaniel never bragged about his service and few people even knew he was a Tuskegee airman until the group’s story was shared in an exhibit at the Lenora Rolla Heritage Center Museum in 2013.

“They weren’t seeking pride. It was just a thing they knew they had to do,” Walker said about the airmen.

A wake will be held March 27 at Saint Peter Presbyterian in Fort Worth from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Funeral services, handled by Baker Funeral Home, will be on March 28 at 11 a.m. at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

As of September 2018, the Tuskegee Airmen society estimated 13 of the 355 single engine pilots who served in the Mediterranean theater operation during WWII were still alive.

Attached Files McDaniel.JPG
#4468345 - 03/31/19 10:17 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Canada's longest serving soldier dies, https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/cana...-soldier-dies/ar-BBVsdfH?ocid=spartandhp

MONTREAL - Honorary Col. David Lloyd Hart, a decorated Second World War veteran who was the Canadian Army's oldest and longest-serving officer, has died at age 101.
The Canadian Armed Forces announced that Hart died March 27 in Montreal.
Hart served for more than 80 years in the army in various roles, including as a young communications operator in England and France during the Second World War. A sergeant at the time, Hart went on to receive a military medal for bravery for his actions during the ill-fated Allied raid on Dieppe in 1942, when he insisted on briefly going off-air to locate two brigades and pass on an order to withdraw.
Born in July 1917 in Montreal, Hart enlisted in the reserves in 1937 with the Fourth Signal Regiment and was called to active duty in 1939.


There was only 16 squadrons of RAF fighters that used 100 octane during the BoB.
The Fw190A could not fly with the outer cannon removed.
There was no Fw190A-8s flying with the JGs in 1945.
#4468425 - 04/01/19 01:35 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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Wow, an 80 year career in the army! That's mind blowing.


“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
#4470083 - 04/12/19 02:24 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS: One of the last Army Rangers involved in the D-Day Invasion at Normandy has died.

Relatives say Charles Ryan died Sunday in his St. Louis home. He was 96.

Mr. Charles Ryan was a standout youth athlete who qualified for the 1940 Winter Olympics in speed skating. Those Olympics were canceled due to World War II.

On June 6, 1944 at Normandy, he was among 225 Rangers who helped neutralize enemy artillery that was attacking landing allied troops. Fifty of 65 men in his company were killed. Mr. Ryan was wounded but recovered and later fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

After the war, Mr. Ryan founded several aerospace engineering companies.

Mr. Ryan is survived by his wife of 68 years, Joan, six children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

"Every Day is Memorial Day"
The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files Ryan.jpg
#4470084 - 04/12/19 02:25 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS: Its with great sadness that we learn the news that one of the last surviving member of the Tuskegee Airmen, Robert T. McDaniel has died at the age of 96.

Mr. Robert T. McDaniel was a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the elite African-American pilots who flew during World War II. He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 and trained as a pilot and bombardier at the Tuskegee Institute, going on to serve as a flight officer with the 477th bombardier group.

After the war, Mr. McDaniel became a math teacher, later serving as a school counselor, vice principal, and principal.

As of March 2019, the Tuskegee Airmen Organization estimated 7 of the 355 single engine pilots who served in the Mediterranean theater operation during World War II were still alive.

"Every Day is Memorial Day"
The Greatest GENERATIONS Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files McDaniel.jpg
#4470085 - 04/12/19 02:27 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - It’s with great sadness we learn that Normandy “D-DAY” veteran Mr. Barran Eugene Tucker, has died. He was 94.

Born on October 30, 1924 to Estelle and Alvin Tucker in Spiro, Oklahoma. He was drafted into the Army during his senior year of high school at Spiro.

He served in the 29th Division, 175th , Company G and landed on the unsecured Omaha Beach on the morning of June 07.

After the 175th Infantry Regiment pushed inland, the soldiers liberated Isigny. Next, they pushed on to Saint-Lô and the regiment attacked a bridge along the Vire River on June 13. But the Americans were outnumbered by the Germans.

“They weren’t about to give it up,” said Tucker.

