John Jackson
Contributing Writer
“…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of that devotion…’
Abraham Lincoln
Today is Memorial Day, and I would like to write a personal memorial to three men, soldiers from World War II, one of whom did not survive the war and two that did.
My uncle, Eugene Pendleton Smith, was a second lieutenant in the US army in the fall of 1941 when he received orders to travel to San Francisco, board a troop ship, and sail away to his new duty station in the Philippines. He took the opportunity in the several weeks before he was due to report in San Francisco to drive from his home state of Georgia across the country to California – a young man’s road trip to see the country.
My mother had a letter from her younger brother that she shared with me describing this road trip and the sights he saw. He was particularly taken with Colorado and the beauty of the mountains as well as the young women he saw out there. He wrote that he wanted to return to Colorado after he got out of the army and maybe settle there. He never got the opportunity. The date on the letter was November 8,1941.
On December 7,1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and one day later they attacked Manilla, the capital city of the Philippines, where my Uncle Eugene had just pulled his first few weeks of duty at the military base there. The Japanese army soon drove the American and Philippine forces onto the Bataan peninsula from which there was no escape, and they surrendered on April 9, 1942. The Japanese then began marching the surrendered army toward a prison camp 65 miles away, a march characterized by such inhumane and brutal atrocities that it has become known as the Bataan Death March. Somewhere along the way Eugene Pendleton Smith was killed and his body thrown into the roadside drainage ditch with all the other bodies of those that were killed along the way. There’s no grave or anything else left of Eugene except the memory of his last full measure of devotion.
My father-in-law, Maurice Louis Junod, a dapper little Frenchman and first generation American, went ashore at Normandy on June 6, 1944, and fought across France and Germany until May 8, 1945, when Germany formally surrendered. His unit was slated to travel back to England and board troop ships bound for the war in the Pacific when the atom bomb ended the war and that mobilization for Maurice.
Maurice would never talk to his family about his war experiences, but on rare occasions he would talk to me. On one particular occasion when we were at a dinner party with his friend Don, another World War II veteran, I got them both to talking about their wartime experiences.
Maurice was reminiscing about one of his buddies, a friend that was with him at Normandy and across most of France. He was with him, that is, until his buddy caught five machine gun bullets across his belly and died right beside Maurice.
Don talked about his unit engaging some soldiers in some little town in Germany and his being ordered to go up into the bell tower of a nearby church and fire down on the Germans. He said he shot a couple of the soldiers and then his unit overran the others. When he climbed down from the bell tower and went over to re-join his unit, he saw that all the dead German soldiers, including the ones he had killed, were young teenage boys. Maurice and his friend, Don, with their memories, paid THEIR last full measure over the 60 plus years since.
Memorial Day was set aside years ago as a day to remember the men who answered the call and who fought and died so we could enjoy the unique freedoms we have in this country.
Between our hot dogs and hamburgers and the enjoyment of being with our friends and families, we should take a moment and remember the sacrifices of all the men like Eugene, Maurice and Don that made it possible.
