War Stories II (81 page)

FIRST LIEUTENANT PAUL AUSTIN
returned to Ft. Worth, Texas, after the war and spent thirty-one years in a career with the telecommunications business.

LIEUTENANT (JG) JAMES (JIM) HALLOWAY
remained in the Navy and eventually achieved the rank of admiral, followed by service on the Joint Chiefs of Staff as chief of naval operations.

LIEUTENANT RICHARD (DICK) ROBY
spent five years in active duty service and another five years in the organized Reserves. He moved to Texas, where he worked thirty-two years in the insurance and investment business while also being active as a rancher on a 1,000-acre ranch outside of Austin. He retired in 1982. He and his wife, Mary Evelyn, who died in 1998, raised three children and have five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

LIEUTENANT THOMAS (TOM) STEVENSON
survived the shark-infested waters of the Pacific Ocean after his ship USS
Samuel B. Roberts
was sunk by the Japanese. After the war ended he returned to his family's shipping business in Long Island, New York.

 

CAPTAIN ROBERT PRINCE
saw virtually no combat prior to helping to lead the Rangers' rescue raid of POWs at Cabanatuan, but he returned to the U.S. a hero. He and the other officers who took part in the raid were debriefed at the Pentagon and then honored by President Roosevelt. Prince is still shy about being in a spotlight that he neither seeks nor believes he deserves. But he says, “A new generation is learning about the sacrifices that were made. I'm glad to see that happening.”

PHARMACIST MATE SECOND CLASS JOHN “DOC” BRADLEY
was awarded the Navy Cross and will always be remembered as one of the six men who raised the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi. After the war a movie was made about his life, and he was often invited to dedicate a war memorial or lead a parade honoring America's heroes. He downplayed his actions in World War II until his death in 1995.

LIEUTENANT GEORGE GREELEY WELLS
returned to his home in Green Village, New Jersey, after the war. For his heroic service on Iwo Jima in 1945, where he was wounded in action, Wells was awarded the Purple Heart.

PRIVATE JOHN COLE,
after serving two and a half years in the Marines, returned home after the war to fight another battle—finding a job. He and many other nineteen-year-old veterans hadn't been trained in anything but combat, and it took some time to find other work. In 2000, Cole returned to Iwo Jima, where he visited the graves that he and others from Graves Registration had filled. He grieved that there was no one to mourn the brave men who had died and now rested on this lonely and scarred island.

PRIVATE DONALD MATES
was hospitalized until 1946, recovering from wounds he received on Iwo Jima, where he was awarded the Purple Heart. He returned to the U.S., went to Arizona State, graduated in 1951, and went into business. Mates is retired and lives in Palm Beach, Florida. On the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, he returned to the island with other Iwo Jima survivors and hardly recognized the land, now lush and green with sixty years of new vegetation.

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS DAN BARTON
recovered from his wounds and went home after the war. He worked in oil exploration in Kuwait, the Khyber Pass, Pakistan, and then in Venezuela and the Oronoco and Amazon jungles. Barton later worked for the TRW Corporation, an aerospace company in Redondo Beach, California, for twenty-five years.

SEAMAN THIRD CLASS LAWRENCE DELEWSKI
recovered from the explosion on the USS
Laffey
but his nerves would never be the same. He suffered from what came to be called “post-traumatic stress syndrome” after the Vietnam War. Back home, Larry became a teacher and coach and taught special-ed kids for twenty-five years.

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS HERMAN “BUFF” BUFFINGTON
went back to finish high school and took advantage of the GI Bill to go to college. He married his wife, Helen, in 1949, and the couple had two sons. Buffington and his wife worked for the
Summerville
(Georgia)
News
, where they learned the newspaper business. They purchased a newspaper in Jefferson, Georgia, and now own four weekly newspapers and a commercial printing operation. Buffington is still involved in the business but has been semi-retired since 1978; his sons now run the business.