California Freemason - August/September 2010

”I will cherish this wonderful
trip for the rest of my life.” -
Clarence Simon, veteran
“There are not enough words to express my heartfelt thanks.
Meeting fellow veterans and sharing memories will stay with
me forever.” - Ben Hagans, veteran

North Atlantic. I had a very good
shipmate, a first class electrician, who
transferred to the Arizona, and two
months later he was dead.”
Sitting in the sun and listening to the
cascading water of the fountain in the
center of the memorial, Drake said he
was thinking of that friend, but also of
his wife of 72 years, who died the day
before Thanksgiving. “This is the first
trip I’ve taken in 41 years without her.”
So what does Drake think of the
World War II Memorial? “It’s gigantic,”
Drake says. “I don’t think it leaves
anything to be desired. I hope the people
don’t abuse it, but take advantage of the
beauty. It means a lot to us.”
He also got to see a great deal of
carnage. While soldiers and sailors and
entire ships all around the Gunston
Hall were hit and went down, it never
got a scratch. Andrews readily admits
he suffers from survivor’s guilt. “Every
day since, I’ve thought about that and
asked, Why me?”

Record of service

Another proud Navy man is Harold Andrews of Lakewood Lodge No. 728, who served on the U.S.S. Gunston Hall,

a Whidbey Island-class dock landing ship, from November 1943 to March

1946. He was in the thick of things in the South Pacific.

From April of 1944 to April 1, 1945, Andrews fought in nine invasions. The list reads like a What’s-Where of WWII battles in the South Pacific: The Marshall Islands; Emirau Islands; Dutch New Guinea; Guam; Palau; Leyte Island (“On the same day,” recalls Andrews, “that General McArthur kept his famous I-shall-return promise”); Luzon; Iwo Jima (“I saw a raised flag. I don’t know if it was the first flag or the second, but I saw it”); and, finally, Okinawa.

When it began, Andrews was 18; by the time of the ninth invasion, he had turned 20. He was a machinist’s mate. “I got to see the whole war in the South Pacific like it was on TeleNews Theater,” he says.

The women who
stepped up

“Women who stepped up were measured as citizens of the nation, not as women … This was a people’s war and everyone was in it.” That quote, one of several chiseled in prominent places around the WWII Memorial, is from Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby, first commanding officer of the U.S. Women’s Army Corp. It had special relevance for two members of Operation Greatest Gift, veterans Anna T. Brown, a Marine, and Marie Smallwood, a WAVE.

Said Hill, “I was sworn in on November 9, 1943, a time when the war was going badly. I was called to active duty on January 21, 1944, and we left from the Los Angeles train station for