Category: Remembering Veterans

Memories of the War

Story and photos by Jim Smothers
Submitted Photos

For a half century, Howell Dulaney would not talk about World War II. He tried to shut it out. He didn’t want to think about the horrors he experienced in the war, and he wanted the nightmares to stop.

“It just gets so real. It leaves you with an uncomfortable feeling,” he said.

“It was 50 years after the war before I thought about talking about it,” he said.

That happened after he joined the George S. Patton, Jr., Chapter of the Battle of the Bulge in Birmingham, an exclusive group of veterans of that battle.

Besides their monthly meetings, there was an annual Christmas party. At one of those events, the chapter president went to each veteran and asked him to tell an experience he had during the war.

“When he got around to me, I was about the last one, and I didn’t know what I was going to say. But when it was my turn, I asked, ‘Do you know about Bear Bryant, that they claim he could walk on water?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’ve heard that.’ I said, ‘Well, I walked on water.’ ”

Then he told how he almost drowned, but was saved by a German soldier.

Part of his engineering group was assigned to ferry infantry soldiers across the Moselle River to prepare for an assault on a German division. The other engineers were to replace a span in the bridge for the rest of the army to cross, but that couldn’t be accomplished if the Germans were there to stop them. So, an attack was planned.

His battalion was split into three parts, two to get the infantry across the river to attack, and one to fix the bridge. Two engineers would be in each boat to ferry six infantry soldiers at a time across the river on a dark, moonless night. The soldiers were instructed to paddle without raising the paddles from the water to maintain silence during the crossing.

“We gave them wooden pegs and told them to use those to plug holes in the boats in case we were fired upon,” he said. “That really got their attention.”

On one of the crossings, they found the infantry had taken some German POWs, and the engineers were tasked with taking them back to the other side.

“On that crossing, our boat capsized. We learned later that we had tipped over on an old ferry cable,” he said. “I had all my uniform on, my helmet and my rifle, and I was not a good swimmer.”

He dog paddled, trying to stay afloat, growing more desperate by the second until, just at the point of giving up, a hand reached down and lifted him up.

“When that happened, my feet hit bottom, and I realized I was only in about four feet of water. We were almost at the bank, but it was so dark I didn’t know that. I looked up and it was one of the POWs we had just brought across. He was taken away with the others, and I never even found out his name.”

Dulaney hasn’t liked the water ever since.

But after telling his story to his fellow veterans, he decided it was OK to talk about the war. He developed an outline for sharing his memories, and gave speeches to a number of schools and church youth groups.

He shared many of his memories with them, but tended to leave out some details—like the bloody water at Utah Beach. He didn’t tell them about young soldiers, his age, who were injured and crying for their mothers, or the horrible injuries some of them suffered.

But he did begin sharing his story with other people.

Dulaney grew up in Eastaboga as one of 15 children in the family. He never finished grammar school because farm life was so demanding. They raised cotton and row crops on an 80-acre farm, as well as animals for slaughter. His mother made dresses for the girls from flour sacks, and shirts for the boys from fertilizer bags. Shoes were a luxury and mostly worn about six months out of the year.

“It was hard work, but it was a good life,” he said.

He joined the Army at 17 and trained at Fort McCain in Mississippi, where he and his fellow engineers practiced bridge-making methods on the Yazoo River. He made bus trips home to see his family, and on one fateful trip he sat next to telephone company operator Robbie Reynolds from Columbus, Mississippi. They wrote to each other during the rest of his training and throughout the war.

After completing training in Mississippi, his group went by train to Boston where they boarded a ship for Great Britain. They sailed around Ireland, up the River Clyde into Glasgow, Scotland, and then traveled by train to Dorchester near the English Channel. About a week later, they loaded their supplies and themselves into a Higgins Boat (made in Mobile, Ala.) and spent the night crossing the Channel for the invasion.

“In Dorchester, we received our combat equipment and began to attend classes, learning what to do if wounded or captured and what information to give the enemy if captured,” he said.

“Once aboard the landing craft, we were told we would be crossing the English Channel into enemy territory within hours, and our destination would be Utah Beach…we knew this was D-Day. Some thought it might be their last day. As the boat was moving out everybody was real nervous. Some of us were trigger happy and ready to fight. Some were praying. And some were crying.”

