aOn September 27, 1944, a C-47 assigned to the 813th Medical Air Evacuation Squadron lifted off from England into the clear morning sky. Its destination was a landing field at St. Trond, Belgium, to pick up casualties. Since the aircraft usually carried military supplies and troops on the outbound flight and casualties on the return trip, it was not marked with the Red Cross.
Aboard the aircraft was 24-year-old Texas-born Second Lt. Reba Whittle, an experienced flight nurse with 40 missions and over 500 hours of flight time.
Somewhere along the way to Belgium, the plane strayed far from its intended route, entering German airspace where it was hit by German flak a couple of miles outside Aachen. The crew braced themselves as the plane gained and lost elevation from heavy shrapnel tearing through its thin-skinned fuselage and disabling an engine. Whittle held onto her seat for dear life as they began to nosedive.
On impact, Whittle was violently thrown from her seat and into the navigator's compartment five feet away. Sergeant Hill, her surgical technician, was wounded in the arm and leg, 
one of the pilots was killed, the other badly hurt. Whittle herself suffered from a concussion and injuries and lacerations to her face and back. Dazed, the crew immediately evacuated the burning plane through the top hatch. As soon as the last of the crew had left the plane, they saw German soldiers had arrived and were pointing their rifles at them.
Whittle was startled when a German soldier suddenly stepped forward, set down his rifle, grabbed a bandage out of his bag, and began to wrap it around her head. She didn't even know that she was bleeding. 
Soon the other Germans followed his lead and began providing the rest of the aircrew first aid before marching them the two miles to Aachen.
In Aachen, they were led to a brick house where they were each given some fruit to eat before being questioned by an English speaking officer. 
They each gave the officer their name, rank, and serial number (as required by the Geneva Conventions) and were then taken into the kitchen where they were given coffee with black bread and butter.
When finished eating, the five American prisoners were ushered onto an old bus and driven 40 miles to their next destination. After driving through a tall metal fence, they were taken into an office filled with officers working on assorted paperwork and led upstairs to sleeping quarters. 
The four men were given one room, and Whittle was given another.
About an hour and a half later, the five were awakened and taken back downstairs where another English speaking officer question each of them as the officer had done at their previous stop. At 1100, they were loaded into the back of a truck and brought to a German military hospital where the doctor 
finished Whittle's treatment and said, "Too bad you're a woman, you are the first one, and no one knows exactly what to do with you."
On October 1, 1944, the group was separated as the men were sent to a nearby Stalag or prison camp, and Whittle waited for the Germans to decide on what they were going to do with her. Five days later, she was sent to Stalag IXC or 9C in Meiningen, where she was assigned to work in the hospital, caring for her fellow POWs.
A Swiss legation that negotiated POW transfers, mostly of wounded prisoners, discovered her in custody and began to arrange her release.
Whittle was escorted by the German Red Cross away from the camp along with 109 male POWS as part of a prisoner exchange. She was then transported by train to Switzerland along with other prisoners who were being returned on medical or psychiatric grounds, then flew back to the United States.
She returned to duty in the hospital at Hamilton Field, California, where she was awarded the Air Medal and a Purple Heart and promoted to First Lieutenant. She also married Lieutenant 
Colonel Stanley W. Tobiason, her fiance before being captured. They later had two sons, one who was a naval aviator who flew a mission in Vietnam. She was discharged on January 13, 1946.
Whittle suffered from an assortment of physical and psychiatric problems. She sought compensation from the Veterans Administration, and in 1950 began a series of appeals for military medical retirement. Despite diagnoses of post-traumatic encephalopathy, chronic severe anxiety reaction, and early lumbosacral arthritis, her appeals were denied.
Whittle also applied for and was denied, POW status. The problem was her status as a POW was undocumented by the U.S. military. She had been ordered by the Army not to talk about her experiences - a common wartime regulation designed to protect military personnel still held by the enemy.
She and her husband continued to fight the bureaucracy to recognize her POW status and to receive back pay. She finally accepted a cash settlement in 1955.
While nurses who were imprisoned in Asia had received a hero's receptions upon their release, Whittle's story was kept quiet by the Army and barely noticed by the media in the celebration of the war's end.
