Our graveyards are abundantly studded with military medallions recognizing the veterans who have served our country. The solemnity of these sacred places is deepened with the knowledge that young people, on the cusp of their futures, risked their lives to protect family, friends, strangers. The 1984 Memorial Day Address reminded us that “our five cemeteries bear mute testimony” to our town’s representation in every war since the American Revolution, courageous patriots who were called to defend their own turf, or to fight for the principles of “freedom, self-determination, human dignity and peace” in other places in the world.
This year we lost the last of our town’s World War II veterans, Tom Gaines and Clarence Thornton, who fought for those principles far away from home. Seventy years later and a few years ago, they shared their recollections with us in the series “Those Who Serve”, where we also published the experiences of World War II veterans Charlie Pike and Mario Fiondella.
Mr. Gaines was stationed in Pearl Harbor, traveling from San Francisco to Hawaii to transport troops, dodging German U-boats in route. “We weren’t allowed to make any noise at night, or to have any lights on the ship,” Tom relayed. Mr. Thornton’s tour of duty afforded him a “panoramic view of Europe” where he hauled ammunition to the front lines, driving on narrow roads in the dark with no headlights. His military career concluded in Germany when the war ended, unceremoniously announced with the words, “pack up your stuff, you’re going home”. Mr. Pike served in the South Pacific, installing telephone and electric lines through rice paddies. A decorated soldier, Charlie was wounded when the troop carrier he was on was torpedoed. Mr. Fiondella was stationed in Japan during the period of Occupation, where he encountered no resentment toward Americans. “They were happy the war was over,” he recalled. “Everyone was.”
Mr. Fiondella walked us through a leather bound, embossed album of Japan, which included photographs of Emperor Hirohito not five feet away from him. Also in mint condition – his Eisenhower jacket. All of them preserved relics of their service. Mr. Gaines shared a photograph of himself “riding the waves on a surf board at Waikiki Beach”. Mr. Thornton kept his dog tags, sharp shooter medal, theater ribbons, a submarine gun medal, a 3rd army patch and a 14th army division patch. Mr. Pike’s relic — the shrapnel which remained in his arm for the rest of his life.
All of these men settled here soon after, or years after, the war, and contributed to our town in myriad ways, with local businesses, through social organizations, as elected officials, and good neighbors.
The War Memorial at Town Hall lists those soldiers who left their farms in Hampton to fight in the World Wars. Only a few of the surnames of the World War I veterans remain with us: Davis, Hastings, Hoffman, Oliver, Stensland. There are more familiar names from World War II: Fitzgerald, Fox, Frieman, Halbach, Henri, Hoffman, Howell, Neborsky, Pawlikowski, Pearl, Postemski, Stone, Surridge, Tumel.
Of those listed, only Charlie Halbach spoke publicly of his service, though his remarks during the Memorial Day Addresses he delivered were broader than his own experiences, reminding us of the purpose of “a day for offering our appreciation, prayers, and support to the men and women who continue to serve us – in places near or far from our safe and quiet town of Hampton.”
Wendell Davis spoke of more personal experiences. “I see an airplane streaking across the sky, with first a thin trail of smoke, and then a thicker, denser tail and 10,000 men looking up, waiting for the pilot to eject and the chute to blossom against the sky, but no ejection comes and the nose goes down and a ball of flame marks the spot where the plane hits the beach at 300 miles an hour. I see a pile of dead men, stacked like cord wood, waiting for the graves registration unit to clip their dog tags before burial. I see the charred and twisted remains of an enemy killed by a flame-thrower. I see a mine-sweeper, lifted half out of the water, breaking up as much in the air as in the sea, and fifteen seconds later nothing but a pitifully small number of men swimming for their lives. I smell the stench of rotting flesh on a tropical beach. I hear the roar as the Mount Hope blows up, an ammunition ship with 5000 tons of shells, rockets, mines, and small arms ammunition. No survivors, not even any bodies. Just boiling water…I see a young sailor sewed up in a length of new white canvas, slipped gently over the side, starting his trip to the bottom one mile down…I hear voices talking, killing the tedium, of the long night watch. These were voices always full of hope, dreams of the future, plans, full of excitement, voices of young Americans, ‘when I get home’…”
Other veterans would deliver Memorial Day Addresses and share their harrowing memories with us. Richard Schenk spoke of his experience on the Moselle River: “I watched army engineers trying to put up a pontoon bridge for us to cross. They became easy targets as the pontoons extended out into the water. Murderous shellfire would seek out and find them. We watched their bodies float down the river. New men came and took their place. This scene was repeated over and over until the bridge reached the other shore.”
