BEST FRIENDS UNTIL THE END: Rat of Tobruk and Burma railway veteran die within days of each other -- will be remembered ahead of ANZAC Day.

Former Rat of Tobruk Murray Willing and fellow veteran Norvyn "Bluey" Stevens — who fought Japanese and Vichy French forces during World War II — knew a great deal about strength in the face of adversity.

The pair of old soldiers, who both recently died at the age of 100 during the current lead-up to Anzac Day, served in different theatres of war but they each had battle scars.

Mr Willing, who was believed to be the state's last living Rat of Tobruk, survived being shot during later fighting in Papua New Guinea.

During his wartime service, Mr Stevens was taken prisoner by the Japanese and was put to work on the notorious Thai-Burma railway.

"One in three Australians died in those camps, but Bluey and his mates fancied themselves as amateur saboteurs," Mr Denny said.

"When the supports for the railway bridges were being sunk, the POWs backfilled all the holes with leaves rather than dirt in the hope the bridges might eventually collapse."

The men just missed out on one final Anzac Day but Mr Denny said, given the cancellation of so many marches and services to protect veterans from coronavirus, it would have been a very different experience from the one they were used to.

"[Murray] used to love being in the Anzac Day marches, he wouldn't miss them for the world," he said.

"It's so sad to have this thrust upon them in their last years … you never know when an ANZAC Day is going to be your last when you get into your nineties.

"To have it snatched away from you by something like this and then know it's another 12 months before you get another crack — you just wonder how many are going to be around."

Murray Willing lied about his age and enlisted as a 20-year-old at Wallaroo on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula in March 1940.

During the war, he more than lived up to his name, willingly enduring hardship during his service in the Middle East and North Africa.

He survived the Siege of Tobruk and, along with 14,000 other Australians, held off the German forces for more than six months.

After resting in Syria, he was sent to fight the Japanese in Papua New Guinea where, during the Battle of Buna, he was shot in the chest.

"As my captain put his hand up for us to move forward, the sniper got me through my chest and it came out under my arm," he said.

He was strapped to the front of a vehicle for evacuation to a waiting aircraft, before Japanese forces attacked.

Like Mr Willing, Norvyn Stevens enlisted in Adelaide early in the war and served as a dispatch rider.

"They went off to the Middle East and worked in Syria, where they fought against the Vichy French under the command of Arthur Blackburn VC," Mr Denny said.

His battalion was later sent to Java to defend against the Japanese but, after the battalion's machine guns were sent on the wrong boat many soldiers, including Bluey, were captured as prisoners of war.

They were put to work on the notorious Thai-Burma railway.

He started as a "hammer and tap man", but Mr Denny said he soon had other ideas — including sabotage — and he was soon responsible for demolition.

A piece of rock damaged his shin badly in an explosion and the wound became very infected.

Managing to survive, he was then shipped to Japan to work in the coal mines until he was liberated after the end of the war.

Mr Denny said he was actively involved in his battalion's association and in Anzac Day marches.

"He held the unit standard, the first man in the unit, in his chair, in his uniform, with his slouch hat — he was always pushed in his wheelchair by his granddaughter," he said.

His granddaughter Ineke Van Rijswijk said he became her best friend.

"He was an amazing man who, despite the struggles and trauma he suffered in life, continued to see good everywhere, to love life and all people right up to his passing."

Despite a harrowing war experience, he did not share the stories with his family freely.

"His view was that if he burdened us and others with those stories, the sacrifices would've been for nothing," Ms Van Rijswijk said.

"I recall other stories … like him laughing with old friends about sunbaking in prison camps and getting burnt.

"We are heartbroken that given current COVID restrictions we cannot send Pa off the way he deserves."

Its with great sadness, we learn the news that World War II veteran and Superstar Mr. Lester Hudson, dies month short of his 100th birthday.

Lester Hudson was one of the last surviving members of the Chindits unit - a highly trained unit who fought against the Japanese during the Burma Campaign.

The war hero was married with one daughter, three grandchildren and four great grandchildren, was due to celebrate his 100th birthday in October. Speaking two years ago about the war, the military veteran told how he was shot by the Japanese during a fierce battle in the South-East Asian theatre of WWII.

