WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day

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WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day

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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition >> WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day

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WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day - 5/13/2012 6:26:41 PM

Q-Ball

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Joined: 6/25/2002
From: Chicago, Illinois
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At church today, I was talking to one of the oldest guys in the congregation. I've known him for awhile, very positive guy, and he and his wife celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary last year. He mentioned today that he went to Northwestern University right after the war on GI Bill, and I asked him about his WWII service. It turns out he not only served in the Pacific, but he was actually ON the Pacific on Dec 7th, 1941.

TJ Smith was a very young member of the Army Air Corps meteorlogical service, basically weathermen assigned to the field to take and report on readings. He was ordered to the Phillipines in Nov 1941, and departed on the USS Republic from Pearl Harbor at 6 a.m. on Sunday, Nov 30th, 1941, as part of the Pensacola convoy. He said he felt very fortunate that they didn't sail a week later, or a week earlier (which would have put him in the Phillipines on Dec 7th, and probably into a Japanese POW camp eventually).

The convoy eventually reached Sydney, and he and his group were sent by train to Perth. From Perth, his meteorlogical section was split in two; half was to be sent to Karachi, and the other half boarded the USS Langley along with a shipment of P-40s bound for Java. That group was rescued from the Langley, but most of them later perished on the rescuing ships. TJ obviously went to Karachi.

He served the rest of the war in India, and 30 months in what had to be one of the most remote US Army outposts in the war. He was sent to Northwestern China, along the Soviet border, to take weather readings; at the time, the Soviets were not sharing weather data with us for whatever reason, so the US Army set-up a series of weather stations along the border with Russia and Mongolia.

Anyway, with the dwindling number of veterans left, it was very interesting to speak to one who was actually in the service when the shooting started. There can't be too many of those left. I know TJ is over 90.

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RE: WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day - 5/13/2012 7:24:54 PM

Cannonfodder

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Joined: 10/22/2008
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This story makes me think all those different jobs.. Not everyone used a rifle, a lot of people did the less "glorious" and often not less risky work that eventually helped win the war..

An entire generation...

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RE: WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day - 5/13/2012 9:04:28 PM

obvert

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Joined: 1/17/2011
From: London, UK
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It makes it so real to actually meet the people who were there. Last year on Remembrance Day I met some vets who served with the British in Burma while visiting my girlfriend's relatives in a small village in Somerset. Just to hear one story made the hair on my neck stand up as we spoke after the service in a small village church.

I wish I could have asked my grandfather more about those days before he died. He was a foreman on a riveting team in the Kaiser shipyards in Vancouver, WA, where quite a few Liberty ships and CVEs were made. I always wonder now which ships he worked on and would love to hear his stories from that time.

< Message edited by obvert -- 5/13/2012 9:06:11 PM >

(in reply to Cannonfodder)

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RE: WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day - 5/13/2012 9:18:58 PM

ilovestrategy

Posts: 3628
Joined: 6/11/2005
From: San Diego
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Reminds me of a vet I met last year that was complaining about being stuck with the Springfields at Guadacanal and how he hid in the trenches during the ship bombings of Henderson Field. Interesting enough, he said Bougainville was worst than any of that.

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RE: WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day - 5/14/2012 4:21:25 PM

Gunner98

Posts: 424
Joined: 4/29/2005
Status: offline

The weather service guys got around to all the great places. I came across this story a few years ago when I was taking a class with a prof who had just retired from the Canadian Department of History & Heritage at our NDHQ. He related how the goose chase started with a letter of inquiry from Germany and about 3 years of tracking down the facts and the location. In the research they managed to track down two of the submariners who installed the station - amazing considering the casualties among U-boat crews. Anyway as the attached Wiki article explains, the Germans set up an autonomous weather station on the coast of Labrador to feed data to U-boats, wasn't discovered until 81!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt

B

(in reply to ilovestrategy)

Post #: 5

RE: WWII Veteran Story on Mother's Day - 5/14/2012 4:50:50 PM

adsoul64