Echoes of distant wars

If not for Memorial Day this Saturday, it would be easy to forget that not long ago Americans fought and died in wars that now seem far from our peaceful existence.

Sixty years ago, Tony Mabbatt’s father, Frederic, wrote "Armistice Day 1938," his reflections of the Great War on the eve of its sequel, World War II.

"I think it was an experience that was pretty dramatic and traumatic for a young guy lugging broken bodies around," Mabbatt, a veteran of the Marine Corps and local figure in Democratic Party politics, said of his father’s poem.

These days, most young Americans have been spared the horror of hauling "shattered human freight" down muddy roads in France, as Mabbatt’s father did as a 19-year-old.

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Armistice Day 1938

Twenty years ago today

The thunder of the guns was stilled

A few dear friends had gone the way of death

The promise of their youth still unfulfilled.

Twenty years ago today

I hauled my last grim load

Of shattered human freight, they lay

Battered, torn and bloody by the road.

A thin sharp smile beneath a bandaged head

A joking word from lips drawn tight by pain

A crooked grin from one so nearly dead

Their’s was raw courage and my eternal gain.

Dear God, if ever I complain

Of petty troubles in these days of peace

The lessons that I learned at war were vain

And I’m no longer worthy of release.

Frederic S. Mabbatt II

World War I ambulance driver

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While it was advertised as "The war to end all wars," many people endured often incomprehensible adversity in the conflicts that followed World War I.

Being in the middle of something as violent and bizarre as modern war is difficult to fathom today, but something local veterans remember well.

In wars that both united and divided this nation, for reasons both clear and obscure, hundreds of thousands of Americans died in foreign lands for the life we live today.

It was a time that is a world away from modern life in America.

When Clayton Stewart left the Wood River Valley at the outbreak of World War II, about 75 people, mostly shepherds and miners were living in Ketchum.

He didn’t figure the war would bring him face to face with sea snakes and headhunters.

Stewart, who now lives off Warm Springs Road in Ketchum was 22 years old, married and working for Sun Valley Resort in late 1941. A native of Shoshone, he guided fishing trips for the resort.

Rather than get drafted and carry a rifle in the Army, Stewart and five or so other locals drove to Salt Lake City, Utah, to sign up for the Coast Guard.

After spending some time at the naval training base at Port Hueneme, Calif., he found himself in the Merchant Marine Service on a supply ship called the SS Columbia Victory.

The ship, en route to the bloody war against the Japanese in the Pacific, was packed with rows of tanks and 5,000 barrels of high octane gasoline in leaky drums.

"You couldn’t even smoke," Stewart said. "Everyone was petrified."

The ocean held unknown dangers for a fisherman used to rainbow trout.

"We went through 20 acres of sea serpents … I saw salt water crocodiles."

Although they were headed to the South Pacific, a tropical paradise didn’t await Stewart and his shipmates.

When they hit landfall, the Columbia Victory docked at Port Milne, New Guinea, a rugged jungle island that had just been wrestled from the Japanese by Australian and American forces.

New Guinea was hot, steamy and disease-ridden.

"It was 122 degrees in the shade and 100 percent humidity," Stewart said.

The ocean water was 90 degrees. A cut on the hand was quickly covered with strange fungus. Malaria and yellow fever lurked everywhere.

"It was pretty awful," Stewart said.

As ship purser, Stewart was responsible for the health of the crew. On shore he took two sick sailors to an Army hospital in Ioma. When he returned to the dock at Milne Bay, the Columbia Victory was gone.

"I came back, there was no ship!" Stewart said.

Stranded on a jungle island, Stewart learned from a sentry he had to go 22 miles down the coast to another harbor to catch up with his ship.

"I didn’t even have a pocket knife," he said.

Walking along the jungle road, two half-naked natives suddenly appeared and grunted something at Stewart.

"Here comes two fuzzy wuzzies (term for natives) and each one is carrying a Japanese head. A head held by the hair in one hand, a machete in the other."

The only word Stewart knew was, "Ioma," the location of the hospital. He tried that. The two headhunters seemed to understand and walked on.

Later, when Stewart asked another sailor what the grunting meant, he was told, "That’s rice. We give them 50 pounds of rice for each Japanese head they bring in."

Denny Pace has piloted 37 different types of aircraft throughout his aviation career, but when World War II started he was a rookie.

In North Africa in 1942, Pace was a relatively green pilot with just a few months of training at the controls of the P-38 Lighting twin-engine fighter.

Pace, who grew up in Burley and has lived in Sun Valley since 1939, retired after being a test pilot and a flight instructor in the States and a squadron commander in Vietnam.

While at the American Legion Hall in Ketchum recently, Pace went through a list of comrades from his old World War II outfit, the First Fighter Group.

There are pages of names in small type with entries like "POW (Prisoner of War) 10 Aug 43. MIA (Missing in Action) 5 Aug 43 escaped. KIA (Killed in Action) 10 Aug 43."

Pace was lucky to escape the war with his life. During the invasion of Salerno, Italy, in 1943, he led the third and last squadron of P-38s escorting a bombing mission. Of his squadron of 36 planes, 13 were shot out of the sky.

With just 50 hours of flight time, Pace went up against German aces who’d been on the Eastern Front fighting the Russians for years. One day, Pace found himself dueling a Luftwaffe pilot in the skies above the Mediterranean.

"I had one I couldn’t shake over Sardinia. Finally he got my left engine-- I thought he got my left engine."

Thinking his twin-engined P-38 had been struck, Pace let the plane spin and drop to 4,000 feet.

