Veterans share World War II memories

Memorial Day is an official holiday to honor military veterans who have passed on, but it's also a good opportunity to talk with those who are still here. Three area veterans recently spoke about their World War II memories.

Taken prisoner after parachuting to safety

Edward Browne of Dennysville, who spent part of World War II as a prisoner of war, is very active in military veterans groups and will be attending this year's Memorial Day program. "I've been steadfast in my relationship with the American Legion and VFW, and I'm grateful for the support those societies provide," he says.

Browne was 19 years old and working at a service station in New Jersey when he was drafted on February 13, 1942, by the Army Air Corps. He was sent to gunnery school in Las Vegas, Nev., before being sent to Peyote, Texas, where bomber crews were being formed. "It was exciting. I wanted that," recalls Browne, who soon found himself flying out of Norfolk, England, with the 8th Air Force.

His luck ran out on his 17th mission, a bombing raid on the synthetic oil fields of Germany and its satellite countries.

"It was May 12, 1944, and there were close to 900 or more 'heavies,' B-24s or B-17s," he remembers. "We were northeast of Frankfurt on the Main and were struck by enemy fire by Messerschmitts. One hundred and forty-six 'heavies' went down."

Parachuting safely to earth, Browne recalls, "I was in trauma. The great emotion of survival does that to you. There were two of us C Major Hugh Atkinson of Atlanta, Ga. We're just 30 days apart in age."

Less than 10 minutes after Browne and Atkinson had landed on the ground, they were picked up by the German military. "They were humane. They frisked us, picked up our parachutes and marched us to the nearest village where they put us in a courthouse where other downed airmen had been assembled. There were eight to 10 of us," says Browne. "Then we were taken to a temporary military post in Freiburg. It was all very correct and decent."

Next, Browne was sent on a long train ride to the Pomeranian area of Germany where he spent the next nine months in the Stalag Luft 4D prisoner-of-war camp. "We were forced out on February 1945, due to the onward pressure of the Russian Army, and were on the road from February into April keeping ahead of them."

"When the war came to an end on May 8, there were still pockets of resistance, but on the 10th of May, we were picked up and returned to Torgau, [Germany]" he says. "Physically and psychologically we were okay because they didn't put us out on conscripted labor at all. We could do our own thing."

After "a long processing," Browne boarded a ship in Le Havre, France, and sailed back to the United States. "I had to recover from weakness," he recalls. "I had some after-effects, but I received rehabilitation in the [U.S. Army Air Corps] Staten Island facility."

Five years later, Browne was working in Alaska where he met and married Margaret Nuquist, a social worker whose territory was 10,000 square miles of the vast U.S. territory. "Then we had the opportunity to return to [the continental U.S.] and lived in Brunswick, Maine, then Lewiston/Auburn, Eastport, Pembroke and, since 1991, Dennysville."

Sixty-four years after his wartime experience in Germany, Browne still keeps a close eye on the role of the U.S. military. "Times are tough for us in Iraq and Afghanistan, and casualties are mounting," he says. "But we still have to believe that our military needs to be overseas to gain peace around the world. That is very, very essential."

Storming Utah Beach on D-Day

Norman Nelson of Machias is a World War II combat veteran who was born in Eastport in 1918. He was working on "a varied career" in East Machias when he decided to volunteer in 1941 for a year in the U.S. Army. "Then they declared war, and that year turned into four years, four months and 17 days," he points out.

Nelson served as heavy machine gunner and squad leader and saw action in Normandy, northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes and central Europe.

Nelson was among the servicemen in the 4th Infantry Division, 12th Infantry Regiment, H Company, 2nd Battalion who stormed Utah Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944. "Getting ashore on D-Day was bad," he recalls of the amphibious landing. "We lost all our weapons and tripods. They were so heavy, they sank in 10 feet of water. It seemed like forever before I got to shore. It was just hell. I lost most of my company on the beach."

"I had my first religious experience that night ashore," says Nelson. "Two weeks before the crossing, I had a pass in London and was looking in a window and felt this presence beside me. The man and I started talking and, out of the blue, he asked me, 'Do you believe in God?' The only reason I went to church was because I sang in the choir and the minister had a pretty daughter. So I looked down the street and in the window and finally said, 'I don't know.' Well, that first night in Normandy, all alone behind a hedgerow, I had a feeling I can't describe. I thought darkness would never come. I looked up and asked God to deliver me from the hell I was in. After an experience like that you try to live the best life you can."

Surviving D-Day, Nelson went on to serve in the Hurtgen Forest campaign. "That was bad. Fighting in any forest was really dangerous because of artillery bursts in the trees."

"But the hardest thing for me was winter in Bastogne," says Nelson of the harsh winter engagement in Belgium. "It was so cold. We had to sleep wherever we would. Sometimes it was in a snowbank."

Whether it was due to luck, expertise or God's help, Nelson escaped serious injury during the war.

Digging for shelter

Ninety-year-old Iley Walston of Lubec grew up in Colorado and that's where he was living in 1942 when he was drafted at age 21 by the U.S. Army.

He served as radio operator in the 26th "Yankee" Division, which did reconnaissance missions. "It was done according to education," explains Walston of his assignment. "I was picked. I didn't volunteer."

He was stationed in Massachusetts, Kentucky and Maine before the 26th was sent overseas. "We landed in France a month-and-a-half after D-Day. Then we took off from there to Russia," recalls Walston. "There were bad conditions. It was winter, and the only shelter we got was what we dug up. We tried to get into houses or barns C or into six-foot-high pigpens made of cement and cover ourselves with hay to prevent bombs from dropping on us."

The 26th travelled through Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany before meeting the Russian Army in Czechoslovakia in 1944.

"We lost a few people who were replaced because they were wounded," recalls Walston, who stayed in one piece. One of his worst experiences was being stationed at Bastogne, Belgium. Metz, France, had been recaptured from the Germans in December, "and we were there for three days of rest, relaxation and training." When there was a German counterattack across the Luxembourg and Belgian hills, the 26th was immediately called into action. "Within two hours they were loading us up to go to Bastogne. We were bivouacked on the outskirts and were replacements for anybody who needed us."

Finally, at the end of January 1945, the 26th began its path from the Saar River to the Rhine in Germany and had crossed the Vltava River into Czechoslovakia, where U.S. patrols made contact with the Russian Army on May 10, three days after the German High Command's surrender to the Allied Expeditionary Forces and Russian High Command.

Three months after the war ended, Walston returned to the U.S. on a Liberty ship and headed back to Maine, where he had married a girl from Machias. He served as town manager there, and his two children were born in the shiretown before the family moved to Lubec 58 years ago. "I was town manager there, too," says Walston. "They offered me more money."

The World War II veteran belongs to the American Legion but has never been interested in being active in veterans' organizations. Summing up his feelings on the subject, Walston says, "We could do without wars."