Military veterans share memories of service

Service medals and ribbons earned by an Eastport military veteran over 80 years ago were finally obtained by a loving daughter this year, thanks to the assistance of the local veterans administration representative, family members and the office of Senator Susan Collins. His story and those of other veterans in the Quoddy area are remembered on November 11, which is Veterans Day in the U.S. and Remembrance Day in Canada.
Pat Rier of Lubec, who grew up in Eastport as one of "the Johnson girls," now possesses Joseph Johnson's WWI victory button, Silver Star and Purple Heart, as well as a Mexican Border Service medal. "For a private, he did well. I'm pretty proud of him," she says of her father, who passed away in 1977. "And thanks to Susan Collins, I even have a flag that was flown in Washington, D.C., in memory of my father."
"When it came in the mail, I couldn't believe it," recalls Rier. "It says it was in honor of my father's distinguished and meritorious service to his county while serving in the American Expeditionary Force."
"He's probably saying, 'That Pat,'" she laughs.
The campaign to obtain the military medals and certificates earned by her father began about a year ago when she began talking with Michael Perkins of the Department of Veterans Affairs office in Machias. Rier obtained a 1917-1919 roster from the Maine National Guard, borrowed her father's dog tags from her sister Ruth and found the one photograph that showed Joe Johnson's shriveled hand. Then she sent everything to Senator Collins' office and was rewarded for her diligence.
Rier and her seven sisters grew up on the Johnson farm at the corner of High and Lincoln streets. Their father's left arm had been injured in World War I. It slowed him down, but he didn't talk much about it. "The only time I asked Dad, 'How did you get wounded in your arm?,' he said, 'Well, I wanted to come home, so I stuck my arm out,'" recalls Rier. "Dad was left-handed, so when sat down and he did anything, he'd have to take his time."
Joseph Johnson was born in Robbinston on October 5, 1896, to John Johnson and his wife Sadie Miller but spent most of his life in Eastport. He was 19 when he joined Company I of the Maine National Guard and was sent to the Mexican border on June 18, 1916, under General John J. Pershing. Mexican insurgent Francisco "Pancho" Villa was stirring up trouble, and the U.S. was worried that the revolutionaries were being financed by Germany.
The next year Joe Johnson and his brother John were sent overseas to France in Company I, 103rd Infantry, in the newly formed 26th Division. It was soon nicknamed the "Yankee Division" because it was full of New Englanders. The Johnsons arrived with the Yankee Division at Saint-Nazaire, France, on September 21, 1917. The 26th remained in a relatively quiet region of the lines along the Chemin des Dames for several months before it relieved the 1st Division near Saint-Mihiel on April 3. In late April, German infantry conducted a raid on positions of the 26th, one of the first attacks on Americans during the war.
A few weeks later, a headline on the front page of the July 27, 1918, Eastport Sentinel declared, "Co. I Drives Huns Back," and included a copy of General Orders No. 131: "On June 16, a strong detachment consisting of 600 picked German troops reinforced by storm battalion elements attacked at daybreak the front line of the 26th American division at Xivray between Xivray and Seicheprey. The enemy was everywhere repulsed by immediate counter attacks and left numerous bodies on the terrain and 10 prisoners, including one officer.
"This brilliant action does the greatest honor to the 26th American division again, in particular, to the 103rd regiment. ... It demonstrated the unquestionable superiority of the American soldier over the German soldier, and indicates clearly what can be expected from these magnificent troops when, in its turn, the Entente assumes the offensive."
Johnson was not injured in that battle, but one week later, on June 23, 1918, he was struck by German shrapnel while serving near the town of Toul. "My uncle heard that someone had gotten killed in the bombardment," recalls Rier. "That scared him."
Still very much alive, Joe Johnson was sent home to the U.S. General Hospital #2 in Maryland for treatment.
When he returned home, Joe Johnson married Margaret Peel and raised a large family. "It was a very special neighborhood. I wouldn't trade it for nothing," stresses Rier, who grew up with older sisters Maxine, Ruth, twins Geraldine "Gerry" and Joyce, and Ina, as well as younger sister Jane.
The siblings recently discovered that they had another sister, Hilda Marie, who had died at age 4 months. "We used to call ourselves 'we seven,' but there had actually been eight girls. She was their first child, and we didn't know about her," says Rier. "Now she's got a pink granite stone paid for by us. We felt we did something for our mother and father."