He said: "If the bullet had been a fraction inwards, that would've been it. The bullet went right through me and out the other side."

The Chindits, officially titled the Long Range Penetration Sniper, were a special operations unit of the British and Indian armies that saw action in 1943 and 1944.

Their man focus was raiding operations against the Imperial Japanese Army, especially long-range penetration: attacking Japanese troops, facilities and lines of communication, deep behind Japanese lines.

It is thought Mr. Hudson was one of the unit's last survivors.

Today, we pause to remember the sacrifices and service of those who have gone before us due to Covid-19.

Rest in Peace. Your Nation does not forget your service. Your soul may now rest upon the Altar of Freedom that we all hold dear to us.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- ZYSMAN, KAHN, 96, served during the war in the United States Air Forces and took part in the Battle of Iwo Jima and bombing raids over Japan, as well as in aerial surveys of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the dropping of the atom bombs over Japan.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- MAJOR LEN MCCUTCHEON, 101, served in the United States Army during the battle at Okinawa in the Pacific.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- WILLIAM MIRANDA, 96, served with the United States Army, First “Big Red One” Division landing on Omaha Beach during DDAY. Bill went on to fight in ferocious battles in Belgium or Holland before being assigned to guard duty in Nuremburg, Germany.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- FRANK BONOMO, 94, served in the United States Navy in the South and Central Pacific during World War II.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- JAMES PARAS, 94, at 17 enlisted into the United States Navy and served the Pacific during World War.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- GEORGE “THE SILVER FOX” CATALDO joined the Navy in 1944 after graduating from New Bedford Vocational High School, serving in the South Pacific until the end of World War II in 1945.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- WILLIAM H. MIRANDA JR., 96, served with the United States Army, 29th Division during World War II, landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day, was wounded outside Saint Lo, and later awarded two bronze stars for his service.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- EDWARD TURKEN, 96, joined the U.S. Army Air Corps in December 1942, and became a gunner on a B-24 Liberator.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- FORREST COMPTON, an Army veteran who earned his greatest fame playing Marine Lt. Col. Edward Gray on "Gomer Pyle: U.S.M.C.," In real life, Compton served with the U.S. Army's 103rd Infantry Division in France during World War II.

AMERICA REMEMBERS -- EMILIO JOSEPH DIPALMA, served in World War II with the United States Army, First “Big Red One” Infantry Division Leo was a WWII Veteran known for his service as a courtroom guard at the 1st Nuremberg Trial.

There aren’t many left that have as much to look back on as Pearl Harbor survivor Mr. Daniel Kramer did.

A survivor of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Kramer died today at Prairie Hills Assisted Living in Clinton. He was 103.

Kramer had spoken with the Clinton Herald about the events of Dec. 7, 1941 many times. He grew up in Dubuque, attended the University of Iowa, joined the U.S. Navy and lived through one of the most harrowing attacks of World War II. Seven battleships were stationed at Pearl Harbor in early December 1941; the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, Kramer was on duty on the U.S.S California.

According to the Naval History and Heritage Command website, the USS California was hit forward and aft by two Japanese torpedoes in the early minutes of the Pearl Harbor raid. She was later hit by a bomb and near-missed by another, which caused additional flooding. Though her design included very good protection against underwater damage, California’s actual condition was much less satisfactory, with many watertight compartments open and some design details proving unable to resist the effects of torpedo warheads, according to the website.

“California was nearly ready to get underway when a large mass of burning oil, drifting down ‘Battleship Row’, threatened to set the ship on fire. She was ordered abandoned, and, when the crew returned on board sometime later, it was impossible to control her flooding,” the website states. The ship settled to the bottom of Pearl Harbor, coming to rest on Dec. 10, 1941. Nearly 100 of her officers and men were killed in action during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Kramer, 25, at the time, had enlisted one year before the the ships were attacked. He had been married less than six months.

“General quarters were sounded,” Kramer said in an interview with the Herald a few years ago. “That means everyone gets to their battle station. My battle station was on the bridge of the battleship. That is where the ship is steered from. We did not get underway before we were attacked by bombs and torpedoes. The battleship slowly sank in the water where the main deck was under water but the rest of the battleship was not. It was a total surprise.”

In an attack that killed nearly 2,500 people, Kramer survived. He went on to Fort Shafter, not escaping more bomb attacks from Japanese airplanes.

