Vern Peters
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| Publication:Arkansas Democrat-Gazette; | Date:Apr 13, 2008; | Section:Three Rivers; | Page Number:123 |
Searcy retiree fought for his country in three wars
By Heber Taylor CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Vern Peters of Searcy
is one of the rare veterans who served as an infantryman in three wars —
World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He earned a combat infantry badge in
each war and a Silver Star, nine Bronze Stars, a Legion of Merit, a
Vietnam Gallantry Cross, a Purple Heart and several other significant
honors.
His military career started when he joined the
Wisconsin National Guard in September 1940. In October, he and others from
the Oconomowoc, Wis., area were sent to Camp Beauregard, La., to train
with the 32nd Infantry Division. It would be the first National Guard
division called up in World War II.
The training was supposed to keep the soldiers
away from home for a year, but it was extended by three months. During
that extra time, Pearl Harbor was bombed, and as Peters puts it, “we
were in for the duration.” The division shipped out to Fort Dix, N.J.,
on the way to Scotland. But they had hardly gotten to Fort Dix before they
were sent to Fort Ord, Calif. This meant that the 32nd was headed for war
with the Japanese.
The 32nd landed in Australia and soon was involved
in combat in New Guinea. The first battle had the 32nd and some Australian
units fighting to take Buna. It was a struggle because of strong Japanese
opposition, swampy terrain, jungle diseases and long supply lines.
But taking Buna was crucial.
“It was the first land recovered from the
Japanese,” Peters said, “and from there we never retreated. We took a
lot of islands off the coast and stayed in New Guinea until 1945.”
Peters was wounded several times. On one occasion,
the Japanese surprised his company “by walking in on us,” he said. In
the hand-to-hand combat, he received a bayonet wound. There were other
wounds in New Guinea and a total of eight in the three wars. Most of the
wounds were from shrapnel, but one was from a bullet in his leg.
Peters’ company received a Presidential Citation
for its success in New Guinea. Peters remembers a battle when his Company
G was defending an island in a New Guinea river. Using rifles, machine
guns, mortars and hand grenades, the Americans killed scores of Japanese
while losing only three men. “Their mortars were missing, but ours
weren’t,” he said. But during the whole war, the division had more
than 7,000 men killed, wounded and missing.
When the 32nd was sent to the Philippines early in
1945, Peters was a tech sergeant and was offered a commission as second
lieutenant. But he was eligible for a trip home and would have to forego
the furlough if he had accepted the promotion.
One reason for going home was to marry his
hometown sweetheart, Wretha Findley, in March. They recently celebrated
their 63rd wedding anniversary. Peters said that she was a good Army wife
who took his being away in Korea and Vietnam well.
He served as a captain and company commander in
the Korean conflict.
“We moved from Pusan (a seaport in South Korea)
up to and past the 38th parallel,” he said. “We moved back to the 38th
and, working with an engineering outfit, built a bunch of bunkers.”
The North Korean soldiers attacked his company
almost every night.
“When the Chinese entered the war, they took
over for the North Koreans.” he said. “They hit our area every night.
On Christmas Eve, 1952, we were hit by 6,000 Chinese troops. We had two
Republic of Korea units on each side, but they received orders to
withdraw. That left us (Co. K, 179th Infantry, 45th Infantry Division) on
the hill. We were forced off around midnight.”
The fight resumed on Christmas morning, and
Company K regained the lost ground by 10 o’clock. “We caught the
Chinese in a cross-fire and killed hundreds,” Peters said. “The
Christmas fighting was the worst that I experienced in six and a half
years of combat.”
After Korea, Peters was company commander of a 4th
Infantry Division company in Yakima, Wash. One of his jobs was getting the
soldiers ready for fighting in arctic conditions. He and one of his men
were skiers, and they taught the others how to ski and pull sleds.
Then followed three years in Amarillo, Texas,
where he was in charge of a recruiting office. During this period, the
Army required its reserve officers to retire from the Army or give up
their officers’ ranks. Peters, who had risen to major in the Army
Reserve, went back to his permanent rank of tech sergeant.
His next assignment — two years of teaching
soldiers and building a military academy in Ethiopia — was peaceful and
enjoyable. He took his family, and through his daughter, Kathleen, he got
to be friends with the emperor, Haile Selassie. Kathleen went horseback
riding with Selassie’s granddaughters, who were also her classmates in
school.
Back home in 1959, Peters was sent to Arkansas to
serve as a senior advisor to the Arkansas National Guard regiment (now
brigade). He and his family lived in Searcy for three years and decided
then that it would be their home when he retired.
After three years, Peters drew an operations and
intelligence assignment in Alaska. He was promoted to sergeant major
there. His last noncombat job was helping with the ROTC program at the
University of Dayton in Ohio. After two and a half years, he volunteered
to serve in Vietnam.
He was a brigade sergeant major before being
promoted to division (command) sergeant major of the First Cavalry
Division. He served a 14-month tour, went home for three months, and
returned for another year with the same division. Both tours found him
serving in the same brigade with his son, Randall.
His brigade used helicopters, and Peters took to
them like he had taken to guns and grenades in World War II. Though he
went on missions with pilots, he sometimes got to do the pi- loting. He
was shot down five times, and one rough landing still has an effect on his
back. But he persisted and picked up 64 Air Medals — one for each period
of 24 hours that he flew in the combat zone.
He was awarded a Silver Star for his part in
evacuating two crews that had been shot down and for going into a burning
helicopter to rescue a crew member. Earlier, he had earned a Distinguished
Flying Cross for hazardous missions and evacuating other soldiers who were
shot down.
When he came home in 1970, he was ready to retire.
His retirement took place at Fort Knox, Ky., on Aug. 1 — 30 years after
he had joined the National Guard in Wisconsin. He said recently that only
three of the 10 officers and 110 enlisted men who were with him back then
are still living. He reached two of them by telephone on March 30.
He didn’t stop volunteering after retiring.
Between the early 1980s and 2007, he put in an estimated 40,000 hours of
volunteer work in Searcy building, gardening, making signs, repairing city
equipment and supervising crews of citizens who needed to do
public-service duty to clear their records. Wretha often worked along with
him, especially when they were beautifying public grounds and helping the
Humane Society.
Now at 86, Vern Peters helps Wretha at home and
takes life fairly easy for an energetic man who has spent most of his life
volunteering in times of war and times of peace.