A farm boy goes to war

Del was a farmboy who grew up in the 1930s, his family taking in a few relatives during the Depression and later years. There was alway work to do and meat, butter and milk to consume despite any shortage of cash.

He had dreams of becoming a veterinarian, but was told he would be attending a college in Missouri to become a teacher.

He probably didn't have the grades to become a veterinarian, but he did meet his future wife before the aircraft industry drew him to Southern California, putting an end to his college career.

Del worked for Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica, running a mill to convert bars and sheets of aluminum into bombers for the U.S. Navy, Army Air Force and even the Russians.

Del and his roommates were content to build airplanes, one an hour, during the work week, hunting rabbits in the desert on their time off and doing things they probably never shared with their future families.

When one of his roommates decided to get married, however, Del remembered Mary, the Ohio girl he knew back in Missouri.

On an impulse, he drove to Iowa where Mary was now teaching. When he arrived at a school function, she threw the keys to a fellow teacher, told her to lock up, and Del and Mary drove to Las Vegas where they were married.

The couple settled into what passed for domestic life, Mary joining her husband at Douglas where she applied "dope," special paint to shrink the fabric onto control surfaces of bombers, and she later moved to an office position.

One Sunday morning, he heard the news from Pearl Harbor on the radio of his old Dodge coupe.

"Don't go until you have to," Del would tell young men during the Vietnam era. His work at the factory kept him out the military for much of World War II, but when production began winding down, Del did his duty, drafted into the Army.

Mary and their infant daughter went to live with in-laws as Del went through wartime basic training at Fort Carson, Colo., assigned to man a World War I-style water-cooled .30-caliber machine gun.

Despite the delay, Del was involved in some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II, the invasion of Okinawa, where Japanese soldiers fought to the death and civilians jumped off cliffs under the misguided belief that they would be tortured or worse by advancing Americans.

Del saw and did things no human being should be forced to experience, mowing down suicidal Japanese soldiers staging Banzai attacks, seeing friends die and watching the enemy being roasted alive in caves with American flamethrowers.

A prime enemy target, Del was blown from his fox hole by a mortar shell one morning, wounded by a hand grenade that afternoon.

Del was evacuated in one of the planes he used to build, flown under fighter escort to Saipan and eventually Korea, where was put in charge of an office while recovering from his wounds.

Word of VJ Day came with a group of American bombers flying over in a "V" formation.

The celebrations died out long before soldiers could go home, and some were filled with so much despair that they did something the Japanese could not, ending their own lives.

One day, Del was ordered to find certain files in his office and destroy them. He let his curiosity overcome his strict obedience to orders and checked out the files he was about to burn.

They were plans for the invasion of Japan, detailed down to the squad level.

Had the atomic bomb not been built and deployed, Del would very likely have died in that invasion, and this editorial would not have been written today.

On Veterans Day, we tend to romanticize their war experiences, but they were just ordinary people who did extraordinary things when their nation called.

That makes their bravery all the more remarkable.