He continued his military service until 1946, when he moved back to Clinton with his wife. There, he started a new career with DuPont.

When 2020 started there were fewer than 500 Pearl Harbor survivors still alive in the United States, putting Kramer in an elite group of military veterans.

It is with great sadness we learn the passing of Pearl Harbor survivor Mr. Thomas Berg, 98, of Port Townsend, Wash. He was aboard the USS Tennessee at the time of the attack.

Berg, born July 19, 1922, was a regular face at the annual Dec. 7 observances at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In December he served as grand marshal for the annual parade, which he had ridden in each year since 2011.

During the 2018 commemoration, Berg recounted for Stars and Stripes how he had joined the Navy right out of high school in 1940 and had been assigned below deck in Boiler Room 7 on the USS Tennessee on the morning of the attack. The ship was moored on Battleship Row beside the USS West Virginia.

He was walking the deck for some fresh air before heading to the boiler room for the day’s work, then stopped into his living quarters. Moments later, a clarinet player from the morning-colors band raced in, shouting that the Japanese were bombing.

“Everybody reeled back and thought he’d gone berserk,” Berg said.

Below deck in the boiler room, Berg’s job was to communicate by radio with a sailor on the navigation bridge.

“He was describing what was going on,” Berg said. “He told us when the Oklahoma turned over, when the West Virginia was sinking and listing.”

When the [USS] Arizona’s magazine blew up, the repercussion drove smoke down the Tennessee’s pipes into the boiler room, burning off the eyebrows of some men, Berg said. The Tennessee’s stern was engulfed in flames from the Arizona’s burning fuel oil.

“I was scared stiff,” he said.

Berg went on to submarine duty during World War II and was discharged in 1946, according to his obituary. He earned a degree in mechanical engineering, and in the late 1960s was a test engineer for the Mark 45 torpedo at Naval Torpedo Station-Keyport. He retired in 1977.

He is survived by Lesa Barnes, his wife of 21 years, three children from his first marriage, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

D-Day veteran who was one of the first Allied soldiers to enter the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after its Nazi guards fled dies aged 95.

When he was just 18, John Gardiner, from Sidmouth Devon, fought his way off Sword Beach during the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.

With his unit, part of the Devonshire Regiment, John battled inland to help his comrades hold Pegasus Bridge, which Allied soldiers had famously captured a few hours earlier.

His unit then made their way across Germany towards the Baltic coast when John and an officer arrived at Bergen-Belsen - making him one of the first Allied soldiers to come across the horrors of the infamous concentration camp.

Approximately 50,000 people, most of them Jewish, died at the concentration camp, including Anne Frank and her mother Edith.

In 2017 he was awarded the Legion d'honneur - France's highest military decoration - for helping to liberate the country from the Nazis.

Now tributes have been paid to John, who died in hospital on May 4 from kidney failure after suffering a fall.

He did not have coronavirus, his family confirmed, though they were unable to say goodbye to him due to visiting restrictions in place due to Covid-19.

His daughter Terina Worrall said: 'Dad will be mainly remembered as a quiet, gentle, kind, generous and helpful gentleman.

'He was always happy to help others and was a very humble person with a quiet humour.

'He enjoyed gardening and had a collection of tortoises in the garden too.'

John served with the 12 Battalion Devonshire Regiment, part of the 6th Airborne Division, and after training his first action was landing on Sword Beach on D-Day.

After fighting in the D-Day landings, John and his unit fought in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium to help quell Hitler's last major offensive of the Second World War.

In March 1945 he was flown by glider 50 miles behind the German lines to help secure strategic river bridges as part of Operation Varsity.

During the operation - the largest ever airborne operation - John saw pal Private Jack Bristol fatally shot through the stomach.

John was unable to stop for the 20-year-old fellow Devonian as they were still under intense fire.

The death of his friend continued to haunt John after the war and his family say he would send money to his relatives as a means of support.

Mrs Worrall said: ' He didn't talk about (the war) for ages. He lost his best friend - he was hit and he was ordered to leave him to die as they were under fire.

'He never really got over that. He used to send money to his friends's mum to help her out financially as she was a widow.

