Mac-Coleman

3 October 2013 –

The World War II Memorial Belongs to My Uncle Walt

June 2004.  The World War II Memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., had just been dedicated—forty years late, but finally open.    We were stationed in D.C., and my cousin, Ron, also lived in the area.   Ron had invited his parents to town to visit the new WWII Memorial, and asked if we would like to accompany them.  Of course!  Escorting Uncle Walt and Aunt Rosemary that day would turn out to be one of the brightest memories of my military career. 

Uncle Walt was the last living brother of four who served in WWII. He was the captain of the first gun turret on the USS Boise, a light cruiser that fought in the Pacific, the Atlantic, and the Mediterranean.  He was decorated for bravery during the Battle of Cape Esperance on 11-12 October 1942, when Japanese shells hit near the first gun turret and killed three of his men.  Until he died just a few years ago, my uncle was proud to introduce himself by saying, “Hi.  I’m Walt Coleman, USS Boise, World War II.” 

Walt was the only one of the four brothers to see a monument built in their honor.

My oldest uncle, LeRoy, for whom I was named, was a sailor on the USS Northhampton.  On 1 December 1942, a Japanese torpedo sent the Northampton to the bottom of Ironbottom Sound in the Battle of Tassafaronga off Guadacanal.  LeRoy and fifty-four of his compatriots were killed, sixty-two years before their memorial was dedicated.  

My father, Burt, was an army sergeant in WWII.  He was drafted into the Army in 1940 as part of the wholesale transition of young men from the Civilian Conservation Corps to military service.  He was wounded in the battle for the Aleutian Islands.  He suffered from shrapnel wounds, and died in 1963, fifty-one years before the dedication of his memorial.

My Uncle Johnie served on the USS Chester and saw combat in the Battle of Coral Sea in May 1942.  He fell ill and stayed in the hospital for ten months before returning to full service stateside.  Uncle Johnie married late in life, had no children, and died while working on a train in Montana, two decades before his memorial was built. 

At home, my grandmother proudly displayed in her front window in Glendive, Montana, the only memorial available to her sons-in-arms:  three blue stars, one gold.  She died in the late 1960s, never to know her sons would have their own monument decades later.

My wife’s father was a colonel in World War II.  He commanded a P-38 reconnaissance group, flying hundreds of missions, ”unarmed and unafraid,” out of New Guinea.  He was deployed overseas for thirty months during the war and retired in 1959.  He died in 1973, 31 years before his memorial was dedicated. 

One of my greatest honors was to wear my father-in law, Colonel Maughan’s, WWII colonel’s rank, a “War Eagle”, on my flight cap as I, in uniform, escorted my Uncle Walt, in a wheelchair, around his memorial.  That day, as he often did, Uncle Walt wore a baseball cap emblazoned with “CL-47 USS BOISE World War II.”    Other men and women also wore baseball caps or pins identifying their right to be at their memorial.  Everyone introduced themselves.  They shook hands firmly, all equals now, commenting how glorious it was to be there that day, remembering together days long past.  A young father asked Uncle Walt to tell his little boys about courage and hardship, and what it was like to be on board ship during a war so many years before.  Walt was pleased and proud to do so.

That was nine years ago.  The WWII veterans who visited the memorial that day stood on their ground.   The veterans who this week visited the Memorial still own that ground.  They bought it by saving civilization.  Their blood, and that of their fallen compatriots, render the ground and the monuments sacred. 

No matter how important we think our contributions to this country are today, you and I are merely visitors to, and should be humble guardians of, this memorial.  Sadly, people with similar birthrights—parents and grandparents who sacrificed so much in WWII—literally barricaded the  monument against visitors for their own careless purposes.   Shame on them for assuming that they had such a right.     

We have little time left to give tribute to the World War II veterans still among us.  Certainly nothing should be more important during this self-induced fiscal crisis than welcoming them to their own memorial and honoring them for changing the course of history, for having “preserved us a nation.”