They landed less than half an hour after the infantry and Marines first landed.

“As we approached the beach, as soon as our craft landed we began to leave any way we could, out the front or over the sides. It was really frightening with all the noise from big guns, rifle fire and mortars exploding all around. The water was waist deep, and it was bloody. There were dead bodies floating everywhere and wounded soldiers crying for help. The only thing we could do was help them out of the water and help them get to a medic.”

Shortly after Dulaney’s battalion arrived in Europe, Eisenhower brought in Patton to be the “fighting general” the Third Army needed, and Dulaney’s battalion was part of that army.

“Patton was an amazing general. He was a great leader, always in the battlefield with his men. He had proved he was a leader on the battlefield in World War I,” he said. “Patton’s theory was once you the get enemy running, don’t give them time to stop and fire back, and it worked.”

Patton moved so quickly Eisenhower told Patton’s commander, General Bradley, to slow him down before he got so deep into enemy territory he would be surrounded and cut off from the other armies. Bradley started rationing Patton’s gasoline to limit how far he could go.

Patton responded by taking his supply trucks to find a gasoline storage depot. “Now, when a four star general pulls up in his Jeep with his supply trucks and says ‘fill ‘em up boys,’ do you think he’s getting his gasoline?”

Patton’s speed helped rescue the 101st Airborne Division when they were surrounded early in the Battle of the Bulge. Eisenhower called Patton to see how long it would take him to get his army to Bastogne, Belgium, to help, and Patton told him 24 hours. He then moved his army without a break, except for refueling, pushing through Germany and Luxembourg to get there.

Dulaney earned his Purple Heart during the Battle of the Bulge when he was hit by a piece of shrapnel from a “Screaming Mimi” artillery round. It was a minor wound, treated by a medic on site, and he returned to duty without being sent away for additional treatment.

His battalion’s last action under fire came at Regensburg, Germany, where a bridge was needed across the Danube. It was built under fire, but not without the loss of four men killed and seven wounded.

After that, Patton moved toward Prague, but was called back to Regensburg when the war ended. Their new orders were to build barracks for a prison camp.

While in Regensburg, Dulaney’s older brother “Doc” from the 7th Army, stationed in Munich, paid him a surprise visit on a three-day pass.

“What a happy three days that was,” he said. “We received a big write-up in the Stars and Stripes magazine. After World War II, my younger brother was in the Korean War. Thank God we all came home safe and whole.”

He said the Germans had superior equipment, but the Americans were better fighters

“I’m proud I was a soldier in Patton’s army, and I thank God every day for sparing my life. I think Gen. Patton was the greatest general ever. He also had the ‘Greatest Generation’ fighting with him and for him…his 3rd Army fought across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and into Czechoslovakia. His army crossed 24 major rivers, liberated more than 82,000 square miles of territory, more than 1,800 cities and villages and captured 956,000 enemy soldiers. His army destroyed 3,000 tanks, 500 artillery pieces, 15,000 miscellaneous vehicles and 2,000 German aircraft.

“I’m not proud of the things I had to do in the war, but war is war. It’s kill or be killed, and we must win all our wars, at all costs, in order to continue to keep and enjoy our freedoms.”

He is a contributor to the National WWII museum in New Orleans, and he encourages everyone to go see it to gain a better appreciation of what it was about.

“I want people to understand what war really means,” he said. “I just want the young people to know what our freedoms mean to us, and we are slowly losing our freedoms.”

Upon his return home from the war, his first destination was to see his family in Eastaboga. But Robbie was on his mind, too, and it wasn’t long before he traveled to Columbus, Mississippi, to see her.

They married within weeks and built a life together. After a 40-year career with Alabama Power, he retired as a district superintendent. They built their “dream home” at Rock Mountain Lake below Bessemer and lived there for 10 years before moving to Memphis to be near their daughter, Eugenia Bostic and her husband, Gary. They were in real estate, and after the real estate crash, they relocated to Florida, and the Dulaneys moved to Pell City, splitting the distance between family in the Eastaboga area and friends in the Bessemer area.

Robbie passed away six years later. Then Eugenia developed inoperable cancer and moved in with her dad to live out the rest of her life. Dulaney was 90 when she died, and decided to sell his home and move to the Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City, where he lives today.

The legend behind name of veterans’ home

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Submitted Photos

The military heroics and achievements of Robert L. Howard are no secret.

They earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor, among many other medals and awards.

However, what may not be so well known about this man — who is the namesake of Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home in Pell City — is that he appeared in two John Wayne movies, said his brother Steven Howard.

During his 36-year Army career, Robert completed multiple tours in Vietnam and received a commission from master sergeant to first lieutenant in 1969. He was a Ranger, Pathfinder, Paratrooper, Infantryman and a member of the Special Forces. Ultimately, he rose to command positions. He also was involved in Desert Shield/Desert Storm.

Information from the veterans’ home website reveals that he was an honor graduate as a Ranger, Pathfinder and parachute rigger and was deemed an “outstanding” Infantryman in his class. The site gives an extensive list of medals and awards Robert received, among them the Distinguished Service Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star for Valor, eight Purple Hearts, Legion of Merit and four Vietnamese Crosses of Gallantry.

The awards and medals that Robert received during his military career are, in fact, too numerous to fit in the shadow box display at the veterans’ home.

In 1956, 17-year-old Robert entered the U.S. Army, continuing a family military tradition that dates back to the Spanish-American War, Steven said.

In between Robert’s enlistment in 1956 and his retirement in the fall of 1992, the Opelika native earned degrees from the University of Maryland, Texas Christian University and Central Michigan University and graduated from the National War College.

Robert was also named to the Military Hall of Fame of the Hoover Institute; Military Hall of Fame of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Alabama; State of Texas War Memorial; Ranger Hall of Fame, and posthumously to the Army Aviation Association of America Hall of Fame.

Robert earned “every medal for combat courage in what is known as the military ‘pyramid of honor’ at least once and, in some instances, multiple times,” Steven said in a speech July 11, 2014, on “Colonel Howard Day” at the veterans’ home. That date was Robert’s birthday.

“From rifleman in the Infantry, he rose to become a recon team leader … with the most elite of America’s special operations units, the Special Operations Group or SOG, as it is commonly known today,” Steven recounted in his speech. “Fifty-four months in Vietnam, 380 combat patrols, 1,683 parachute jumps and eight awards of the Purple Heart. It should have been at least 14 instead of just eight. But many incidents Robert just quietly shrugged off as insignificant and unworthy of another medal.”

Robert’s many acts of battlefield bravery and determination, especially in circumstances when the soldiers were surrounded or outnumbered, earned him nominations for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Oftentimes, Robert put himself in danger to rescue wounded soldiers, Steven said.

One time, Robert executed a daring mission in which he entered an enemy camp and captured a North Vietnamese Army colonel. During later interrogation, the enemy colonel gave vital information about troop placement that aided U.S. strategy and saved the lives of many American soldiers, his brother recounted.

As a result of the capture, the North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong placed a bounty on Robert, said Steven, who, himself, is a two-time Purple Heart recipient in Vietnam.

Prior to that, Steven had served alongside Robert in Vietnam. After a price was put on Robert’s head, the Army separated the brothers out of security concerns, Steven said.

From battlefield to big screen

During one tour while Robert was a Ranger, he was wounded and sent to a hospital. President Lyndon Johnson and John Wayne visited the hospital. Johnson remarked to Wayne that Robert was a good-looking Green Beret. Wayne agreed and sought to have Robert take part in Wayne’s upcoming movie, Steven said.

Thus, Robert appeared in The Green Berets. He played the role of an Airborne instructor, according to the website, www.rlhtribute.com.

It was not long before World War II hero-turned-actor Audie Murphy joined Wayne in trying to convince Robert to become an actor, Steven said.

To tout the movie The Green Berets, Wayne, Murphy, Robert and Steven were seen going about New York City together for two nights.

“They were all so much alike,” Steven said of the two actors and Robert. “All of them were nice guys, the kind you’d like to hang out with.”

