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Surviving Servicemen
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Surviving Servicemen: Peebles man receives medals for serving during Vietnam War
By FRANK LEWIS PDT Staff Writer A Peebles man who was a part of Operation Linebacker II during the Vietnam War recently received military medals he had earned while serving in the war. Congresswoman Jean Schmidt recently presented the medals to John Brockhoeft, who had requested her help in obtaining the commendations. Brockhoeft began serving in the Navy on Aug. 14, 1969, and was honorably discharged Jan. 30, 1973. He was trained as ...
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Lee Burton relaxed at his home in King’s Edition, South Shore.
Lee Burton: A huggable sailor in his Saucy days
By G. SAM PIATT PDT Staff Writer SOUTH SHORE, Ky. — Lee Burton, an 86-year-old World War II veteran, was loafing one recent day in his favorite restaurant, the Short Stop, where a photo of him as a handsome 18-year-old sailor hangs on the wall. He noticed a couple of young women in a nearby booth admiring the photograph. He heard one of them say, “Boy, I’d sure like to hug that sailor’s neck right there.” Burton stepped up to the booth, held ...
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John Estep paused Friday to reflect on his World War II days.
Surviving Servicemen: John Estep: On D-Day With The Armed Guard
In the early 1940s, when John Estep was a teenager, teachers and other mentors of that generation spoke of religious principles, of love for God and country, of men being willing to die to uphold those principles. Estep was from the country, and country people knew what it took to survive. He was born at York, Ky., attended a two-room school on the head of Dry Run in Scioto County and then the high school at McDermott, where teacher Vernon McC...
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Harold Delotell, 85, at home in New Boston with some of his World War II medals.
Harold Delotell Drove WWII Landing Craft
There’s a job for every individual in the military, and all those different jobs meshed together during World War II to form one very effective force — a force that defeated two powerful foes on both sides of the globe in just over three and one-half years. The Portsmouth Daily Times’ publication of the stories of the heroes (don’t let them hear you call them that) of World War II has covered those who man the guns on the big ships to soften t...
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Curt Diles, B-24 Nose-gunner, Bailed Out Behind Enemy Lines
Curtis “Bud” Diles would have graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1944, but he dropped out to go to work. He was working as an automotive machinist when, two months after his 18th birthday, which came July 15, 1943, the U.S. Army drafted him. He chose the Army Air Corps. A year later, on Sept. 8, 1944, he was a nose-gunner on a B-24 Liberator, making strategic bombing missions over Europe out of southern Italy. He would fly 35 such missio...
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Arthur Sullivan holds a board displaying his medals, with the Bronze Star at the extreme left.
Infantryman Arthur Sullivan Won Bronze Star On Okinawa
Arthur Sullivan sits in his double-wide home off Ohio 335 just north of Sciotoville and his mind wanders back 65 years to his fighting days as a U.S. Army infantryman in World War II. On one wall of his clean, neat home hangs a glassed-in square frame that has gathered a little dust. Inside are displayed his medals from the war. He allows a visitor to take the plaque down from the wall for a closer observation. The first medal is the Bronze St...
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Richard Allen, Tank Driver, Mechanic
Richard Carl Allen will turn 91 on May 15. He’s still sharp physically and mentally. He keeps busy with one little project after another around the mobile home of Beatrice Shields, his niece whom he lives with in a trailer park just south of Piketon. He built a picnic shelter at the trailer where they can enjoy breakfast. He can tell what’s wrong with a car by listening to it run. His memories of his fighting days with the U.S. Army in World...
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Kenneth Rapp looks over some of the medals he was awarded for his time with the 42nd Rainbow Division.
Ken Rapp, Combat Medic
Kenneth Rapp, 85, of Portsmouth, graduated from Washington Local High School on the West Side one day and was in the Army the next. “The Army promised that no 18-year-olds would be sent overseas into combat,” he recalled. “Three months later our division sailed for Europe and the theater of war.” Rapp was assigned out of basic training to the combat medics. His Company D, 122nd Medical Battalion, was part of the 42nd Infantry Division — better...
