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am I?
The Sergeant
John W. Gabersek Jr. Memorial Scholarship
Who am I?
My
name is Eric Montgomery and I am the proud great nephew of the men you have met
on my opening page and a devoted friend to the veterans I've met throughout my
life. I've always had a fascination with the second world war much in part
due to the advancements made in technology. As an engineer, I can
appreciate the design and development of the means to defeat our enemies and the
monumental effort required to arm 14 million soldiers, sailors, and
airmen. Although we are at war today, few of our families have been
effected by it. During WWII everyone, young, and old alike were effected
in some way. Imagine yourself today walking to the grocery store with a
book of ration stamps in your hands and 3 gallons a week of gasoline in your
tank. Indeed, we are so blessed, to live our lives basking in the freedoms
we enjoy today, even in this time of war. These freedoms were
preserved by what President Roosevelt described as the "American' peoples
righteous might that will win through to absolute victory". He professed
within his declaration of war on December 8, 1941; "With confidence in our
armed forces, with the un-bounding determination of our people, we will gain the
evitable triumph, so help us God."
When I was a kid, the Vietnam War was raging in South East Asia. Every
night my father would watch Walter Cronkite give the latest facts and figures
of the war. Cronkite always lead in with the body count, much what it was
like for our generation a few years ago. In the evening, I would listen to a transistor radio given to me by
my grand father. Tucked under my pillow each night, late night talk shows
would discuss the goings on in Vietnam. I would continue listening to radio until
long after these soldiers were brought back home. Current events were always my
strong suit in school as I grew up with Pittsburgh radio personalities of Perry Marshall
and
John Cigna of KDKA. At times it seemed to me that I was the only one who
cared what was happening around us.
During WWII, I am sure that
listening to the radio was a nightly ritual for my mother and dad as well as my
grandparents. Little did I know that 60 years later, I would begin to
relive those moments as a World War Two living historian. In 2002 I started to collect the memories of my great uncles and
a vast array of artifacts from the era. At the same time, I traveled to England,
France, Germany and Austria and began to immerse myself in the period.
Regrettably then I was unaware of my great uncle Amin's rests in the American
Cemetery in Normandy. I surely must have walked right by his
grave. Little did I know then that I would return there 7 years later on a
great crusade of my own.
Pride of our nation.
A D-Day Prayer by Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States
On June 6th, 1944, President Roosevelt led the nation in
prayer over the radio and into every American home.
"
Almighty God, our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty
endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our
civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and
true, give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in
their faith. They will need thy blessings, their road will be long and
hard, for the enemy is strong, he may hurl back our forces, success may not come
with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again, and we know that by thy
grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
They
will be sore tried by night and by day without rest until the victory is won.
The darkness will be rent by noise and flame, men's souls will be shaken with
the violence's of war. For these men are lately drawn from the ways of
peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest, they fight to end
conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise,
and tolerance and goodwill among all thy people. They yearn but for
the end of battle, for their return for the haven of home.
Some will never
return. Embrace these Father, and receive them, thy heroic servants, into thy
kingdom. And for us at home, fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters,
and brothers of brave men overseas whose thoughts and prayers are ever with
them, help us, Almighty God to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in
this hour of great sacrifice.
Many people have urged
that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road
is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a
continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is
spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.
Give us strength too, strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions
we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces. And
let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may
come, to impart our courage unto our sons where so ever they may be.
And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our
sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts
of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these
deter us in our unconquerable purpose. With Thy blessing, we shall prevail
over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed
and racial arrogances.
Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister
nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace, a peace invulnerable to
the scheming of unworthy men and a peace that will let all of men live in
freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil. Thy will be done,
Almighty God. "
Focusing on the Past
As I continue my endeavors to bring to you one perspective from one member of one
family, please take a moment to read a small story of my childhood. I'm
not finished with it yet, but it's interesting none the less.
Since I was a young boy I have been
'playing army'.
My brother and me broke up the bar stools in our basement and shaped them into
wooden guns for an
all out fight for supremacy of the backyard. As the years went on we gained allies in our conquest.
Other kids in
the neighborhood joined the fight that seemed to be ever increasing in tactic
and in territory. Plastic guns now replaced those made from those ever
present bar stools, and smoke bombs in the shape of hand-grenades filled our
pockets. Even if you were captured or killed, after counting 5
Mississippi, you were back in the fight.
As the battlefield widened, the two armies migrated to the nearby
cemetery, where tombstones provided ample cover and mausoleums served double
duty as headquarters for the army of the 12 & unders. It was then, taking
refuge amongst the dead, trying desperately to stay alive, that I became
interested in the past. All around me and at my feet were soldiers. Like the
horror movies of the late 60’s and early 70’s imaginary hands sprouted up from
the grass-covered grounds virtually seaming to be grasping at my body and into
my heart. Each stone had a story to tell, yet no one could listen, from the
Civil War to Vietnam all around me I was surrounded by the real heroes of
battles in far away places from places I never heard of or I would probably ever
see. On Memorial Day, the green blanket of grass which covered over the graves
of those brave soldiers was enhanced by the flowing red, white, and blue or our
nation’s flag.
