“This band is carrying on a great tradition,” Bruz West said during Maine’s commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II on Aug. 15 at Cole Land Transportation Museum. At 94, the Bangor native who lives in Winthrop was entitled to praise the Bangor Band as it played the national anthem, lots of marches, “God Bless America,” the rousing “Stars and Stripes Forever” and the traditional medley of songs that brought the veterans to their feet when their branch of service was honored — Army, Marines, Coast Guard, Air Force and Navy.
Seventy years. That means our surviving World War II veterans are at least in their late 80s, and many of them age 90 or more. Fifty-one of them came to Cole Museum to take part in one of numerous worldwide events held under the Spirit of ’45 umbrella and receive a special blue ribbon marking the anniversary for their walking sticks.
As a reporter who covered countless city council, town council, selectmen and committee meetings as a reporter, I wanted to tell readers who was there, who voted this way and who voted that. So I’m big on putting things in the public record — in print as well as online — so these veterans will not be forgotten. These Maine World War II veterans were at the anniversary event:
Arthur Babineau, Harold Beal, Ralph Bickford, Ralph Bonville, Lawrence Burleigh, Austin Carter, Simon Caswell, George Chalmers, Robert Clark, Galen Cole, Robert Coles, William Deering, Perry Drew, George Dumont, Guy Ellms, Nancy Ellms, John Fogler, George Fulcher, Don Gallupe, Bob Glidden, Roland Goff, Alton Grant, Vaughn Harris, Donald Hayner, Leon Higgins, Basil Hills, Lou Horvath, Sumner Jones, Lowell Keene, Stanley Knox, George Lapaire, Clarence Littlefield, Paul Lucy, Enlow Minick, Carl Mitchell, George Newhall, Ronald Noyes, Carmine Pecorelli, Dean Pennypacker, Clifford Pierce, Alec Powell, Robie Robbins, Dustan Rogers, Norm Rossignol, Claud Scribner, Charles Snowman, Leroy Starbird, William Walker, Clifford West, Paul Wilbur, Elwood Worster Sr.
West reminisced about growing up in Bangor, watching parades, riding the trolley and participating in Junior ROTC at Bangor High. Born in 1920, Clifford West Jr. shows up as a 9-year-old in the 1930 Census of Bangor, living on Elm Street with dad Clifford H. West, 50, a salesman; mom Bertha S. West, 47; sister Eleanor, 17; and sister Leona, 15.
In college at the University of Maine, the Prism yearbooks list him as “social chairman” of El Circulo Espanol and a member of The Maine Flying Club. He also took civilian military training for aviators at Dow Field in Bangor and racked up about 200 flying hours.
But a medical issue with one lung dashed his hopes of becoming a pilot, so Clifford West Jr. became a U.S. Marine specializing in “communicating with the guy flying.”
At the Battle of Peleliu in the South Pacific, his Marines found themselves in a bad position as they made their way to the island. “The Japanese had tied themselves to trees and were firing down,” he recalled. It was about 115 degrees, he said, and “the water was full of debris and bodies. We couldn’t move,”
Over a two-week period at Peleliu, West said, 1,500 Allied troops were killed and 5,700 wounded.
The Battle at the Japanese island of Okinawa lasted longer but was “a much simpler operation,” from his point of view. What would come next was fairly obvious, he said. The Allies “were planning to land on Honshu” in the fall, with yet another major operation against the Japanese scheduled for early 1946.
Troops returning from Europe and many still in the United States who had not seen combat yet would join the massive invasion in the Pacific. But U.S. planes dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August, and the Japanese eventually surrendered. Using the bomb was controversial, West acknowledged, but said to him it was “a lifesaver.” V-J Day, when the Japanese signed the surrender, is observed on Sept. 2.
In writing this, I used not just what West said but explored census records, yearbook records and military sources. Even if the veteran in your family wasn’t a colonel in the Marines, you may find a lot of information in libraries and on the Internet.
Cole Museum founder Galen Cole, a Purple Heart veteran of the 5th Armored Division in Germany, took listeners back to Dec. 8, 1941, when students attended an assembly at the school on Harlow Street and were told “the Japanese had performed a sneak attack.”
By the time Cole joined the Army just after graduating Bangor High School in 1944, “62 of my classmates already were serving,” he recalled. He paid tribute to those who lost their lives and praised the many veterans who volunteer at the museum, from serving as tour guides to being interviewed by youngsters in the Veterans Interview Program. Paul Wilbur has shared his experiences as a Marine in World War II with more than 2,000 students so far.
Gov. Paul Lepage and wife Ann attended the anniversary event and helped lay wreaths at the Maine World War II Memorial and the Bangor World War II Memorial on the grounds of the museum.
Cole Museum has many military artifacts inside and outside the museum, but Director of Operations Jim Neville urged those attending not to overlook the benches inside that came from Bangor’s Union Station, benches where those going off to service “said a silent prayer to come home.” He also pointed out the Union Station clock displayed inside a freight car — the clock where the men and women “reset their watches” before leaving this last reminder of Bangor.
Neville, himself a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Marines with service in Iraq, expressed what attendees of the commemoration appeared to be feeling: “We are blessed by every moment we can spend with the Greatest Generation,”
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