Private Harry Johnston was my grandfather; my father’s father.  At age 15, he ran away from his orphanage in Iowa to join the Army.  He changed our family name from Johnson to Johnston so they could not track him , lied about his age, and entered the Army prior WWI.  At the time, there was a famous British explorer, Sir Harry George Johnston and I suspect this inspired the choice in name changes.  We do not have detailed records on his service, but we know he was in the horse cavalry or horse artillery.  The picture above of him on a horse was supposedly taken at Camp Oglethorpe, Georgia.  When he reached Europe, he was handed a second pair of shoes and was informed he was now Infantry.  He was wounded in France in the Argonne.  As a little boy, I would sit in his lap and look at the severe scars on his forehead.  He told of how he was hit by a fragment from an enemy artillery shell and was unconscious for two days.  His scalp was completely peeled over his face and he was left for dead. Two days later, the burial detail came through tossing bodies on a horse drawn cart.  When they grabbed him, he awoke and they dropped him and ran off in fear.  They came back a couple of minutes later and took him to a field hospital.  His wounds were to the extent that nobody wanted to operate on him.  A young Army doctor in Paris took the mission and basically sewed up his scalp like the end of a sausage.  As the story goes, Grandpa brought all kinds of war souvenirs home.  This is a familiar story to all collectors of militaria.  He married grandma in the 1920s, and she tossed all of his stuff.

    WWI was not the end of military service for grandpa.  He entered the Navy in the 1930s.  When the US entered WWII, he was off to the Pacific.  While he was not wounded as he was in the First World War, he did escape death once again.  We don’t know the name of the submarine, but grandpa was a maintenance chief on it.  While in port, he was struck with a appendicitis.  The ship left port without him and was sunk by friendly fire.  

    The last battle grandpa fought was a massacre.  As first hand witnesses have testified, grandpa entered the house from the war clutching his sea bag and unthinkingly tossed it down the basement steps.  My dad, about 6 at the time, began rifling through his sea bag and found a compromising picture of grandpa and a Hawaiian hula dancer.  Not unlike the Gestapo in the movies, he immediately turned the evidence over to the Supreme Allied Commander (grandma).  Grandpa lived for another 38 years, but he never rested after that day.  They both now lie in Arlington National Cemetery; he gave 34 years of military service to the United States of America.

1918-2005

Captain Arthur Caldwell Cason, Jr. died at his home in Bradenton, FL in 2005 after a long, valiant battle with cancer. He was 87. Casey, as he was known to his friends, was born March 20, 1918 and raised in Norfolk, Virginia.   He signed up to become a naval aviator and was commissioned an Ensign in the Navy in 1941, joining the Pacific Fleet in February 1942 as a dive-bomber pilot.

For 30 years, Casey made the Navy his home. He rose rapidly through the ranks to Captain, retiring in 1972.

In 1942, then Ensign Cason, shipped out to the Pacific Theater, where he distinguished himself as a Dougles Dauntless  dive-bomber pilot, Hellcat fighter pilot and landing signal officer in all the pivotal battles of the Pacific. He earned many combat awards, including the prestigious Distinguished Flying Cross on October 19, 1942 from Admiral Nimitz for “bombing and strafing fleeing enemy forces without regard for his own safety” in the Battle of Midway, where he sank a cruiser and damaged a transport ship. While on a mission in the battle of Midway, he returned to the Hornet only to find it on its way to the bottom of the ocean.  He and the rest of his squadron were forced to land on another carrier. 

He served with equal valor in many other battles such as the Coral Sea, Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal, Santa Cruz, Leyte Gulf and Philippine Sea. He was aboard the carrier Hornet when General Doolittle launched his raid on Tokyo.
 

Many of the carriers on which he served–the Hornet, Lexington, Enterprise and Franklin–were heavily damaged or sunk. While on the Hornet, three Japanese planes crashed into the ship, one passing through his stateroom. He had flipped coins and was sitting in the ready room at the time rather than his room. While seated there, a bomb plunged through the deck and in front of the chair on which he was resting his feet. The pilot next to him was killed, but Casey survived. His extraordinary good luck held later near Bougainville when, separated from his squadron in bad weather and with his radio out, he descended from the clouds, by chance, over a Japanese fleet of fifteen warships. Braving intense anti-aircraft fire, he strafed and bombed repeatedly a transport before his guns jammed. His fuel low, he searched in vain for his carrier. With only five minutes of fuel remaining, he spotted a fleet in the distance, but could not identify whether it was friend or foe. Approaching, he was challenged by radio but couldn’t respond. He was then fired on by his carrier’s escort vessels, but Navy air cover identified him as friendly and he landed unscathed.

