Reflecting on the events of yesterday at the Veterans Day Presentations, i have several more thoughts that I think are worth mentioning. I was pressed for time and could not complete all that I wanted to say in the first post. The first thought is when I hear the National Anthem played, in addition to my patriotic pride and emotions, it always triggers a memory from the past. Though the sensation is not as vivid as it once was, I still remember and feel it all the same. For many years, when I would hear the National Anthem, the hair would actually stand up on the back of my neck. When we were playing a home football game at Warren High School the tradition at the time was for us to remain in the field house. When the National Anthem was being played, this was our cue and we would walk out onto the porch and down the stairs to the football field. At that time, I was so pumped and on an adrenaline rush that I was tingling all over in anticipation of what was ahead. I can recall the time period of probably 1966 to 1967. I had a classmate named Cheryl Thompson. Her brother DB Thompson Jr was in Vietnam and in the hot zone with the fighting. I recall the strain that the family back home was going through knowing what their loved one was enduring and not knowing when there might be a visit from a message courier about their brother and son. The other thing that I recall is back in the time period of 1978 to 1979, I was working at Mobil Oil as an Assistant Operator. The Unit that I worked on had an Operator and only one assistant. My Operator for about a year was a man named Paul Byerly. I was in my early to mid twenties and he was in his mid sixties. He actually retired at age sixty-five while I was working with him. Paul Byerly and I had very little in common to talk about. The unique thing about Paul Byerly is that he was a World War II Veteran. There were many midnight shifts that we sat and talked and he related to me his experiences as I listened in awe. Paul Byerly was a crew member, possibly a navigator or gunner on an Air Force Bomber. He was assigned to several missions were they Went Over the Hill (Alps) and dropped bombs in the Pacific Theater. Although several were successful on his last run, his plane was shot down and he was alone and afloat in a life raft in the Pacific. After several days, he was picked up by a Japanese Patrol Boat. He said he was glad to be picked up even by the enemy, but little did he know the nightmare that he would endure. He told me about the starvation and the physical abuse that he underwent but also of the mental abuse that he endured. He described the food that they were given as mainly a soup of a few grains of rice in water with the heads of the fish they fed to the Japanese captors. He was in a inhumanely small cage with nothing to occupy the time. What he did to survive was to sit and suck on the fishheads. After several hours, his saliva would break down the fish bones and it would become soft and brittle. When the bones got soft enough, he would eat them to keep up his protein and mineral needs. He lost nearly a hundred pounds and weighed only about eighty pounds when he was liberated. The POW Camp that he was in also housed Australians and English prisoners. The Japanese would hold regular public executions that the captives were forced to watch as the Australians were executed by beheading. They were made to kneel and a hoe type weapon would chop off the victims head. After the Atomic Bomb the POWs were liberated and turned back over to allied forces. It was only then that he learned that he was only two weeks away from his execution date. It is almost unimaginable what he and so many others like him suffered for our freedoms. This is a debt that can never be repaid. I have not heard from him in many years and I assume that he has passed on. If he were alive today, he would be more than a hundred years old.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 05:42:23 +0000
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