Whittle died of breast cancer in 1981. Her POW status was officially conferred by the military two years after her death in 1983.
When war raged through Europe in the summer of 1914, the American public wanted nothing to do with it. Not our war, they said. President Woodrow Wilson agreed. He pledged neutrality for the United States. But over the next few years, three incidents turned public option away from isolationism to one of wanting to take action against Germany and its allies.
First was when a German submarine torpedoed the British-owned passenger liner Lusitania without warning, killing 1,2,00 passengers, including 128 Americans. Second, a German submarine sank an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans.
The final straw was the Zimmermann Telegram, a 1917 coded diplomatic proposal from the German Empire for Mexico to join in a military alliance in the event the United States entered the war against Germany. 
The telegram's main purpose was to make the Mexican government declare war on the 
U.S., which would have tied down U.S. forces and slowed the export of U.S. arms to England, France, Russia, and their allies.
As part of the alliance, Germany claimed they would assist Mexico to reclaim Texas and the Southwest.
When the content of the message was decoded by British Intelligence and went public, Americans were outraged. President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress for "a war to end all wars" that would "make the world safe for democracy." Congress voted to declare war on April 6, 1917.
Mexico, far weaker than the U.S., ignored the proposal and, after the U.S. entered the war, officially rejected it.
By the time the Great War ended on November 11, 1918, more than 2 million American servicemen had served on the battlefields of Western Europe. Of those, 53,402 were killed in action, with another 63,114 deaths from disease and other causes. About 205,000 suffered wounds.
Those who returned home were treated like heroes. As some proudly marched all along Broadway, hundreds of thousands of spectators crowded the sidewalks, and others looked down from skyscraper windows. They cheered and shouted and tossed confetti in a shower that became a blizzard of shredded paper falling on the motorcade and the marching troops below. Flags, marching bands, and music heralded the procession. When the parades ended, and the fighting men and women were discharged, they returned home to farms, towns, and cities throughout America hoping to pick up life where they had left it. But the returning veterans found things had changed, including themselves. Those suffering from emotional and physical issues struggled to adjust. Those who lost the jobs they had before 
marching off to war found it difficult to find other work in an economy that was weakening by the day.
Aware of their plight, some legislators attempted to get bills passed that would assist veterans in getting their lives back together, but it never got off the ground. 
Eventually, in 1924, six years after their service, Congress did pass a bill providing World War I veterans compensation for their service. But President Calvin Coolidge vetoed the bill, saying: "patriotism...bought and paid for is not patriotism."
Congress overrode his veto a few days later, enacting the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924, commonly known as the Bonus Act, providing a bonus based on the number of days served. But there was a catch: most Veterans wouldn't see a dime for 20 years.
As years passed and the American economy grew worse, continued efforts by veterans groups to get the bonuses paid out sooner went nowhere. And although there was some Congressional support for the immediate redemption of the military service certificates, 
President Hoover and Republican congressmen opposed such action; they reasoned that the government would have to increase taxes to cover the costs of the payout, and thus any potential recovery would be slowed.
As the Great Depression of 1929 worsened, hundreds of thousands of war veterans found it difficult to make a living. Many joined the groups already pressuring the government to pay 
out the bonus immediately. It would help them get through the rough times, they pleaded. Their efforts fell on deaf ears. Neither President Herbert Hoover nor the Congress would budge.
With the deepening of the depression, veterans and their families began marching on Washington D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates.
Thousands of war veterans began difficult journeys across the country, traveling in empty railroad freight cars, in the backs of trucks, in cars, on foot, and by any other means that became available. 
By mid-June, it was estimated that as many as 20,000 veterans and some family members had arrived in Washington, and were camping out, often in dirty, unsanitary conditions, in parks around the city, depending on donations of food from a variety of governments, churches and private citizens. Most of the Bonus Army, as they became known, camped in a Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats, a swampy, muddy area across the Anacostia River from the federal core of Washington.
On June 16, 1932, the House passed the bonus bill to immediately give the vets their bonus money by a vote of 209-176, but on June 18, the Senate defeated the bill 62-18.
Many Americans were outraged. How could the army treat veterans of the Great War with such disrespect?
Many marchers remained at their campsites hoping President Hoover would act positively on their plea for assistance. That did not happen.
Rather, on July 28, 1932, Hoover had his Attorney General, William D. Mitchell, order police to remove the Bonus Army veterans from their camp. When Veterans rushed two policemen trapped on the second floor of a building, the cornered police drew their revolvers and shot two veterans, killing William Hushka and Eric Carlson. When told of the shootings, President Hoover then ordered the army to evict the Bonus Army from Washington.
In charge of breaking up the camp was Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur. Six battle tanks supporting the operation were commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue. At the same time, thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street and watch.
The Bonus marchers believing the troops were marching in their honor, cheered the troops until Patton allegedly ordered the cavalry to charge them- an action which prompted the spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!" Soldiers with fixed bayonets followed, hurling tear gas into the crowd.
Army troops stormed several buildings that the veterans were occupying as well as their main camp, setting tents on fire and forcing an evacuation. When it was over, in addition to the two 
veterans that had been killed by police, several babies died from tear gas, and scores of veterans and Washington police had been injured in various confrontations. Nearby hospitals were overwhelmed with casualties.
The incident marked one of the greatest periods of unrest our nation's capital had ever know. General Douglas MacArthur and President Herbert Hoover suffered irreversible damage to their reputations after the affair.
It was especially disastrous for Hoover's chances at re-election; he lost the 1932 election in a landslide to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Perhaps as atonement for their shabby treatment of the veterans and pressure from the public, Congress passed the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act of 1936, replacing the 1924 Act's service certificates with bonds issued by the Treasury Department that could be cashed at any time.
Congress was given another chance of redemption near the end of World War II. Again, it failed its duties and came close to stopping a bill designed to provide returning veterans with money 
for education, unemployment, and home loans. Those against the bill said it would encourage veterans not to seek work and that providing money for a college education was not necessary since college was for rich kids.
In spite of their opposition, the bill passed by a single vote (Rep. John Gibson of Georgia was rushed in to cast the tie-breaking vote) and even before the war had ended, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, otherwise known as the GI Bill of Rights, on June 22, 1944.
The G.I. Bill prevented a repetition of the Bonus March of 1932.
Unlike the Bonus Bill, the GI Bill offered Word War II vets a raft of benefits that reshaped postwar America for decades to come. It established hospitals, made low-interest mortgages 
available, and granted stipends covering tuition and expenses for veterans attending college or trade schools. From 1944 to 1949, nearly 9 million veterans received close to $4 billion from the bill's unemployment compensation program, which was actually less than 20 percent of the money set aside for unemployment. Instead, most returning servicemen quickly found jobs or pursued higher education. Many also took advantage of home loans.
The education and training provisions existed until 1956, while the Veterans Administration offered insured loans until 1962.
Those more visionary elected officials representing that small majority that help squeak through the enactment of the GI Bill knew it had far greater implications. For them, it was seen as a genuine attempt to thwart a looming social and economic crisis. 
Some saw inaction as an invitation to another depression.
Recognizing the importance of the GI Bill years later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Readjustment Benefits Act of 1966, which changed the nature of military service in America by extending benefits to veterans who served during times of war and peace.
One can only hope today's Congress and those in the near and distant future understand the value and importance of keeping the GI Bill in full force and sufficiently funded. To do less would be to dishonor our veterans and the many sacrifices they made and continue to make.
Alongside the glaring reports of failure by the nation's Veterans Affairs Department, I have also seen an increase in media publications, in the news and in print, which are painting a very dismal picture for our [soon to be] next generation of Veterans, and I for one...don't like it.
The views being expressed as of late, ranging from "a new wave of veterans suffering from PTSD," "The latest findings show veterans are using/abusing pain medication" to, "We will have a major influx of post 9/11 veterans which will require significantly more medical treatment and care than years past," and it is being done using "alarming" borderline, scare tactics on the public.
I would like to take some time to explain, from my point of view, of course, how this is setting our Veterans up to fail, why this is alarming, and why I am very concerned.
