My life: Plenty of war and little peace...

Gen. Douglas MacArthur & troops landing in the Philippines
(National Archives)

Written by Jim Heffernan/DuluthNewsTribune/8-2-25  

I might as well own up to my advanced age. I was born in 1939. For those who count on their fingers (I sometimes do) you’d need eight persons counting all of their fingers and one with a hand tied behind her back. That’d be 85.

 

Never thought it would happen to me. Or Ringo Starr, who just caught up to me. If you don’t know who Ringo Starr is, you’re either older than I (and that ain’t easy, friend) or way younger.

 

A few contemporaries of mine were chatting over a restaurant breakfast recently. Age came up. And let me put some of those 85 fingers into perspective. You are reading writings of a person whose parents — both mother and father — were born BEFORE MOTORIZED FLIGHT. Yup, before the Wright Brothers managed to get their original craft into the air at Kitty Hawk in 1903. And there weren’t many cars around then either.

 

Going back even further, my oldest grandparent, and the only one who ever laid eyes on me, was born in 1855 (I can prove it on his tombstone). So if you pay attention to history, there were a lot of people still around then whose lives overlapped with that of George Washington, who died in 1799.

 

That grandfather was 10 years old when Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 at the end of the Civil War.  It was said he claimed he could see the glow of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 from his home in southern Ontario. I never got to ask him about that or anything else: he died when I was two years old, a week before the attack on Pearl Harbor, marking entry of the United States in to World War II.

 

There’s been a lot of war in my lifetime. My birth in October 1939 came a month after German Chancellor Adolf Hitler actually started WW II by invading and massacring Poland a month earlier.

 

Welcome to the world, young James (called at the time, Jimmy).

 

I actually remember some things about World War II as I grew into in my formative years — the first five years of my life. I remember a lot of talk about war and neighbor young men who had gone off to fight it. A couple of them who were members of our church were killed overseas. I remember the collective grief over that.

 

President Franklin D. Roosevelt
signing the Declaration of War against Japan
(National Archives)

Perhaps the most significant things in that era that I remember are the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in April 1945 and the bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, bringing the war to an end. I recall how happy everyone was that the war was over, as I was anticipating entering first grade, having successfully completed kindergarten. (I excelled at the daily nap.)

 

That “great” war was only the beginning of a succession of wars in the ensuing years as I was growing up. Five years after WW II came to an end, along came the Korean War. Wow, another war. I was 10 and still in elementary school. Exciting to a 10-year-old with sketchy memories of the earlier war. Not so exciting to the “kids” just a few years older in their later teens who were drafted into the military and sent over to fight it, many of whom never came back.

 

But hey, it only lasted three years. Surely that would be it with war. Yeah, right. Of course, there was fighting here and there in those intervening years until my own generation that, if called upon, could be drafted to fight. Every boy of my generation was required to register for the draft at age 18 and face induction into the army when your name came up. It was called your “military obligation.”

 

So I registered and managed to avoid being drafted until my early 20s with a college student deferment, but they finally caught up with me and down I went to Minneapolis for an army physical exam. I passed, in spite of being stone deaf in one ear since childhood. I should have had bone spurs.

 

Facing the draft, I joined the Minnesota Army National Guard where you could serve six months of active duty and six years as a weekend warrior back in your home state. I became a general…screw up.

 

While on active duty I recall sitting on bleachers with other inductees during boot camp and having a gruff sergeant lecture us for not trying hard enough in our training to become good soldiers. I’ll try to quote him. “You guys better start paying attention, ‘cause there’s a little country called Vietnam where things are heating up.” 

 

Vietnam? Where’s that? It was 1963. 

Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washinton D.C.
(Wikipedia)

 

When that one heated up and kept going for 10 more years, more than 55,000 Americans had given up their lives when it finally came to an end. I’ve stood at that long, black wall in Washington, D.C., with all their names carved in stone. Try that sometime; it’s hard to retain composure. Very hard.

