The logistics of getting such equipment there in those days seem quite formidable to me.
That's why they developed the LST, landing ship tank.
Posted on 02/18/2005 12:29:49 PM PST by SwinneySwitch
Mission resident Richard Kemp is used to people stopping and staring at his Madeline.
The 53-year-old, in fact, relishes the attention he gets when people ask him about the companion that he has shared his life with for the past 11 years.
Of course, this one doesn’t spend money.
She just demands it.
Lots of it. About $90,000.
Madeline is no lady; she’s a tank. A 1944 olive-drab Sherman tank with twin diesel engines that rattle when she starts up. She doesn’t purr like her successors; instead, she lets out loud gurgles and burps — symbolic of an era when military machines were less about stealth and more about utility.
"She gets loud," Kemp said of the tank, which he named after his mother several years ago.
Kemp began restoring Madeline nearly 11 years ago, after he saw an ad in the Military Vehicle Preservation Association’s magazine, Supply Line.
"It was $30,000, and $5,000 for the freight," he said of the initial investment.
Madeline’s parts have been imported from across Europe and Asia. In fact, Madeline’s engine was originally used on a Sherman in Russia during World War II, Kemp said.
Of course, Kemp said he didn’t know it would take him 11 years to rebuild her.
"It looked like junk," he recalled. "But I was told all I had to do was put it together — like a puzzle."
Several puzzle pieces (and $60,000) later, Kemp is driving Madeline in local parades and military air shows.
He’s also taking her out to her first battle re-enactment this weekend in Doss, a tiny town northwest of Fredericksburg. He left this morning for the five-hour trip.
The re-enactment will commemorate the Feb. 23, 1945, raising of the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, immortalized in one of the most famous photographs in history. A Rio Grande Valley Marine, Cpl. Harlon Block of Weslaco, was one of the handful of Americans who hoisted the Stars and Stripes that day, but he was killed in action before the battle was over. This year is the 60th anniversary of the battle, which secured the strategic island for Allied forces in 1945 near the end of World War II.
The event is organized by the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, the only museum dedicated to combat in the Pacific Ocean. The museum is often referred to as the Admiral Nimitz Museum, named after Chester Nimitz, the Fredericksburg native who commanded U.S. naval forces in the Pacific during much of the war.
Organizers are expecting more than 300 re-enactors from 22 states including Ohio, Florida and California. There’s also expected to be 80 re-enactors from Japan.
The battlefield will also include several Japanese pillboxes, or concrete defenses the Japanese used to secure limited safety during the battle; a dozen World War II aircraft; and 50 military vehicles, including tanks, halftracks and flamethowers, said Helen McDonald, the museum’s assistant director.
Michael Faubion, a military history professor at the University of Texas-Pan American, said historical re-enactments like the one this weekend are important because they bring history alive.
"History in a textbook can be really boring," he said. "(History) comes to life with re-enactments and makes it more interesting than just words on a page, which can be really abstract."
Of course, re-enactments can never compare to being there to talking with someone who was, he said.
"It’s never as realistic as possible," he said. "But it’s just as relevant and important."
The 36-day battle for Iwo Jima was one of the Pacific theater’s most deadly. Only 1,000 of the 20,000 Japanese defenders survived, while 6,000 Americans were killed.
Most people think the battle was over when the U.S. flag went up on Mt. Suribachi, Faubian said. However, Americans didn’t secure the whole island until three weeks later, March 16.
The re-enactment also honors Iwo Jima veterans like Donna resident James Bell, then a Marine corporal who was shot in the head during the battle.
Bell, 81, was saved by two sugar packets he placed between the lining of his helmet and the metal. When the bullet hit his helmet, it glided through the sugar and out the back of the helmet, grazing his hair, now snowy white with the passage of time.
Bell is expected to be one of the speakers at the five-day event. The patriotic spectacle also includes a parade, USO-themed musical and the battle re-enactment.
This will be Madeline’s first appearance in a re-enactment, Kemp said.
"I just hope it doesn’t rain, I don’t want the OD to run," he said jokingly of the tank’s olive drab paint. "I just don’t like for it to get wet."
As for the drive, Kemp said, it won’t be too bad — most of the time people just stop and stare.
"The real fun is at the checkpoint," he said, coyly. "All those Border Patrol agents want to see it."
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Dulcinea Cuellar covers entertainment and features for The Monitor. You can reach her at (956) 683-4427.
Cadillac gasoline engines were used in one variation...
My dad flew C-46s over the Hump in the Chnia-Burma-India Campaign as a civilian pilot. He was born in 1906 so he was a little too old to step forward in 1942. The CBI was a place no one wanted, so that's where he went.
As a civie, was he with Chenault in China? We had lots of what would be Air America today guys like your Dad pre-WW2.
Your Dad was a great American patriot.
I can understand precisely what you mean. One of the things which really ticks me off is how in Japan their children are so well educated about Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but they know nothing about The Rape of Nanking, or places like where my Uncle was captured, Corregidor, and the Bataan Death march which followed. When I was a kid, he told me lots of stories about what he saw and went through in the POW camps and Hell Ships... the Japanese soldiers deserve NO respect so far as I am concerned.
Hirohito should have been HUNG!
Wow.
BTTT.
I'm sure, too, but it's too bad we have not allowed the use of flamethrowers in Afghanistan. They would have been ideal for the cave battles. Likewise in Fallujah - excellent room clearing method, plus it would scare the bejeepers out of the hajis. Fighting fire with fire as it were - remember the Blackwater contractors...
He probably would have liked that too, but you know what they say about Asian men...
My Dad carried Jap steel from a mortar shell to his grave.
That's all the Jap iron my family ever had around - never a Jap car.
The logistics of getting such equipment there in those days seem quite formidable to me.
That's why they developed the LST, landing ship tank.
Said the Germans Called the Shermans "The Ronson Lighters" it took a great loss of life to knock out one tiger, Heard also of a tiger commander named barkman(sp?} that destroyed over 12 shermans before he was finaly overcome
But they all seemed to get over it somehow before they passed on to the other side. Or, some are still alive today.
Not a one of them (at least that I've talked too) hated the average Japanese over what their military had done, nor hated Japan after our bilateral 1953 Peace Treaty with them.
I guess most of them realized that America Had Won (in a huge way), that Japan changed, and they just went on with their lives.
Plenty of people I believe actually own products that they don't know the components, for example, for sure aren't made or sourced in Japan. It is very hard to tell these days.
The whole story about Hirohito being set free in itself would make a great book.
Think what today's media would do with that.
Wait a minute. That was done by Harry Truman. The story would be on page Z99 or in the classified section and we'd never know about it!
Well, sorry to disillusion ya about that, but my uncle hated them so badly that when his sister went to japan in 1952 and adopted two Japanese babies, he never spoke to her again. His last words to her ever were "Get those Nip bastards off my land and never show your face to me again."
Those little babies hadn't even a microscopic trace of sin over what the Nippon Teikoku Rikugun did before their births.
But what can you say or do?
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