As life progressed, my interest in our past veteran’s did not
diminish. Being brought up in the cold war years seemed just that, cold and
without boundaries. Knowing that the world as I new it could be gone in a
matter of an instant was unsettling. All around Pittsburgh were a series of
Missile silos operated by active duty military, Nike sites as they were called.
My father would drive by the sites and make a comment as to what was behind
those barbed wire fences. They were everywhere, seemingly right in my backyard.
During this time, as a child I remember vividly the CBS news that
my dad watched during dinner. The body count from Vietnam and South East Asia
was always the lead story. Even as a youngster, I could not understand the
difference between North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, Laotians, or Thai. All I
knew is that we, the American Army and Air Force were bombing and fighting in a
far off land, and in some cases dying for the political ideals of our nation. I
could not figure out why we were losing ground after killing so many each day.
It just didn’t make any bit of sense to me.
These events certainly had an effect on our war games, now instead of
the usual “good guy/bad guy” battles, we now pretended to be Commies or Reds.
No one wanted to be a commie. But as in all wars, there are survivors and then
there are the dead, but in our case all of us came back alive ready for dinner
promptly at six.
It wasn’t soon after seeing all those news reports and hearing
Walter Cronkite tell the masses about that day’s figures that bronze grave
markers started showing up in our nearby cemetery. A friend of my brothers
older brother was killed and was buried no more than 20 yards from our favorite
spot, a make shift goal line made from the ashes of our charcoal grills that
crossed our football field right smack dab in the middle of the cemetery.
Everyone saw the marker because after all it seemed to gleam in the sun and
shimmer in the rain. Each marker gave each soldier’s name some meaning, the
unit and dates of his birth and his ultimate sacrifice to his nation.
As time past, so did life, and the battles of our country seemed
to get more complicated and because of Satellites and TV, far less remote.
Conflicts in Lebanon, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, the Persian Gulf, Bosnia,
entered live into our living rooms. And now, even our own cities and towns
under siege from a cave deep inside Afghanistan. Battles are now fought on the
101st floor of office buildings and on farmer’s fields rather than on
some distant battlefield.
Growing up I watched many a Hollywood production of World War 2
battles like Tora! Tora! Tora!, Midway, The Longest Day, The Battle of the Bulge,
Patton, To Hell and Back, The
Flying Tigers, The Fighting Leathernecks, The Story of PT-109, and many, many more. These
classic tales of good versus evil taught America’s youth to respect and honor
our veterans and what they did. Even the classic TV series, Hogan’s Heroes and McCale's Navy not
only convinced the viewer that the enemy was some sort of idiot, but at the same
time made the oddball or cast outs of our forces seem remarkable bright despite
their deceptive role playing. I believe that everyone in American society who
watched these shows could relate feeling quite at ease with some member of the
cast. Each episode, no matter how improbable, infallible or impossible the
task, the Americans seemed invincible in the face of the enemy.
Of course Vietnam changed all of that. America’s interest in
saving foreign populations from Communism, Nationalism, Fascism, or Racism,
inevitably always meant American soldiers would loose their lives fighting for
the cause of Freedom. Spilling into our own towns and cities was the blood of
civilians as well, as Ohio National Guardsmen killed 4 anti-war protestors at
Kent State University. America no longer possessed the innocence of the pre war
years or the prosperity of the post war years. Times were certainly changing
and the veterans of World War II and the Korean War were nearly forgotten in an
instant. But some still carry the memories.
Since those very early formative years as a child, I have been a
student of the events that took place during the years of the Second World War.
As a child, it was difficult to understand the prior events that led civilized
populations of the world into an all-out conflict. As an adult, one begins
trying to understand those days gone by. Fortunately, there are plenty of books
to read, movies to watch, the History Channel to view, and the internet to surf
to uncover the details. I have found that unfortunately that there is a
lot of arm chair revisionist generals, especially on the internet, so you have
to be careful what you read.
But none of these outlets of information can replicate the
feeling of either talking with those that were there or being there. To walk were Rommel gazed out into the English Channel
at Normandy, stand were Hitler stood at the Eagles Nest, to fall to your knees
in prayer as so many American soldiers did as they were cut down on Omaha
Beach, to understand the terror felt by so many Londoners is truly an awe
inspiring life changing moment. So, in 2002, off I went, to Europe on a 15 day 4 country
unaccompanied adventure to England, France, Germany, and Austria.
On the days and weeks prior to my journey, I spent a significant
amount of time finding out all I could about the unique places I wanted to
visit. I started at the Library where I took out books to plan a trip that
would lead me from Manchester England to the Bavarian Alps and back to London.
Visiting friends in Manchester and Rossdorf Germany assured me a wonderful
experience even if it rained, snowed, hailed or even if an earthquake decided to
make an appearance...
Slightly updated on 5-5-2020...
to be continued...
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