News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Jack Kinsey, Ralph Meyerdick and Vic McIntire recalled service with the Seabees in World War Two.
Jack Kinsey invited a couple of old friends to Sisters last week -- friends who haven't all been together since 1946, when they were stationed in north China with the 6th Marine Division.
Kinsey, Ralph Meyerdick (Sun City, California) and Vic McIntire (East Lake, Ohio) were members of the 32nd Special Battalion of Seabees -- the Navy's construction outfit, which handled tasks from unloading ships to building hospitals and air strips during World War Two.
After war's end, back in '46, they were helping the Marines repatriate Japanese soldiers and their families who had been occupying that part of China since 1938.
North China wasn't all dreary duty. The Seabees were stationed in a nicely built European-style compound built by the Germans during the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century.
There was a nice stadium there, where the Navy boys took on the 6th Marines in the memorable New Year's Day, 1946, Rice Bowl football game.
The Marines won on the final play -- a tipped ball that fell into a receiver's arms.
Football was a passion for the three friends.
At the end of their tour of duty, "we pretty much knew what we wanted to do -- we wanted to go to school and play football," Kinsey said.
The GI Bill allowed that to happen and all three went on to careers in education and coaching.
The men saw each other individually a couple of times in the intervening years, but this was the first opportunity all three men and their wives had gotten together.
The men enjoyed their reminiscence, each one's memories triggering a memory in another.
They recalled a terrible typhoon in the fall of 1945 that pushed huge tankers 100 yards ashore in the Philippines.
They recalled salvaging wreckage from planes that crashed during the campaign in the Philippines.
McIntire remembered the moment when the cost of combat became clear to him.
He served on a burial detail that took a body of a young man who had died suddenly of meningitis to the military cemetery on Leyte Island.
"That was an eye-opener for me," he said. "White crosses as far as you could see."
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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