Washington Remembers WWII by John Hughes

Author:John Hughes [Hughes, John C. & Hefferman, Trova]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
Publisher: Legacy Washington

Hart is congratulated by Jack Cowan, the honorary consul, at the French Consular Agency in Seattle in 2013 after receiving the Legion of Honor. Bob Hart collection

As their kids were growing up, the Harts were active in Indian Guides and Little League. Bob became a volunteer firefighter, donated blood for 40 years and volunteered at the American Lake Veterans Hospital near Tacoma. He was a stalwart at the Saints’ Pantry Food Bank in Shelton until he took that nasty fall in the garage in 2013. Getting old is doubly frustrating for Bob because he was always such an active guy—flying his plane, riding motorcycles, working out at the gym. “We’ve had a good life,” Bob says, smiling at Kath. Yet there was a tragedy, too. They lost their middle son, Karl, in a car crash in 1974. “His love for life will always be remembered by his parents and bothers,” Kath says.

Their eyes glisten. You’re not supposed to outlive your kids.

“Time,” Dick Cavett once observed, “is the star of every reunion.” Hart remembers the 517th get-togethers when all of a sudden no one was young any more. There was always catching up to do—wives, kids, jobs. Invariably the talk turned to what happened when they were young—the dimwit with the tattoo on his penis; Mount Currahee at the crack of dawn; their first jump; the day they rounded a bend north of Rome and first heard “the snap of hot lead as it passed over their heads”; the day when their sergeant got killed at Trois-Ponts.

Mickelson, Meingasner and McDade; Duggan, Bonner, Hill and Gallucci—the push-up king of the 517th. When Hart says their names he still sees them the way they were in 1943 when they arrived in Georgia from all over America. The average Joes who had grown up washing eggs, pumping gas and picking berries during the Depression turned out to have the smarts and courage to win World War II. Afterward, some got rich as lawyers and land developers; Terry Sanford was elected governor of North Carolina and ran for president. A disconcerting number—carrying too much baggage from the Bulge or unwilling to surrender to declining health—took their own lives. That strikes Bob as especially sad. In any case, “they’re practically all gone now. Except me.” He says it not so much wistfully as matter of fact.

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