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John McCleese recalls the exact number of soldiers killed in battles and skirmishes he took part in during World War II in Europe.
John McCleese, Rifleman: ‘Show The Enemy No Mercy’
John McCleese is in Heartland of Portsmouth. He is in the nursing home undergoing a couple of weeks rehabilitation for gout and various other ailments before returning to his home at Park Apartments, downtown Portsmouth. In six months he’ll turn 90, but he still carries the broad shoulders of a construction ironworker. He had agreed to share some of his memories of those World War II days when he fought the Germans across the war-torn landsca...
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Bill Windle looks at a World War II publication that has a photo of Commander Evans and a photo of the USS Johnston.
On The Brave Ship Johnston
The USS Johnston DD 557 is listed in the annals of World War II as one of the bravest ships to do battle in the Pacific, and this was all because of its skipper, Commander Ernest E. Evans, a full-blooded Cherokee Indian born Aug. 13, 1906, in Muskogee, Okla., USA. “The Johnston was a fighting ship, the fightingest destroyer of them all, but he was the heart and soul of her,” said Lt. Robert Hagen, the ship’s gunnery officer and the senior surv...
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Art Lewis, center, stands with Army buddies Johnny Searles of Oak Hill, left, and A.J. Collier of Red Bay, Ala., on the Siegfried Line on the border of France and Germany. Both Army buddies are now dead.
An Engineering Depot Company
Art “Bub” Lewis recalls his first night on French soil as the loneliest and most uncertain time of his life. He was just past his 20th birthday and 4,000 miles from his Ohio home in South Webster. He and other members of the 716th Engineering Depot Co. had just came ashore at Utah Beach. This was two or three days after the first wave of infantry had landed along the coast of Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Out ahead the flash of light from t...
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Cpl. James Howard prepares to head out on patrol with his platoon in Iraq.
Surviving Servicemen: From Iraqi Freedom Soldier To Youth Minister
WHEELERSBURG — James Howard had no problem deciding what he wanted to do upon finishing high school. He graduated from Wheelersburg on May 25, 2002, and four days later left for duty with the U.S. Marine Corps’ Fourth Marine Division. There were four 2002 graduates, actually, who went in together. The others were John Etterling, Alex Watts and Josh Huddleston. They spent nearly three years in training, including several months in Israel with ...
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In this Department of Defense photo, a hospital corpsman helps Otworth to a first aid station after he was gunned down on Iwo Jima.
With The Fourth Marine Division
WHEELERSBURG — You’d never know it to hear him tell it — he never talks to family members much about it, not in much detail — but few American fighting men saw more combat action in the Pacific islands during World War II than Earl “Bud” Otworth. Otworth, 88, joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942 after graduating from Green High School in Franklin Furnace. Packing a rifle with the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Regiment of the Fourth Marine Division, he w...
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Dick Jenkins reminisces about his experiences of flying a C-47, a model of the plane shown, in the Pacific Islands during World War II.
The Making Of A Combat Pilot
It was a round-about route that led Richard “Dick” Jenkins from Portsmouth to the controls of a C-47 “Skytrain,” which evolved from the DC-3 airliner. The C-47 was the standard transport used by the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. The twin-engine aircraft was a workhorse. It could carry the load — up to 10,000 pounds of cargo or 25 troops. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said the C-47 was one of the four principal instruments of the allied ...
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Last year, at age 93, Morton still fit into his Braniff summer uniform.
Morton Was A Test Pilot From PHS
The early part of Paul R. Morton’s World War II experience reads like something out of a Milton Caniff comic strip adventure featuring ace pilot Flip Corkin — or the more modern-day Hal Jordan. The 94-year-old Portsmouth High School graduate was a commercial pilot for Braniff International when the United States entered the war in December 1941. The U.S. Army Air Corps needed experienced pilots to fly special missions and asked the airline co...
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