World War II vets’ stories come slowly, if at all

Veterans Day wasn’t mentioned around our house. My father has a distinguished military history. He just doesn’t talk about it much.

As he approaches his 80th birthday, I want him to talk about it, to fill in the blanks. I’m not unlike countless others with World War II-era fathers. We want to hear the stories before it’s too late.

Thomas Schumacher, director of the state Department of Veterans Affairs’ post traumatic stress disorder counseling program, said that among my father’s generation, “very typically they hold this in forever.”

“The Great Depression taught them to keep things sealed up. And with the vigorous economy after the war, there was little to complain about.”

“Veterans keep these events very private. They don’t want to talk it up because it brings it up,” added Steve Akers, an Everett counselor who works with veterans. “Most veterans want to talk about the funny things and the relationships. I believe that whatever we can get out of them is good.”

The only war story I heard as a child was a happy one. I heard it again last week: “An elderly French couple invited five officers in our unit for Christmas dinner. The poor lady broke down and cried because we came armed with coffee, tea and sugar.” And he’ll joke that we never camped as kids because of all the cold nights on the ground during his “all-expenses-paid trip to Europe.”

My father is one of millions. There are 25,349,000 U.S. veterans. In Washington, there are 670,628; of those, 111,056 served in World War II, according to U.S. Census data. My dad is one of millions, but his story is his own.

“We lose 300 to 400 World War II veterans a month in this state,” Schumacher said. “They’re part of a very special generation.”

Last week, I picked up the phone – gingerly. I asked my father about the war. And he answered.

My father, Richard Ahrens, landed at Utah Beach in France 17 days after D-day in June 1944. He came home in the fall of 1946. During the Korean War, he was called back to active duty in the Air Force and was sent to Chicago. He served in the Air National Guard when I was young, becoming a colonel before retiring in 1973.

“I was subject to recall during the whole Vietnam War,” Dad said.

In all those dinner-table squabbles over Vietnam, it never occurred to me he was under a cloud of having to go. A lot of things never occurred to me, beginning with what it was like to be 19, at the University of Idaho, and to head off to war.

He remembers the date – Jan. 11, 1943 – that he left for an Army induction center in Utah. Of his officer training at Fort Lee, Va., carrying rifles through a swamp sticks in his mind. After ordnance school in Nebraska, he was assigned to the storied 42nd Infantry “Rainbow” Division at Camp Gruber, Okla.

My dad left Boston in early 1944 on a Cunard liner co-opted for the war. “We zigzagged across the Atlantic. It was scary, we had to keep one eye out for subs,” he recalled.

His unit stayed outside Liverpool, England, where a horse racetrack “was filled bumper-to-bumper with tanks and trucks waiting for the invasion of France.” He was the armed officer selected to go to London to get troop movement orders, bringing back details for moving across the English Channel.

They landed at Utah Beach in an LST, or landing ship tank. “The whole bow comes down,” my dad said, as I thought “just like in the movies.” I’ve seen “Saving Private Ryan,” with its D-day horrors. I know what my father shared was edited for family consumption.

His transportation unit supported infantry and armored divisions. “The more Eisenhower’s boys were successful moving away from the beach, the longer the supply lines became,” he said.

He moved “through terrible battles” in France. He recalled Ste. Mere-Eglise, where American paratroopers dropped into the town square early on D-day. One vivid memory is of blown-up Holstein cows hanging in the trees.

After marching through Paris and Verdun, harsh weather closed in. “We ran out of gas. I was in the 3rd Army, Patton’s Army, and everything kind of stopped for a few winter months.” When planes from England could drop supplies again, “we moved on into Belgium, Holland and then into Germany.”

His unit crossed the Rhine at Mainz. He was in Nuremberg, Munich and Salzburg, Austria.

“The war ended at that point, May 9, 1945. We ended up at the gates of Dachau,” he said.

By the time he arrived at the concentration camp, its occupants were German SS troops and officers. “It was, like, you made the bed, you stay there. They were starving to death,” he said.

The SS men were put to work “keeping everything clean and doing maintenance on our vehicles.”

In the occupation Army, my father “did a lot of guard duty and moving supplies and troops.” He spent time in Berlin, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Italy.

During the war, he was wounded in the backside by shrapnel, and awarded a Bronze Star. I asked about that, and was only told “it was for bravery, valor, whatever. I don’t even remember what it was for, what specific incident.”

I’m not convinced he doesn’t remember. But I’ll be forever grateful for all he did share.

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