 

Oops, I’m running out of space here, but not wars. Can’t recount every war in my lifetime but here we are in 2025 with war once again all around us — Russia vs. Ukraine, Israel vs. Hamas. Lots of people are dying still. Iran or Russia vs. United States? Always a question mark.

 

You hear quite a bit of talk these days about possible World War III. If it happens, I’ll probably miss it, but my grandchildren won’t. Concerns me deeply.

 

Happy summer. Enjoy. Better hurry, there’s not too much left.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Lots of war and not much peace...

Written by Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune/3-5-22

 

I have decided to write part of my autobiography, Here. Today.

 

I was born in Duluth one month after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. America wasn’t directly involved until two years later when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. By then I was 2 years old, and I remember nothing about it.

 

So I was introduced into this world in wartime. World War II went on long enough for me to grow into being aware of the war. Fragments of childhood memory include seeing a lot of men in uniform and the deaths of two soldiers, sons of our church my family knew. I wanted a children’s military uniform and got a sailor suit. Lots of children wore little uniforms.

 

I remember the rationing of certain foods and gasoline and the saving of tin cans. My father sold our car because of gasoline rationing and tire shortages. We took the bus.

 

I was four when President Roosevelt died, the war still raging in Europe and the Pacific. I remember grownups talking sadly about the president’s death. And those grownups — mainly my parents — talked a lot about the war’s end, when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945. By then I had completed kindergarten.

 

Everyone seemed relieved that the war was over. It was a joyful time. No more war forever, it seemed.

 

Five years later, when I was 10, the Korean War broke out. They didn’t want to actually call it a war so it was mainly referred to as the “Korean conflict.” My brother had graduated from high school and was concerned about being drafted. All healthy males in America were subject to the draft at age 18, war or no war, for decades. Unless, of course, they had bone spurs.

 

Things seemed to settle down a little after the Korean War came to an end following three years of fighting, About 40,000 American service personnel were killed, many more wounded. Duluth’s Marine reserve unit was hard hit. I was getting into my teens and soon would have to register for the military draft myself.

 

But throughout that period something called the Cold War was ongoing, with ubiquitous references to possible nuclear war with Russia. No actual fighting, though, involving the U.S. Everyone was relieved when Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin died, but it didn’t do much good, as Hungary found out a few years later.

 

What is more, there was this Indochina war going on throughout the rest of the 1950s. It seemed awfully far away and remote until America’s leaders started grumbling about the spread of communism in Asia (falling dominoes) and began sending more and more American troops to “advise” the leaders of a place called South Vietnam, under siege from the communist north of that country.

 

Oops, by now I’m of draftable age, but was deferred from conscription because I was in college. After I finished college in 1962, I joined the National Guard to avoid the draft (six months active duty vs. two years) and recall being told in boot camp that you guys better pay attention to your training because things are getting hot in a place called Vietnam.

 

I had joined shortly after tensions between the U.S. and Soviet Union resulted in the building of the Berlin Wall, and the closest most historians believe we ever came to nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961. Dangerous times. War and rumors of war, as the Good Book says, portending the Armageddon.

 

The war in Vietnam kept right on going though and by the time it ended in 1975 with the fall of Saigon (we didn’t win), some 55,000 American service personnel, majority of them my age, had been killed. Their names are on a black wall in Washington, D.C.; you can’t visit without getting choked up. I served in guard and reserve units right here in Duluth until 1968 when my obligation ended. Whew. Never got called up.

 

 

I was getting too old for military service in the 1970s and had married and started a family. The next several years seemed pretty peaceful, and besides, I was busy being a husband, father and tending to making a living.

 

But that pesky Middle East kept flaring up and finally boiled over in 1990 in a conflict we now call the First Iraq War and also known as Operation Desert Storm. Short lived, and not many casualties, but war nevertheless. It drove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and kept American military personnel busy over there for several years.

 

And can’t forget the 1990s trouble in the Balkans, the ethnic cleansing, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the revival of centuries old grudges among the populations of such places as Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.

 

Then in 2003 American leaders declared the Second Gulf War in Iraq in response to the September 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and other targets, including the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. No one has ever shown that Iraq had anything to do with the 9/11 attacks. That one went on until 2011, concurrently with the war in Afghanistan that also got going in 2001 and just ended last year. Many Americans died and were wounded in both theaters.

