Faces of Sacrifice

Aneta M., 40 - Iraq War (03-04)
“I joined for money for college. So I went for the highest bonus at the time and that was being a driver. They needed women in that role. They had to fill so many numbers. So as a reservist I thought, Oh, who cares what the job is? I'm here for money for college. And so, I wanted to do something outside. They offered me some jobs that were indoors or being an MP and I was like, Oh no, I'm not interested in that and I'll be a driver. It's fine. I like traveling. So that's why I ended up in the job I was in. I was deployed from 2003 through 2004. We were at Fort Knox for a while and then we went to Iraq. When I was deployed, we had an incident where we were stopped on the road. We were in a convoy and an EOD explosive ordnance unit had to come and diffuse a IED on the side of the road. It was kind of the slums outside of Baghdad. There was garbage everywhere and people. We sat there for hours. It's not an ideal situation. But it was interesting to see the EOD crew come in. They came in their armored vehicles, they had the armor suits on, everything. We watched the EOD guy walk up to it in the big suit that he wears and he picked it up and he walked away with it. We were like, Oh my gosh, what's going on? We watched him put it outside their armored vehicle and they exploded it by the vehicle. Then they drove off. It was that simple. And then we continued on with our convoy. So it was really exciting. Another situation that sticks out to me is in 2004 over Easter Sunday we were in Baghdad overnight. We started to get attacked at the base right on the other side of the wall where the staging area for all the parked vehicles were. We were only supposed to be there overnight, but ended up being there for 21 days. Those nights you sleep with your flex vest on and with your weapon. One day we were sitting in the chow hall eating, so happy to have a hot meal and not MRAs, and they started sending mortars in. You don't know where it's coming from. You just hear it and you just take cover. There must've been 150 people in a chow hall and everybody stopped, looked up, jumped up, grabbed their weapons and ran outside. You couldn't have choreographed it better. We went back to our vehicles and took cover. When the wounded came in, I was treating wounded and then sent them off to where the medics were. The first 30 days, 60 days, anything that moves you jump. After a couple of months, it just feels like work. You just go to work every day and you don't really think about it. It's just everyday life. It wasn't this big dramatic thing everyday. I was in a leadership role. I was promoted to Sergeant while I was there. I led convoys, that kind of thing. That was not well received by locals. They would approach the male unit members and talk to them, interact with them. But they would just stand away from me. The problem was with the women. I had a lady look at me, spit at the at me, looked right at me, not anybody else. And then covered her face back up. It was an older lady. The was the first time that as a soldier, as an American, I ever felt someone's hatred towards me, that I didn't do anything to encourage it. I was with a really good unit. I was with the seven 62nd transportation unit out of Akron. Very good people, very good crew. I was in second platoon, we were family like, you love each other, you hate each other, you fight, you get along, all that. There was six females in our platoon and the leadership gave us the option to either be segregated in our own living area or we could stay with our squad. They left it up to us. We chose to stay with our squad. When I got out I wanted nothing to do with anything military, I was burned out. When I came home I wanted to get back to my civilian life. I wanted to finish my degree. I wanted to get back and make some money. I was getting married, I was buying a home. I was doing all those life kind of things that was put on hold for the 16 months that I was gone. I will say the only thing I ever miss about the army are my friends that I made. I came across Medina County, women in the military. It's a women's veterans group. And I was like, Oh, there's a women's veterans group in Medina, I didn't know that. So I reached out and I started hanging out with them and it’s more of a social thing. We get together, we talk, we reminisce, talk about current life, you know, support each other friends. By the end of the year, they elected me president, and I've been president since, so I'm president of the group currently and I mean it's been probably eight or nine years now. They're my friends and they really helped me with my kids. Now that I'm out, I really see the value in what I learned and when they talk about having it be a mandatory service of one or two years when someone's 18, I mean we're in America, so you do what you want to do. I'm not going to say it should be mandatory, but I definitely think that the population would benefit from those experiences. I do. So that's the biggest thing I think I take away from the military experience. I didn't really, I don't wanna say I didn't appreciate it, but I didn't understand the weight it would have in my life for the rest of my life. So overall I think it was a positive experience and I would do it again, maybe a little wiser in my contract choices.”
