Centre County World War II vets share stories of courage, devotion

Friday, Nov. 11, is Veterans Day, and we pause to honor all those who served in the American military services.

As a Centre County Gazette reporter, I have been fortunate to have known and interviewed several veterans of World War II from the Penns Valley area. The following excerpts are from previously published articles about these men, who are members of what journalist Tom Brokaw once called “The Greatest Generation.”

■ Billy Stover  

Stover, of Aaronsburg, now 94 years old, was drafted into the Army Air Corps in October 1944. After training, he was assigned to the 78th (Lightning) Infantry Division of the 311th Infantry Regiment, then shipped to the frontlines of the Battle of the Bulge, where he spent 39 days in combat.

“I was only scared once — from the first time we went into combat till the war was over,” he said. “If you weren’t scared, you weren’t there.” In spite of their situation, Stover and his buddies maintained a sense of humor. They joked about the “bullet with your name on it,” but one fellow said he was more worried about the bullets that said “to whom it may concern.”

Stover had a few close calls in combat. Once, while firing from an upstairs window, a German soldier zeroed in on Stover and fired his rifle at him. The bullet came through a corner, where it had to pass through two walls.

“The bullet went through the first wall, but the second wall stopped it or I woulda got it right here,” said Stover, pointing to his chest. Another time, bullets were hitting the ground all around him, so he dropped to the ground behind the only cover available — a 4-inch- wide fencepost — and never got hit.

 ■ Lawrence Wolfe

The late Wolfe, of Coburn, was drafted into the U.S. Army in early 1941, and after training in Virginia, was sent to the West Coast, where he was assigned to a California National Guard unit. In late 1941 Wolfe was sent to Camp Malakole, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, where he was assigned to Battery F, in the 251st Coastal Artillery.

Wolfe remembered the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor well. His base was less than a mile away from the harbor.

“It was around 7:30. I was in the kitchen with the cooks, standing on a platform in the back of the kitchen when they blew up the Arizona. We saw all this smoke — it looked like a volcano was blowing up,” said Wolfe. “The shock almost blew us off the stand we had in the kitchen.” 

Wolfe said that he and his men at first didn’t realize it was the Japanese attacking. “We had no idea,” he said. “We blamed it on the (U.S.) Air Corps men.”

When Wolfe saw the red sun emblem on the planes, he realized it was an attack by the Japanese.

Japanese planes were strafing the area, some spraying bullets into the kitchen. Wolfe and the others ran outside and dived into foxholes for cover. After a time of great confusion due to downed phone lines, the call to arms was blown on the bugle. “Then the captain said ‘We’re at war with the Japanese,’” said Wolfe.

Wolfe lost a friend and fellow Coburn resident in the attack. Master Sgt. Bill Brandt, who was housed near the harbor, was shot and killed by a strafing Japanese plane when he stepped outside his building to see what was going on.

Wolfe concisely summed up the effect the Pearl Harbor attack had on America and the world. “Them bombs — they changed everything. The whole thing changed after that.”

■ Bruce Moyer

When the late Moyer, of Centre Hall, was a youth, his greatest ambition was to fly. When he was drafted into the U.S. Army in February 1943 at age 19, he applied for the Aviation Cadet program, but that group had reached its quota and Moyer was not accepted. Instead, the Army assigned him to the Medical Corps, even though he had no medical training.

He applied again to be an aviation cadet at Camp Picket, in Virginia, and was accepted. He passed his exam in April 1943, and was sent to Keesler Field in Buloxi, Miss., to begin his training, then went on to the college pre-aviation cadet program at Union University in Jackson, Tenn. There, he had his first flight experience, flying 10 hours in an Aeronca Champion.

Moyer passed an Army aviation pre-flight course, then spent three months in each of the Army’s three-tiered flight training levels. After graduating and receiving his wings, he became part of a fighter pilot group stationed at Matagorda Island, off the Gulf Coast of Texas, where he flew patrols over the Gulf of Mexico in a Curtiss P-40 fighter. He later was assigned to a P-51D Mustang, which was the most advanced, state-of-the-art fighter plane of its time.

