Opening Up
By Donn Devine, CG, CGI
Veterans can be reticent about sharing accounts of their combat experiences, unless the listener is the right person or an incident triggers the memories. It took both in the case of my mother’s youngest brother, Clifford F. DeRevere. He was an Army captain during the bloody campaign for Okinawa in World War II, but it wasn’t until after his death in 2005, when he was just shy of his 94th birthday, that we learned about his unusual role in the war effort.
Uncle Cliff spent his entire working career with the phone company, which, when World War II approached, landed him a direct commission as a lieutenant in the Army Signal Corps. I was still in elementary school in 1942 when he came to our house in his new officer uniform of “pinks and greens”—taupe trousers, dark olive drab blouse—before he left for his first duty at the Signal Corps Replacement Training Center at Camp Crowder, Missouri.
I knew Uncle Cliff went to the South Pacific, rose to the grade of captain, and commanded a signal company, but after the war he didn’t return to the East Coast. Though we kept in touch, neither his infrequent visits nor regular telephone calls encouraged discussion of his World War II experiences.
It was a stepson, a combat veteran of Vietnam, who became the right listener—the person to whom my uncle finally spoke of his World War II experiences. That’s how we learned that Uncle Cliff commanded an unusual joint Army-Marine unit that provided communications between the separate services in the heat of combat. The unit included some of the highly secret Marine Corps Navajo code-talkers. Called Joint Assault Signal Companies (JASCO), they had Army, Marine, Army Air Force, and Navy communications specialists and were trained and equipped to link elements operating on land, sea, and air—still a challenge today after more than half a century.
An illustrated book about World War II planes prompted the incident that triggered my uncle’s memories. The book had a picture of a Japanese Ki-21, a two-engine transport that crash-landed at a U.S. airbase in Okinawa on 24 May 1945. The caption said the plane had taken part in a suicide mission.
It was during his final days that Uncle Cliff, who had a terminal illness, and one of the stepsons were paging through the book when suddenly Uncle Cliff exclaimed, “I know that plane!” The crash landing had stopped within 50 yards of his signal site, and 20 sappers left the plane, intent on destroying targets in the area. Four of the men headed for Uncle Cliff’s signal installation but were killed before they could do any damage. Others were more successful, destroying a squadron of new C-54 transports that had arrived earlier the same day.
Uncle Cliff’s account led to a further sharing of military experiences between the veteran of World War II combat and the stepson, a Marine radio operator and wireman through three major operations in Vietnam who would later describe the opportunity to know Uncle Cliff as a gift. The book triggered the exchange. But it was furthered by the common bond, though in different wars, of shared combat experiences.
Donn Devine is a regular contributor to Ancestry Magazine.
Email This Post
This just recently happened to me. My husband a VietNam veteran told me when he first returned from there he didn’t want to talk about it. I’ve respected his wishes, though on rare occasions he’s said a few things. But a few weeks ago my uncle stopped for a visit.
He started talking about his experience in VietNam and my husband shared several stories. I simply picked up my notebook and started writing.
I’ve learned that all we hear from veterans is filtered through their perceptions of their individual experiences. My young husband was kille in Italy on May 23, 1944. Each of his suviving buddies, upon their return home, provided a different, and conflicting, story about what had occurred that day. Most prevalent was that my husband had stepped on a land mine, lost a leg, and died in a field hospital. Many years later, the medical records I requested from the Department of the Army made no mention of a lost limb, but one comment appeared - “his hands were too badly burned to permit finger-printing to confirm identification. However, other methods confirmed his identification.”
I am an Occupationsl Therapy Assistant and work in skilled nursing centers. Frequently I am privileged to listen to the stories of veterns. I am greatful for this opportunity, and feel truely blessed that they are willing to talk to me. I wish I had writted down the stories as some are very interesting. I try to encourge them to write them down for their families and the rest of us,because once they are gone so are their stories.
My younger brother was in viet Nam too and has a map of his travels while there up to Siagon. He now can release information that the military did not want him to talk about for 30 years. He was a very skilled man finding the troups way out of the dense brush in Nam when nobody else knew what direction they were going.
I was so shocked for him to tell he was a Black beret. He would go in before camps were set up and clear the area of the Viet Congs, ensuring that the camp would be safe.
He told of being one of 250 men left of a group. His fellow comrades were shot down in the fox holes.
He and his buddy were in the fox hole when he seen his buddy go down. Finally he heard only his gun replying to the gunfire on the camp. He slithered thru the mud to get to the machine gun in another fox hole and rattled off rounds like he thought he would be shot any minute. When the helicopter came in the next morning he was still shooting. They called down on a loud speaker to cease fire they were on his side.
He became a leader of his men. He became a great Seargent and signed up for Guard duty once out of the services. Again there he was very good with the troops and helped with the other guards in a horrible tornado that passed thru my area.
He is in very poor health today from the result of the Agent Orange.
my grandfather served in ww2,i don’t know much about his time there but he will always be my hero.