Honoring those who fought for freedom
Nov. 11 is Veterans Day, a day to honor all the men and woman who fought America’s wars. While it is a day to celebrate our freedom and their service, it is all too easy to nod your head to a veteran, say “thanks for your service,” and go about your day off.
However, many people who have never served in the military, especially in wartime, understand completely the sacrifices and experiences of these veterans.
In this issue of the Pioneer, we introduce you to five different veterans with diverse stories of war and peace, but one common thread runs throughout: their military service impacted, and perhaps defined, the people they are today.
Earl J. “Chuck” Kohler, Navy,
Pearl Harbor
Survivor, WWII
Like many others of his generation, long-time Concord resident Earl J. “Chuck” Kohler left his family’s Minnesota farm in 1941 to enlist in the service to help with the war effort. He was 17.
Since he was under-aged, he needed his father’s permission to enlist.
“I was surprised he said okay,” the 92-year-old told me in a recent interview. “I was responsible for the day-to-day operations and did most of the heavy lifting, but he was willing to sacrifice for the greater cause.”
After Navy basic training, Kohler was assigned to Pearl Harbor. At the time of the Japanese attack, he was composing a letter to his mother on a Remington typewriter. Bomb fragments flew into the back of his head, Kohler ripped out the unfinished letter and crumpled it in the trash before racing outside.
“I was afraid I’d get in trouble if somebody found it,” he confessed. Plenty of other trouble awaited him outside. “At first I didn’t realize what was coming. The sound of bullets ricocheting off the buildings didn’t quite register as danger.”
An officer outside ordered sailors into an uncovered construction ditch, but as soon as Kohler hit the bottom he jumped back out and headed to the ammo shelter to put up a defense.
“The officer hollered at me to get back in the ditch, threatening to put me on report — a serious offense during war time.”
Kohler weighed the consequences but didn’t look back, finding someone with a key to open the ordnance shack. With considerable effort, he and a fellow serviceman mounted a machine gun into a PBY-5A, an amphibious aircraft parked against a bunker. At first, Kohler fed the ammo, but he could tell his mate was far off-target, so he manned the gun.
“I could hit a jackrabbit on the run on the farm,” he said, “so even though I hadn’t been trained on the gun I began zeroing in on the targets.”
Kohler eventually served six years in the Navy and returned to Minnesota in May of 1947. The initial euphoria of the victory had worn off and the returning servicemen put their war experiences behind them.
“It was a shock,” he said. “Everything else had grown, but my town was still the same. I tried to make a go of it, but ended up moving to the West Coast.”
After stints at Columbia Steel and the paper mill in Pittsburg and Antioch, Kohler went into construction in 1952 and helped build most of the highways in the area, some of which people still travel on.
“I’m proud of my contributions,” he says. “My experience in the service taught me to be fiercely independent. With limited education and options I did whatever I could to increase my skills so I’d never have to be dependent on others.”
Many decades passed before Kohler spoke about his experiences. In 2010 he went back to Pearl Harbor and, with the help of a naval historian, he was able to stand on the spot where the first bomb hit. “Everything came back. Somewhere on that day, I lost a 17-year-old youth and aged about 20 years in one day.”
What Chuck Kohler wants most of all, is for people to look to the beacon on Mt. Diablo that commemorates Pearl Harbor from sunset on Dec. 7 to sunrise on Dec. 8, and remember all the veterans who gave their lives so that we can enjoy our freedoms.
Pete Laurence, Army
Vietnam Green Beret
It may have been a generation after WWII, but young people, like Kohler, still felt the call to fight for their country.
Pete Laurence, a Clayton resident since 1954, was in the Yukon Territories working for a Bush Pilot service in 1964 when the Viet Nam conflict was heating up. Recalling President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural speech imploring the next generation to do their part for America, the 19-year old returned to the U.S. and enlisted in the Army with hopes of becoming a member of the Special Forces.
After a year in Korea as a Military Policeman, his tenacity and smarts got him into Special Forces training. This elite group, known as the Green Berets, spent 16 weeks learning the Vietnamese language and culture, as it would be their mission to work directly with the South Vietnamese people. As an A Team Weapons Sergeant with his 12 man team, he was eager to get to Vietnam to help the Vietnamese people fight Communism. His unit was welcomed by the villages they were sent there to help.
Laurence says his unit was something like “the Peace Corp with guns.” They helped the villagers get their crops to market safely, delivered medical services, and became part of their community. In fact, Laurence was asked to be in several weddings during his time there. They also trained the villagers to defend themselves against the North Vietnamese Communists. They often found themselves in extreme danger, being fired upon or surrounded by the enemy. On occasion he barely escaped, carrying an injured soldier on his back.
Laurence feels grateful for his experience serving but also for making it home. One of his good friends from Clayton Valley High School did not. His buddy Jerry Novakovich was killed in an ambush in 1968. As an only child, Novakovich did not have to go to Vietnam, but he volunteered to go anyway. Both these young men had strong determination to help their country, to do their part as the next generation of Americans, and to fight for freedom. When Laurence returned from his service he talked with high school and college students about Vietnam, correcting misunderstandings about the U.S. role there. He was an adamant defender of freedom because of what he saw with his own eyes – what the communist government of North Vietnam was doing to the people there.
When Laurence visited the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. he made rubbings of the names of Novakovich and three other of his friends lost to the war. He keeps those rubbings, framed, above his desk to remind himself every day to make the best life he can because they didn’t get the chance to.
Deanna Ped, Air Force
Senior Airman in Afghanistan
While it is hard to remember the veterans who didn’t come home, it’s also difficult for veterans to think of those who were left behind at home.
When Aiden Ped was a tiny infant in 2009, his grandmother would sing a song to him: “My mommy lies over the ocean, my mommy lies over the sea…”
That’s because Aiden’s mom, Air Force Senior Airman Deanna Ped of Concord, was serving in Afghanistan, and missed most of the first year of her son’s life.
Her husband, Matthew, a Marine, was also serving overseas, in the heart of the war zone.
“Aiden was preemie, born two months early,” Deanna Ped says. “He was in the hospital for two months. Two months after he got out, I got the orders I was to report to training. ‘We need boots on the ground over there,’ I was told.”
It was heartbreaking, Ped says, and an example of what many women and families faced in this latest war.
Ped was part of an elite 13-person team stationed at Kandahar Airfield, and the first night she arrived, they suffered a rocket attack. “It was a blur. We were trained to fall on our stomachs, cover our heads and cross our legs.” It was the first of many “incoming” incidents she would face in the eight months she was in Afghanistan, and they soon became routine — as did the blistering 120-degree heat.
“We had water, but it was always warm,” she says. “To this day I can’t drink cold water.”
But Ped was a “queen” over there, earning accolades from the highest echelons of the Air Force.
“Little did they know that while I did great things during the day, I would wake up screaming at night, or go off by myself to write poems to my son. I felt so guilty to have had to leave him.”
When she returned to the states, she said that at first she was “little more than a glorified babysitter to Aiden. “Then one day, I was holding him in front of a mirror, and he was looking back and forth, then suddenly he smiled and burrowed his head into my chest. He recognized his mom. And I’ve been mommy ever since.
Ped and Matthew both retired from the service, and now have two more children: 3-year old Reid and 11-month-old Ailey. But both parents suffer from bouts of PTSD — sometimes severe.
“Being in the service gave me strength and a strong work ethic,” Ped says. “But it also taught me I’m never going to leave my kids again.”
Raymond Henderson,
U.S. Army Sergeant, World War II (Merchant Marines), Korea, Vietnam
Most veterans serve in one war, and will say that’s enough. Others, however, find themselves in throes of two, sometimes three different conflicts.
Concord resident Raymond Henderson’s military story begins in the Mission District of San Francisco, and ironically ends up there three wars later.
Not much of student, Henderson, at 15, doctored his birth records in 1944 to gain entry into the Merchant Marines. “I was told by the captain of the ship we’d be gone six weeks, and then I’d better ‘get my ass in school.’” Well, eight months later, he arrived back. He took one look at Mission High School, where he was supposed to attend, turned around and re-upped on a merchant ship. He sailed in wartime and peacetime, until in 1947, he decided he wanted off the ships. So he decided to enlist in the Army, and become a paratrooper. Ironically, he wanted to see if he had any animosity against Japan — “I lost two brothers in the Pacific,” he says — so he chose to be stationed there. “I ended up feeling sorry for the Japanese,” he says. “There’s no glory in war.”
He stayed there until 1950, when he joined the Military Police. He was on his way back to the Bay Area to take a leave, when the Korean War broke out. He was part of the 7th Military Police Company, and sent back to Japan. His was one of the last units to leave for the Korean front, protecting supply lines. Eventually the Chinese forced a retreat.
From there he headed back to San Francisco’s presidio, but he didn’t connect with the friends he had left behind. So when he had a chance, he took a post as an MP in Austria, where he met his wife. He stayed there for several years as part of an elite, multi-national peacekeeping unit, but returned to the states to Ft. Lewis, Washington, where he was bodyguard for a general. But in 1964 he was called to active duty again, this time in Viet Nam.
“I wasn’t so lucky there,” he said. “I was injured in a mortar shell explosion and received the Purple Heart.”
He was sent home and this time, decided he would use his training experience to help others.
His first assignment? Taking over the “troubled” ROTC program at Mission High School.
He loved the job, and ended up staying there until he “graduated” with the class of 1991 — even though he has already completed his GED years before.
“The military gave me an education and a love of modern military history,” the 86-year-old says. “After all, I lived it.”
Staff Sergeant Steve Barton
Vietnam
Even though Steve Baron didn’t choose to serve in the Army, he says he wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
After graduating from high school in Westwood, CA, Barton attended college for two-and-a-half years. At that time the college deferment was only two years; he was drafted and began service in 1968. He then spent the remainder of his first year in paratrooper training and non-commissioned officers training. With his expert rating in rifle and machine gun, he was sent to Vietnam in January 1969 as a sergeant in light infantry.
His unit was sent to the Hobo Woods, which was heavy with the Viet Cong forces and in an area that is now known for its extensive tunnels built by the enemy to quickly move from place to place. He saw heavy fighting and lost friends, as did most soldiers serving during this time. He was awarded a Combat Infantry Badge, Army Commendation, and earned a promotion to Staff Sergeant.
It would be another 34 years before Barton would learn he also was awarded the Bronze Star for meritorious service in a combat zone. Barton regrets that his father did not live long enough to see him receive this medal. His father had earned two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts in WWII.
Upon his discharge at the end of 1969, Barton began a 26-year career with Bank of America. After extensive travel around the world with his job, Barton and his wife and two children settled in Clayton in 1987. Barton now is part owner of the Clayton Club Saloon and active in the Clayton Business and Community Association.
As Barton reflects on his service, he says, “You learn that when a soldier goes down, it is only by sheer luck that it wasn’t you. You realize that you are lucky to be here, back home, and you have to take responsibility for coming home. You have to do the right thing always, whether it’s easy or you are in the midst of a war.”
Part of the responsibility he feels is reflected in his philanthropic activities with CBCA. And on Veterans Day and Memorial Day, he offers all veterans a free drink at the Clayton Club. He wants them to know they are appreciated.
Concord Pioneer writers John Miller, Kara Navolio and Peggy Spear contributed to this article.