The Chelsea Standard
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Honoring our Chelsea heroes
Three local veterans recall their service in World War II
By Janet Ogle-Mater, Special Writer
PUBLISHED: November 13, 2008
America entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 16.1 million men and women served in the U.S. Armed Forces from 1941-1946.
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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs projects the number of living WWII veterans to be less than 3 million. They further estimate America loses 900 World War II vets a day.
Like small towns across America, Chelsea sent many of its young men and women to war. According to the "Roll of Honor" sign, which once hung on the outside wall of the Chelsea Market building, 306 men and seven women from Chelsea and the surrounding vicinity served in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II.
Today, the records of the local VFW confirm 18 living WWII veterans. Gus Hansen, Commander of the American Legion, agrees with that number.
"There is no telling how many others may be living, because after the war, some men just wanted to completely separate themselves, so they wouldn't be a member of either group," Hansen said.
According to local obituaries, Chelsea has lost five WWII veterans since May, three during the same week in July.
"We are losing our WWII vets steadily now," says Chuck Reed, commander of VFW Post 4076.
What follows are the stories of three of Chelsea's valiant veterans from World War II.
Daniel Ewald
Daniel Ewald came to Chelsea in 1926 at the age of 3. He turned 18 two weeks before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps a year later on Dec. 15, 1942 while a senior at Chelsea High School.
"My best friend, Joe Hale, talked me into enlisting," Ewald recalls. "We thought we would have it better than in another branch of service - more choices.
"We knew military service was inevitable. My draft orders came just before Christmas, two weeks after I had enlisted."
Ewald joined the Marine Platoon #75 in San Diego for six weeks of boot camp.
"It was a rude awakening," he says. "I thought we would be welcomed, but the discipline started the minute we arrived. I was scared to death. They treated us like a bunch of cattle and dogs. They tested both our physical and mental endurance daily.
"I got along by staying in the middle and going unnoticed. If you were of average skills and learning ability, had good physical condition, and had nothing that made you stand out - like being too short or tall, you could get along.
"I swear, all 60 Marines in our platoon gained 15-20 pounds of muscle in those six weeks."
Ewald spent the next eight months in training at telephone and radio school on the Goleta Marine Base in Santa Barbara, Calif. Then it was off to the South Pacific.
"After 19 days across the Pacific, I remember apprehension of seeing distant islands and wondering what we would encounter. Lucky for us, the fighting Marines had already been there and moved the next battle further north."
Ewald, who achieved the rank of sergeant, was a member of a three-man flight crew on a torpedo bomber. He was the gunner, manning a machine gun, radio, and homing device.
He continued training while stationed in the Hebrides Islands, then his squadron of 360 moved up to the Central Pacific and the island of Guam.
"There were some pretty fierce battles fought with the Japanese there," he says. "Our squadron took over a Japanese airfield, and we flew combat missions in enemy territory from September to December of 1944. We were lucky; we only had a few casualties."
Ewald spent about a year overseas before he got a month furlough home, after which he was sent back to California, then Pearl Harbor. His last mission was from Hawaii to Tsingtao, China in August 1945.
"The war had just ended, but our ship was already loaded, so we went as occupational forces," he says. "We got caught in a ferocious typhoon in Okinawa. It lasted several days, and at the end of it there were hundreds of boats smashed, sunk, or just unusable. I finally got home on March 10, 1946."
After the war, Ewald attended the Michigan Academy of Arts in Saginaw with his best friend and former Marine, Hale. He joined the Dana Corp., in Chelsea, where he worked in the engineering department for more than 33 years.
He married Clara Miller, a lifetime resident of Chelsea, in 1947. Together they raised five children: three daughters and two sons. They have 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Today, Ewald, who turns 85 later this month, and his wife reside quietly in a condo with most of their family living nearby.
Merle Barr Jr.
Merle Barr Jr. received his draft notice in October 1942 when he was 20 years old. He entered U.S. Army basic training at Fort Belvoir, Va. in January 1943. After three months of basic training, he attended Officer Candidate School.
"By the end of June, I had my commission," Barr says.
He was given the rank of second lieutenant, and later captain. He joined the Cleveland National Guard, a combat engineering battalion, in England in October 1943.
"I got there just in time to celebrate my 21st birthday," he says.
Barr trained with the battalion in England by removing old mines that were deteriorating along the British shores, and by completing simulations of ship-to-shore operations.
"We were out front of infantry to take care of the land mines and build roads and bridges," he says. "Because we made the way for the infantry to come through, it was front-line combat."
