They did their duty--they saved the world

They're aging now. Many are already gone, faded into history with a quiet humility typical of their generation.

They're the men and women who answered America's call from 1941 to 1945, when the atrocities of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan threatened to ravage world civilization.

Once they were heroes. At the time, they didn't understand the significance of their contribution. They were just doing what they were told, doing what was expected of them..

"They're modest almost to the point of being diffident,"said Bill Oldson, a Florida State University historian and director of the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience. "I think it's a generational characteristic."

Many who have come after them neither understand nor appreciate their sacrifices--partly

because of the veterans' own reluctance to share their experiences. That's a history lesson Oldson and others are trying hard to teach.

"This is the one war this century that really mattered," he said. "If the Kaiser had won World War I, all it would have meant changing of some frontiers. If the Germans and Japanese had won World II, the consequences would have been horrific."

Veterans Day is around the corner, an appropriate time to remember--and thank-- the surviving vets of World War II.

Veterans such as Martin Bruns, Barbara K. Wright and Walter Mercer--are Tallahasseeans whose paths never crossed but who each played a role on the team that saved civilization.

'In keeping with the highest traditions'

As a 22-year-old seaman, Martin Benjamin Bruns was already a three-year U.S. Navy veteran on that deceptively peaceful morning of Dec. 7, I 941, aboard the USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor.

Bruns, a clerk, was on the deck of the mighty battleship when Japanese planes came screaming out of the sky to bomb and strafe and send the United States headlong into the world's most terrible war.

Now 78, the Lafayette Oaks resident and retired naval administrative officer is a man of few words. He struggles to rind the right ones to describe how his life was forever changed in a flash.

"It happened -- pow!" said Bruns (pronounced Broons), striking his palms together like a thunderclap. "That was it."

That was it for 1,177 of his shipmates who died, the worst single disaster in U.S. naval history. But that wasn't it for the mild-mannered clerk from Fredericksburg, Texas.

The text of his commendation describes what happened next better than any words he can manage:

"He assisted in fighting fires ... while the decks were being strafed and bombed by enemy aircraft and later assisted badly burned men over to the life lines. On orders to abandon ship, he rescued injured men who were faltering in the water and swam them to a nearby quay.

"He then assisted in loading wounded men in a 50-foot motor launch and proceeded with the launch toward a boat landing, assisting in the rescue of men in the water on the way. After discharging the wounded men at the landing, he manned an abandoned 50-foot motor launch as engineer and returned to his ship to pick up the remaining survivors on board and men at the quay.

"On the way back to the landing more survivors were picked up from the water. He then returned for a final trip to the Arizona making certain no more survivors were left stranded, then passed the remaining battleship moorings looking for survivors.

"During the period he was making these boat trips, Japanese aircraft were continuing with heavy bombing and strafing attacks in the area. His initiative and devotion to duty under heavy enemy fire were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service."

The memories, he says, are largely stashed in the recesses of his mind, but he gets choked up when asked to recall them.

"As things go on," he said, "you lose track of unpleasant, dreary thoughts."

Bruns, who left the Navy in 1968 after 30 years' service, wears hearing aids these days. But he's fit and trim at 138 pounds and works part time at a local animal hospital. He doesn't trumpet his wartime achievements.

"I was there, so what? I just happened to be there."

How can others say thanks?

"To appreciate what they got ... what my shipmates got killed for," Bruns said. "They contributed their lives."

Always faithful to her beloved Marine Corps

In her bones, Barbara King became a U.S. Marine in the early 1930s, as a girl of 12 or 13.

In her hometown of Pittsburgh, she occasionally went downtown by herself to attend special events at the Stanley Theatre. One day the U.S. Marine Corps Band was playing. She went

"Those uniforms.' The music! I was hooked!"

In August '43, America was already at war. King had received bachelor's and master's degrees and was director of marketing for a Pittsburgh department store. But she had to scratch the itch she'd had for more than 10 years.

She enlisted after a newspaper article reported that the Marine Corps was recruiting its last class of female officer candidates from among civilians.

"I was down there (at the recruiting office), bingo!" she said, her animated speech underscoring her undying fervor for the Corps.

At 78, Barbara K Wright is still and forever a Marine down to her bones. A "Semper Fi" bumper sticker adorns the front window of her Killeam Estates home. Her ramrod straight posture also gives her away.

Her actual time in uniform -- about two years -- belies her lifelong commitment to the Marines.