'Today I would say his experiences left him with PTSD but like so many of that era they just got on with it.'

Three weeks later after John's unit headed north through Germany he and a senior officer came across a series of huts behind barbed wire fences.

They were urged to approach it by a skeletal figure of a man who opened the gate for them.

Mrs Worrall said: 'At Belsen he found the camp all but empty of people apart from a German/Jewish guy who spoke a little English.

'He showed him around and one can only imagine how traumatic it must have been to find bodies in a pit with lime spread over them.

'Again, I think that contributed to his quiet demeanour.'

John had four children with his first wife Pat.

After they divorced in the early 1970s he met his second wife and now widow Joan who he later married in 2003.

John's funeral is due to take place at Whimple Crematorium on May 19.

It is with great sadness; we learn the passing of Polish WWII fighter pilot. Mr. Jerzy Glowczewski. He was 97.

Jerzy Glowczewski, a Polish-born fighter pilot who flew World War II missions with Britain's Royal Air Force after Nazi Germany invaded his country.

He is believed to have been the last surviving member of a group of Polish exiles who joined the Royal Air Force to fight the Nazis.

Born in Warsaw in November 1922, Jerzy Eligiusz Glowczewski fled Poland with his stepfather at the age of 16 when Nazi Germany invaded in 1939.

Glowczewski was nearly killed in a strafing run by a German plane as he tried to find what remained of the Polish Army. As refugees, Glowczewski and his stepfather lived in Bucharest, Romania, before moving to Tel Aviv, Israel.

He served with the Allied Forces in the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade in Egypt and in Libya before he traveled to Britain to become a pilot.

He joined the Polish army in exile in 1941, where he served in the No. 308 'City of Krakow' Polish fighter squad. With this squadron, Glowczewski completed 100 mission and was awarded the Polish Cross of Valor three times for his efforts.

Glowczewski was also instrumental in halting the final major attack on the Western front by the German Luftwaffe.

On New Year's Day in 1945, Glowczewski shot down a Focke-Wulf 190, a German fighter aircraft, over Belgium from his Spitefire fighter plane.

'As I looked over my shoulder, the Focke-Wulf was a crumbling crucifix against the bright, morning sky. Another explosion, it tumbled down,' he wrote in his memoirs.

'It was probably one of the last classic dogfights in which survival depended on the acrobatic skill and lightning reflexes of the pilot.'

After World War II, he returned to a savaged Poland following the German's surrender in May 1945. Glowczewski decided to pursue a career in architecture and attended that Warsaw University of Technology. He graduated in 1952.

His work as an architecture helped rebuild Poland's ruined old town and designed many projects around the country.

He married Irena 'Lenta' Glowczewska and had his daughter, Klara.

Glowczewski career eventually took him to the United States, where in 1961 he visited in 1961 on a Ford Foundation grant.

He taught architecture at North Carolina State University, before spending two years in Egypt directing the redevelopment of the city of Aswan in 1965.

Wartime in Israel led Glowczewski to flee Egypt with his family, including their dachshund named Romulus, two years later.

In later years, Glowczewski taught architecture at the Pratt Institute in New York and wrote memoirs recounting his life experiences.

The Accidental Immigrant' was a single volume memoir released in English in 2007.

Glowczewski is survived by his daughter Klara and two grandchildren.

Sarah Gibson dispatch rider.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituar...h-rider-one-fighting-wellses-lauded-war/

Commander Jim Speed Royal Navy beach commando Sword beach.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituar...commando-cleared-beaches-d-day-obituary/

Mieczyslaw Stachiewicz, Polish Second World War bomber pilot.


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituar...cz-polish-second-world-war-bomber-pilot/

Scotland's oldest veteran and World War II hero Jimmy Sinclair dies aged 107

Scotland’s oldest veteran and World War II veteran Jimmy Sinclair has sadly died at the age of 107.

Tributes have poured in for the war hero after he passed away at his home in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on Wednesday, May 27.

Jimmy, who served as a gunner with the elite Chestnut Troop of the 7th Armored Division in North Africa, lived a fascinating life and was the last surviving Desert Rat.

The pensioner, who celebrated his last birthday with a dram and a bowl of porridge, included Prince Charles and wife Camilla as personal friends.

