Guardians of history
World War II veterans share their stories
The remembrances, though foggy, remain 79 years later. Somewhere in the Pacific, gunnery mate 2nd Class Oakley Hacker stood dutifully on the rear deck, a Navy Armed Guard member protecting the cargo vessel S.S. Oliver Wolcott, one of America’s vaunted World War II Liberty ships.
Clad in naval dungarees, white T-shirt and sailor’s cap, he remembered previous strife at Normandy Beach and the Philippines, but the inviting waters around the Oakland, California-bound ship promised better on that late summer day in 1945.
Not long after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, Hacker explains, “We got word to throw all the ammunition overboard.” He would soon be on his way home to his native Clay County, Kentucky.
At 108, Oakley Hacker is Kentucky’s oldest World War II veteran. Photo: Tim Webb
Hacker, at 108, is Kentucky’s oldest WWII veteran. He was one of about 300,000 Kentuckians who served in history’s most costly conflict. More than 50 million died worldwide. America, entering in 1941 after the Pearl Harbor attack, lost some 416,800. Of that number, 6,802 were Kentuckians—and one was Hacker’s brother.
Several Kentuckians shined publicly in the war—notably Franklin Sousley, flag-raiser at Iwo Jima, and Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., a governor’s son who was the highest-ranking American officer killed. Seven Kentuckians were Medal of Honor recipients. But most were known by only their families and friends, or their wartime buddies.
Hacker says he feels “appreciated … something you think ought to happen” after visiting the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. He is well-liked at the Eastern Kentucky Veterans Center in Hazard, where he now lives. “They are good to us here,” he says.
“WE WORKED HARD”
The vivacious Ruth “Pat” Humphrey, now 100, joined what she called “the swimming thing,” or Coast Guard. That followed when her first choice, the Army Air Corps, wasn’t available. She recalls that in basic training, “you had to help the others if you could swim.” Humphrey followed five brothers who served in the military.
Starting as a typist in the branch’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., she later took supervisory responsibilities in the medical department. “It wasn’t fun. We worked hard,” she says. The post-war brought many parades, and she proudly notes that she “marched in several of them.”
“FOCUSED ON THE MISSION”
Richard Kolodey is nearly the age of his 101-year-old farmhouse in Slaughters. At 99, he has much wisdom, honed early by the 100 bombing missions he experienced as a U.S. Marine gunner on a Grumman TBF Avenger dive bomber.
Kolodey engaged in all three major battles of the Solomon Islands in the Pacific theater. The bomber crew consisted of a pilot, a turret gunner and a belly gunner working the radio. It was dangerous, but “We were focused on the mission,” he says. “You trusted the pilot. You’d get a lot more nervous when you got back and out of the plane.”
After the war, Kolodey worked in the A&P grocery chain and has been active in his church. He was recognized for good Sunday school attendance for over 70 years. He’s often interviewed about his military service and is always looking for living veterans who served in his time and area. They’re tough to find, he says.
“THE GREATEST PRIVILEGE I EVER HAD”
When Paul Jones joined the Navy Air Corps, he received flight training in Pensacola, Florida. Unexpectedly, baseball legend Ted Williams was one of his instructors. “I lucked out,” says the affable Jones, who idolized Williams.
Jones, of Corbin, didn’t see action overseas, but he did spend 19 months in tough training, ready to go, and he remains a patriot. “I was proud of that uniform. It was the greatest privilege I ever had,” says the 102-year-old. “We paid a big price. A lot of fellows did. I lucked out and didn’t. If we hadn’t won World War II, you and I wouldn’t be here now.”
“JUST SO HAPPY THAT I GOT BACK”
When Nathan Hatton Jr. and his best friend appeared at the Wolfe County draft board desiring to volunteer into the U.S. Army, Nathan’s third cousin happened to be in charge. “Your mom will kill me,” said the director, not wanting to expedite the process. Undaunted, the two signed up. Hatton went to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for basic artillery training, and his friend went to the hospital with food poisoning.
Hatton would be deployed in Europe after the Battle of the Bulge, spending much of his service time in France under challenging conditions. He recalled camping with his unit at a burned building and standing “guard duty for four hours in the freezing rain. It was cold.” Snowbound at another location, Hatton says, “Some of the guys went into town and came back with a pot-bellied stove, stove pipe, a bag full of coal and some wine. It helped a little bit, you know.”
The 98-year-old, who volunteers weekly at his church’s food pantry, concludes, “War is terrible. Just so happy that I got back.”
“I WANTED TO SAVE THE COUNTRY”
Perry County native Paul Baker, 97, entered the Army Air Corps during the war’s last year, 1945, after being told that if he volunteered, they’d “give me what I want.” Encouraged by a high-ranking officer, he became a flight engineer and “sat behind the co-pilot,” he explains. He spent the next 22 years in the Air Force, retiring in 1967. Though he missed most of WWII as a late enlistee, he emphasizes that he was ready. “I wanted to save the country,” he says.
Kentucky veteran advocate and Miss America 2000, Heather French Henry, praised WWII veterans during the June 6 Honor Flight Bluegrass event at Louisville’s Bowman Field.
“It’s really a privilege to be able to honor their sacrifice and service,” she said. “You can see in their eyes that they are remembering … (and) to be able to talk to those heroes as living pieces of history and know that they did such a profound service for the world is really breathtaking. … These moments are just as much for educating future generations as [they are] for us to remember.”
