D8
SALUTE TO VETERANS
THE NORTH PLATTE TELEGRAPH
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2020
Veteran recalls years driving supply trucks Sandhills native faced constant danger in WWII’s Pacific theater
ger. The Japanese sent high- altitude bombers over the islands, as well as kamikaze pilots bent on suicide runs. When the bombers dropped their loads over the islands, Howe said there was no place to hide. Luck kept him alive, he said. “We didn’t have any shelter of any kind. Sometimes we’d have sandbag shelters, but the ground was so rocky, you couldn’t dig much,” he said. “When the bombs hit, there would be a big ‘Whomp.’ We’d get a big concussion where we were standing. Our shirts would puff out and our pants would puff out. That was close enough.” Troops didn’t have ear pro- tection, and as a result of the bombing, Howe lost his hear- ing and was declared 100% disabled by the Veterans Administration. Howe said there were about 100 trucks in each convoy, and they traveled and camped as a group. To reach the ships moored at sea, they drove over floating, wooden deck- type roads. There wasn’t a port because the ships were too large to come in. Their greatest danger while accept- ing loads from ships were the dreaded kamikaze pilots. “They were after the ships; that was their deal,” he said. “They were a pain.” When Howe’s group reached the Philippines, they found themselves under threat of snipers and others as they traveled narrow roads deep into canyons. Although the military equipped truck drivers with rifles, their weapons were hung in the back of their cabs and would have been of little use in a sudden confrontation. Howe and other drivers turned to the black market to buy .45 caliber automatic handguns that had belonged
By NANCY GAARDER Omaha World-Herald
The memories come easier, now that so many years have passed. Wes Howe, 98, was a 21-year-old ranch kid from the Sandhills of Nebraska when he enlisted in the Army in 1943. He would spend two-plus years away from home, and during most of that time he ferried bombs, airplane fuel and ammunition along the rugged roads of islands in the western Pacific Ocean. His resourceful ranching background and familiar- ity with vehicles meant he was the ideal candidate, in the Army’s mind, to drive a supply truck in the island- hopping battles in the Pacific theater. Howe was assigned to Quartermaster Supply Company 2079 attached to the 5th Air Force. Under the cover of dark- ness, but also during the day, Howe and dozens of other drivers took their loads from ships at sea to air bases on the islands that the Allies took over as they fought their way to the Japanese mainland. They also stashed caches of bombs and fuel in the island jungles. “The Allies paid a heavy price in the island-hopping maneuvers to retake all the islands in the Pacific,” said Howe, who witnessed the re- lease of Allied prisoners in Japan. “Some could not even walk.” Across all nations, the civil- ian and military losses in the Pacific theater were stagger- ing, totaling in the millions. For the U.S., 111,606 personnel were killed or went missing, 253,142 were wounded and 27,000 were captured, accord- ing to The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia. Howe’s work at war was in the face of ever-present dan-
Courtesy of NYE Square At nearly 99, WWII veteran Wesley Howe still adds to his scrapbook by making notes on clip- pings of published photos and stories relating to his time in the military.
to American pilots whose planes had crashed in the Philippines mountains. Howe said he drove the rugged Philippines terrain with one hand on his steer- ing wheel and the other on his gun in his lap. “I never had to use it, thank God,” he said.
Howe’s wife, Katheryn Wood Howe, was a U.S. Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She came from a Sandhills ranching fami- ly, too, and they got to know each other by corresponding during the war. Their letters were sparked by a Sandhills
initiative to keep its service- members connected to people back home. Wood enlisted in 1944 and served in San Diego, doing dental work for soldiers re- covering from facial damage from the war. She was honor- ably discharged in 1946.
Please see TRUCKS, Page D9
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