VALUABLE LESSONS
Greatest Generation share their stories of life during WWII to students
GREENFIELD, N.Y. >> Several Prestwick Chase residents became fast friends with local students Wednesday while sharing their stories about life in the service and on the homefront during World War II.
Students in teacher Mary Izzo’s eighth-grade American history class, at Saratoga Central Catholic School, met more than a dozen members of America’s Greatest Generation, both men and women who shared their remarkable experiences.
“It’s cool listening to their stories because I didn’t know about some of this stuff,” student Cody Burky said.
“It’s nice to meet the people who served our country,” class-
mate Chris Gill said.
Likewise, veterans feel an obligation to teach young people about one of the most important chapters in U. S. history.
“They should know some of what we had to endure, the difficulties of being away from home,” said Joseph Walsh, who served aboard a destroyer, the USS Warrington, which patrolled the Atlantic coast looking for German submarines.
He and his wife, Joyce, plan to celebrate their 70th anniversary on June 28. They began dating before he joined the service. Saying good- bye, especially after Joseph came home on leave, was the hardest part for both of them.
“It was terrible,” Joyce said. “I thought he was never coming back.”
Students met and interviewed veterans one- onone or in small groups of two or three.
Eighth- grader William Fizer learned a great deal talking to Paul Aubry, a 92-year- old Army Air Corps veteran, whose most trying ordeal was in basic training when he almost died of spinal meningitis.
“They gave me the last rites,” Aubry said.
He was among the fortunate ones, however, who didn’t have to experience combat.
“I was just glad it was over,” he said about the war’s end. “The first question was, ‘ What are you going to do now?’”
Aubry, a Queens native, grew up in Valley Stream, Long Island. Thankfully, his pre- war employer, AT&T, took him back and he also pursued night school classes at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute on the GI Bill.
A return to civilian life was sometimes difficult, the same as today for soldiers coming home from the War on Terror.
Ted Toolan was 17 and a senior at the former Nott Terrace High School in Schenectady, in 1945, the last year of the war. He said his late older brother, Jim, who served in the Coast Guard, was severely affected by a harrowing experience at sea.
In 1944, the Germans tried to established new weather stations in Greenland. Doing so would help their armies know when and where to strike in Europe.
Also, Germans in Greenland, using English speaking people, would transmit false reports to American bomber groups preparing to fly from Hancock Field, in Syracuse, to Scotland. Thinking they would fly in good conditions, crews would instead encounter strong head winds, run out of fuel and crash into the sea.
The Coast Guard was called on to intercept Germans preparing to set up new stations in Greenland.
In October 1944, Jim Toolan’s unit captured the German trawler Externsteine and brought it back to Boston. It was the only enemy surface vessel captured at sea by U. S. naval forces during the entire war.
Most of the men on Toolan’s boat became sick from extremely rough seas during the return trip. But he wasn’t affected, at least not as much, so he was told to take the wheel and make sure the boat, towing the Externsteine, made it home.
The ordeal was extremely stressful and affected Jim for several months afterward, Ted Toolan said.
Two other brothers, Wallace and John, served in the Coast Guard and Navy, respectively. John served aboard an LST craft during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
The war had ended by the time Ted Toolan was old enough to join the service, but he entered the Air Force and later spent 30 years in the Air National Guard, reaching the rank of senior master sergeant.
Spa Catholic girls had an especially good time talking with two of Prestwick Chase’s oldest residents -- 107-year- old Marion Buchanan, who spent 5-½ years in the Women’s Army Corps; and 100-yearold Elizabeth Smith whose husband, Snowdon, was one of the first American casualties of World War II. He was shot and lost a leg during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Traveling alone by train across country, she immediately went to meet him in San Francisco and assist with his recovery. Later, he went back in the service for the duration of the war.
Despite such hardships and tragedy, Smith said Americans had an extremely positive outlook throughout the war.
“Everyone was so upbeat,” she said. “Everyone knew it was an incredible experience.”