Remembering Pennsylvanians who fought for us
They were journeys.
Incredible journeys, really.
In the early 1940’s, Pennsylvanians by the thousands left homes and loved ones and went to boot camps, gunnery schools, and staging locations. And then, into the killing zones of World War II.
They were young men, for the most part. Some were from big cities. Many, though, were from smaller places scattered in Pennsylvania’s mountains and valleys, in its farmland and forests, near waterways like Brubaker Run or Quittapahilla Creek or the Beaver River. Through trauma and bloodshed, they were sustained by the thought of getting back to those places, and to the people who loved them most.
One, barely 18 and destined to man .50-caliber machine guns in the tail of a B-24 bomber, summed it up.
“All that matters to the boys in this army,” he wrote, is “the little word ‘home.’”
Pennsylvania’s role in the “arsenal of democracy” was huge. Over time, there would be production of battleships, tankers, rations, radar technology, small-arms ammunition, TNT, the jeep, and a long list of other items that helped win the war.
But all of it revolved around the young men doing the fighting – including ones from little places most people had never heard of.
Some came home. Some did not.
Longtime journalist and writer Ford Turner is researching a story about some of those young men. Their names are now etched in stone at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery and National Cemetery of the Alleghenies. The magnificent reverence of those places reflects how important it is to remember what they did for our nation – and for us.
Ford has received the Pennsylvania Distinguished Writing Award and more than 40 other journalism recognitions. Outside of newspapering, his articles have appeared in several magazines. His father, the late Cal Turner, was a U.S. Navy signalman and frogman in World War II and later became one of central Pennsylvania’s most recognized newspaper writers.