He regularly corresponded with the royal couple as the Duchess of Rothesay’s father was a fellow Desert Rat.

Two armed forces charities have paid tribute to Jimmy, who passed away just weeks after featuring in a special VE day exhibition to mark the 75th anniversary.

In a joint statement, Mark Bibbey, of Poppyscotland, and Dr Claire Armstrong, of Legion Scotland, said: “It is with great sadness that we learned today of the passing of Jimmy Sinclair, who fought against Rommel in the North African desert as a gunner with the elite Chestnut Troop, 1st Regiment Horse Artillery, of the 7th Armored Division.

“We are blessed that so many were able to hear Jimmy’s incredible story over the years and it was no surprise that he received numerous commendations for his Service during the Second World War and, following that, with the Allied Control Commission in Berlin.

“His was one of the most important voices that were heard as the country celebrated VE Day just a few short weeks ago.

“We wish to send our sincere condolences to Jimmy’s family at this time, along with his legion of friends and followers.

“There is no better way to sum up this wonderful man than highlighting that he refused to wear his medals out of solidarity for those he served with that were lost.

“We are sure that many of us across the country and beyond will be raising a glass to this incredible man.”

It is with great sadness; we learn the passing of Pearl Harbor survivor and World War II superstar Mr. Harry Ogg. He was 98.

Harry enlisted in the Navy in June of 1941 and after boot camp, was assigned to the USS Neosho AO 23 which was in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. After years of service he returned home on August 14, 1945 on his birthday. During his time in the Navy he earned 5 battle stars and he thanks the good lord he survived.

Ogg was a long-time member of Chapter 5 Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and paid for the Pearl Harbor Survivors memorial at Sherrill Park in Corpus Christi, Texas.

It is with great sadness; we learn the passing of World War II SUPERHERO and longtime Fort Berthold doctor Mr. Herbert Wilson. He was 99.

He spent two years in Europe in the 1940s, participating in 31 bombing raids with the 506th Bombardment Squadron, 44th Bombardment Group. He joined the U.S. Army Air Corps as a gunner and bombardier, looking after armament, the bombs and guns, and flying on a B-24 Liberator. A model of that cherished plane still hangs from the ceiling in his office.

It was during the war when he met his helpmate of 70 years, the young Lilian May “Ozzie” Osborne. The two met at an American Red Cross Club party in London, but neither of them danced so they bonded over a book they were both reading, “War and Peace.”

Herbert Wilson, and his wife Lilian, had six children, 14 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

After the war, Wilson, a Bethel, Vt., native, graduated from Harvard and Tufts Medical School on the GI Bill and worked two years for the U.S. Public Health Service. His second year he transferred to the Indian Health Service at Elbowoods, where he spent a year before the rising reservoir of the Garrison Dam flooded the town. He established himself in New Town, where he doctored for 42 years.

It is with great sadness we learn this morning that one of the last survivors who witnessed the Japanese Surrender, 1st Class Machinist Mate, Arthur C, Albert Sr., went home to be with his Lord. He was 93.

Art was born on January 29, 1927, in Syracuse, NY. He served in the United States Navy for 21 years. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy at the age of 17, where he bravely fought and served aboard the USS Missouri during World War II.

He witnessed Japan’s formal instrument of surrender ending World War II on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay, Japan. He was injured during the Battle of Okinawa when a kamikaze struck it, but he never reported the injury.

He later had to have his right kneecap removed, and the bones fused, which caused him to walk with a stiff leg. He then went on to serve during the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Nearly every year, Art, his wife Sherry, and other family and friends would travel with him to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to celebrate the signing of the peace treaty, and in fact, he had plans to attend the 75th anniversary in just a few short months.

Art was the life of the party when he would be on board the ship with crowds, cameras, and microphones following him around as he regaled his days aboard the “Mighty Mo.” He also loved to speak at schools to share with students the events of his time in the service.

He is the kindest and loving person you could ever meet.

Arthur C, Albert Sr was one of the few left who could wear World War II, Korea, and Vietnam hat. RIP Arthur C, Albert Sr.

Vera Lynn dies.

RIP the forces sweetheart.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53091856

Wow, 103!! RIP

I admit, other than the context and time period of a short obscure song, I had no idea who she was...

"Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn?
Remember how she said that
We would meet again
Some sunny day?
Vera, Vera
What has become of you
Does anybody else in here
Feel the way I do?"

RIP, and to all referenced on this thread.

Same here Mark. I didn't know who she was until I was in my 30's and indeed when I first listened to "The Wall" when I was in high school I had no clue who Roger Waters was singing about.

It is with great sadness; we learn the passing of SUPERSTAR Warren Jorgenson, a Marine veteran of World War II, POW who survived Corregidor and 'hell ship' voyage, He was 99.

Not many Marines survived more hell than Warren Jorgenson.

The veteran from Bennington witnessed the attack on Manila at the outset of World War II. He was wounded just before the fall of Corregidor, endured a "hell ship" journey to Japan, and three years as a POW.

“Jorg,” as friends called him, lost a high school sweetheart who married another man, thinking Jorg had died in the war. He married three times before they finally reconnected.

“He was such a sweet man,” said Jan Thompson, president of American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor Memorial Society, who had known him for many years.

She said there are only about 60 known veterans still living who survived the Japanese POW camps.

In 2014, Thompson selected Jorgenson along with several other World War II POWs to travel to Japan on a tour of goodwill and reconciliation. The former POWs, in their 90s, appeared on television, gave talks, and met with senior diplomats from both the U.S. and Japan.

Though Jorgenson endured harsh treatment at the hands of the Japanese, he told The World-Herald at the time that he made an early decision not to be bitter about it.

“I decided life’s too short,” he said. “I’m not going to be angry.”

Jorgenson was born in 1921, in Bertram, Iowa, a whistlestop town near Cedar Rapids. His father was a railroad foreman, and his childhood revolved around trains.

He graduated from high school in 1938, got a job in a factory, and planned on marrying his high school sweetheart, Ruth Harrison. He lost the job the following year, and joined the Marines after seeing an ad in the paper about the adventure of serving in Asia.

“When I broke the news to her, she was distraught,” Jorgenson said in 2014. “We were two church kids, straight-arrow. We tentatively figured we’d marry when I got back.”

After boot camp, Jorgenson was sent to Shanghai, China — at the time described as the “Paris of the East.”

In late November 1941, Jorgenson and the Shanghai Marine garrison was evacuated to the Philippines as the Japanese menaced the city. On the morning of Dec. 8 — Dec. 7 in the United States, across the International Date Line — he crowed to his gunnery sergeant that his Marine Corps tour was half over.

“Ten minutes later, someone came up and said ­‘Oahu’s been bombed!’” Jorgenson recalled, referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

That day he saw Japanese aircraft fly overhead to bomb Manila. By the end of December, his unit, the 4th Marine Regiment, was sent to guard the island fortress at Corregidor, in Manila Bay.

During the four-month siege that followed, Jorgenson grew to hate the whine of the air-raid siren.

“I was in terror,” he said. “But you finally adjust, because you’re not dead yet.”

He was shot in the side the day before the garrison fell. The bullet missed his heart because it was deflected by his gas-mask canister.

Jorgenson was sent to Fortress Corregidor’s massive underground hospital. He was lying on a blood-soaked cot when the loudspeaker announced the garrison was being surrendered.

“They said the Japanese will be entering the tunnel in a few minutes,” Jorgenson said.

He said the Japanese didn’t disturb operations in the hospital and left the wounded to heal.

While he was recovering, Jorgenson missed a critical roll call. As a result, his family in Iowa received a message that he was missing and presumed dead.

He spent two years in the Philippines, doing manual labor. He felt his treatment was harsh but not brutal.

“I’d gotten hit a few times, but that was just part of the territory,” he said. “You feel like you want to get up and clobber them — but you don’t.”

Jorgenson was shipped with 1,035 POWs to Japan in August 1944 on one of the notorious hell ships, the Noto Maru. They were crammed into a hot cargo hold with no room to sit. They were given only a little rice and water each day. An open vat in the middle of the room was a communal toilet.

“There were no fights. Just a lot of congestion and smells,” Jorgenson said.

Once in Japan, he was among about 900 POWs sent to the Hanawa prison camp in the mountains of northern Japan to work as slave laborers in the Mitsubishi copper mines. Twenty-seven of them died.