Steven was elated when he saw his brother on the movie screen the first time. “He was amazing!”

Robert also made a parachute jump in another John Wayne movie, The Longest Day.

Ultimately, Robert decided against a movie career in order to be involved in one of the most elite and covert of the Army’s Special Forces, Steven said.

“He had made the decision that the Army was for him,” said Steven.

Author John Plaster took note of Robert’s deeds and battlefield actions and has recorded them in two books, SOG: The Secret Wars of America’s Commandos in Vietnam and Secret Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines with the Elite Warriors of SOG, Steven said.

After Vietnam, Robert’s service concentrated greatly on teaching and training soldiers preparing for Airborne, Infantry, Ranger or Pathfinder assignments. He was also an instructor at the Special Warfare School, and Command and General Staff College.

“He loved his men,” Steven said.

Upon his retirement from the military, Robert settled in Texas and worked with the Department of Veteran Affairs. He retired in 2006.

“He was a straight-up guy. He was easygoing. You’d never know he was in the building, unless someone told you. My brother was the kind of guy I always wanted to be,” said Steven, who relocated to Pell City from Prattville to volunteer at the veterans’ home.

Robert – who was a husband, father and grandfather — died Dec. 23, 2009, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

“Much has been written and said about Robert’s chest full of medals — both U.S. and foreign,” Steven said in his July speech. “But I will never forget one statement that he made to me, and it was profound indeed. Looking down briefly at the left side of his uniform, he said, ‘I would trade all of these to train one soldier.’

“To many, he will be remembered as a larger-than-life Green Beret,” Steven continued. “And this, he was. But to me, he will be simply Robert, my brother.”

Additional assistance with this article was provided by the staff of Col. Robert L. Howard State Veterans Home.

Long on inspiration

Story by Leigh Pritchett
Photos by Michael Callahan

The home of Clarence Edward Goodwin is a soft yellow, trimmed with white and cradled by blooms.

Overlooking the lake, it resembles a dollhouse.

In its entrance is a wall hanging that reads, “Within this house, may God’s love abide to bless all those who step inside.”

Goodwin sat in the bright and cheerful sunroom fashioned by his own hands. Most people know him as “Shorty” – a nickname he got in first-grade for wearing knickers. Goodwin laughed and told a visitor, “Half my grandkids don’t even know (my real name).”

Great-granddaughters Maya and Eva Webb breezed through from playing outside. Eva stopped long enough to show she had learned to twirl a baton.

It is a pleasant, peaceful existence.

Yet, it is far, far removed from the daily horrors Goodwin faced 70 years ago as a prisoner of war.

Born in Walker County, Goodwin, who is 90, grew up in the Pinson-Chalkville area.

When he was drafted at 18, the United States was involved in World War II. After finishing Army basic training in Texas, Goodwin boarded a train for Virginia, where he would be deployed overseas. On the way, he became ill and was hospitalized in Pennsylvania.

Upon his release, records declaring him dead went to Washington, D.C., while the very much alive Goodwin was sent to Virginia. From there, he went first to North Africa, then Italy.

Because he was “deceased,” his two basic training paychecks would be his entire monetary compensation for three years of military service.

Attached to the 36th Texas Division, 142nd Infantry, he and four others were positioned at a river in the region of Naples, Italy, with the charge of preventing the Germans from advancing.

“There was a river in front of us. (German) tanks came across it like it was a roadway,” Goodwin recounted. “We ran out of ammunition and everything else. We had no choice” but to surrender.

Goodwin’s captors marched him 350 miles and put him into a boxcar with so many other people that they could only stand up. Goodwin was taken to Munich, Germany, and made to walk into Poland. He ended up in a POW camp working 12-hour days. At night, the captives were locked up and their shoes confiscated.

That was in 1943.

From then until late summer 1945, he would spend time in at least four different stalags in Germany, as well as work camps in Poland. He would turn 19 and 20 in captivity.

With his own eyes, he saw unspeakable atrocities: Women raped and the men who tried to defend them being strung up on street lamps until they died; people shot at point blank as they fell on their knees, crying for mercy; ashes falling from the sky like snow — ashes from incinerated bodies.

