In 1955, he was sent to Vietnam as part of a 19-member American team assigned to observe the French presence there. It would not be Cale’s last experience in a war zone. If anybody like that came near me, I’d just have to open one hand and we’d both be gone.” “I slept at night with a grenade in each hand because the North Koreans were coming down and slitting throats. Explosive booby traps set by North Koreans and subzero temperatures added to what he described as a hell on earth. The tenacity of the enemy wasn’t the only concern for Cale. The rest would have farm implements… scythe, sickle, machete, hoe, waiting for the first guy to get killed so they could get a weapon.” The Japanese didn’t know when to stop… Only thing different with the Chinese is when they came across the river, only one guy would have a weapon. I said, what’s wrong with people? They didn’t know when to stop. “We kept mowing down people coming across the Chinese river. Two years later, he was asked by his captain at the 5th Regimental Combat Team, “Are you ready, Cale? You’re going to Korea.”Ĭale didn’t just go to Korea – he was entrenched in North Korea. Having been thoroughly immersed in Navy and Marine Corps life, Cale transferred to the U.S. “I actually treated the wounds of Japanese prisoners, the same as our Marines,” Cale said. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Cale was attached to the 1st Marine Division, where he would serve as a corpsman at Guadalcanal. The 1937 Hindenburg disaster led to the eventual cancellation of the program and a change in Cale’s plans. A farm boy from Macomb, Ill., Cale enlisted in the Navy with the intention of serving in the dirigible airship program at Lakehurst, N.J. entry into World War II, it was the first exposure Cale had to combat. Just as Pearl Harbor marked the beginning of U.S. Japan didn’t like to let anybody in their country know how they attacked our country and our ships.” “In the last 10 years we talked to 25,000 students from fourth grade on up to college. It is a story that he frequently shares with the handful of living survivors and visitors to the Pearl Harbor National Memorial. Now 98, the life member of American Legion Post 17 in Honolulu has told the story of his Pearl Harbor experience thousands of times. Some of them were just tired because they were blown off the ship or jumped and had to get ashore.” Some of the people were badly burned, and I would try to pick them up, and the skin would come right off their hand. “I only picked up 46 people,” he recently said to The American Legion. Cale, a weak swimmer at the time, still recalls walking into shallow harbor waters to retrieve wounded and dead bodies over the next couple hours. “’No, we don’t train on Sunday! Must be some sort of National Guard or Reserve activity… But then, as I was watching, a plane came by with the Rising Sun on the fuselage, and I said, ‘My God, those are Japanese planes!’”Īt that point, Cale’s life and the fate of the world were forever changed. “How come they are bombing the battle wagons?” he asked himself. On that fateful morning, he had just eaten breakfast and was walking to the receiving station when he noticed strange activity on battleship row. But rather than the sun, it was Mars, the god of war, that would become his uninvited and all too-frequent companion throughout a military career that spanned from World War II through the Vietnam War.Ĭale was a 20-year-old Navy hospital pharmacist mate stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. A Rising Sun was the first sign to Sterling R.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |