WWII veterans around the River Region
This is a collection of living WWII veterans previously featured by the Montgomery Advertiser
WWII veterans around the River Region This is a collection of living WWII veterans previously featured by the Montgomery Advertiser Check out this story on montgomeryadvertiser.com: http://on.mgmadv.com/2gzQDqS
Rebecca Burylo, Montgomery Advertiser Published 12:02 p.m. CT Dec. 3, 2016
Tommy Davis(Photo: Contributed)
After Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, more than 200,000 Alabamians took up arms and answered the call to war, pledging to "Never Forget" the thousands killed in that surprise assault.
We mark the 75th anniversary of the event this week as we highlight seven veterans who answered that call many years ago and now call the River Region home. They are counted among the 10,422 World War II veterans living in Alabama today. ​
Sgt. Tommy Daniel Davis
Considered one of the most catastrophic enemy attacks launched on U.S. soil, Pearl Harbor catapulted America into the fight against Japan, Germany and Italy.
Montgomery native Marine Master Sgt. Tommy Daniel Davis, 96, was a sailor. Seventy-five years ago, Davis witnessed Japanese fighters bombard the Hawaiian naval base the morning of Dec. 7, 1941.
From his ship, where he was a young Navy steward at the time, Davis saw the bombs drop. He witnessed Japanese aircraft flying overhead. He saw the carnage, and he could do nothing to stop the onslaught.
"I was on a repair ship and we were next to a battleship tied up to the dock about two miles from me," Davis said. "Then I saw the bombs went down the stack of the Arizona and it just burst, but they didn't hit my ship. They weren't after my ship at all, because my ship wasn't a combat ship, it was a repair ship."
It was the first time Davis had seen combat.
"I was just so shook up, I couldn't think. I was shook up for a few days," Davis said. "There was nothing we could do but tend to our wounded, but we didn't have any wounded on our ship."
Davis continued in the Navy doing food service for 10 years and transferred to the Marine Corp for 20 years fighting in WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
Col. Lawrence Kloess, Jr.
Eager to serve his country at the early age of 16, retired Col. Lawrence Kloess Jr. pretended he was older in order to join the armed forces with his buddies during World War II. Kloess, now a resident of Montgomery.
World War II veteran and career military man Larry Kloess is shown at his home in Montgomery, Ala. (Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)
Kloess, now 89 years old, volunteered to fight with the Navy in 1944 after he turned 17 and stayed until the war's end. He served on the USS Pondera APA-191, an amphibious personnel attack transport that held 26 landing craft and armament and worked on the engineer force for damage control. Stationed in the Pacific theater near the Philippines, Kloess recalled the time of the Okinawa invasion. His ship replenished the troops there.
"We got a little too close to the shore of the Japanese. The captain made the mistake and they [enemy] started firing artillery shells at us. I remember I walked by the side of the ship and 10 feet from me a big ol' splash came from one the shells. Good thing it was in water and not ground," Kloess said.
In 1985, Kloess retired from Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base after serving in Korea.
Master Sgt. retired Roy McGinnis
World War II veteran and POW Roy McGinnis talks about his war experiences at his home in Montgomery, Ala. on Thursday July 23, 2015. (Photo: Mickey Welsh / Advertiser)
World War II veteran and POW Roy McGinnis talks about being shot down in a B-17 and being taken prisoner during an interview at his home in Montgomery, Ala. on Thursday July 23, 2015. (Mickey Welsh / Montgomery Advertiser)
Master Sgt. retired Roy McGinnis and his crew flew, crash-landed and survived the infamous Black Thursday B-17 assault during World War II and were held prisoners by the Germans for two years.
Growing up in Sylacauga, Alabama, McGinnis, 94, and a few from his school football team lied about their age to enlist. They joined the National Guard in 1940.
World War II veteran and POW Roy McGinnis talks about life in Stalag 17B during an interview at his home in Montgomery, Ala. on Thursday July 23, 2015. (Mickey Welsh / Montgomery Advertiser)
They volunteered for the U.S. Army Infantry service in Prattville and transferred to the Army Air Corps. McGinnis, who now calls Montgomery home, began training as a B-17 aircraft gunner with the 62nd Infantry Brigade and was sent overseas in September 1943 to the 8th Army Air Corps in England. He was a right-waist gunner and would be a part of one of the deadliest air battles during WWII, Black Thursday.
"That mission was the Schweinfurt mission where we were to bomb the ball bearing factories there in Germany," McGinnis said. "On that mission, we lost 60 airplanes."
McGinnis and the rest of the fleet were surrounded by German engine-two fighters that seemed to come out of nowhere.
"We lost an engine over a target, and we left formation, the Germans jumped us and the pilot put the plane in a dive and of course the fighters shot another engine out and there was fire," McGinnis said. "Everyone got out and everyone ran different ways."
McGinnis and the B-17's navigator ran and hid in a corn patch nearby. They were captured, interrogated and imprisoned at Stalag 17B, a German prisoner of war camp in Austria, until the war's end. They were liberated on May 7, 1945.
Sgt. Willie Lee Wright
Willie Lee Wright with family (Photo: Rebecca Burylo/ Advertiser)
Willie Lee Wright, of Pike Road celebrated his 101st birthday in September and shared what he remembered during his serving in the Army in the fight against Hitler.
"I saw a lot of men go down," Wright said simply. He had come to know those men very well during his three years and six months with the military.
Wright was only in his 20s and living on a farm in the Pike Road community when recruiters came in 1942 to pull all eligible men into the fight against Germany and the Axis Powers.
He left to enlist. As a sergeant, Wright served as the first cook for his company and oversaw his staff.
Although, Wright was never on the front lines, he was close enough to see the carnage of battle and recalled one day over the Rymes River.
"There were people, German women, in tall buildings there like church steeples, about eight or 10 of them," Wright said. "Every once in awhile you saw them and they would take high-powered rifles and kill our soldiers. Shot them right in the head."
"One soldier, William, crawled half-a-mile on his belly, tore up his shirt and fired on the women ... he called back to headquarters, and we blew up the steeple."
When the war finally ended, Wright was on his way back home to Pike Road where he lives near his family.
Seaman Jack Crittenden
Jack Crittenden (Photo: Rebecca Burylo/ Advertiser)
Alabama native Jack Crittenden was drafted in the 1940s as one of the first black seaman during World War II, earning his first assignment at Port Chicago, California.
Now 91, he recalled the horror of losing 332 of his comrades in the infamous Port Chicago explosion, including many African-American seamen loading ammunition onto a ship.
"It was on that assignment when we had the explosion, and we got in trouble for mutiny," Crittenden said. "After the explosion, all the seamen at the port were transferred. Everything was in disarray. It was like panic took hold of the Navy."
He was sent to the Philippine Islands handling a landing-craft tank that soldiers drive tanks on and transfer them to other parts of an island. After the war, he was discharged and came home to finish school and graduated from Alabama State University.
Robert Harwell
World War II bomber pilot Robert Harwell took part in the D-Day invasion and finished the war with 67 combat missions. (Photo: Alvin Benn/Special to the Advertiser)
Aviation has been a big part of Robert Harwell's life ever since he was a kid when his first flight was with a hotshot barnstorming pilot in Alabama's Black Belt.
As an adult, he became a pilot and moved into the big time with dozens of bombing missions, including D-Day — a World War II turning point.
He spent the war flying twin-engine B-26 bombers. Harwell, now 93, was assigned to the 497th Squadron of the 344th Bomb Group. Each squadron had 16 Martin Marauder bombers with a crew of six.
His first mission occurred a few days after the start of the D-Day invasion and didn't stop until his 67th flight over enemy territory, including the Battle of the Bulge during the winter of 1944.
"Sometimes we'd fly two missions a day and other times we had to wait long periods because bad weather kept us grounded," Harwell said.
He said his missions often called for low-level attacks on bridges, gun emplacements and other enemy installations. He said he turned down a Purple Heart he could have received after one mission but has several other decorations from his time in combat.
After the war, Harwell left the Air Force and spent 40 years with the state Department of Education, He and his wife, Helen, paid their respects at a Normandy cemetery during the 50th anniversary of the invasion.
Air Force Lt. Col. John Napier
John Napier in his dress uniform upon his commission into the Air Force. (Photo: Contributed )
It was never a question for John Napier. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he knew he was going to enlist.
"Patriotism, of course. After the attack on Pearl Harbor we wanted to defeat the Japanese. So I served three years in Guam and Saipan, overseas in Japan," 91-year-old Napier said.
Napier is proud to have fought also in the Korean and Vietnam wars. He enlisted when he was 17 on Dec. 7, 1942 after finishing his senior year of high school.
During WWII, he served in the Marine Corps and was among those preparing to invade Japan before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"My unit was getting ready to invade Japan in just three months," Napier said. "We were one of the first to go up to Japan to occupy it after the bomb fell. It was a horribly impressive sight with the destruction and people still going by on stretchers."
He continued to serve in the Korean War for the Air Force's National Security Agency and the Vietnam War when he was stationed at Maxwell Air Force Base. He served in the Alabama National Guard for eight years during the Gulf War and received the state rank of brigadier general for the Army. He retired in 1977.
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