Brother and sister serve
Retired nurse Elizabeth "Bessie" Bass of Grand Manan served as a Wren in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS) during World War II, and her younger brother Mark Mayo, who passed away on November 2, made the Navy his career.
The siblings grew up in Saint John, and Bessie was teaching school when the WRCNS was formed in 1942. "Maybe I didn't like teaching all that much," she quips. "So I joined the Wrens in January, 1943, when I was 22. At the time, my brother was a midshipman in the Royal Canadian Navy serving in the Mediterranean on the battleship HMS Nelson."
"I think Mark wanted to go into the navy when he was just a kid C maybe high school age," recalls Bessie. "Before the war, there was a big British cruiser in drydock in Saint John, and our father took us to see it. Mark was very interested in joining the navy. He became an officer cadet when he was just 17 and had to train in England. About 15 of them sailed over. That was in 1941, just when things were getting very dangerous in the Atlantic."
In the meantime, "because being a teacher didn't qualify me for anything except office work," Bessie found herself in charge of sailors' records in Halifax, a city that was home to about 1,000 Wrens during the war. "It was very exciting when I was there. Ships were coming in from all different places, sometimes coming in with their bow almost destroyed."
After eight months of enjoying her life in the Nova Scotia port city, Bessie was drafted to Ottawa, "which was not very exciting. I was there for one-and-a-half years, but then my mother became ill, so I was transferred to Saint John and finished my navy career in 1946."
She had always wanted to be a nurse, and her three years in the service earned her financial assistance, so Bessie went into training at Saint John General Hospital. When her sister Joyce got a job as a cook for Lady Ames at her summer cottage on Grand Manan, "I thought I'd like to come to Grand Manan, too."
Deciding that she wanted to stay on the island and work at what was then the Grand Manan Red Cross Society Outpost Hospital, Bessie was hired on April 19, 1951. She married "twine mender" and World War II veteran George Bass, who had served in the Royal Canadian Army as a corporal in the Pictou Highlanders and who passed away in 2002. Their daughter Hallie is a nurse practitioner on Grand Manan, while son Michael works in Sackville as a pharmacist.
Now 91 years old, Bessie describes herself as in "good health" and will be attending this year's Remembrance Day services, one week after attending her 88-year-old brother's funeral.
During World War II, Mark Mayo had taken part in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Salerno, Italy, and then served on the cruiser HMCS Ontario during a Far East deployment in 1945. After VJ Day, he was in charge of a naval landing company to secure Hong Kong after the Japanese occupiers surrendered. In his many years with the navy, he served twice at Canadian Forces Headquarters Ottawa and was on the staff of NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
"He had a wonderful life," says Bessie of her brother's naval career. "And when he retired as a captain at about age 60, he retired to Halifax. He was happy."

Meeting up in the foxholes
Retired educator and noted fisherman Edward Bartlett of Eastport served in World War II with the U.S. Army, as did two of his brothers, Fred and Lee, while another brother, Clyde, served in the U.S. Navy.
Edward Bartlett enlisted in 1942 and was among the troops invading North Africa at Casablanca. "We worked ourselves up the coast, over to Sicily, the Italian mainland, then into France and Germany."
"We all came home safe and sound," says Edward of his siblings. "I think that has a lot to do with where you are, being in just the right place at the right time."
The Bartletts grew up in Camden, Maine, and back in 1943 when he was stationed in Italy, the local newspaper published a letter and poem "Eddie" Bartlett had written to a friend, Dr. Lee Dickens.
Said the Camden Herald, "Eddie's friends will recognize the familiar wit and personality as penned in the following lines from the Italian front. 'I hope those articles on planes and tanks are really sinking in, as we're depending on them. I wished some of the people back home could have been with me in my foxhole a couple of nights ago when a bunch of bombers came in over us so damn low that I could have hit them with a pea shooter. (If I hadn't had my nose so far in the ground.) When the bombs and lead start falling, that's when a fellow starts to wonder where the hell those 100,000 planes they put out last year are. Then we hear our fast little fighters go roaring over, and we know that everything is okay again.
'I had a swell experience today when I met [brother] Fred's buddy. Fred is in the Anzio beachhead and told this buddy to keep a sharp look-out for me, but I'll bet he'll be surprised when he hears we met. He told me that Fred has one of the most elaborate foxholes in that area. Right now he has running water and all, with all the rain we get here. He's doing a magnificent job, and I'm damn glad and proud to say he's my brother.
'Here's a little poem that expresses our feelings after 17 months overseas.'
'We Did Our Stretch In Hell'
'I am sitting here and thinking / Of the things I left behind, / And I hate to put in writing / What is running through my mind. / But there's one good consolation, / So, gather around me while I tell / We will all go to heaven / For we did our stretch in hell.
'We have built a million kitchens / For our cooks to burn our beans, / We have stood a million guard mounts; / We have cleaned up our latrines, / We have waded through the marshes / Of a million tons of mud; / We have killed a million insects, / That tried to suck our blood.
'When final taps have sounded / And we lay aside life's cares / When we stand that last inspection / On those shining golden stairs, / The angels then will welcome us / Their magic harps will play; / We'll draw a million canteen checks / And spend them in a day.
'It is there we will hear St. Peter / Tell us loudly with a yell / 'Take a front seat, boys,' / For you've done your stretch in hell.'
(signed) Eddie 'Stevenson' Bartlett."