Five C.O. World War II veterans share their stories

Five Central Oregon World War II veterans sat down to talk with NewsChannel 21’s Wanda Moore about their wartime memories before she joins them on their Honor Flight to the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C.

One of them is Jim Murphy of Redmond, who grew up on a ranch in Weed, California. When he was 20 years old, he was drafted to the Army Air Corps and headed overseas on the Queen Mary.

“Actually, I over-celebrated my 21st birthday in the province of Champagne and got busted,” Murphy said.

He landed at Omaha Beach in Normandy on Dec. 13, 1944 and helped open the first airstrip in France.

“We could see the shells bursting a mile or so away and they gave us hell,” Murphy recalled. “So we went back and dug our fox holes.”

In France, he was an armor for planes, which played a tremendous part in the victory in Normandy.

“I think that’s one reason why the Cherbourg peninsula was taken as quickly as it was,” Murphy said.

Irv Kaplan was a radio operator on bomber planes for the Marine Corps.

“I flew in SP2Cs, which are a form of diver-bomber,” Kaplan said.

It didn’t take him long to pick the division he wanted to be in.

“The reason I joined the Marine Corps was because they were always in tropical climates,” Kaplan said.

His unit was flying over islands in the Pacific. As they were inching closer to Japan, the dropping of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war.

“If we were going to fly over Japanese islands, they wouldn’t have held back anything with the anti-aircraft,” Kaplan said.

The scariest moment of his time in the service was during a test flight, when the engine went out and their plane started to dive.

“It’s awful quiet when the engine is off, but luckily the pilot kept his cool,” Kaplan said.

Andy Riener was an anti-aircraft gun operator in Hawaii.

“For 10 months, we looked into the sky, looking for the Japanese,” Riener said.

Four months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, his unit was shipped to Europe. After spending the cold winter months on the ship during the Battle of the Bulge, trying to stay warm, they arrived in Germany.

The town in which they arrived was already liberated, but the horrors of the war were still evident.

Riener remembers one concentration camp in particular.

“That’s what our officers made us look at. This wall, which was 12 or 15 foot high and maybe 40 or 60 foot long — and it was nothing but bodies,” Riener said.

Although it has been 70 years, Riener remembers those days like they were yesterday.

“Despite my memory going away, I never forgot any of it,” Riener said.

Sandy Porter was 18 years old when he received the letter from the government, telling him he was drafted to the Air Corps.

“At that time, they were losing one out of every two bomber pilots and one out of every three fighter pilots, so they wanted bodies,” Porter said.

When he completed his training in 1944, they did not need pilots any more. Porter calls himself lucky.

“I was at the right age. Any older, I would have seen action – any younger and I wouldn’t have been in it at all,” Porter said.

When Porter returned, he and his wife traveled the world. And although they have been to Washington, D.C., they haven’t seen the World War II memorial.

“That will be new,” Porter said.

Robert Grills was 20 when he was drafted into the Navy, serving on an attack transporter ship. His unit was in the South Pacific, traveling some 50,000 miles.

“We had several encounters with submarines that weren’t ours,” Grills said.

Luckily, the escort boats were able to destroy all of them.

Later, he went to the Underwater Demolition Team, the predecessor to the Navy SEALs.

His team was developing a suit to keep pilots warm if they went down in Arctic waters. Grills was selected to test out the suit in ice-cold Alaska waters for 45 minutes.

“That one was in open waters. There was slush, ice on the water,” Grills said.

The most memorable moment of his service was the invasion of Okinawa.

“There were several people who had wounds, where the scrap metal was just raining down like hail,” Grills said.

Stay tuned this week as we join these five Central Oregonians and dozens of fellow World War II veterans on their visit to the memorial built in honor of them and all who served.