Area man recalls serving his country in WWII
WAUSA – For Gerald “Gerry” Schumacher, serving his country as a member of the military was nothing new to his family.
The Wausa man, who spent part of his life residing near Hartington, served in the U.S. Navy from 194446. His twin brother Jerome served in the U.S. Army, while their brother Paul – who was 13 years younger than them – was a U.S. Marine. The brothers’ father, Anton, served in the Army during World War I.
“I enjoyed it – that’s the main thing,” Gerry, 99, said of serving in the military. “If you don’t like it, it doesn’t work, but I liked it.”
He was drafted into the military on June 6, 1944 – the same day as the D-Day operation when the Allies stormed the beaches of Normandy, France – and went through boot camp at the Farragut Naval Training Station, which was located in northern Idaho at the south end of Lake Pend Oreille.
“It was a monster of a lake up there,” Gerry said.
The rural Crofton native wound up serving as one of about 300 crew members on the U.S.S. Stormes DD780, a new 300-foot-long destroyer ship at the time that was launched out of Seattle, Wash., in early 1945.
“I was a farm boy on a ship, and that was great,” Gerry said. “It was something else.”
His job for the first six months on the ship was as a deckhand. He eventually joined the engineering department and learned how to become an electrician.
He recalled the Battle of Okinawa, Japan, in May 1945 when a kamikaze – a Japanese airplane loaded with explosives that deliberately crashed into an enemy target – hit the front end of the ship, resulting in severe fires and a large hole in the hull that led to flooding the stern of the ship.
“We got sent over to Okinawa,” Gerry said. “It was a hotspot then. That’s where the (Japanese) nailed us over there. They caught us with a suicide plane. We were supposed to be protecting our country against suicide planes.”
Temporary structural repairs were made to the ship at a floating dry dock in the region. Once those were finished, the ship headed east across the Pacific Ocean and through the Panama Canal, and then north to New York.
From there, the ship continued north past Canada and Greenland and traveled above the Arctic Circle on a test run during the winter.
“The war was over, so they were testing out these newer ships,” Gerry said, noting temperatures became so cold at times that the ship’s gun mounts would become frozen shut.
The ship eventually returned to the United States, and he was honorably discharged from the Navy in June 1946 at the New York Navy Yard in New York City’s borough of Brooklyn.
Gerry, who grew up on farms near Crofton, Bloomfield and Hartington, and Wausa native Betty Anderson were married on Nov. 24, 1948, in Hartington.
The couple moved in 1951 to the Denver, Colo., area – where they raised three daughters and two sons – and lived there for about 50 years before relocating to Wausa in 2001.
After serving in the Navy, Gerry worked as an electrician for his civilian career in Colorado and Nebraska until he retired in his early 60s. Gerry and Betty, who were married for nearly 73 years until she died on April 14, 2021, at the age of 94, have several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A longtime member of the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars organizations, Gerry noted he was proud to serve his country in the military. “We just did our jobs,” Gerry said. Gerry, who will turn 100 on Jan. 22, 2024, noted he is wondering whether there are any living World War II veterans left in northeast Nebraska other than himself, especially those who served in the Pacific Ocean theater of war. People may mail him with any information that is related to his request at: Gerald Schumacher, 803 S. Vivian St., Apt. 109, Wausa, NE 68786.
Mark Mahoney|Cedar County News