 

I’m almost out of space, but not wars. Here we go again. I need hardly mention that a couple of weeks ago war erupted in Ukraine, started by Russia for no good reason, just like all the rest. America is not directly involved with troops this time around. We’ll see if that lasts. And hey, they’re back fighting in Europe where this personal account started.

 

That’s my life in war and very little peace. I’m pretty old now, but feeling fine. I figure there could be a couple more wars before I call it quits. Stay tuned.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog here at www.jimheffernan.org. You may find other Duluth News Tribune posts by searching Heffernan on the DNT site and HERE.

A child’s-eye view of World War II...

By Jim Heffernan

What follows is a column I wrote for the Duluth News Tribune on one of the anniversaries of the end of World War II in Europe. I’d forgotten about the column until this month when a copy of it was found among the effects of an elderly Duluthian by her daughter, and passed on to me. This year (August) will mark the 70^th anniversary of the end of the war. I reprint the column here because its descriptions of my memories of World War II are the same today as they were when I wrote it. Here’s the column.

Engraving of Kilroy on the WWII Memorial in Washington DC

It’s (the anniversary of) V-E Day. I don’t remember May 8, 1945, specifically but I remember the war. I was born the autumn Hitler invaded Poland and was a kindergartner when the Germans surrendered. But I remember a lot about the war.

I remember no sugar, no jam and jelly. I remember red and blue (rationing) “points” which my folks had to use along with money to buy certain groceries. I remember being taken to movies and seeing newsreels of the fighting and bombing and being scared by it.

I remember asking my mother if I would ever have to go to war. “No,” I remember her comforting answer. I remember the shortage of gasoline and tires, prompting my father to sell the family car and go without. My father had served in the Army during the First World War and was too old for the second. Like many others who couldn’t serve, I remember he did what he could on the home front. He was involved in Civil Defense and had a big white helmet that I liked to try on, although it was very heavy on my head.

I remember blackouts in Duluth – rehearsals for the local population in case the Germans or the Japanese ever decided to bomb the city’s ore docks. (I didn’t understand then but later realized they played a key role in the American war effort.) I remember a lot of men worked in places called “the shipyards.”

I remember fighting with other kids in the neighborhood over who lived on the American side of the street and who lived on the Japanese side. I lived on the American side.

I remember gold stars on little flags hanging in the windows of people’s homes and knowing they represented “boys” who were in the service. I remember thinking they were “men” and being confused. I remember when service men from our church got killed in the war and how bad everyone felt.

I remember how badly I wanted a scooter and how hard they and other toys were to get because all of the metal was going into the war effort. Then I remember getting a scooter made all of wood – frame, wheels and all – and how the wheels wouldn’t stop squeaking.

I remember wanting a sailor suit and how mad I was when I got one but it had short pants. I remember having friends whose fathers were in the war and hearing stories about how they were stabbing Japanese with bayonets in jungles. I remember that much of our playtime involved playing war and shooting and getting shot. “Bang, you’re dead, you dirty, rotten Nazi.”

I remember “Kilroy Was Here.” I never understood it and still don’t.

I remember the swastika and Hitler and that they were evil. Once I saw a swastika embossed on an old book in our attic (published long before it was adopted by the German Third Reich), and I remember defacing the book with color crayons. I remember Mussolini and Tojo.

I remember President Roosevelt and General Eisenhower. I remember Roosevelt dying and hearing that President Truman would now be our president and hearing that he wouldn’t be as good as Roosevelt no matter what. I remember Gabriel Heatter (a radio news commentator in that era).

And I remember that the war was suddenly over and we could get jam for our bread.

Years later I realized that the war had been fought for me. I was one of the babies of the next generation who Winston Churchill cocked his ear and listened to and said he could hear crying.

Even today when I see World War II vets marching in parades in their Legion or VFW uniforms I stop and think, “Hey, those guys fought a war for me.” And I appreciate it.