“We never did capture it. We assaulted it three times and they wiped us out. There was a lot more enemy and artillery up there than they estimated. How I survived, I don’t know. I was in the thick of it. I came within inches of getting killed there. But they missed me.”

After running out of ammunition and suffering severe casualties, Col. Paul Goode, commanding officer of the 175th Infantry Regiment, made the decision to surrender to the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division.

“Our regimental commander had so many wounded, he surrendered to save lives,” said Tucker.

“We fought all day long, so we ran out of ammunition and we had so many wounded.”

The Germans took the captured soldiers to a POW camp in Mooseport, Germany and were forced to work as slave labor in a sugar beet factory. In December 1944, Tucker escaped back into France with two other soldiers.

A French family fed the soldiers and told them they could sleep in their barn. However, the family notified the SS and Tucker was captured that night. The Germans took Tucker to a POW camp in Zeitz, Germany.

In April 1945, a rumor spread around the camp that Adolf Hitler had ordered the execution of all American POWs. So Tucker escaped and was rescued by American soldiers. When he made it home to the U.S., he weighed only 77 pounds.

Mr. Tyler was the last known survivor of company G.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest Generations Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files Tucker.jpg
#4470424 - 04/14/19 04:36 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - It’s with sadness we learn the news that World War II veteran Edgar Kuhlow of Sheboygan Falls has died. He was 100.

Over the years, the Sheboygan Falls resident shared stories of his time in the war and as a prisoner of war in Germany for over seven months.

Kuhlow was drafted at age 24 and served in the 45th Infantry, fighting in the front lines of battle, including at the January 1944 Battle of Anzio in Italy.

Months after that invasion, on Sept. 28, 1944, Kuhlow and a squad of six men were sent out on reconnaissance when the group was captured in France, about 100 miles from the German border.

"They lined us up on the road," Kuhlow said. "I thought for sure they're going to shoot us."

In the months that followed, Kuhlow and other prisoners were marched from camp to camp throughout Germany, each one no better than the last with little food, chilling temperatures and either bunks full of lice and fleas or the cold, hard ground with only one small blanket to share among three soldiers.

"I was never beaten or anything like that, but conditions were so poor," Kuhlow said. "The food — we never got enough to eat. I'm only about 140 pounds to start with and ... I lost 50 pounds."

Kuhlow's liberation came with the end of the war. In mid-February 1945, with the Russians' "big guns in the east" audible, the Germans forced Kuhlow and other POWs to march west, following the Baltic Sea coastline to avoid capture. Kuhlow estimates they covered some 200 miles in a three-week period.

Kuhlow, who had malaria and was too weak to walk, traveled in a wagon. He and others who were sick were eventually dumped at a camp at Greifswald, where they stayed for two months.

At the end of April, he and the others again were forced to march away from the approaching Russians to Barth, near the Baltic Sea. This time, it was only a two-day trial, however, and the group arrived in the German town at the beginning of May 1945, days away from the end of the war.

The morning after they arrived in Barth, Kuhlow recalls he was astonished to find all of the German guards had pulled out during the night and headed west to surrender to the Americans.

Although free from German watch, the group stayed there for another week or so, until an English B17 bomber picked them up at a nearby air field.

"It was the 12 of May," Kuhlow said. "It was a beautiful evening."

A day later, the group arrived in Reims, France, and Kuhlow, who was battling yet another bout of malaria, was treated at a hospital there.

The first thing the former prisoners of war did was shed all of their clothes, which were rags at that point, Kuhlow said. That was followed by a hot shower, a haircut, shave, another shower and then a noontime meal.

"Then, I felt like an American again," Kuhlow said.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest Generations Foundation

Attached Files Kuhlow.jpg
#4470425 - 04/14/19 04:37 PM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
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AMERICA REMEMBERS - Its with sadness we receive the news the World War II pilot, Darrel Shumard has died. He was 97.

Fully 74 years after his fighter-bomber tumbled from the sky over war-plagued Europe and he was seized by German soldiers, Darrel Shumard just four weeks ago took off from Sonoma County’s airport in a Cessna with a pilot a generation younger beside him.