He was made to remove the bodies of starvation victims at the Dachau concentration camp.

He saw Jewish people who were so thin that they were skeletons. Yet, it was an accident that he should see them and the corpses. Because he is an American, he was quickly removed from the task. “The Germans didn’t want the Americans to know that was happening,” he said.

He knows the Holocaust was real. Even so, his mind could not comprehend the evil. “How can this be happening?” he wondered. “What’s next?”

Those two words – “what’s next?” – described life day after day during captivity.

There was little, if any, food for the POWs. They would scratch in the dirt to find worms, insects, grass – anything to eat.

“There were a number (of POWs) who just willed themselves to death,” recalled Goodwin. “They just didn’t want to live.”

The winters were long and the cold penetrating. “It’ll get to you in a hurry,” Goodwin said.

The prisoners had only pants and shirts. There were no coats, no glass in the windows, no heat in the buildings. The captives huddled together for warmth.

Torture was frequent and heinous.

Once, Goodwin was put in an underground pit that was too small for him to sit or stand. He had seen other men emerge from this punishment, stripped of their sanity by the relentless darkness, silence and solitude.

He resolved to remain sane.

He would play ballgames in his head, adding extra innings as needed. He would think about his mother, Katie Goodwin, and replay in his mind the different steps it took for her to prepare a meal or attend to her chores.

“That’s how I kept my mind occupied,” Goodwin said.

He had no idea how much time passed while he was in the pit, but later learned it was 15 days.

During the months and years of captivity, thoughts of his mother were ever present with him. Many are the times he asked God to give him the chance to hug her once more.

Four times, Goodwin tried to escape from camps. Each time, soldiers, dogs or Hitler Youth caught him.

The fifth attempt was vastly different.

Using a yardstick he found somewhere, Goodwin started measuring all sorts of objects in the camp. “Cassidy” – a man whom Goodwin took into his confidence for this mission – wrote down the figures Goodwin would tell him.

The pair measured and measured for weeks. This activity became so common that the guards apparently began to see it as harmless.

At one point, Goodwin was even allowed to measure the barrel of the gun a German guard was holding.

The duo measured around a guard building. Goodwin discovered that, when he was behind the building, the guard could not see him or the train station about 300 feet away.

One day when they were measuring around the building, Goodwin told Cassidy to run for the train when its whistle blew.

The whistle sounded; the two sprinted.

As they approached the back of the train, a German officer at the rear of the last car urged them in his language to hurry. He stretched out his hand to help Goodwin onto the train, and Goodwin thanked him in German.

Before long, Goodwin and Cassidy came to the sinking realization that the train was headed into – not out of – Germany. They knew they had to get off, so they jumped through the train windows. Goodwin landed on a river embankment and swam away, with bullets flying past him. But Cassidy collided with a metal bridge and died instantly.

For three weeks, Goodwin hid in the daytime and traveled at night. He sought Russian troops, knowing they were the only ones in the region working with the Allies.

When he came upon the Russians, they were not pleased to see him, their sentiments toward the Americans having soured over issues. In fact, they wanted to send Goodwin to Siberia.

Somehow, though, Goodwin convinced an officer that he wanted to fight alongside the Russians soldiers. For three weeks, he did.

When the Russians finally met up with American troops in Berlin, Goodwin was able to rejoin his countrymen. He said to a Russian officer, “Let’s go home. The war’s over.”

The officer replied, “For you, yes. For me, never.” Then, the officer pulled a star pin from his lapel and gave it to Goodwin, asking him to remember.

Goodwin keeps the pin in a shadow box, which contains the tangible reminders of his service to his country. There are medals for marksmanship, expert rifleman, North Africa campaign, German occupation, good conduct and World War II. His POW ribbon was sent to him 42 years after the fact during President Reagan’s Administration. His favorite, though, is the medal for gallantry.

Tears stream down Goodwin’s face as he retells what happened on the battlefield and in the POW camps. Tears come when he speaks of asking God to let him hug his mother again. They come as he talks about how God’s hand was upon him during captivity.

He thinks back to the moment when his hands were raised in surrender. Goodwin realized then that he was a man without a country, a flag, a family or friends. He was alone.