HONOR FLIGHT
Jeff Thoke believes World War II veterans truly saved the world—and he also believes in thanking them for what they did while there is still time.
Thoke chairs the nonprofit Honor Flight Bluegrass, one of three Kentucky hubs of the national Honor Flight network. The nonprofit’s mission is to fly WWII, Korean and Vietnam veterans, free of charge, to Washington, D.C., to see the memorials honoring their service. The organization provides an opportunity for citizens to support, volunteer or join the welcoming crowd at the airport for the veterans’ return home. Many of Kentucky’s electric cooperatives are longtime supporters of Honor Flight Kentucky, another Honor Flight hub, which operates out of Lexington’s Blue Grass Airport.
Thoke encourages people to meet World War II veterans and listen to their stories. “They are living history,” he says. “What most like is your time to listen to their experiences.”
Thoke’s participation with Honor Flight began when he accompanied a veteran and fellow Trimble Countian on an Honor Flight trip. Having a deceased grandfather and father who served during World Wars I and II, Thoke already had a connection.
“It was the coolest thing to spend a day with a World War II veteran close to the age of my father and see the memorials,” Thoke recalls. “I was really infatuated with the World War II vets.” The next year, he escorted a nearby Henry County veteran.
A retired Kentucky Tourism employee, Thoke spends many hours weekly on Honor Flight Bluegrass projects, and he is gearing up for next year’s 80th anniversary of the war’s ending.
OVERCOMING THE ODDS
Growing up in Bourbon County’s North Middletown, young Albert Wess couldn’t have imagined the role he would one day play in the iconic Red Ball Express operation. He was just focused on surviving, having lost both parents by age 10.
“I had a hard time,” he says.
Wess’s twin sister was sent to an orphanage after their mother’s death while Albert stayed with his father. When his father died, he was by himself. He remembers killing a neighbor woman’s chicken “to get me some supper.”
A local white man offered him a place to stay for a few years, but inexplicably, noted Wess, “he wouldn’t let me finish high school.”
Wess already had much to overcome, and those years were even tougher for being a Black man confronting racial prejudices.
Wess entered the U.S. Army in 1943 and received high-level mechanic training at Ft. Crook in Nebraska. Shipped to World War II’s European theater, in Central France, Wess was assigned to be a truck driver.
But not just any truck driver.
The Red Ball Express was a 6,000-truck convoy system created during a short but critical planning session to supply the Allies after the Normandy invasion and advancement into France. It would be manned mainly by Black drivers, demonstrating a segregationist policy. Wess became one of those drivers.
“They just called us together and said, ‘We’re gonna put you all in the Red Ball Express,’” Wess explained.
The 82-day operation began on August 21, 1944. The plan was for the two-man trucks to drive 25 miles per hour and keep a 60-foot interval. But the planned speed and interval distance didn’t always work out, according to Wess.
“They said, ‘Wess, do you have a governor on that truck? Break it.’” Wess often drove solo and in the darkness, equipped with small “cat eye” lights on the vehicles, and trucks collided.
With bombs dropping from German planes, “You were scared just driving the truck,” he says.
Now 101 and living in Paris, Kentucky, Wess was asked what the American flag means to him with his hurtful remembrances of racism. He responded by talking about his more than 70 years of patriotic participation in the Veterans of Foreign Wars. The flag is just as meaningful to him today as it was during his war service, he says. “I just overlook the rest of that stuff and put it in junk.”
“NEVER BE ORDINARY”
Bound for basic training, Marine recruit Dale Faughn took notes as he viewed the newness of the American countryside on his way from Louisville to San Diego. A recent Eddyville High School graduate, he hadn’t been much of anywhere and didn’t know what to expect.
He carried a personal maxim with him, developed and practiced while growing up poor in Depression times: “Don’t be ordinary.”
Recruit Faughn would find his resolve difficult to keep after arriving for camp. “It was quite a surprise,” Faughn recalls. “They came out cussin’ like we were criminals. They threw everything at us . . . (but) I had to look at it philosophically. They had to be tough.”
Soon to a World War II warrior, Faughn was only starting to learn why toughness was necessary. With training, Faughn attained an unordinary expert marksmanship badge, and his unit was shipped to the Pacific theater. They eventually landed on the island of Iwo Jima shortly after the Allies bombed it. Seeing a new world, far from the western part of Kentucky, he gained profound inspiration while on the battlefield, and he would exercise his favorite art, poetry, in writing a few poems about what he saw.
Not content to be ordinary, he later penned “I Met the Flag at Iwo Jima,” the most well-known poem of thousands he wrote over his 98 years. Faughn died on April 21, having lived just as he aspired. He thrived as a highly acclaimed public-school teacher in Kentucky for 61 years, retiring at age 85. He was an elite blood donor, giving over 36 gallons in his lifetime, and was inducted into two donor halls of fame. And about that writing that started at Iwo Jima—Faughn was named one of Kentucky’s 1986 Kentucky poets laureate, bearing witness to the power of his observations on the World War II battlefield.
Though already hardwired to help others, Faughn was also spurred by a sense of the common “survivor’s remorse” his veteran colleagues felt, according to son Paul and others. “It was the debt they feel they owe to their community and country in memory of their buddies,” says veteran advocate Sandy Hart.
Even in the last few months of his life, Faughn could be seen often at veteran advocacy functions, sharing, with amazing diction and clarity, the stories of his military service and of those who gave all because of their patriotic spirit.
