Author: Sarah Mofford
Our nation’s history is full of wars, from the American Revolution to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. We’ve always learned about the conflicts themselves, their effects on America’s homefront, and the heroes and villains – but by comparison, the personal stories of the soldiers are rarely told. Upon his retirement, Oxy alumnus Adrian Flakoll ’48 set about telling some of these stories. He created an anthology of old war stories, entitled “Battle for the Abbey,” which includes many memoirs from soldiers who also attended Occidental.
One such student, John Wright ’48 of Pasadena, joined the American Field Service in 1942, the same year he enrolled at Occidental. In “Battle of the Abbey,” Wright recalls the time he served during the Italian Campaign. While driving the ambulance for the Advanced Dressing Stations (ADS), he was shot at by German artillery and contracted jaundice around Christmas time.
Wright recalls the remnants of the hospital to which he and a comrade would drive wounded soldiers during the war. He described how, during the war, the building was bombed, leaving it as nothing but a pit surrounded by bare trees. But when he returned later, the place he and his friend remembered was no longer the same. It was a McDonald’s and a parking lot. “Sixty years does make a difference,” Wright wrote.
Another alumni and Pasadenian, George James Pastre ’48, wrote in “Battle for the Abbey” of his experience as a pilot and Prisoner of War after he was drafted in 1943. On his 10th mission as a pilot, flying over Dessar, Germany in May 1944, his fighter exploded just moments after he had ejected from the cockpit. Upon landing, he and several other soldiers were held prisoner by the Germans. In his story, Pastre writes of how he and the other prisoners would joke that they were digging tunnels to get out and would laugh to themselves when the Nazi guards came into the cells and checked the flooring. Pastre was freed on April 18, 1945 when an Allied tank brigade occupied the German town where they were being held.
Oxy alumnus and Emeritus Professor of Theater Omar Paxson ’48 is also a WWII veteran. Paxson commented that during the war, everyone, not just soldiers, were recruited to the war effort. “The whole country was turned to the war. Everybody was involved,” he said. Paxson recalls the environment of fear. “At that time, we were frightened. You didn’t have any idea what you were going to be put into,” he said.
After his conscription, he was chosen to be part of the Army’s engineering program. He recounted, with a chuckle, how he, having studied Theater, felt somewhat out of place in this science-driven field. “I remember the old German Engineering Professor as he read off the grades for the exam. He went through all the grades, and he got to the worst, and it was mine,” Paxson recalled. Rather than failing him and sending him straight to the infantry, the professor elected to pass Paxson, giving him a D. “But it didn’t matter ’cause the program was closed and everyone was sent to infantry,” Paxson joked. Specifically, he was sent to the 99th Infantry Division, arriving in Europe during the coldest winter of the war, in 1944.
Paxson remembers the war without the glory that many movies display. “My only goal was to get out and go to school. When you’re 18 and 19, and we were all those ages, you’re indestructible. You’re not going to war to save your country at all, you want to get out and go on with your schooling and what you wanted to do. I hated war [and] I hated guns. It was almost more than I could take. But you do it.” He did this until 1946, when he returned to Fuller Junior College before being accepted into Occidental under the G.I. Bill. He then went on to teach Theater at Oxy and still lives in Eagle Rock.
Paxson says he still keeps in touch with 11 of his Army friends, mostly from Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but the long friendships were not the only thing he still carries with him. “Being in the Army affects your whole life because you went through horrific experiences. Many of your buddies were killed and didn’t come back. It has a great influence with the way you think,” he said. Paxson still recalls the harrowing crossing of the Bridge at Remagen, where he experienced a battle that would later become famous first-hand. “I witnessed American boys that had been shot and run over by tanks and their bodies were mangled. I saw the bodies piled up like cord wood,” he recalled. “These are images that a 19- or 20-year-old is having and they remain with you your entire life.”
Another Oxy Professor who served in World War II is Emeritus Professor of History Bob Winter, who was an aviator during the war. After a year at Dartmouth, he was drafted to the 15th Air force in Italy. Winter remembers he didn’t think much about being drafted. “Strange thing about that. At war we didn’t think about much except doing our duty . . . so I went in because I had to. No, I never thought I’d come back. We were shot at a lot on the aircraft.” He commented, with a touch of humor, that the Army helped him academically, despite the dangers of war. “People like me should add a little time before college. Before the war, I didn’t do very well. After two years in the army, I did a pretty darn good job.”
Winter remembers going to see an old WWII plane on display at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank with a friend. Guests were not allowed in the plane, so he walked around its sides, where some old veterans were examining the plane and exchanging war stories. “I said, ‘Oh my God, I’m one of them,'” Winter said with a laugh. Upon his return from the war, Winter went into teaching History, first at Bowdoin College in Maine, then at Dartmouth for his doctoral, then at UCLA and finally at Oxy in 1963, where he taught until his retirement in 1994.
Though the majority of Oxy’s veterans fought in WWII, they do not make up the full ranks. Andrew Rolle’s “Occidental College: A Centennial History” mentions a student, Homer Lea, who fought in the Boxer Rebellion for Emperor Kuang Hsu at the turn of the 20th century. Additionally, there is a plaque outside Alumni Auditorium commemorating seven veterans, including an athlete and a class president, who fought and were killed while serving in the First World War. When Sycamore Glen was unveiled after the war was over, it was dedicated to all the Oxy students who fought in the Great War. Many of Oxy’s ROTC students during the late 1950s and early 1960s went on to fight in Vietnam. In fact, Oxy was designated as a training institution for the United States Air Force in April 1951, when the Korean War broke out. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the Department of Defense disbanded its unit at Occidental.
More recently, Oxy has even made contributions to the war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. One alumnus, Matt Tompkins ’01 did three tours in Iraq, one in Kosovo and one in Afghanistan as a USAID worker. Unlike Winter and Paxson, Tompkins attended Oxy on a ROTC scholarship, so when he graduated, he had a four-year service commitment.
“I was there to lead and to serve. I didn’t know whether I wanted a military career, so I didn’t really have any ‘goals’ beyond accomplishing the mission at hand,” Thompson said in an e-mail interview. He also commented that Oxy’s liberal arts philosophy prepared him for the Army. “I was much better prepared to interact with people from all walks of life and different cultures than some of my counterparts from the military academies,” he commented.
But being in war itself also taught Tompkins a few life lessons. “Two things do stick with me from those experiences. One, it matured me quite a bit, very quickly, at a relatively young age,” he said. “And two, it allowed me to develop immense patience – patience for things that don’t go as planned, patience with flawed supervisors, patience with bureaucratic processes and patience to let subordinates accomplish their tasks without constant i
nterference or requests or updates.”
Aside from the College’s archives and the plaque outside Alumni Auditorium, Oxy’s veterans have received little recognition. But veterans and soldiers, no matter what the war, should never be forgotten. But how can we properly celebrate Oxy’s veterans? Perhaps we should follow Winter’s suggestion by celebrating Veterans quietly. “We did our duty and that’s all. It shouldn’t be any big to-do,” he said. “I’m terrifically against WWII monuments being put up. My brother and sister and I went up to an old [military] airfield in Italy a few years ago, and instead of there being anything, there is just wheat. The only thing left is the control tower. That seemed to be the proper memorial: quiet.”
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