Laura O., 31 - Afghanistan & Iraq War (06-11)
“My MOS, military occupational specialty, was Russian linguist. However, I never actually worked as a Russian linguist. I was trained, went to school for two years and then never actually did it because I was put in a unit that didn't have billets for linguists. So, they’re like, “well, we don't know what to do with you. We're gonna send you to a C school and make you into an analyst.” So, I actually ended up being a DNI analyst, which is a digital network intelligence analyst. I was stationed at Fort Meade in Maryland. I was at the NSA and then the training to be an analyst was in Cory Station Pensacola, Florida. I legally cannot say anything about my service. I stared at a computer screen all day. It wasn't fun. I really miss the people. I had a lot of really good friends that I made there and it's really hard leaving them. The main thing I want people to know is there are women in the military too. Because believe it or not, a lot of people still don't know that or they knew it on a conscious level but not at a subconscious level. I had a shirt that said “veteran, not the veteran's wife.” I still had people that just skipped over me. Women are veterans too.”
Charles M., 83 - Cold War (62-94)
"I was a chaplain during the cold war. My father was the one that gave me my patriotic duty. He signed me up right after Pearl Harbor happened. I eventually went out to Santa Monica, California to attend Ramsey Military School. I decided I wanted to go back home to Ohio, which I had a calling to become a minister. I feel I always have a feeling of God's presence." Listen to Charles entire story: https://www.temi.com/editor/t/aM3FGT2R6qQ0v6Lwq-phJ8qA93Rv9id8mXJWPDi9EqtT9N5LVQIf8pDeLE66qnm8vgu6t_Xd3Mg-TflAJblPBpWkIDc?loadFrom=SharedLink.
Robert P., 97 - WWII (42-44)
I was raised during the depression, but as a child, I had always wanted to be an Army Air Corps pilot. So, after I graduated from high school, I got a job, but then that’s when the war in Japan started and so I enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Luckily, I was able to secure the pilot position and so I went through the training and everything was so far so good. After doing pre-flight’s and other drills, next up was 60 hours of solo flying in an open cockpit airplane… that doesn’t happen anymore today. After graduating from twin engine school, I was assigned to an actual unit. The unit was the B-24, which was the largest one that they had at the time. I headed to Boise, Idaho and met my crew. I started out as co-pilot at the time. After the training with the crew was finished, we were assigned to go overseas. We didn’t know where we were going. So, we flew out of Boise and landed in Lincoln to do a final check on the airplane. We were then sent to Morrison Field which was in Palm Beach, Florida. From there we left at night, with an envelope, again, not knowing where we were going. We were told to fly out of here south for two hours, open the envelope and then you’ll know where you’re going. Well it ended up being England. Out of the crew, I was the oldest at 22 years old, we had a very young crew. And here we are on a 12-hour flight to South America, Africa and then up to England. Our navigator in the B-24 never flew over the Atlantic before, so this was his first time. At night, he had to use the stars to navigate. Lo and behold, we hit Africa right on the nose. I thought that was remarkable for a young man who has never done that before. After some time in Africa, we started to fly again, over the Sahara Desert, which was about a thousand miles and went to Marrakech, which is near Casablanca. From there, we took off to England and landed at a British base. We were based in the Eastern part of England, in a base called EYE, that’s where we flew out to 34 missions. All the missions were different, but extremely frightening to say the least. But we all survived. After that, I was sent home for two weeks and I got to enjoy Miami, Florida with my wife. I was than reassigned to Texas, flying bombers up and down the coast and training the soldiers how to fire their guns. I took courses at a flying school and they kept me there as an instructor. Two of my students were the Tuskegee Airmen and they were real gentlemen, excellent flyers. It’s crazy that all the fellows I knew there, none of them backed down or cancelled their flights. They hated to go, because they knew what they were facing, but we had to go. Some of my friends were lost. I am the last one alive from my crew. I think about that a lot….
Dimitry B., 98 - WWII (41-46)
There were two to three thousand people on a boat, they called them troop ships and we had to move from island to island. When you got on those ships, you were always conscious of the fact that there were two, three or four destroyers following us. The Japanese just wanted to kill as many people as they could, they would just wait at the ports in their submarines, just waiting. One of our ships were headed to Iceland and a destroyer got them, killing five hundred people. The natives at the island of Saipan were told to watch out because we were going to be invading the island and killing as many people as possible. They were so scared. So, when they heard this stuff, they took their families to the highest point and committed suicide. There were times when we had to climb down rope ladders from the troop ships, because they could only go so far, onto navy ships to bring us to waist deep water. Well, when people climbed down on the rope ladders from the troop ships, a lot of them fell off and drowned because of the gear and water movement from the ships. That happened a lot.
