Date: Fri 31-Oct-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: MICHEL

Quick Words:

schools-Downing-WWII

Full Text:

Hearing A Soldier's Perspective On World War II

(with photos)

BY MICHELE HOGAN

Students in Karen Kirch's seventh grade classes got a sense of what World War

II felt like from a man who had served six years in the artillery, and had

been a part of three campaigns in the Asiatic Pacific Theater and the European

Theater.

William Downing, Newtown resident, said, "All the training cannot possibly

prepare you for that clash; that point where you know there is somebody over

there, and he is trying to kill you."

Mr Downing's job was to calculate firing data for the guns (105mm Howitzer

canons). He recounted a dramatic moment in his service.

"I remember one night, in the infantry, in the front lines, there was a gap

(and we suspected that the enemy would try to get through the gap). We got all

12 guns laid on the target. When the enemy came through, I picked up the phone

(walkie-talkie) and called `fire.' All twelve guns went off. Our fire landed

on the enemy, the Japanese, and I heard the cheers from our side as the fire

landed."

Mr Downing showed the students a sword that was believed to have been used by

the Japanese for beheadings. A student asked if he had got the sword while in

the service, and Mr Downing explained that in the war, you had no place for

anything but the bare essentials.

He described the conditions on board the troop ship he took from Norfolk, Va.,

to the Panama Canal. The narrow bunks were tiered four or five high, and each

man had to keep all his possessions, including fire arms, with him in that

tiny space.

There was no ladder to get to the top bunks, so people just hoisted themselves

up or clambered up over the bunks. "If someone's lying there (on a lower bunk)

he may get a foot in his face."

A student asked, "What was the hardest thing to leave behind?" Mr Downing

explained that he never thought about it. "Back then there was a spirit in

this country - it wasn't that you had to do it, you wanted to do it - every

man was involved."

He went on to describe how a friend with a disability that prevented him from

serving in the military instead found another way to help - he drove an

ambulance.

Mr Downing's sense of immediacy as he described the grueling day-to-day

existence of the war, punctuated with moments of terror, prompted a student to

ask Mr Downing if he was glad he had had the experience.

Mr Downing responded that "it's such a short period of time, but such an

intense time, that I can't imagine what my life would have been without it.

Yes, I am glad I had the experience."

Mrs Kirch said that her main objective in having Mr Downing speak to the

seventh graders was to help the students understand the individual's

experience in the war. Students will be comparing Mr Downing's personal

experience with that of current military personnel, and the descriptions from

the novel April Morning .