OVH veterans lend their voices to history

PERKINS TWP. - It's been about 60 years since Ken Moran, 94, served about a Navy destroyer in the South Pacific, but the constant dangers of battling Japanese aircraft, submarines and other ships remain vivid in his memory.

Describing his transfer to duty about the USS Fletcher, Moran said, "That's when my life changed. That's when I went into combat. For two years, that's all we did."

Once, Moran watched the ship behind the Fletcher being hit by a Japanese aircraft.

"The ship went down right away. I don't know if there were any survivors or not," he said.

Service during the notoriously bloody Guadalcanal campaign was particularly dangerous, Moran recalls.

"It seemed like every day there was action. One time, we got word there was going to be 100 Jap planes coming after us," Moran recalled during a 45-minute interview videotaped last year by Paul Fortner, a Vermilion man who volunteers at the Ohio Veterans Home.

The Fletcher circled around the island. The Japanese air armada sank three U.S. ships, "but they didn't find us," Moran said.

 "That was a narrow escape," he said.

Moran was interviewed under the auspices of the Veterans History Project, a program supervised by the Library of Congress that is attempting to preserve oral personal histories from aging war veterans.

OVH officials and volunteers say there is a sense of urgency in trying to find more volunteers because there is a danger many fascinating stories will remain untold.

"We have lost some fascinating stories," said Elaine Waterfield, an OVH volunteer who has helped coordinate the Veterans History Project at OVH. "There's a real need to get it done."

Waterfield said OVH used to have a veteran who served in the Army Air Corps in France during World War I. Another former resident was aboard the landing craft that landed the first occupying forces in Japan in World War II.

Nationwide, veterans are reported to be dying at a rate of about 1,500 a day, she said.

Moran said last week he never talked about his war experiences with his children. The Canton native said that when he returned home, he put the war behind him and returned to working for Timken, where he worked before and after his Navy service, retiring in 1976.

"When I got home, I took my uniform off within 10 minutes," he said.

But after he made his Veterans History Project tape, Moran had copies made so he could send them to his daughters in Georgia and in Chicago.

Not all of Moran's memories are harrowing. The tape recalls lighter moments, such as when Moran returned home from the war at about 11:30 p.m. and immediately suggested to his mother that they go out for a beer.

A friend serving as the bartender at the local tavern asked Moran when he'd gotten back. Just a few minutes ago, Moran answered.

"It didn't take you long, did it?" the friend answered.

Despite all of the action the Fletcher saw, the ship was hit by the Japanese only once. Watertender Elmer Charles Bigelow earned the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously when a shell from a Japanese shore battery hit the ship on Feb. 14, 1945, killing several sailors and starting a fire in the ship's magazine.

Seeing the danger-an explosion in the ammunition storage could have sunk the ship-Bigelow rushed below and doused the fire.

So far, only two interviews have been completed at the OVH for the Veterans History Project. Waterfield completed an interview with Bill Henschel, 55, a Vietnam veteran at the home.

"The reason I went into the Marine Corps is because my father had been in the Marine Corps and I heard all my life how hard it was and how I probably couldn't make it, so that guaranteed that I would go into the Marine Corps," Henschel explains on the tape.

The Tet Offensive began 37 days after Henschel arrived in Vietnam. His unit was sent into Hue, the old imperial capital.

Henschel's platoon was almost wiped out and Henschel himself was shot in the head when he tried to rescue a wounded comrade. The unconscious Marine was placed on top of a tank. When a shell hit the tank, Henschel fell off, and the tank apparently ran over his left leg.

"At this point, probably everyone thought I was dead, but I was unconscious for seven weeks. I regained consciousness in San Diego, Calif., at the naval hospital there. I weighed 72 pounds," Henschel said.

Henschel tried to go to college after he recovered, but he had trouble concentrating because of his injury and discovered that many fellow students at Cornell were hostile.

"I can't count the number of times I was called a murderer," he said. "And actually spit in my face."

The Library of Congress Internet site at www.loc.gov/folklife/vets/ includes a catalog of interviews. Some of the interviews have been made available online. The site includes a form so volunteers can obtain a project kit and carry out an interview that meets government standards and that will be included in the archive.

Anyone interested in volunteering also may contact the volunteer office at the Ohio Veterans Home at 419-625-2454 ext. 1218.

All contents © Copyright 2002 Sandusky Register

Call us at 419-625-5500