Paul V., 97 - WWII
U.S. Marine Corps
Frank G., 96 - WWII (43-45)
I was a flight engineer, but had multiple purposes, on a Boeing B-17G, 384th Bomb Group - 556th Squadron. My station was on top of the plane, in that bubble popping out, fifty caliber machine guns on each side, that’s why I don’t hear very well anymore. Behind me in my station was a tall piece of plexiglass. I wasn’t hit, but the plexiglass behind me was hit by flak one day. The plexiglass marbleized down my back, my imagination went wild. I could imagine nothing but blood running down my back. I’m yelling, “I’M HIT, I’M HIT!” The copilot says, “get up here and we’ll take a look.” He starts laughing, there’s nothing there. There wasn’t a scratch on me. Our average missions were 22,000-26,000 feet and negative sixty below zero. It was cold up there. You didn’t dare take your gloves off, if you did and touched the side of airplane, you’d let your skin be hanging. I had my oxygen hose get disconnected one day. You had about 1.5 minutes to live. Thankfully I was able to get it back together. That was scary. Another task I did was help with the dropping of the bombs. Sometimes the bombs would get hung up and didn’t drop. And I was the guy that had to go up there with a screwdriver and fix it so it could drop, the entire time you could see below. I flew on a total of 35 missions including, Battle of Normandy, Battle of the Bulge and Operation Market Garden.
Robert P., 72 - Army (67-70)
The Army promised that I’d be a photographer, my dad was a Marine, but they didn’t promise that I could be a photographer. So, I enlisted in the Army for three years, was in the signal corps and was stationed in Fort Devin’s, which was a short timers fort. My CO was much smarter then I was because at the time I was married and had a kid. He refused to send me, which I’m now very thankful for because who knows what could have happened. As a photographer in the Army, we used a camera called a Speed Graphic (shown.) I’d photograph sporting events, which was a real treat, officer portraits and sometimes I’d go up in a helicopter to take aerials. But one of the things that really hit me hard was having to photograph wounded soldiers coming back from Vietnam. Back then, the only way to document their progression of their wounds was by taking pictures. So, I had to take pictures of soldiers with missing limbs and other horrific wounds and document the different stages. That was very tough… it was tough for us to see this stuff. When I went in, I was very immature, but being in the service for three years, it really made me a lot more mature. I was thankful for the opportunity and wouldn’t trade it for anything. After the Army, I assisted a few photographers and eventually worked at American Greetings for seventeen years. After that, I opened my own photography studio in Cleveland.
Ken B., 89 - Korean & Vietnam War (47-67)
I enlisted because I just got out of school and there were no jobs. I’m most proud of my last rank that I received, Senior Chief E-8. While in the Navy, I oversaw the engine rooms, fire rooms and the destroyers. I was in charge of 75-80 people on the ship.
Don M., 86 - Navy (50-57)
I went to the gate of my permanent job in the navy and they said, "Don, oh wait a minute", He went back in the building and he comes back out. He said, "there's a message here that you are to report to the commanding officer of the Naval Station." "What did you do?" I said, well, I know what it's all about. So he said, "well, get in the truck." So once arrived, I run in, he said, "go down the hall and turn left." And I thought, I'm going to pull a sneaky. So when I walked in, an officer took me to the door of this office and he said "you have a message here, you're to report to commanding officer, what the hell did you do, you're in trouble already?" I said, no, I think I know. So when I walked in, I thought you don't salute officers when you're inside a building, you salute them when you're outside. And I thought, I'm going to salute this officer. And I walked in, this guy was sitting at his desk and I walked up in front of his desk. I said, seaman, Don M. reporting for duty, sir, (saluting him), and he looked at me and he reached over and he had a chair over there and he pulled it up beside his desk and he put his feet up on his desk. He said, "you're 22 years old, you got a college degree.... what in the hell are you doing in that uniform, you should be wearing the uniform I'm wearing." I said, I'm here to serve my country. He says "what the hell am I going to do with you?" He said, "well, go back to the barracks and I'll call you in a little while." So I went back to the barracks, it took almost all day but they came to get me and took me back. And this was the third man in command. There's a commanding officer, the executive officer and operations officer and that's who they took me too. He said, "you're going to have a tough time" and I said, why? He said, "because you're 22 years old, these other guys are only 17 and a half." I was told I was going to be working with the operations officer. The operations officer, who's third in command had a desk, right beside him I had a desk. I worked with him and I moved people from departments. I was older than some of the officers as well, but it was fun.