I have never been a fan of warfare, but I admire and respect American veterans for enduring and surviving the carnage and ultimately the social, political and economic unrest that battles inevitably cause.
Many who return to family and friends after combat are silent about their experiences. I doubt if my father ever uttered more than a handful of reflections to his family about his Korean War service. Far too many others suffer from the ordeal and have trouble regaining a foothold in civilian life. But veterans can often be a source of powerful insight and inspiration.
My first encounter with a war veteran who spoke openly about his wartime life was with the late Harrison Lemont, an Army Air Corps radar operator during the battle of the Philippines in World War II. It was the late 1990s and I was a writing instructor at an adult education class in Kittery. I couldn’t have had a more engaged student who also motivated his classmates, especially when I taught about memoir writing. After the course, he published a book called “Never Alone.”
Some war memoirs can be weighted with statistics, geography, casualty figures, numbers of sunken ships, campaign strategies. Lemont’s book offers a real sense of the front-line service members’ feelings, what their daily lives were like.
In his remembrance, Lemont writes about bombs, gunfire, heat, typhoons, what it’s like to go without food and supplies for days, sleeping on bare ground, encounters with enemy “forces” and native bystanders, and being surrounded by “the constant, overwhelming stench of death.”
Lemont’s three years in the Army began when he was drafted in 1943. Though he grew up as a so-called military brat moving around the country with his Navy career father, he was unprepared for what he would face in the service. For example, while on unit maneuvers in a Louisiana field, a man ran out on his porch and yelled, “Get out of here, you damn Yankees.”
Despite the traumas of combat, he found positives, as he wrote, about “finding a thrill seeing history up close and feeling part of something big.”
About the same time I met Lemont, I was also a feature correspondent for the now-defunct Portsmouth Press in New Hampshire, where I profiled Harry W. Jones Sr., the grandson of former slave John Samuel Jones. In his youth, Harry Jones’ Sunday school teacher was Harriet Tubman, founder of the Underground Railroad.
Jones, who died in 1992 at 91, was also one of the few surviving members of the black military unit, the 92nd Infantry Regiment, serving under Gen. John J. Pershing during World War I. This regiment was later depicted in the film “Men of Bronze.” The year before his death, he had a substantial speaking part in “Lost Boundaries,” a movie about New Hampshire’s Dr. Scott Carter, a light-complexioned African-American physician during the late 1940s, who, because of racial prejudice, confronted the issue of whether he and his family should “pass for white.”
Harry Jones showed me how to use an old-fashioned rangefinder similar to a periscope that he helped capture from the German forces. It is an optical instrument that allows one to see around or over obstacles while concealed in a trench or behind a wall.
He and his family moved to Portsmouth at the end of the Great Depression from Seneca Falls, New York. At the suggestion of an American Legion friend, he wandered into a post office one day and read the job board postings. His friend thought America was getting ready for another war and there might be some work to be had. In his classic manner, Jones responded: “What are you talking about? We just got finished with a war.”
By then, Jones was weary of war, so, since he was already a tradesman specializing in refrigeration and air-conditioning maintenance, he eventually landed a job at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and, in 1966, went to American Samoa as a deputy director in the field.
“What I remember most about Harry is that he was a real maverick — a trailblazer,” said New England historian Valerie Cunningham. “He was always full of new ideas.” T.J Wheeler, a Portsmouth-based musician, added: “It may sound a little cliche, but I considered him a beacon of strength and self-esteem, whether you’re black or white.”
Before Lemont died, he mailed me a copy of his book inscribed, “To a special friend. May you find in this small slice of history something of what once was.” Despite painful memories, both of these war survivors left a legacy of vigor, resilience and determination with a good dose of humor, all important attributes to help us find inner peace in a complex world.
Leigh Donaldson is a Portland writer. His writings on international, national and regional politics, business, social issues, history, art, culture and travel have appeared in a number of print and online publications.