At age 97, the taciturn and modest Shumard, long one of the region’s most revered veterans of World War II, took the controls of the sporty, six-seat plane and headed off for Amador County.

“He flew the thing all the way over and all the way back,” marveled his pal, Lynn Hunt, a pilot and restorer of the sorts of warplanes that Shumard flew as a young U.S. Army Corps captain.

Shumard was born Dec. 2, 1921, in Galesburg, Illinois. He wasn’t yet school-aged when hard times pushed his parents to California in search of work.

When he was 10 and 11 years old and the Great Depression was on, Shumard and his folks became “fruit tramps,” granddaughter Michelle Grady of Rohnert Park recalls. They moved from orchard to orchard in the Monterey-Salinas area, picking produce.

Shumard graduated from high school in Turlock. He had studied at Modesto Junior College for a year and worked briefly at Lockheed Aircraft Co.’s factory in Burbank when, not long after the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, he went to war.

He trained to fly the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk fighter, then the P-47. He flew missions against Germany in the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s attempt to disrupt the Allies’ advance that began with the D-Day invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

Early in 1945, 23-year-old 1st Lt. Shumard was flying out of France with the 404th Fighter Squadron, 371st Fighter Group, 9th Air Force. On Valentine’s Day, while flying in formation on his second mission of the day, the wings of his plane and a second one accidentally touched.

Damaged, both planes went out of control and both pilots bailed out, descending beneath parachutes near the French-German border.

Shumard always considered himself lucky, but that day his boots touched down in the midst of German soldiers while the second pilot came down among Americans.

Shumard was imprisoned at a POW camp. As the Allies approached, the prisoners were forced to march many miles to a second camp.

Close friend and fellow pilot Bill Canavan recalled Shumard telling how he was walking the camp’s perimeter fence one day, just for something to do, and he came upon a familiar face — that of a former Turlock neighbor and high-school buddy.

Shumard learned the man, Art Peterson, had become a pilot of a Martin B-26 Marauder bomber. “They couldn’t believe they found each other,” Canavan said.

Shumard and his fellow POWs were liberated April 29, just days before Germany’s surrender. Shumard was back in California and an honorably discharged veteran when the war ended with Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15.

Again a civilian, he went to work for a Southern California construction firm that paved streets and parking lots and such. In 1953, he fell in love with Madeline Hood, a descendant of Roger Williams, founder of the Rhode Island colony.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest Generations Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files Shumard.jpg
#4470664 - 04/16/19 10:10 AM Re: The Passing of The Greatest Generation. [Re: F4UDash4]  
Joined: Apr 2015
Posts: 13,734
F4UDash4 Online cool
Veteran
F4UDash4  Online Cool
Veteran

Joined: Apr 2015
Posts: 13,734
SC
AMERICA REMEMBERS - Normandy Veteran of the battle La Fiere dies. Mr. Fred B. Morgan Jr. of Martha’s Vineyard, was 97.

Mr. Morgan Jr. didn’t talk about World War II for over 50 years, and when he did, no story was quite as harrowing as his memory of treating a badly wounded soldier along a road in Normandy, France, while a Nazi tank approached during the small hamlet Battle at La Fiere.

“He kept saying ‘Get outta here Morgan, they’re gonna kill us,’ ”

As the tank bore down on them, Mr. Morgan didn’t budge: “No way I could have ever lived with myself if I left him in a ditch bleeding.”

Morgan was a member of the 82nd Airborne’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and a veteran of combat jumps in Sicily, Holland, the Battle of the Bulge, and Normandy.

For his own war injuries, he received a Purple Heart and was awarded a Bronze Star as well.

The oldest of three siblings, Fred Baxter Morgan Jr. was born in Edgartown in 1921, a son of Fred B. Morgan Sr., who skippered vessels, and Doris Howland Taylor.

Mr. Morgan, known as Ted, who became an Edgartown selectman for more than 30 years, was 97 when he died on Martha’s Vineyard Hospital.

“Every Day is Memorial Day”
The Greatest Generations Foundation
Web: www.TGGF.org

Attached Files morgan.jpg
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