But he wasn’t hit. The left engine had conked out, because Pace had forgotten to shift his fuel supply when one tank got low.

With the other plane out of sight, "I switched my gas tank on and went home," Pace said. "That probably saved my life, screwing up."

When the Germans weren’t trying to kill him, the elements were.

"We were stationed near the Sahara [Desert in North Africa]. We used to get a scirrocco, a hot wind from the south. It would burn your eyeballs out."

With water scarce and hygiene conditions lousy, one of the few pleasures in the desert was home brew. To cool it, Pace and the pilots would stow a few gallons of the homemade beer in the nose cone of a P-38 and take it up to 33,000 feet where the air was cold.

Other pleasures of home were out of the question.

"I never did have a Coke over there."

Pace is one of 106 members of the American Legion post in Ketchum. He said he’s reminded every year of the losses and sacrifices of his friends from both here and the First Fighter Group.

"There’s 110 crosses at the [Ketchum] cemetery," Pace said. "I know more people in the cemetery than I do on the other side of the fence."

A reporter with a gun

For young journalists, there is one sure way to move up fast in the business: cover a war.

David Halberstam and Peter Arnett became famous for their coverage of Vietnam. Although he didn’t survive Okinawa, Ernie Pyle’s dispatches from World War II made him a household name.

Pat Murphy, who eventually became the publisher of the Arizona Republic landed a job at the Miami Herald because of his reporting on the Korean War.

When the Korean War broke out in June 1950, Murphy was a 21-year-old Army reporter at the Ft. Benning Bayonet.

The North Korean army had attacked the length of the peninsula and overrun everything in its path except a small pocket of resistance around Pusan at the southern tip of Korea.

American troops were rushed to the scene. Murphy found himself in Japan being issued a rifle and gear.

The situation was desperate.

While filling out papers before boarding a ship for Korea, a sergeant told him, "Well, you guys are going to be dead in 48 hours so it doesn’t make a difference."

Murphy was assigned to Task Force 777, a combined force of infantry, armor and artillery that fought all the way through both Koreas before being turned around by Chinese forces at the Yalu River.

Murphy’s job was to write stories from close to the front lines for the newspapers in America. But the tense situation required him to carry a carbine and a pistol along with his pen and typewriter.

While hunched down behind a tank in the streets of Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, Murphy saw an enemy soldier pop out of a manhole in a side alley. Murphy and the others nearby turned and shot.

"I don’t know if I got him or somebody else got him."

Like Pace in North Africa and Stewart in the South Pacific, Murphy found the elements could be as deadly as the enemy.

The winter of 1950-51 was one of the coldest on record in south Asia. Temperatures stayed down around 30 below, but troops in Korea were still in their summer uniforms and standard combat boots. It wasn’t until angry parents complained to President Harry S. Truman that the troops got parkas, gloves and rubber boots.

"I can’t think of a time I’ve been as cold. It was a cold you can’t get away from," Murphy said.

In the war-torn countryside with few buildings to begin with, there was no warm shelter.

Murphy looks back on his years in the service with thanks. He said it’s made him who he is today.

As a lifelong journalist, he’s a devotee of the freedom of speech. In Korea, he feels he and others defended it.

"I think the greatest memorial to anyone who has served is to practice what we fought for," Murphy said. "If by God, we were fighting for freedom, let’s practice it everyday, not just Memorial Day."

Bob Hope for Christmas

After 100 days in the jungle of Vietnam, Cal Nevland and his comrades in the 4th Infantry Division had set a record. No other American unit had been in the bush so long without a break.

Through 1966-67, they’d been hunting down and fighting the North Vietnamese Army through the jungle-covered Central Highlands. As Nevland described it, the jungle was "a place where everything wants to kill you and bite you."

It was Christmas 1966 and they were scheduled to come out of the mountains for a visit by entertainer Bob Hope and his holiday entourage.

Then word came down that it was to be Christmas in the jungle.

"The morale of the troops went so bad, they changed their plans," said Nevland longtime chief of police in Ketchum.

Growing up in North Dakota, all the men in Nevland’s family had fought in America’s wars. At age 19, he figured he too might as well get it over with.

War, however, was no hunting trip.

"I didn’t think it was going to be as bad as it was," Nevland said. "You can’t believe how bad, how nasty, war is."

The 4th Infantry Division was off in remote combat zones, fighting the well-organized and determined North Vietnamese.

Fighting regular army forces, rather than the civilian guerrillas known as Viet Cong, made for long, brutal battles that rampaged through the hills for days. There were times Nevland can remember where he had five hours of sleep during a three-day engagement.

"When you get into the actual conflict, you get so worn down, it becomes a mind game to do whatever you can to stay alive and help your friends stay alive."

Not everyone made it.

"There’s a few people I think about that I’ll remember for as long as I’m alive."

Nevland doesn’t forget the suffering and horror of Vietnam, a war some critics say was in vain.

"When we went to Vietnam, we went there with the right thing in mind. It’s easy to say now it was stupid or unnecessary, but we didn’t know that then."

Nevland said he doesn’t doubt that without the wars the U.S. has fought in the last 75 years, a foreign government would be ruling the land today.

"I think Memorial Day is meant for those who gave their lives for the freedom this country gives us, and I think that’s the way it should be remembered."

With the 20th century winding to a close, it’s hard to imagine veterans 50 years from now talking about hardship and sacrifice the way veterans of this century’s wars do today.

It’s because of those sacrifices in part, that war on a grand scale is now seemingly obsolete.