We cannot portray all of today's Veterans as those that are troubled, mentally unstable, pain medication taking individuals. They will have enough challenges facing them as they try to re-enter their civilian lives, a life that is completely different than that of the military life they had grown accustomed to and sacrificed for. To pro-actively assign a set of stigmas and/or labels to these Veterans is cruel and unfair, especially when it is generally applied to all!
It is no secret that there are companies out there that bend over backward to hire/help Veterans, to which I graciously applaud you. However, there are also a number of companies that shy away from hiring Veterans! 
Why? For all of the reasons listed above that are being over-publicized by the media. Add to that list a company's fear or concern that the Veteran may be called up to active duty, thereby putting the company in a position where they 'lose' their employee.
For more insight into this phenomenon, I refer you to the June 2012 case study performed by Margret C. Harrell and Nancy Berglass: "Employing America's veterans." " Perspectives from Businesses," which is readily available on Google.
That same case study cites individual companies suggesting that Veterans need to have more time post-service to "acclimate" to society before entering the civilian workforce, i.e., before the company is "comfortable" with hiring them. My question for those that think this: What is the Veteran doing while you're waiting? Most of our Veterans will not have the luxury to just sit idly by and wait for the civilian society to feel comfortable with them! Your waiting serves as a contributing factor to the problem.
What are Veterans to do when the existing Transition Assistance programs are lacking, and they are basically told to simply go to the VA if they are feeling saddened or depressed (you may have heard something about the VA's issues in recent months)? Add to this, when employers are not willing to extend offers to Veterans due to the again aforementioned list of 'concerns,' you now have Veterans with no place to turn, and this creates a vicious cycle!
To break this cycle, perhaps we can start by encouraging our media to decrease the over-publicizing of potential issues our Veterans will face, in a negative light. Most of the country knows of these issues already. What's more important here is to be there, at the ready for our Veterans, assisting our Veterans, and welcoming our Veterans with the proper opportunities and support structure.
The emphasis needs to shift to the companies, support groups, outreach programs, educational institutions, and of course, the daunted VA system so that we can prepare them and steer them toward our Veterans, not scare them away from our Veterans. We have proven enough times in the past how capable and [unfortunately] willing we can be as a nation to turn our back on our Veterans, let's not do that again with this generation. Don't wait! Prepare, and at the end of the day, I think we can do a better job of how we are disseminating this information to the public.
Stephen Robey is a full member of the Marine TWS since Aug. 2013. The native of Illinois served in the USMC from 1986-1990.
Forty-five years ago, the war in Vietnam was raging, and draft notices were going out by the tens of thousands daily. Among those to receive a draft notice was Steve Peck, who, like many other college students, had a temporary deferment. But after graduation, Uncle Sam told him it was time to report for duty.
Peck's mother, Greta, first wife of movie star Gregory Peck, told Steve she could arrange for him to skip out and stay with family in Sweden, but he wasn't very politically aware and wasn't opposed to serving. "I certainly didn't want to use my father," said Peck, even if his famous Oscar-winning dad and humanitarian might have been able to get him out of military service.
So Stephen Peck was drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps in 1968 and served as a Lieutenant in the 1st Marine Division near 
Da Nang from 1969 to 1970. When he came back, he pursued what he thought would be his long-time career. He enrolled in a graduate school cinema program in 1972 
and went on to become a documentary filmmaker.
But his life changed in 1990 when he made a film about a group of homeless veterans living on the beach in Venice, Calif. Back then, there were few services for veterans outside of the V.A., and almost none for homeless vets. After that, Peck knew he had to do something to help other fellow veterans; to become an active participate in solving the problem rather than an observer. So he went to the University of Southern California and earned a degree in social work with the goal of devoting himself to helping veterans.
In 1993 Peck joined U.S. VETS, a nonprofit organization serving homeless and at-risk veterans. The organization partnered with a housing developer at that time and started 
its first site, the West Side residence in Los Angeles -a place veterans could go and get the services they needed to stabilize themselves.
In 2012 Peck was named CEO of U.S. VETS, which now has 11 facilities in six states and the District of Columbia, and it serves more than 2,000 veterans each day. They have helped 3,000 veterans find housing, and more than 1,000 veterans obtain full-time employment yearly. The estimated number of homeless vets at the time he became CEO, was 60,000 homeless vets. Twelve percent, or 7,200, lived in the Los Angeles area.
