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By the end of October more than 200 Cedar County men had been released from the service. During the second week, a record number of veterans filed discharge papers with the county clerk.
Laurel veterans on the list included: Cpl. Warren Kint, Pfc. Ivil Nelson, Pfc. Gaylord Burton, Sgt. Victor Dahl, Pfc. Herman Schrieber, Pfc. Edward Brasch, Pfc. Wendell Haahr, Pfc. Raymond Dolph, 2nd Lt. John D. Urwiler, Sgt. Leonard Beckley, Staff Sgt. Raymond Rohde, Pfc. Clarence Elsberry, Staff Sgt. Lester Smith, and Brothers Earl and Harry Martinson.
For most vets it was a happy time. Even if they weren’t in combat, being away from family and friends for two or three years was not easy. One much appreciated comfort was the hometown paper. Editor Allison sent more than 350 free copies of the Advocate each week to Laurel soldiers serving overseas.
Widowed in 1931, Mrs. Belle Olmstead raised four sons – three of whom were in the service. One son, Fahy, had been killed in action in 1944. Verle was discharged in August 1945. In October, he married the girl he left behind. Many other returning veterans did the same. But not every marriage had a happy ending.
Donald Olmstead was discharged in August. His wife and son had been living in Fremont during his absence. Olmstead went to Fremont expecting a happy reunion. Instead, he was shocked to find that his wife had found another man. According to her obituary, she and her new man had married in September 1944. If that was not an error, she was still married to Olmstead at the time.
Olmstead immediately filed for divorce and then filed a $25,000 damage suit against his wife’s lover on the grounds of alienation of affection. Possibly realizing he had a snowball’s chance of collecting such a large amount, his lawyer negotiated an out-of-court settlement and Olmstead dropped the suit. He later remarried and hopefully had a happier life.
Vernon Knudsen, son of Mr. and Mrs. Julius Knudsen, was killed in action in Luxembourg on Jan. 18, 1945. In September, Mrs. Knudsen received a touching letter from a Polish woman living in France. The letter read in part: “Dear Mrs. Knudsen. Your son Vernon arrived here on Dec. 6, 1944, with five other comrades. We spent many beautiful hours together. I was as good to them as a mother could be. I, with my husband and children, wept when they had to leave on Dec. 18. Vernon told us he would write when he returned home. But now we got news of his death and we are real sorry.
“When it is possible, we will look for his grave. It is not possible now because the railways are damaged and the bridges are destroyed. Like you I am feeling bitter about the loss of your son. The love of a mother of every nationality goes over the grave. Valdalin Kaymierciak, Freyming, France.”
Julius Knudsen built the cabin court now known as The Big Red Motel.
With the lifting of censorship, soldiers were allowed to be more specific about where they had been and what they had done.
A letter from Robert “Bud” Middleton published in the Advocate of Oct. 3, told what he had been doing since shipping out on the USS General George M. Randall on Dec. 19, 1944. Incidentally, the Randall was the ship that carried Elvis Presley to his duty assignment in Germany after being drafted in 1958.
The Randall docked at Hobart, Tasmania, Oct. 4, 1945. From there it sailed to Bombay, India, where Middleton‘s unit boarded a train to a camp near Calcutta. After four days in camp, they boarded another train to the city of Ledo near the Burma border. The Ledo Road and the Burma Road were the two main overland supply routes to China.
On Feb. 21, they flew to an airstrip near the front lines. Middleton said the Japs had hastily pulled out leaving some of their dead lying on the ground. On March 6, they left camp and walked 75 miles over rough country to Kutri, Burma.
“That was a walk I’ll never forget,” he wrote. “I was a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man. A BAR is a big rifle that shoots like a machine gun. The rifle alone weighs 19 pounds. I also carried six magazines of ammunition that weighed one pound each besides my personal belongings for a total of about 75 pounds.“ Middleton said they flew from Kutri to Kunming, China, on April 1. The flight was over the eastern end of the Himalayan mountains at an altitude of 14,000 feet. The “Hump” as it was called was considered one of the most difficult and dangerous flight paths in the world. By the end of 1945 the Hump had claimed more than 500 aircraft and 1300 lives. After arriving in Kunming on Easter Sunday, Middleton began driving a water truck. He later drove an open truck hauling Chinese troops and equipment to a point near the front lines. “The roads were rough and the hills were high, but we didn’t lose many trucks,“ he said. But they did lose some and wreckage can still be found along the route.
“On June 20 we moved to another camp near Yuanling. I helped train the Chinese for about two weeks but since then we haven’t done a thing. We were certainly lucky to get by all that time without being in combat. It’s all over now and we’re just sweating it out waiting for a ride home.”
Some other news: George Berglund Jr. piloted one of the 1100 planes which flew over Washington D.C. during the parade honoring Admiral Chester Nimitz. All told 385,000 gallons of gas was used during the parade. Gasoline rationing had been lifted just two months earlier but rationing wouldn’t have applied to the military anyway.
Seaman 2nd class Maurice E. Bass, son of Mr. and Mrs. Grover Bass, was a member of the crew of the distilling ship USS Pasig. “The Waterboys” as they were called were not distilling booze or turning water into wine but rather making drinking water out of seawater. One day off the coast of Okinawa, the Waterboys produced half a million gallons of fresh water.
The war may have ended but the draft continued. In October eighteen Cedar County boys were called up. Those from Laurel included Floyd Miller, Donald Heese and Gene Zeurcher.
