John Clayton: On this day, we stop to listen
By JOHN CLAYTON
Union Leader Staff
10 hours, 29 minutes ago
THE BIG BLUE scrapbook lay open on the dining room table. The Bronze Star was tucked inside a translucent sleeve on one page.
I was struck by its size.
It's so small.
He was a 19-year-old from New Hampshire when he served on South Pacific Island during World War II.
The medal itself is not much bigger than a quarter, yet it's big enough to harbor a million memories for Roy Annis, who is so typical of the men and women we honor today.
He was a small-town kid from New Hampshire -- Hooksett-born, Pembroke-raised -- and he was barely 19 when he found himself on Leyte Island in the South Pacific. He was with the 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment. His unit, Easy Company's second platoon, was following a Japanese supply route through the dense jungle -- the Ormoc-Burauen trail -- when shots rang out.
It was Nov. 19, 1944.
'It was the first time we took fire,' he said.
'Our first scout was shot and killed,' he said. 'Then our second scout was wounded. After that, I found out I was the new first scout.'
But first, Roy Annis found out what he was made of.
'That second scout was down in the middle of a shallow river,' he said. 'It was fairly wide but not too deep. We had this lieutenant -- a West Pointer, nice guy -- and he asked if I thought we could get the guy out, so we started and as we did, I looked back real quick and that lieutenant, he didn't raise his head but six inches and when he did, he got shot right in the head.'
The sniper fire continued, but Roy made it down to the river. As he dragged his wounded comrade to safety -- it didn't hurt that he was a high school track star -- his baptism of fire had begun.
'That's the whole thing about medals and stuff,' he said. 'You happen to be in a position where you have to do something and you do it. That's all.'
Trust me when I say there's no bravado, no bluster behind Roy's words.
When you're 82, and you've seen and done what he's seen and done, there's no need for bravado or bluster, but after all these years, there is a need for guys like Roy to tell their stories and an even greater need for people like us to listen.
So I did.
When the war broke out, Roy's family had left Pembroke for a while when his father took a job at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. By the time he was starting his senior year at Portsmouth High, he heard that nearby Kittery High School was holding graduation ceremonies twice each year -- in January and June -- and he saw a chance to be in uniform six months ahead of schedule.
He and a friend went to their principal and asked if they could do the same. The principal declined, so Roy had to wait until he graduated in June of '43. Less than two weeks later, he was on his way to Camp Wheeler in Georgia.
'I wanted to be a pilot,' he said, 'but I was afraid that by the time they taught me how to fly, the war would be over, so I joined the paratroopers.'
Pilot or no pilot, the Army still had lofty goals for him. He was in line for the Army Specialized Training Program that would have allowed him to spend his service time in a college classroom, but that wasn't going to fly with Roy.
He passed on college, then he took a 10-day pass to come home.
'That's how I wound up in the South Pacific,' he smiled. 'I wanted to go to Europe because my father had served there during World War I, but one day they called us in and said if we wanted to go to Europe, we were shipping out the next day. I hadn't been home since I went in, and I felt I owed it to my folks to come home, maybe for the last time.
'So I did,' he said, 'and that's how I wound up in the South Pacific. We went over on an Italian luxury liner,' he said, and that smile surfaced yet again. 'There were more than 7,000 guys on that ship. There were so many people that they fed us twice a day, and the line never stopped. You just got back in the line and by the time you got there, you were hungry again.'
And even though he was a paratrooper, his landing on Leyte Island was by boat.
'It rained every day,' he said. 'I had a brand new pair of boots when I got to Leyte and a month later, when we got off, they were rotting and falling right off my feet. Everything rots in the jungle and with all the rain, I found I couldn't sleep when the rain was hitting my face. It didn't matter on the rest of my body, but I couldn't sleep if it was hitting my face.'
Other nights, sleep didn't come at all.
'One night we had dug these foxholes and it was so dark, you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. We were so close to the Japs, we were rolling hand grenades out at them. You didn't want to shoot your rifle because they'd fire back at your muzzle blast, so we rolled out grenades to keep them off of us. After a while, I took my knife and I kept it in my hand because if anyone was coming in on me, I wanted to be ready.'
The month-long battle on Leyte was just a prelude to the action on Luzon, where Roy got to put his paratrooper training to the test.
'On Luzon, we jumped,' Roy said. 'There were some of our guys already down on the beach and we jumped to hook up with them. We were in C-47s, a lot of 'em, and when we jumped, you couldn't see down through the fog. I wanted down, fast, so I climbed on my risers, and just like that, we were out of the clouds. I aimed for this pine tree. I was trying to hit the low branches to break my fall. I missed it, but I was down OK in this soft field.'
Things got harder thereafter.
Roy's best friend in Easy Company was a guy from Texas named John Chapman.
'He was the best platoon sergeant ever,' Roy said. 'He got shot through the left side of his neck and it came out through his left shoulder. I called out for a medic and he said, 'Don't bother. I'm done for.''
Roy called out anyway, and the medics saved John Chapman.
Within hours, the medics were tending to Roy.
'He got wounded first and he got wounded the worst,' Roy said, 'but we both got wounded on the same day.'
He rolled up his left sleeve.
He showed me the pronounced indentations on both sides halfway up his forearm, evidence of the through-and-through gunshot that landed him in a tent hospital on Elandia.
'I couldn't use my hand,' he said. 'I used my right hand to keep flexing my fingers on my left hand. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to use it again, but after a couple of months, it was going pretty good and the doc said I had to go back to my unit. When I did, we were training for parachuting into the north of Japan, but then we dropped the atomic bomb...'
He didn't need to finish the thought, but he did.
'I'm one of those who can say I'm glad we did it,' he said. 'It saved a lot of American lives and a lot of Japanese lives, too.'
And Roy's life thereafter was remarkable in a way that typified the World War II generation. He came home to Pembroke and married his sweetheart, Madeline Richard.
They've been together 58 years.
Roy started off working at an auto parts shop in Concord for 25 bucks a week. Eventually, he wound up working for the Post Office in Suncook, and he and Madeline managed to raise their four kids even while Roy was serving on the school board, the zoning board, the planning board and the board of selectmen, because that's what guys like Roy have done since they saved the world for us.
Today's our day to thank them.
