Nostalgia & History > Memorial Day rememberence

On Veteran's Day back in November I wrote a post about my grandfather's army service in the Pacific theater back in World War II.  Link to that post is:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,3573730,3573730#msg-3573730

In the spirit of what we are observing today, I return with one specific story from the scrapbook he put together after the war, surrounding one of his close friends, one Mercer "Deacon" Wallace. "Deacon" appears in many of the pictures and notes as the 32nd moved in and out of combat along New Guinea's north shore throughout 1944. As I related in the above post, in November of that year, the 32nd jumped to the Philipines, landing at Leyte Gulf on November 14th, and then moving over to Luzon in January 1945. Dave and one of the other operators were split off shortly after arriving and sent into the mountains to provide needed relief to artillery and observation supply posts, and they spent 54 days on foot playing hide and seek with Japanese forces in the mountains of Luzon. Meanwhile, the rest of the regiment participated in the bloody Villa Verde Trail fighting.

I'll now surrender the authorship to Dave, who wrote the following:

"On April 18 we were relieved and came down to Asingan. My feet were about done for. The next day the regiment came off the Villa Verde. We were to rest at Asingan.

Although the regiment was to rest at Asingan, many never got there. They were resting with the soil for a blanket and a cross to mark their bed. Among them was Mercer "Deacon" Wallace, one of the swellest guys I have known."

"Deacon" represents but one of roughly 407,000 such stories in the U.S. armed forces in World War II.  I submit this in his memory, among of all those we are honoring today, and apologize otherwise for the lack of any specific railroad content.

Attached should be a picture of "Deacon", Carl, Bluey, and my grandfather in front of a native shack at Anamo, New Guinea, sometime around July 1944, and then the two pages of a letter Deacon's mother wrote to Dave after the war.

Thanks for looking.

Jeff Moore
Elko, NV
 

---

---

---

Thanks for sharing.

The greatest generation.

Nice post....

Very nice post. My great aunt was a Maryknoll nun imprisoned on the island of Luzon at a camp named Los Banos. She was rescued in a daring mission in February 1945 by some brave soldiers like your grandather.  What unbelievable sacrifice by so many. We need to keep telling their stories.
John

Great post.

Ronda Thomas