Thinking his mother had locked him out and banned him from the family, he left the town of Tyler, Pennsylvania and made his way to New York.  Unsure of how he would make his way in the world, he conned a priest into thinking he was an orphan who needed some adult's permission to get into the armed forces as the only way to support himself.

Once he had the priest's signed paper, the battle was not over.  He failed the Navy's weight standard, he was too skinny.  He went out and got a five pound bunch of bananas and ate them all, passing the weight the second time around.  The bananas made him sick, though, and even fifty years later I don't recall him eating a banana.

We were just into World War I at the time, and my father was put on a ship where he stagnated through the war.  He told me that they only fired the big guns once, on his sixteenth birthday, 4 February, 1918.

During his stay in the war, he ran across his cousin.  Sam, I think his name was, but I couldn't swear to that.  He and his cousin were on the same ship going back home and his cousin was something of an embarrassment to him.  So on their way down the gangplank in New York, my father made sure he was behind his cousin so he could kick his rear all the way down.

While my father had to stay in New York dealing with the facts that he had not taken boot camp
and was too young really to be in service, his cousin went back home, not mentioning to the worried family that he had seen my father.

When my father returned to Tyler before heading off to boot camp at the Great Lakes, he was cold-shouldered by his family while the cousin was feted.  No one even knew where he'd been, all they knew was that he'd worried them sick for over a year by not sending word to them that he was alive.

My father was sitting in the corner of the parlour and his cousin was over, making big about his time in service with the family making sure to pile it on, I think for my father's edification, when my dad casually mentioned that he'd seen his cousin in New York.

My grandfather turned to his nephew and asked if he'd indeed seen my father in New York.  The cousin didn't answer, but my dad said he'd kicked his ass down the gang-plank when they landed there.

Now it was out that my father had been in the war as well and he was welcomed back into the family heartily.  While he was in boot camp, he wrote to his youngest sisters, Sally and Isabel.

Prohibition was on, and after my father got out he took a job running rum along the Eastern Seaboard for Dutch Schultz.  He also held down a job as life-guard in Rockaway Beach to show some sort of employmentn to explain his money.  He bought custom-made shoes of good leather and aligator, and fine suits.

The 'feds' caught on to him and he took off for Pennsylvania.  He said he'd left a good sum of money in New York banks, afraid that he would be caught if he went to get it.

It was during this time that he met and married his first wife, Virginia, and had a daughter, also named Virginia but called Jeannie.  They got an annulment.

Strangely enough, none of them were hit.

Some of the Marines were captured and tortured.  My father carried the scars of cigarette burns on his eyelids for the rest of his life.  He told me that they were held on a beach, and the enemy soldiers would take one prisoner and torture him, perhaps kill him, and let the others listen to his screams while they used the others as ash-trays.  One thing they did was to cut the Marine's stomach open and pour hot sand into him.  He would die, of course, but not until after he'd endured a lot of pain.  My father said that he was slated to be next when rescuing forces arrived.

They returned to Washington DC in 1923, in time to stand Honour Guard at President Harding's funeral.  It was August and they stood out there in the hot sun in their woolen Dress Blues.  Some of them fainted from the heat.  But they counted it an honour to be there.

He worked for a short time at the R&P Coal Company in Indiana, PA.  He'd worked in the mines as a boy, he didn't like it any better as an adult.

My father joined the Army then and was stationed at the Presidio of Monterey.  It was a Cavalry unit then, horses and all.  They used to hold public displays on the Parade Grounds for the townspeople.  They would do their exercises down at Pacific Grove.  Once, my father had a boil on his rear yet had to ride all the way back to post.  The boil broke and he was in some severe pain.

He was at Monterey in the mid-thirties, around 1936.

After that, he was a Drill Sergeant at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.  World War II had broken out, and he was training recruits to 'keep their heads and asses down so they don't get shot'.  He shipped out for Europe with his last batch.

While he was in England waiting to go over to the Continent, he looked up relations in Wales, and went to Scotland where he learned to do the Scottish Sword Dance, a dangerous dance where the performers stick various body parts into a circle made by swords.  He said he was made an Honorary Member of the Stewart Clan then.

In June of 1944, Allied forces made their move toward Europe.  Airplanes bombed the land to draw attention away from the landing.  They went over on ships, then transfered to landing barges with doors that swung down on the front of them.  The barge they were in opened too soon and half or more of my father's unit's casualties came from drowning.

After that came the Battle of the Bulge.  Standing guard one night, my father lit a cigarette and had his hat shot off his head.  He threw down the cigarettes and never smoked again.

They went on into Belgium, to a little town whose name he'd long forgotten by the time I was old enough to ask.  The town's mayor and council had been pro-German, and they left town when they knew the Allies were coming in.  On their way out, they took all the bowling balls from the public lanes.

When my father's unit got there and tied things up, they decided they wanted to bowl a few frames.  Problem.  No balls.  The pins were all set up, my father said, tempting them.  Tired, angry, fed up and knowing that it was the Nazi-sympathetic government that had taken the balls, the men climbed up into the rafters and 'bowled' using a machine gun.

They also went into one of the concentration camps in their advance.  My father said the stench carried for five miles.  This camp was in Germany, but I never knew the name of it.  He said the bodies were piled up like cordwood, and he had no love nor respect for the people of the town, who must have known what was going on by the smell alone.

Sometime in there my father was put into the Army Air Corps.  Or in his words, 'drug kicking and screaming into a plane'.  He never saw the sense in learning how to parachute.  Why leave a perfectly good aircraft?  But there he was, on a plane.

He was released 'at the convenience of the Army' at Camp Beale (now Beale Air Force Base) California, in June of 1945.  He was over forty.  They asked if he would like to be civilian instructor at the firing range, but he declined them.

My father was awarded some medals through the years of service, medals he pawned later when he was short on money.  But he was proud of his service to his country.