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At Pearl Harbor, all the ships that had been hit _ well, not all of them, but so many had been hit and were on fire and everything, and here we were in this little canoe all in the middle of this.
Now let me ask you this. There's a lot of side things, should I tell all of those? There are a lot of side things that are unusual, and nobody else had one exactly like I had
On Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, 23-year old J.W. "Bill" Simpson wasn't worried about much of anything. His mind was far from the growing world conflict that day as he sat in a car parked off Second Street in Monticello, KY, shooting the bull and drinking moonshine with one of his buddies.
It was at 6 am on February 19, 1945 that the Thurston began landing operations at Iwo Jima. The invasion of the small Pacific island turned out to be one of the bloodiest and most remembered battles of World War II.
Although the U.S. flag was flying above the island, the Japanese were far from relinquishing their territory. The battle continued for another 29 days.
People that live on a farm, or in rural areas, understand the fun of hunting in the great outdoors, once said to be the "Sport of kings," it's a sport that's hard to explain to a city dweller, they lack the ability to comprehend what the sound of a full throated "Bay" of a good Black and Tan coon dog sounds like. A hunter knows the sound of his dog's "Bay," even though that dog is miles away, it's like the drama and music of an opera, and that sound carries over hills and mountains as the hunter rushes to his dog's location.
n 1944, on Dalton's 19th birthday, he made a decision that would affect him for the rest of his life: he joined thousands of other young men and became a soldier to do his part for his country in the ongoing conflict, World War II. After he joined, he passed his physical examination at Fort McPherson, Georgia and on March 30 was officially inducted into the United States Army.
Grandpa was quite a character and always had plenty of amusing tales to keep me entertained for hours. Grandma didn't talk very much but shared her assortment of memories with me through a tattered box of black and white photographs she had collected over the years.
I would ask, "Who is this, Grandma?" She always answered and then Grandpa would contribute a tidbit of information. Uncle Noah was five feet tall; Aunt Lizzie had ten children; Great-grandfather Allen fought in the Civil War; and so on.
My beloved grandparents both passed away in the late 1970s and somehow I was fortunate enough to be given the frayed container of photographs sitting in the top of Grandma's closet.
I was in Baltimore Maryland, and was working in the General office for the Baltimore Railroad. As I recall, it was a Sunday morning when I first got the news on the radio that there was an attack on Pearl Harbor. I chose my own way to get into the army, and I chose something to do to with transportation since I had a little experience with it.
I joined in late December 1942, and I got to Europe in early January 1943, from then on, I was apart of the transportation organization.
I spent the war in Antwerp shipping special supplies to places in Europe.
Food was passed right to left and left to right amid polite requests of "potatoes please," "pass the peas," and "may I have the gravy." If the adults were deep in conversation they merely accepted the dish coming at them with a nudge on their sleeve and then passed it to the person on the other side until it reached its destination. Several of my uncles were passionately bent on many subjects and with the dinner wine following the cocktails were generally deeply into their subjects by suppertime. Given the nudge they would accept the proffered dish, not break stride in their dissertations on whatever topic and attempt to pass it to the next person.
Don McKee hoped to be an engineer in the Army when he gave up his college deferment in 1943 so he could be drafted. But the Army had other ideas. He would be a medic.
“When I heard that, I was crestfallen.” But his training would change his mind. He warmed to the idea of being a medic. He would soon treat many wounded and dead, accumulating an experience of war he still recalls vividly, unflinchingly, 60 years later. He is frank and direct, even chatty, sometimes digressing, his voice often surging to stay ahead of the memories that seem to descend on him from all sides.
Mum lived with John, her eldest brother in Peebles, Scotland after her mother died, and when she was in her teens she went to work in the woolen mills in Galashiels.
It was hard being a weaver. There were huge looms and only gaslight to work by. She had to watch the shuttles flying to and fro, and pity on you if one broke or you got a knot. You had to watch them all the time. No wonder my mum's eyes were bad later in life!
Slowly a giggle rose up in the boy, giving way to outright gut bursting laughter. The two turkeys were still there, flapping their wings, screeching and flapping about wildly. The ricocheting slug had struck the branch on which they had been resting and the old hard hickory had split. In the instant the branch was burst open, the resting birds feet had fallen into the gap. Then the limb had snapped back together, trapping the now obviously distraught gobblers.