After W.W.II, he served as a flight instructor and then became a ’hurricane hunter’ out of Miami. Joining the anti-submarine patrol bomber community, he eventually became Commander of Fleet Air Wing Eleven in Jacksonville,Florida, overseeing some 120 planes. His wing achieved notoriety for having taken the first photos of a Soviet nuclear submarine on the surface of the ice at the North Pole. Later, his planes participated in the naval blockade of Cuba, taking photos of the Soviet ships with nuclear missiles heading to the island. Later in his career, he servedas Commodore of the Middle East flagship, the Greenwich Bay, and was Executive Officer in Jacksonville Naval Air Station and at the French Navy base in Port Lyautey, Morocco. He was a student at the Naval War College near the end of his career, and upon retiring he worked for several defense contractors as a consultant.

Captain Cason passed away in April of 2005 at age 87.

Stepfather of my Uncle David Bassett (his biological father was assistant platoon leader of the Airborne Test Platoon and killed in a helicopter crash in the 1950s).

Jack Bradley was my wife’s great uncle.  He flew a P-51B “Mustang” with the 354th Fighter Group of the 9th Air Force.  They were called the Pioneer Mustang Group because they were the first to receive the P-51.  His squadron was the 353rd Fighter Squadron.  The Group flew its first combat mission in ETO on 1 December 1943 and ranked 1st in the war with 701 confirmed kills in aerial combat.  Jack Bradley was 3rd overall in the Fighter Group with 15 confirmed kills.  I met him several times at family get togethers and unfortunately, he died several years ago.  

Here is a newsclip from 1999:

Friday, October 1, 1999

Retired area aviator to be honored
By JOHN STARBUCK
Staff Writer

A Brownwood man who shot down 15 enemy aircraft during World War II will be recognized today by the Confederate Air Force.

Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Jack T. Bradley is among eight individuals and a squadron scheduled to be inducted into the American Combat Airman Hall of Fame at the CAF Headquarters in Midland.

Bradley was attending Howard Payne University when he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

After graduating in 1941 from flying school in California, he joined the 9th Air Force’s 354th Fighter Group as a second lieutenant after it was formed in San Francisco.

Based in Portland, Ore., the 354th was deployed in the fall of 1943 to Europe.

He flew the P-51 Mustang, which saw its first combat during WWII, and was part of a group of pilots who recorded 701 aerial victories against the Germans and another 300 wins on the ground.

“That fighter group destroyed more enemy aircraft in the air than any organization in the entire military,” Bradley, 81, said.

Besides claiming his share of enemy planes, Bradley also had nine probable kills and damaged 12 additional aircraft. Two planes were destroyed in a 10-second span.

He later became commander of the 354th. When the war ended in Europe in May 1945, the fighter group was deactivated.

“My best memory was when the war was over. It was pretty costly,” said Bradley, born and raised in Brownwood.

Although a majority of Bradley’s service was with the 354th, he also took brief charge of another fighter group during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944 after its senior officers had been killed in action.

His decorations included the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star and Distinguished Flying Cross.

He returned to California and took command of the 1st Fighter Group, which flew the first P-80 and F-86 jets in the Air Force. He also saw time with the Royal Air Force in England.

Retiring from the Air Force in 1962, Bradley worked in the aircraft industry for several years.

He later owned an international marketing consulting firm, and was a cattle rancher and construction engineer.

Signing up for the military, Bradley knew that America had a job to do and he wanted to be a part of it.

“I was very patriotic,” he said. “Our main concern was winning the war.”

