Department of Virginia

Old Vets Scorched By Strain of New Wars

Tom Philpott | November 12, 2009

Even Old Vets Scorched By Strain of Current Wars

   A small group of U.S. war veterans, the age difference among them as wide as

70 years, gathered last Saturday at American Legion Post 177 in Fairfax,

Va., for a special event at the annual Veterans' Day Community Fair. They

had agreed to participate in a "living history," co-hosted by VFW Post 8469,

and organized by its commander, Floyd Houston, a man committed to ensuring

local war heroes, old and young, don't fade away. For two hours they told

war stories and stood by to answer questions that never came from local Boy

Scouts seeking to earn merit badges for their time there. The public too was

welcomed but didn't show.

   What they missed was more than the usual compelling personal accounts of

war. They missed how deeply some veterans of past wars are disturbed by

burdens being carried by the current generation of volunteers. Avon

Blevins, a retired Navy chief, began his talk by pulling a few mementoes

from a paper bag. He was a teenage radioman aboard USS O'Brien when that

destroyer escorted 50 landing craft, with 200 infantrymen apiece, toward

Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. "We took them in on the first wave. We

got them there on target and on time.Patrolled up and down the beach all day

and fired when they asked us to fire," Blevins said. O'Brien's guns took

out enemy pillboxes and a machine gun nest. It was relieved that evening by

its sister ship, USS Meredith. When O'Brien returned at dawn, its crew could

see the Meredith on fire and sinking from an explosion later confirmed to

have been caused by a German mine. Three weeks later, an eight-inch German

shell from a shore battery would rip into O'Brien below its bridge, causing

32 casualties, Blevins said. After repairs, the ship sailed to the Pacific.

Blevins was still aboard when Japanese Kamikaze aircraft struck, twice. In

the second attack, a plane with 500-pound bomb penetrated to the ship's

ammunition magazine. "Almost blew the ship in two. We had a lot of

casualties," Blevins said. "We had part of the pilot too. I never will

forget he had three or four uniforms on. I had one of his shoes until an

officer took it away from me."

   John Swart was 19, part of 8th Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, which landed

at Utah Beach in the second wave ashore at Normandy. "Some troops got out

in water over their heads, carrying 30 pounds packs. Where I landed was

probably knee high," he said. The first town they liberated was Sainte

Marie du Mont. At dusk that evening, Swart recalled, he and other troops

watched in horror as Army gliders tried to land in fields the German had

planted with telephone poles. "A lot of those boys were butchered up,"

Swart remembered. Swart's own mortar platoon suffered 60 percent casualties

within weeks. He was wounded twice that year, in July and November. For the

second set of wounds he spent 10 months in various hospitals before

discharge. He let the scouts passed around one of his Purple Heart medals.

Lehman Young, a former Navy test pilot, recalled delivering an F4U Corsair

fighter to a base in California early in WWII. He had arrived with extra

fuel and so, before landing, decided "to do some sightseeing." He was set

on flying under the Golden Gate Bridge until he was close to it. Instead he

flew up the coastline. Suddenly he saw puffs of black smoke in the air ahead

of him, exploding shells from anti-aircraft batteries. "I wasn't supposed

to be there," Young said, holding his cane and smiling. "I did a real quick

180, got back over the bay, got down real close to the ground, went up in

the mountains and hid for a couple of hours." Young said he had five forced

landings while flying naval aircraft, but "that was as close as I came to

getting shot down."

   By the time retired Army Col. George Juskalian, 95, arrived at Legion Post

177 in his wheel chair, the Boy Scouts had moved on. But sharing his

experiences through three wars, including capture by the Germans in Tunisia,

wasn't his priority this afternoon. Where should we start, I asked him.

"It starts with my anger at our present military policies. We have military

personnel redeploying to theaters of war five and six times and we're not

doing anything about it," said the colonel, his voice rising. "We expand

the Army by about 20,000, which is a drop in the bucket. But nobody is

mentioning the draft. Nobody! Most of the country doesn't even know we're in

a war! After eight, nine years of fighting, when in the hell are we going to

level with them? How are we going to continue this all-volunteer business,

especially for the Army and Marines taking the losses?" Yes, he said,

because of a poor economy the military is meeting recruit requirements. But

before civilian jobs grew scarce, the services were lowering standards,

Juskalian said. "Who's kidding who?" "I don't hear anybody at the White

House, anybody in the Pentagon, any of these generals we have, anyone in the

Congress using the word 'draft.' It's become a dirty word! We can't rely on

volunteer effort forever!" He said he reads letters in newspapers from

military spouses worried that loved ones are going off to war, again and

again, perhaps this time never to come back, while they raise their young

children alone. "Well it bothers me. Jesus Christ, I could cry," he said,

voice growing soft and eyes moist. Eventually he recounts some of his own

experiences in WWII and wars in Korea and Vietnam, not mentioning until

prompted by Houston his two Silver Stars. Soon Juskalian returned to why he

was there. "If it's a war worth fighting for," he said, "the whole country

has got to fight for it." Houston, with a son returning to Afghanistan the

next day, agreed.

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