Barr left England to take part in the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944.
"It was the longest day," Barr stresses, "just like the movie says," speaking of the 1962 war classic "The Longest Day." "It was pretty horrific."
Barr pauses, and then relates his D-Day experience.
"I was talking to a sailor on deck as we were approaching the beach, and suddenly he was lying on the deck, dead," he recalls. "I was about the second man off the right side of the ship that morning, in water up to my ears, when an 88-millimeter shell hit the ship. Blew it up. To this day, I have no idea how many men may have survived."
As a liaison officer between two combat battalions, the mission for Barr was to determine how much loss the battalion he went in with had and then find his own battalion to report the state of affairs.
"We needed information to coordinate opening roads inland from the beach," he explains.
Barr had to travel more than a mile of Omaha Beach on his own.
"There was still sniper fire and I got trapped on the beach by a machine gun nest," he said. "I eventually found a radio man and he made contact with a ship in the channel. He gave them our location, then lost contact. The ship just kept firing in the vicinity - turned the woods into toothpicks. Totally annihilated it."
Barr took refuge in the wooded area and the next morning went back to the beach to find his battalion, which he did by mid-afternoon the day after landing.
Late in 1944, Barr was transferred to military government.
"Toward the end of the war there was a need to have military government personnel working with civilians to get Germany's government, industry, and economy going again," says Barr, who spent all of 1945 working in the Bavarian Alps.
Barr came home in the spring of 1946 and went to work for Chelsea Light and Water Co. He married his first wife later that year. They were divorced in 1959. He has two children, a daughter and a son, from this marriage.
Barr had been working for Federal Screw Works in the Clocktower building when he was drafted, and FSW invited him back in 1947. He began work as the manager of the Chelsea purchasing department, but when the manager of the Detroit purchasing department died suddenly, Barr was offered the position. He commuted from Chelsea to Detroit for 30 years until his retirement in 1987.
He remarried in 1960 to his wife, Arline, and they have a daughter and son. He has seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
Today, Barr, 86, and his wife take pleasure in traveling to visit family members who reside throughout the country, including a son and grandson who live locally.
Duane Landwehr
Duane Landwehr, originally from Manchester, enlisted in July 1944, when he was only 16. He had changed his birth certificate to declare he was older.
"I and couple of friends went to the Federal building in Detroit to enlist in the Navy, but they wouldn't take us," he says. "They told us to come back when we were older. So, we went downstairs to the Merchant Marine office and they signed us up.
"We just wanted to go. We were proud of it. And we figured we would have to go sooner or later, so why not sooner."
He received his six weeks of basic training at Sheepshead Bay, N.Y.
"I didn't know what to expect really," he recalls. "But we learned how to fire certain weapons, tie knots, how to get boats off the ship, and things like that - it was all new to me."
He was given the rank of seaman, which meant he would be responsible for maintaining and operating deck equipment, standing watch, steering the vessel, and routine maintenance.
"We had two four-hour duty shifts each day," he says. "On the first, I would stand watch for an hour, steer for an hour, check the equipment for an hour, and then do what needed to be done on the ship for the rest of the time."
In February 1945, Landwehr set out on a Liberty ship, a type of cargo ship built during WWII for wartime industrial needs, from Baltimore to Italy. He was part of a large Merchant Marine convoy loaded with ammunition and other supplies for the troops.
In the area of Gibraltar, which was heavily manned by submarines, the convoy lost a ship.
"I did not see the actual sinking, there were so many ships in our convoy," he explains.
From Italy, Landwehr returned to Galveston, Texas, then crossed the Atlantic again to France in April 1945. He left France and voyaged through the Panama Canal into the South Pacific, where he remained for a few months.
On his last mission, Landwehr was sent to Okinawa in October 1945, where his ship got caught in the same ferocious typhoon Dan Ewald had been in.
"We didn't know each other then, and it was just a couple of years ago that we discovered we were there at the same time," says Landwehr, who returned home and left the service in January 1946, just before he turned 18.
Landwehr moved to Chelsea in 1953 and married lifetime resident Winona Franklin. Together they had three sons, and together they endure the loss of a son a year ago. They have five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Also in 1953, Landwehr began work at the Chrysler Proving Grounds. He worked as a test driver, technician, and for 18 years as test supervisor. He retired in 1983.
Today, Landwehr, 80, volunteers at the Chelsea Community Hospital where he delivers the mail and drives the shuttle. He and his wife enjoy visits with their family who live throughout southeastern Michigan.
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