    During the early part of the war, American Daylight bombing was a risky proposition.  Uncle Larry told me that crew members often left their M1911A1 pistol in their footlockers during missions.  During his last mission, he had six pistols in his footlocker; one was his and the others were from crewmembers who had already been shot down.  On 23 September 1943, Uncle Larry’s squadron flew a mission to bomb a harbor at Nantes France to bomb a U-Boat tender ship that would go out to sea and re-supply the U-Boats.  He said that the enemy fighter would often come straight at the bomber’s nose, one fighter after the other.  This was manageable for the bomber crew because they could train their guns on each plane as it came by.  This day, Uncle Larry looked up and saw six FW190s in two wings of three.  They were wingtip to wingtip and all guns firing.  A 20 MM shell came through the nose of the bomber and struck the bombsite.  Uncle Larry was saved by his flak vest, but he was severely wounded with 80+ small holes in his body and both hands mangled.  Apparently, more than the bombsite was struck because the pilot, Bill Higdon, gave the order to bale out.  3 of the engines were on fire.  All 10 crew members made it out of the plane before it exploded in mid-air.

    When he landed, he was in occupied France in a town called Plougue and the plane debris fell outside of Plemet; both of these towns are in the French province of Brittany.    Today, one of the engines from Uncle Larry’s B-17 is in a local museum.  A Frenchman tried to help him but Uncle Larry told him to leave him for the Germans because he knew he needed professional medical attention or else he would die of infection.  In fact, of the crew of 10, 7 were captured and the other 3 were able to evade the enemy.  According to the official Gendarmerie (police) records, of the 7 POWs, one was seriously wounded.  This was obviously Uncle Larry.  The Germans soon came and found Larry and took him to a military hospital at Loudeac where he was treated.  Because of this, Uncle Larry never had anything bad to say about the Germans.  When he was recovered, he was sent to a camp named Stalag Luft 1 in Barth, Germany.   Barth is on the coast of the Baltic NW of Berlin in what used to be East Germany.  I visited Stalag Luft 1 and there isn’t much left.

    The camp was on a peninsula and between the camp and the mainland was a Luftwaffe Anti-Aircraft Gunnery school.  The water table was high and the water in the Baltic was freezing.  The effect of these conditions meant that the guards were not too concerned about escape attempts.  In fact, they let the soldiers wear themselves out by digging tunnels.  Since the water table was so high, the tunnels were close to the surface where the guard dogs could easily hear the digging.  They would cock their ears and then the guards could play the “kick in the tunnel” game.  The guards would also let the POWs walk along the water and dig for mussels in the clay to supplement their diet.  Uncle Larry found an ancient obsidian crescent hand knife one day and used it to open the shell fish.  He kept it as a souvenir after the war.  (I have since seen such a knife in a museum in Ireland.  I was told it was an ancient Viking knife know as a Lunate Crescent.)  Soon, Allied bombing could be heard in the distance and the airmen would often slide out of the windows of the barracks to watch and cheer.  Once bombing became a regular event, the Germans put out the order that everyone was to stay in the building.  One day, an airman forgot himself and jumped out of the window when the air raid siren sounded.  A young guard shot him dead.  That was the only “war crime” that Uncle Larry witnessed.

    One morning, the airmen awoke to find the camp abandoned.  The guards had left in the night.  The Russian were near.  Many of the enlisted wanted to run wild across the country side, but the officers seized control and ordered them to stay put and stay out of the way of the dangerous Russian Army.  Small, foraging parties were formed and the airmen went to find what they could to eat.  Uncle Larry was on one of the foraging parties and they went to inspect the Anti-Aircraft Gunnery School.  There, he found a pair of Luftwaffe flight boots that fit him and he also brought back a small Luftwaffe hat eagle.  Years later, he gave me the eagle as a present.   Anyway, the camp was evacuated by B-17s landing at the nearby airport and Uncle Larry finally made it back to England.  When he went back to his squadron to visit, there was not one single person that he knew.  After the war, he went back to school and got his degree in Chemistry.  Uncle Larry was a very quiet and unassuming man.  He was extremely smart and thought things through.  I am blessed to have known him and to be able to tell his story.  

http://home.comcast.net/~spotedog/somalia/BASEMENT%20OF%20HELL.pdfimg src=”http://journalofaveteran.com/wp-admin/” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ />

Also a live leak to the song that I wrote as a tribute to SGT Ron Richerson KIA

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=fe6_1193275020

And a link to my Somalia Veterans Commemorative Patch

http://home.comcast.net/~spotedog/somalia/somalia%20veteran%20

commemorative%20patch.htmlimg src=”http://home.comcast.net/~spotedog/somalia/somalia%20veteran%20commemorative%20patch.html” border=”0″ height=”1″ width=”1″ />