History. “The time to preserve it is now, or we can lose it.” The words are from Saint Joseph’s College history professor Dr. Michelle Laughran, and the underlying premise of Windham in World War II – an oral history, a project carried out and presented jointly by the college and the Windham Historical Society.
Eight
students from Dr. Laughran’s Historical Methods class conducted recorded
interviews with four World War II veterans, all from Windham: Robert (Bob)
Miele, Ralph MacDonald, Carroll McDonald and Fred Collins. Working with tape
recorders and a set of prepared questions that often lead into different areas
and additional stories, two students sat with each veteran in sessions ranging
from 20 minutes to two hours.
Senior
Kattie McQuilkin helped coordinate the project and analyzed the content of the
four interviews. She presented her findings to an audience of more than 30 at
the Windham Historical Society’s Old Town House museum last Monday, Patriots’
Day.
Asked
about any revelations she encountered during the course of her work, McQuilkin
observed that her “textbook” study of history dealt with “battles, campaigns
and presidents,” but that the direct communication with local veterans revealed
“real people you could relate to, not just the elite.”
Robert Miele recalled two
unforgettable events. As an aircraft radar operator in southern England, he
remembers tracking German planes emerging from across the England Channel.
“As
long as you could hear those engines you knew you were safe,” because that
meant they continued on. The V-2 rockets were a different story; they were
hard, if not impossible, to track on radar. One crashed and exploded, “with
what? Five hundred pound bombs,” right near our camp.
Miele,
who arrived in Europe aboard the Queen Mary with 10,000 fellow troops, said he
was later deployed to France where, in 1945 following the defeat of Hitler, his
superiors alerted his group to prepare for deployment to the Pacific conflict.
Just as they were ready to leave, Japan surrendered. The best possible news!
After the war, how did Miele wind up working, then running, Patsy’s store in
South Windham? Long before that, the reason his family came to Windham?
“Because of a dog and a bag and cough drops, but that’s a story for another
time.” He did not elaborate.
Ralph MacDonald remembers
skipping his high school yearbook photo to play pool. He tried for a late
re-take, but the photographer had used up all his film. MacDonald joined the
Air Force, where he trained to fly B-51 bombers. Preferring to discuss his
earlier life, MacDonald reminisced about his early education in Windham at the
one-room Ireland School in east Windham.
“It
had nine grades, sub-primary through eighth grade with just one teacher (Clara
Nash). “She was a good teacher,” he recalled. “She always celebrated holidays
and made them special. You know, I got the best education from her, better than
kids got after that time.”
He
told a story he related to fellow WW II veteran, Dr. Edward Tottle of Windham,
an author and teacher: During the transition years between the phonics method
of teaching reading and the so-called “look and say” approach, Miss Nash, who
apparently preferred the latter, kept a rarely used phonics chart on the wall.
The superintendent, apparently a phonics traditionalist, would visit the school
occasionally “and that’s the only time she ever used it,” MacDonald related
with a chuckle.
Carroll McDonald
maintained
a cheerful disposition during the program, interrupting and trading jibes with
society vice-president Dave Tanguay during opening remarks and introductions.
McDonald, along with Miele and Windham’s Clyde Seavey, began their war service
during their senior year at Windham High School. Early mornings, before going
to school, each stood atop one of the town’s watch towers scanning the skies and
listening for the sound of enemy aircraft that might have braved an attack on
the homeland, an occurrence that, thankfully, never materialized.
McDonald
joined the U.S. Army Air Corp in 1944 and trained in North Carolina to fly B-51
bombers. McDonald recalls practicing skeet shooting, a rehearsal for learning
to drop bombs ahead of a target. “I shot ‘til I was black and blue.” The war
ended a mere six weeks before McDonald finished training.
Fred Collins, unable to
participate in the program due to illness, was the only veteran interviewed for
the oral history project to see combat. He fought in the hard won battle
against the Japanese on Iwo Jima in 1945. For his service, Collins was awarded
a Pacific war medal. He later volunteered in the war in Korea. Collins told his
interviewer that a soldier should “fight to live, not to die,” a reference to
the Japanese penchant to claim honor by dying. Americans, he indicated, fought
willingly and courageously so that they, and freedom, could live.
Collins is a frequent
contributor to The Windham Eagle letters to the editor often retelling stories
about growing up and explaining his patriotism.
Professor
Laughran said transcripts of the oral history project will be submitted to the
Windham Historical Society and to the Library of Congress. Phase II, she added,
will begin next fall when a new group of students will interview local
individuals and families who kept the homefront fires burning during World War
II. Perhaps then we will learn the story behind the mystery of “the dog and the
bag of cough drops.”
Box
quote:
"If you're lucky
you'll get to the sand...they couldn't go in because of all
the rocks and coral.
They were killed going in...the men with all their
equipment sunk into the
water trying to get to the beach."
The landing at Iwo Jima
Fred
Collins
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