As a Marine officer serving in Vietnam, Peck 
learned a few things about war. 
"You face enemy fire; you engage the enemy. If you don't go where the trouble is, you cant solve the problem."
As the CEO of U.S. VETS, Peck takes the fight to the front lines. "Our job as I see it is to engage the enemy at home in the U.S.- the enemy of homelessness, disillusionment, and disappointment-to, let these men and women know that there is a path forward and that we support them and are tremendously grateful for their contribution to this country and the sacrifices they have made," he said in a recent newspaper interview.
But Peck knows the demand for services nationwide is growing dramatically as thousands return from multiple deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. He also recognizes the Veterans Administration will not be able to answer the need.
He estimates 20 percent of all vets suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, but only 40 percent seek help. "Crunch those numbers, 
and it means roughly 250,000 vets from Iraq and Afghanistan will go untreated, and that translates into thousands of fractured families, lost jobs and more homelessness," he said.
To stem the tide, Peck and his staff began going to college campuses and into the streets in search of vets needing help, but either didn't know it or didn't know where to turn. U.S. VETS is building a network of contacts on greater Los Angles college campuses where several thousand vets are taking advantage of the G.I. Bill.
"We owe it to veterans who are sent out there to serve this country, to help them when they come back and that there will be sufficient money set aside for them to re-integrate back into society. I feel we have an obligation to do that," he said.
The life and career of General George Patton were, to say the least, flamboyant. Known to his loyal troops as "Old Blood and Guts," his colorful personality, hard-driving leadership style and success as a commander, combined with his frequent political missteps, produced a mixed and often contradictory image of an out of control leader with a temper, tendency toward insubordination and his open criticizing on how the way the war is being waged.
Perhaps nothing showcased the general more than the 1970 movie "Patton," starring George C. Scott in the title role.
The movie of the famous tank commander traces his battlefield genius during World War II that garnered him fear and respect from the Germans but disdain from our Allies and, in particular, General Dwight Eisenhower. 
When Patton's big mouth and bigger ego became a liability to the fragile alliance Eisenhower was trying to hold together to fight the Germans, he was summoned to Eisenhower's 
headquarters and ordered to shut up and stay out of trouble. As time passed, Patton seemed to forget the warning, resulting in his being removed temporarily from his battlefield command. That was when he slapped two soldiers under his command, accusing them of cowardliness. In both incidents, witnesses claim Patton used words similar to "You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot." Patton drew his pistol and waved it in one of the Soldier'sSoldier's face. "I ought to shoot you myself right now, you G**D***** coward." Profanity came easily to him.
Patton was a great student of history, especially military history, and used the history of ancient battles and battlefields to his 
advantage against the Germans during WW II.
His extensive understanding of historical battles also made the great general a staunch believer in reincarnation, believing he had been a soldier in many previous lives and a quote that is credited to him reads; "So as through a glass and darkly, the age-long strife I see, where I fought in many guises, many names, but always me."
Among the many warriors, Patton thought he had been in a former life was a prehistoric mammoth hunter; a Greek hoplite who fought the Persians; a soldier of Alexander the Great 
who fought the Persians during the siege of Tyre; Hannibal of Carthage whose brutal tactics enforced loyalty 
among his troops and power over his enemies; a Roman Legionnaire under Julius Caesar who served in Gaul (present-day France, Luxembourg, Belgium, most of Switzerland, parts of Northern Italy, as well as the parts of the Netherlands and Germany on the west bank of the Rhine); the Roman Soldier who pierced Jesus' heart with a spear; an English knight during the Hundred Years War; and a Marshal of France under Napoleon.
In the movie "Patton," there was a scene in which Patton has his driver stop in an open field that had been an ancient Roman battlefield. He looks over the land, gets out and tells General Omar Bradley (the main advisor of the movie), "It was here. The battlefield was here. The Carthaginians defending the city were attacked by three Roman Legions. Carthaginians were proud and brave, but they couldn't hold. They were massacred. Arab women stripped them of their tunics and their swords and lances. The soldiers lay naked in the sun, two thousand years ago, and I was here."