Jorgenson was one of only two of the POWs still living in 2015, when Mitsubishi officials delivered a formal apology to the POWs in Los Angeles.

Characteristically, Jorgenson tended years later to recall moments when his captors showed their humanity. In a 2014 interview, he remembered talking in English with a Mitsubishi engineer who had studied at Columbia University in New York. And the memory of a Japanese officer who was a Christian and gave each prisoner at Corregidor a pack of cigarettes moved him to tears. The officer told them he hoped they got home safely at the end of the war.

“There were times when you saw the brighter side of things,” Jorgenson said.

The Hanawa prisoners heard rumors of the atomic bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Within weeks they were rescued by American troops. He lost 70 pounds while in captivity.

After traveling by ship to the West Coast, Jorgenson called his parents, who were stunned to hear from him. He asked about Ruth.

“My mom said, ‘Sonny boy, just cool it. She’s married,’” he said. Ruth had moved to California with her new husband.

Jorgenson was crushed, but he moved on. He married Louise Messick, and used his GI Bill to go to Drake University and earn a degree in radio broadcasting. He worked for decades in the music industry.

The couple had three sons and divorced in 1959. Jorgenson remarried and settled in Omaha. His second wife, Betty, died in 1981.

Fourteen years later, Ruth — who was widowed and living in Pebble Beach, California — learned Warren was still alive. She wrote him a letter. They rekindled their youthful romance and spent 18 years together, until she died in 2013 after a fall in their California home.

“It was really a honeymoon,” Jorgenson said.

He moved back to Nebraska, near two of his children, to live in a retirement home in Bennington.

Jorgenson had long participated in American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor events, which Thompson said were therapeutic for the veterans (including her own father) who survived the often brutal imprisonment by the Japanese military. Few received any kind of treatment for their trauma.

For many, she said, the bitterness they felt dissipated after goodwill trips like the one Jorgenson joined in 2014.

"Since we started sending them back, it's been a night-and-day difference," Thompson said. "That's the power of these trips."

Jorgenson published a pair of books through a Christian bookseller after turning 90. The first was a politically charged indictment of modern parenting called “Daisies & Dandelions.” The second, “The Expendable Garrison,” was a memoir of his Iowa childhood and his military service, including his POW experience.

In 2017, the then-commander of his wartime unit, Col. Kevin Norton, visited Bennington to film an interview with Jorgenson about his Marine Corps experience.

It is with great sadness, we learn the passing of World War II SUPERSTAR Mr. Marvin Strombo. He was 96.

Marvin Strombo, a United States Marine who as a young man on war-torn islands of the Pacific saw humanity at its worst and journeyed to Japan at age 93 to display it at its best, died Tuesday night.

Strombo grew up in Dixon and lived his last six decades in Missoula, in the log home where he drew his final breath.

"What a good man he was, or is," Sandra Williamson said Tuesday in her father's final hours. "He lived a long, full life and taught a lot of lessons along the way. We're so grateful we had him."

Strombo was in good health earlier this month, when a book about his swashbuckling Scout-Sniper platoon in the 6th Marine Regiment during World War II was published. He was one of author Joseph Tachovsky's primary sources as the ranks of the 35 Marines who survived the Battle of Saipan dwindled.

Just one remains: Roscoe Mullins in West Virginia.

"It's funny. Marvin and Roscoe were best buddies from boot camp through Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian and then they acted as a police force in Japan after the war. They were the last two," said Tachovsky, who began researching "40 Thieves On Saipan" after his father's death in 2011.

Frank Tachovsky was the highly respected commander of the "40 Thieves" who were, as the book jacket cover states, "trained in a ruthless array of hand-to-hand killing techniques" to "wreak havoc in and around, but mostly behind, enemy lines."

Those lines moved steadily and bloodily north along the 12-mile long island after U.S. Marines stormed the southern beaches of Saipan on June 15, 1944. Victory was declared on July 9.

"Daddy loved the book," Williamson said. "He thought it was wonderful that the stories of all those men were going to be told. That mattered a lot to him."

Like many war survivors, Strombo kept his memories to himself. Tachovsky was able to comb some out in frequent visits to Missoula from his own home in Wisconsin. Strombo shared stories of his days on Saipan freely with the Missoulian for a Veterans Day profile in 2016. One of them turned into what his daughter called a "life-changing" experience.