“If you flew an hour or two in a P-40, you were played out,” said Moyer. “The Mustang was like a toy by comparison — the ease of control, and the responsiveness.” 

Moyer liked the horsepower, too. “There was about 1,200 horsepower out there. It was one sweet airplane.”

By this time, in1945, the war was winding down, and new fighter pilots were not needed in the European theater. Moyer and his fellow pilots were scheduled to go to the Pacific theater, but atomic bombs brought an abrupt end to the war, so they never got to see combat.

Moyer was disappointed he didn’t get in combat. “This was what you were there for,” he said.

After the war, 1st Lt. Moyer wanted to stay in the service. “I was young, and I was flying, which is what I wanted to do,” he said. He got his wish by being assigned to a newly formed flight demonstration team, which traveled around the United States putting on flying demonstrations, complete with close formation flying and aerobatics. “We didn’t have a name, we were just a tactical flying group,” said Moyer, who was in that group for about a year, and then was discharged in September 1946. After the U.S. Air Force became an independent service in 1947, the group was named the Thunderbirds Show Team, which now has a 70-year long reputation as one of the best military flight teams in the world.

■ Harold A. Stitzer  

On a personal note, my late father was a World War II veteran and Bronze Star recipient, drafted into the 387th Field Artillery Battalion, U.S. Army. The 387th was part of the 104th Infantry Division, which was known as the Timberwolf Division. Its insignia featured the head of a howling wolf.

Dad’s unit saw combat action in both Holland and Germany. Somewhere in Holland in October 1944, someone was needed to carry a field radio and accompany the recon officer forward to establish a communications post, and to operate the radio as needed. Dad was the right man for this task — his parents owned and operated a radio sales and repair shop in Pleasant Gap, so he knew a lot about radios.

A field radio in those days was not a compact, lightweight piece of equipment. Those were the days of vacuum tube technology, and a “portable” field radio was the size of a small suitcase and probably weighed about 30 pounds. Dad strapped the electronic behemoth to his back and, quoting from his Bronze Star citation:

“He was frequently subjected to intense enemy artillery, mortar, and sniper fire. He facilitated the laying of the wire line, and the maintenance necessary to keep it in operation, handling duties other than his own in a superior manner and refusing to be relieved for the entire period of four days. His courage, versatility, and devotion to duty were an inspiration to his comrades in their first days in combat, and reflected the highest credit on Corporal Stitzer and the military service.”

Dad’s unit came face to face with the evil of the Nazi regime in April 1945 when they liberated a concentration camp near Nordhausen, Germany. From all accounts, the Nordhausen camp was an absolute hell on earth. It was a satellite camp of the Mittelbau-Dora camp where prisoners were forced to work manufacturing the German V1 and V2 rocket-powered “Buzz Bombs.”

When prisoners became too old, weak or ill to work, they were shipped to Nordhausen, where they were locked in concrete hangar buildings — with no sanitary facilities and no food whatsoever — until they died of starvation or disease. Their bodies were incinerated at the rate of about 100 per day.

When the 104th Division arrived, its soldiers were greeted by the sight of nearly 3,000 corpses in various states of decomposition scattered about the camp compound. The sight and the stench were overwhelming. The soldiers conscripted men from nearby Nordhausen to help bury the emaciated bodies in mass graves. A few prisoners were found (barely) alive, and the Army medics managed to save only a handful of them. For the thousands of others, it was too late.

These men’s stories are not unique. Similar stories are shared by legions of other former GIs who literally stood in the line of fire to save the world. Their courage and devotion to duty has been passed down to successive generations serving in places such as Korea, Vietnam, the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan and here at home, protecting America’s shores and skies from all enemies, foreign and domestic. The debt we owe them is incalculable. The thanks we give them seems inadequate, but still we must try.

Veterans, we salute you, and we thank you for all your service and sacrifice.