As early as World War I, when he was a young tank officer in France, he reveled some speculations about reincarnation in a letter home to his mother. He wrote: "I wonder if I could have been here before as I drive up the Roman road the Theater seems familiar, perhaps I headed a legion up that same white road... I passed a chateau in ruins, which I possibly helped escalade in the middle ages."
Later during the war, in a visit to Langres, France, "a place he had never before visited," he declined the offer of a local liaison officer to show him around the town, once the site of a Roman military camp. "You don't have to," Patton told the surprised young man, "I know it well." Patton, of course, was convinced he had been to France before as a Roman legionnaire. As he led the way through the area, he pointed out the sites of the ancient Roman temples and amphitheater, the drill ground, and the forum, even showing a spot where Julius Caesar had made his camp. It was, Patton later told his nephew, "As if someone were at my ear whispering the directions."
In October 1945, Patton assumed command of the Fifteenth Army in American-occupied Germany. On December 9, he suffered injuries as a result of an automobile accident. He died 12 days later on December 21, 1945, and is buried among the soldiers who died in the Battle of the Bulge in Hamm, Luxembourg.
The film "Patton" renewed interest in the "flamboyant" General George Smith Patton, immortalizing him as one of the world's most intriguing military men.
The market is flooded with books written about Vietnam. Many follow the same path in their storytelling, beginning with their youth, entry into the military, their war experiences, returning home, and how they feel today about that journey. This book does some of that, but it is different in more ways. The author takes us on a voyage spanning his wartime service as a U.S. Navy patrol boat officer in Vietnam's Mekong Delta to his recent return trip to Vietnam and finally, to the most poignant and memorable part of his story, visiting the families and graves of three friends and fellow combatants.
The nexus of the book came from an article written by the author for Naval History magazine and published in 2010. But through that process of research and pouring over a journal he kept during his Vietnam tour of duty, the memories of those three men, James Rost and Eldon Tozer, both Navy patrol boat officers and Robert Olson, an Army advisor working with Vietnamese soldiers, kept popping up. The focus of the three friends became more important during the author's return trip to Vietnam, where he revisited the horrors of war, the worst being the death of his three comrades.
Over the years, the author had resolved to find their families and share his remembrance of their loved ones and his admiration for them, but his return visit to Vietnam moved him to action. And thus began a road trip by car from his home in western New York across the United States and to Quebec, Canada.
Backtracking in Brown Water is an exceptionally well-written book and is highly recommended. It not only vividly describes how the war was waged in the brown waters of Vietnam, but it also brings home the impact on the children and families members of those lost in that war- a lesson for a nation that still grapples with the effect of the war.
Reviews
"I thank you for honoring all who served, but especially Army patriots like Bob Olson and Walt Gutowski. They were great men whose spirit and professionalism you captured well. I highly recommend the book."
Colonel Mike Paluda, U.S. Army (Ret.)
"Rolly Kidder has delivered a brilliant chronicle of the Vietnam conflict with which many may not be familiar. Forty years later, he revisits Vietnam and tracks down the families of three men who had been killed. The recounting of his visits with the families of the three servicemen is a poignant reminder of the continuing grief and pride present amongst many. It is a fitting memorial to the Army and Riverine heroes and an honor to those who mourn them."
Captain M.B. Connolly, USN (Ret.) Former commander River Assault Division 132, Assault Squadron 13, 1969-1970
About the Author
Rolland E. Kidder served in Vietnam as a U.S. Navy patrol boat officer with River Division 535 in the Mekong Delta in 1969-70. This is his second book. His first book, 'A Hometown Went to War,' an oral history of 37 WWII veterans, earned him the Writer's Digest Best Life Stories Award.
Recognized for his strong sense of patriotism, Kidder was appointed to the American Battle Monuments Commission by both Presidents Clinton and Obama and was a member of the original National World War II Memorial Design Committee. Active in politics, he served four terms in the N.Y..Y. State Assembly. He also started his own natural gas exploration company.
He is a graduate of Houghton College, Evangelical Theological Seminary, SUNY at Buffalo Law School, and is currently on the Board of Directors for the National Fuel Gas Company.
He and his wife Jane live on Lake Chautauqua in western New York.