After induction and graduation from Officer Candidate School at Camp LeJeune, N.C,. she became a company commander, overseeing about 200 enlisted women at their base in Quantico, Va. Their main mission was straightforward: to free a male marine for combat by providing support services. Women Marines drove trucks and Jeeps, taught courses on base, handled administrative responsibilities, cooked and cleaned.

The Marines had the highest casualty rate of all the branches of service.

"(The casualties) were awful," Wright said, "but they were part of the deal. Marines went in knowing they weren't going to come back."

By 1945 she was married--to a Marine--and pregnant with their first child. Pregnancy and the Corps didn't mix, and she was automatically forced out--one of the saddest days of her life, she says.

After rearing four children, traveling the world with her former Marine husband and obtaining a doctorate in her late 50s, Wright is now retired. But the passion still burns.

"In my opinion, it is the single time our country has been 100-percent totally united,' she said of the war. "I have that unhappy feeling we may never be that way (again)."

'Pride in having made a contribution'

Growing up in rural Mississippi in the '30s, Walter Mercer saw places such as Paris and Versailles

only in his schoolbooks and his dreams.

Even when America was plunged into war by Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, Mercer figured

he'd never be touched. He was just a teenager, a high school kid. Europe and the Pacific were worlds away.

Eighteen months after America went to war, so did Walter Mercer.

He was drafted in 1943 into the then-segregated Army. It was an adventure he never could have imagined.

After basic training his outfit shipped out to England, then to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Like the hundreds of thousands of other Allied troops in Great Britain, Mercer was constantly training, wondering when the inevitable invasion of France would get the green light.

On June 6, 1944, all hell broke loose. The Normandy invasion had begun.

Mercer was still in Belfast when the first troops landed. But 40 days later, he and his unit landed at Omaha beach, the scene of some of Normandy's bloodiest fighting. By then, the Allies had secured the beaches and were fighting for control of the French countryside. The outcome was still in doubt.

Cpl. Mercer supervised a crew of stevedores who unloaded equipment from ships at Cherbourg for the famous "Redball Express," using winches to unload tons of ammunition, vehicles, food and all other supplies essential to crushing the Nazis.

As the Allies pressed through France toward Germany, Mercer also guarded German POWs.

He was a noncombatant -- but combat was never far away. The crippled Luftwaffe still was capable of getting planes airborne. The night Mercer landed, a pack of German fighter planes buzzed overhead.

And Cherbourg wasn't completely secured after Mercer's unit got there. Nazi snipers were taking occasional shots at U.S. troops.

"I was thinking 'There's danger here, I could get killed,' he recalled. No one in his unit ever was hurt but some who volunteered for combat were killed.

Now 72, the Florida A&M University education professor credits his Army experience with helping him decide to be a teacher. His exposure to other cultures, he says, helped convince him that he could contribute to "improving relationships among people" in this country.

He says he is proud lo have been a small cog in the Allied war machine that freed Europe.

"I didn't dream that going into the Army, I would participate in such a historic occasion, liberating France, eliminating the (tyranny) of Hitler... It made the world a better place to live. Democracy is not a perfect way to live, but it's a whole lot better than what you've got in

many other countries.

"I thought that I was making a contribution, supervising people helping to get supplies to the Redball Express to the troops out front. It was like being on a team, and because of our collective effort we won."

'The lack of knowledge is really appalling'

FSU's Oldson, 57, has spoken with hundreds of vets and their families through his work for the World War II institute. One California veteran, who served on the USS Enterprise in the Pacific, spoke to Oldson shortly after attending a reunion of shipmates, where he was given a baseball cap commemorating his service on the famous aircraft carrier.

The man wore the cup as he strolled through a mall when a 'friendly young woman stopped him "I think it's great that someone your age is into 'Star Trek'!" she gushed.

"The lack of knowledge," said Oldson, "is really appalling."

He attributes that in part, to unimaginative teaching focusing on rote memorization of facts rather than critical thinking.

But it also is due to the reluctance of the World War II veterans to bring attention to themselves.

"Many of the ones who are left say that no one wanted to talk about it after it was over. Most just wanted to get on with their lives," said Ed Lane, president of Tallahassee's World War II Historical Society.

Said Oldson: "None of these people think they did anything special."

They did their duty.

Thank God they did.

Bill Berlow, the son of a World War II veteran, can be reached at 599-2257.