My Stepfather, Paul 18 March 1924-14 December 2005 (Buried 17 December 2005 with Military Honors) I carelessly miscalculated and missed the date of Paul’s death which was the 14th of December, not the 17th as I had thought, but the day after Mom’s. It was today‘s date, instead, that he was buried. Sorry, Sir. “World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind.”--General Gordon R. Sullivan, United States Army, Chief of Staff, from the U.S. Army Military-History Archive. Paul served the entire mission that was the beginning of the end of World War II, from Normandy to the liberation of France to the Battle of the Rhineland to bring down Adolf Hitler’s Nazi German and end the human carnage. In that duty he served in the European Theater as a decorated and superior Marksman and hunter of German snipers who were causing high causalities among American and allied troops. He was immediately deployed from the European Theater at the fall of Berlin to the Asian Pacific Theater where his company was charged with liberating the Philippines and then deploying to Japan to secure that nation during the surrender of Japan. He had also served and had decorations for his service in Africa and the Middle East. Among other hot spots around the world in his more than quarter-century military career as a frontline combat soldier, and part if the 1st Cavalry Division, America’s First Team, he was among the first into Korea combat where he later lead his platoon of marksman and conducted tunnel warfare, known as tunnel rats, where he would go into tunnels on search and destroy missions to engage the enemy. Those were dangerous missions and often booby trapped. Tunnel warfare was popular and more common in the later stages of the Vietnam War. Some of his activates were classified and some of his missions were covert operations conducted behind enemy lines. He served at the pentagon and later retired during the Vietnam War in 1969 under General William C. Westmoreland, Commander of United States Military Operations of the Vietnam War, who signed his Appreciation of Service certificate and DD214 from the Department of Defense. He remained on reserve active duty. Some of his missions, because of their relevance to national security, were deleted or altered from his military records which is why it was so hard to initially obtain proof of his service for honor-guard ceremony for his funeral, which I insisted upon. The inability and delay for the Division of Military and Naval Affairs, along with other researchers, to find those records needed for the honor guard service until the Pentagon furnished the proof needed for his burial-service was stressful, but did arrive in time, but also resulted in his headstone lacking Korea and Nam service distinction. I was with Paul when he was told by the military that he had several medals due him that he hadn’t yet picked up and he told the government to keep them, that he didn’t want them. I wish he hadn’t done that. General Westmoreland’s death preceded Paul’s by five months. He served in the wars with several of his brothers whom all succumbed before him. In a free world, or one that ought to be, men didn’t have to know the people they were liberating or rescuing, it was just something they done because it was the right thing to do.
Posted on: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 22:25:21 +0000
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