My father was born in Portland, OR and graduated from The Dalles High School in 1929, the year in which the great stock market collapse signaled the beginning of the worst economic depression my country has ever seen. When he left high school, he moved to southern California to live with one of his older brothers, Verne.

Verne was house sitting while working as a border patrol guard. The plan was for dad to live there with him rent free, while attending a junior college in a nearby town. The opportunity dried up when Verne's job dried up and the boys both moved back home.

The trip back home was highly disappointing to my dad. His family were poor and the depression made things worse. He really wanted to go to school and further his education. He worked at whatever jobs he could find. He picked fruit and vegetable until he dropped from exhaustion. He would race others to get a job loading barges when he heard the dock whistles blow. He worked often in a local cannery for several years.

At age twenty six he began to work, drilling water wells with his father, who had three drilling machines at the time. After about two years he had managed to save up enough money to move to Des Moines, IA, and attend the Des Moines Still College of Osteopathy. While he studied there for a year, he worked part time in a drug store and barely managed to make ends meet, but in his own words, "It was a miserable gap," so once again, he had to move home.

His dad needed help again so he went back to drilling wells for about a year, but the money they made wouldn't provide enough for regular meals, so he made a decision to join the National Guard. He received a place to sleep, had three regular meals a day and earned twelve dollars a month. Sixth months after joining he made the rank of Sergeant and began to earn a dollar a day.

On the morning of December 7th, 1941, he was sitting on his footlocker in the barracks at Fort Lewis, WA, with his discharge papers in hand when the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor broke locally. Of course all discharges were cancelled and he was immediately inducted into the Army of the United States.

His first assignment was to guard the Weyerhaeuser Lumber Yard, and shortly after that, he was sent to Fort Clatsop, on the Oregon coast. There, he and a few men under his command were ordered to guard a fifty mile stretch of the Oregon coastline with just three .50 caliber machine guns. How they were supposed to do that without gaping holes in their defense I don't know. I suspect it was so that somebody in charge could answer affirmatively that they had taken steps to protect what they were responsible for protecting.

In April of 1942, my father got new orders and was sent to San Francisco to ship out to Melbourne, Australia, where he stayed for about three months. From there he went to Rock Hampton for about a year. After that he went to Port Moresby, in Papua New Guinea, north of Australia and from there almost immediately by plane eastward to other side of the mountains. Now a Master Sergeant, my father marched his men up the coastline a distance where they stayed for a year.

I once asked my father, who was not talkative about the war, how many men he had under his command. There were one hundred and twenty. I asked if he remembered any of them. At that point my mother laughed. My father didn't have a great memory for names, but he remembered all of their names and all of their serial (dog tag) numbers.

I further asked him (I was young) if any of his men died in the war. Seven alone, died from accidental discharge of their own firearms. I was shocked. My dad had taught me to shoot and to safely handle guns from age eight. I asked, appalled, "Didn't they know how to use guns?" He answered by telling me that they had all received basic training before being given to him and that they all trained regularly with firearms.

While in Papua New Guinea, they engaged the Japanese military, and were shot at, bombed and attacked with hand weapons. My dad was a calm character, and when I asked if he had ever had bombs dropped near him he told me that the Japanese bombed their encampment once and he had to run for it and dive over an embankment to escape the bombs. In typical fashion dad said, "Stupid bomb threw dirt and sand all over me." It was striking to me that he showed no animosity to the attacker, but was instead annoyed that he got sand down his neck. If you'd ever experienced his sense of humor, this was classic dad.

He saw a lot of death. I never asked if he'd ever had to inflict it. He and everyone else there were given infected vaccinations for some local disease and several men in his unit died from that. Strangely, the records of the men who died were lost by the Army. He was sick from that too and also contracted malaria, which plagued him for years after the war.

From the coast of Papua New Guinea he went to Hollandia (a Dutch state) for a month or two, and then finally he was shipped home on rotation aboard a Liberty Ship. In all, he was in the military for nine years, six months and 13 days. He saw things men shouldn't see. He was not hardened by the war however, as some men can be. He remained a gentle, loving man, whose memory still makes me weep with his loss. I will see him again though. It is one of the greatest consolations I have in this life. He died of cancer in October of 1991, and I still miss him terribly.


He wasn't noted in anybody's book. He wasn't famous, and I'll never be the man he was, and that's okay. Few men will.

While my father was in Papua New Guinea, a young missionary couple, the Reverend C. Russell Diebler and his wife, Darlene, had been serving the Lord in Western New Guinea from 1938 until 1942, when serving on what is now the island of Sulawesi, they were imprisoned by the Japanese.

I can recommend Darlene's book, "Evidence Not Seen: A Woman's Miraculous Faith in the Jungles of World War II" and believe you will be enriched by reading it. This young woman, by the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit endured many hardships that most of us can only imagine. She suffered greatly at the hands of her captors, even losing her husband and remained faithful to Christ.

So many served in this war in different ways and for just causes, made immense sacrifices on behalf of our freedom and for our Lord. The stories are amazing. I will never forget the sacrifices made for us by my dad, by my brother in Vietnam, or by someone like Darlene Diebler Rose. I will cherish what they did. Peace, and happy Memorial Day.