Sidney Marland spoke of a comrade, who “took a Japanese bullet in the forehead, not at arm’s length from me, as we were ambushed on a jungle trail in the Solomons.” Arthur Osborne remembered “the struggles, the mud and cold, the fearfulness, the longing for home, my buddies being brought in wounded and dying, not ever knowing what was coming next,” though his speech focused on the homecoming after World War II, the respectful and celebratory welcome, and remorse that those who returned from Vietnam never received that sort of embrace. Tom Gaines, reminding us that our troops served in five wars in his lifetime alone, asserted that “the search for peace is America’s most patriotic endeavor”, and John Woodworth spoke of “a brief respite from the fear and noise and wounding and dying” when he discovered a kernel of beauty which rendered him spellbound, and inspired him to pen a poem by candlelight in his dugout that night, a tribute to the men in his unit who died.
Under the mimosa I stand
And count the leaves of the twig in my hand.
and shadows dance upon the ground
where late my comrades fell around.
Under the mimosa I hear
Their voices murmur sweet and clear
“We fought but did not wish to die”.
Under the mimosa, still, they lie.
In 2015, Gordon Hanson’s Memorial Day Address reminded us of the ultimate sacrifice of one of our own, Leslie Jewett, a name which should be familiar to all of us as our town’s only casualty of World War II. Born in Hampton in 1917 and buried in the South Cemetery among many family members, Leslie Jewett lost his life on June 6, 1944 on Omaha Beach in Normandy, leaving his parents, his sister, his wife, and an infant son he never met. In 2019, Anne Flammang spoke of the women from Hampton who were veterans of World War II, Dorothy Howell, Ruth Burchnall, Jean Surridge, and Eva Loew, marveling that “a town of only 535 people produced four young women who volunteered to serve in our military”. In 2014, the Plourde family would tell us a tale of two brothers, both veterans of World War II: a decorated soldier who earned a Purple Heart, Paul was severely wounded in the D-Day invasion and presumed dead, his personal effects shipped home; yet through the efforts of his brother, Pierre, who never really believed it, Paul was eventually located in a hospital in France. And in 2011, Virginia Welch would write of David Teale, the only child of Edwin and Nellie, who was missing in action for over a year until the Teales traced the names of the men in his unit who signed a captured Nazi flag David sent his parents, some of whom relayed that they’d seen David’s raft attacked and capsized in the Moselle River, and saw him “in the icy water, and wounded”. He was only 19.
In March, the Gazette reprinted letters from our service men and women, first published in “The Hampton Newsletter” in 1944. News of the inhumanities was tempered with these messages of humanness — daily schedules, buying a bicycle, swimming in the warm waters of Italy, the coldness inside an English church, and the shared sentiment: “Boy, will I be glad to get back home again.”
Home: the thread running through the commentaries — the speeches, recollections, letters, stories – the hope of returning home.
Twenty years ago, in his last Memorial Day Address, Wendell Davis described war as “moments of abject terror followed by days and weeks of utter boredom. The boredom was made bearable by meeting people of all walks of life from all over the United States…and the thing we all had in common was the desire to tell each other about the town we came from. So I told them about my town.”
As we gather together in that town to commemorate another Memorial Day, and salute those who served, then and now, near and far, we mark the passing of our very last veterans or World War II and acknowledge the end of an era – that of the “Greatest Generation”. We are humbled by their bravery. Born during the “War to End All Wars”, which wasn’t, having survived the Great Depression, they put aside their pens and their plows to fight a common enemy, tyranny. World War II, with its new ways of waging war and its new horrors — the residual realities of nuclear warfare, and the horrific realities of the Holocaust, and the frightening realities of how close we came to the end of our world, a world every one of these valiant veterans helped to preserve for us.
Mr. Schenk asked, “What gave these men the strength and courage to take their fellow soldier’s place immediately after seeing him killed? It was, of course, because he could not forget what his comrade was trying to accomplish. To forget would have meant that his comrade’s efforts were in vain.”
Theirs was the ultimate sacrifice; in return, ours is so minimal: on Memorial Day, we remember.