It was then that he clearly heard the voice of God saying, “But I’m with you.”

“A peace came over me,” Goodwin said. “I can’t explain it.”

The peace was present the entire time he was a POW. “It’s still there,” Goodwin said.

Surrounded by ‘angels’

Many were the times that his life was spared or that people came into his path to help him. He is certain God put angels around him to protect him.

One instance during which Goodwin felt that protection was when he stood before a firing squad. The soldier giving the commands shouted, “Ready … aim …”

The word “fire” was all that stood between Goodwin and death.

But rather than utter that final word, the soldier gave Goodwin the chance to go back to work.

Another time was during a torturous interrogation. His German interrogator suddenly stated in English to other German soldiers in the room, “He’s a Christian. Let him go.”

Still another act of divine intervention was when Goodwin experienced appendicitis. A Russian medic happened to be in the same camp as Goodwin. Even though he could not speak English, the medic indicated that he could do the surgery.

The operating room was a stall from which a cow had to be removed, the scalpel a sharpened piece of metal. The string of a nearby feedbag was used for sutures. The only infection control was the 20-degree temperature outside.

There was no anesthesia. Goodwin just passed out at some point during the surgery. When Goodwin awoke, he was alone in the barn. The Russian was gone. In fact, he never saw the Russian again.

“I can see nothing but (God’s) hand in my life,” Goodwin said.

After Goodwin’s escape from captivity, it took a month for him to return by ship to the United States. From New York, he went by train to Birmingham, arriving at 1:30 one morning.

With no other means for getting home, he decided to walk. He figured he had walked over much of Europe as a POW, so he could certainly walk the 22 miles from Birmingham to Pinson.

Goodwin did not know at the time the cloud of uncertainty under which his parents had been living. His parents first had received a telegram, saying their son was killed in action. Later, a Tarrant woman told them she had heard a BBC broadcast that her own son and Goodwin were taken prisoner.

The Goodwins did not know which was the truth.

At 7 a.m., Goodwin reached home.

“That was when I put my arms around my mom that I’d been praying for so long,” Goodwin said. “She fainted.”

After he was discharged from the military, Goodwin had only a week to recuperate before returning to semi-professional baseball.

In a tournament during which he played for the Continental Gin team, he hit a home run and two triples. A scout saw him and Goodwin soon signed to play with the Rome Colonels in South Carolina, a farm team of the Detroit Tigers.

After a year, he decided to go back to semi-pro baseball. In 1953, his team missed winning the World Series in Battle Creek, Mich., by one game.

He played semi-pro until he was 62 years old.

In 1947, he wed his wife Joyce, better known as “Bitt.” They now are in their 66th year of marriage, a union blessed with three children, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Through the years, he has been an aircraft electrical mechanic, a plumber and an appliance repairman with his own shop. “I haven’t quit that yet,” he said. “I won’t ever retire, I don’t guess.”

However, his POW experiences he kept to himself. He did not even tell his dad, Carlton Goodwin, before his death in 1976.

After moving to Pell City in 1982, Goodwin felt like God was telling him to share his story. The first time he told it was at his church, First Baptist in Pell City.

Since, he has spoken to many thousands in schools, churches and other groups in Alabama and during a television interview. He has shared his story about being a POW and about the peace he has through salvation in Jesus Christ, God’s Son.

As a result of his sharing, two professionals at Veterans Administration Hospital in Birmingham told Goodwin they wanted to experience the peace he has in his life. And they received it when they asked Jesus to come into their heart and be their Savior, he said.

Goodwin now believes God allowed him to go through the POW experience so he can minister to others. If it helps someone else, if it leads someone to salvation in Jesus, then the years in captivity were worth the cost, he said.

One thing he has come to understand is the importance of not dwelling on the bad that happens in life. Harboring those thoughts robs a person of joy.

He also said he does not worry about tomorrow or next month or next year. Instead, he lives minute to minute.

“The moment is all that we have,” he said. “I’m only assured of the moment. I’m here at the mercy of the Lord every day, every moment, every breath. When I finish my mission, He’ll call me.”