Rex and Keiko Ziak of the Obon Society of Oregon tracked down the family of a Japanese officer who died on Saipan and whose "Good Luck Flag" Strombo claimed as a souvenir. In company with the Ziaks, Williamson, Williamson's sister Brenda Strombo of Portland, Oregon, daughter Emily Williamson and Tachovsky, Marvin traveled to a remote village in Japan in August 2017 to return the flag.

In a moving ceremony, he presented it to three siblings of Sadao Yasue, whose body Strombo came upon among more than 100 fresh corpses on the outskirts of Garapan, the island's capital. In his book, co-written by longtime friend Cynthia Kraack of Minneapolis, Tachovsky described Strombo's encounter outside Garapan. It occurred on June 25, 1944, or 76 years ago Thursday.

Strombo broke off from the six-man group when he saw among the bodies what appeared to be a small World War I cannon. As he approached it, it vanished in the shimmer of the tropical heat.

"In its place lay a dead Japanese captain, as peaceful as if he were sleeping," Tachovsky wrote.

Strombo gazed at the placid face.

"No visible wounds, very little blood, Strombo guessed that he had been killed by a mortar strike," Tachovsky reported. "Rummaging through the warrior's pack, he found many family photos: mother, father and their children in a mountainous village strikingly similar to his home in Montana. He's no different from me, Strombo thought.

"Standing up to leave, he noticed the captain's Good Luck Flag peeking out of his uniform."

Strombo first decided against taking the flag, knowing it to be sacred to the Japanese, Tachovsky said. But he changed his mind.

"If I don't take it, somebody else will," Strombo said, and tucked the flag into his dungarees. "I promise I'll give it back to your family someday."

When he did 73 years later, he became the first U.S. veteran to return a Good Luck Flag in person to Japan, at least through the Obon Society.

"I can almost smell my brother's skin from the flag, so we know that you have kept it well for so long," 89-year-old Tatsuya Yasue said during the hour-long ceremony that the Ziaks arranged to have live-streamed.

The act was typical of her father, Sandra Williams said Tuesday.

"To be able to go back there and do something that brought the family peace meant something to him," she said. "It’s hard when you're in the fog of war, just trying to survive. To be able to go over there and bring comfort instead of bullets, to him that was almost life-changing."

Strombo was one of four brothers who fought in and survived World War II. Oliver Strombo, two years Marvin's elder, was with the Second Marines in the same Pacific battles. Marvin reupped after the war and served in the Korean conflict as well.

He had nightmares, mostly of waking up in the throes of a Japanese banzai. But he handled what has since been labeled Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, better than many. He was discharged in 1951. Starting in 1959 his only marriage produced the four children who were with him on his deathbed Tuesday night. They are, in order of age, Noemi Bassler of Florence, Brenda Strombo, Sandra Williamson and Tim Strombo of Redondo Beach, Calif.

"When Marvin's wife left him shortly after their fourth child was born, he found that being the single parent of four was the best medicine in the world to help him ease his demons," Tachovsky wrote in "40 Thieves."

"He just put all of his focus on raising us and making sure that we felt loved and safe and had a roof over our heads," Williamson said this week. "We were to him what he was to us, just that saving grace."

Tachovsky was at his home in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, late at night nine days ago when he received an urgent email from Brenda Strombo asking him to call her. The news was bad: Marvin, who had been so fit and alert for his age, had taken a dramatic downturn. Hospice was called in.

Tachovsky put everything else aside and jumped in his car the next morning, a Wednesday. After the familiar 1,500-mile drive, he pulled up to the Strombo house Thursday night.

"It's Marvin," he said simply. "All these old guys have become like second and third fathers to me. I went to Japan with him, and I wanted to see him one last time."

Work beckoned Tachovsky home on Monday, and Strombo drifted into unconsciousness that evening. He passed away shortly after 10:30 p.m. Tuesday.

"Marvin kind of rallied when I was leaving," Tachovsky said. "The last cognizant thing I heard him say, he just looked me and said, 'Joe, Semper Fi.'"

The Marine Corps motto that means "always faithful" is also the final line in Tachovsky's book.

In his final hours Tuesday, Strombo was surrounded by his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.