The War Years: The Shelton Brothers in World War II

By Stanley O. Shelton

War is never a good thing. Many lives are lost, sometimes all in the same family. This is an account of this Shelton family and their time during the war years. The first six boys served within the first six years of WWII together. Both the Korean and Vietnam periods were included in their history in that the younger two boys served during that period. The fact they all survived is amazing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781662463136

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The War Years

The Shelton Brothers in World War II

Stanley O. Shelton

Copyright © 2022 Stanley O. Shelton

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2022

ISBN 978-1-6624-6312-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-6362-4 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-6624-6313-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Warm Up for War: 1938–1939

1940

Hurry Up and Wait

Nothing but Bad

Honing the Troops

Off I Go

Hellhole

Wright Field/Daniel Field/Herbert Smart Airport

Brothers Meet on Battlefield

Mop

Prisoners of War

Hospital

Patterson Field, Fairfield, Ohio

Worst Day

Military Service of Willis Oscar Shelton’s Boys

Sapulpa, Oklahoma, April 28, 1946

Foreword

On October 27, 2003, I received a copy of this manuscript from my uncle Stan. For a number of years, I had taken on the task of being the family historian. Stanley Orrin Shelton, brother number six, had been writing down many of his memories of his family, Willis Oscar and Dosia Shelton, for some years. Many of the stories he had started in the early 1990s and was done on an early computer using Wordstar, an early word-processing software. And many were saved to the seldom used any more old floppy disk.

Going through my father’s (Jean Arthur’s) belongings after his death, I found early drafts of a book Uncle Stan was writing called Wine from the Grapes of Wrath. I asked him if he had ever finished it and could I get a copy. What he sent was a printed copy done on an old dot matrix printer. I decided then and there that I would retype the material using the latest tools and to store the documents on my computer. This was the beginning of many a night of sore wrists.

In the summer of 2003, my family stopped in Norman, Oklahoma, and stayed a couple of days with Uncle Stan. I discovered that Stan was quite a prolific writer and had much material he had written on this old Kaypro computer. So I told him to send any of the material and I would retype it. Thus begins this document.

My history with the Shelton Clan has had good times and sad. I was present in San Juan Capistrano, California, on July 1968 when all eight boys were present to give their mother a diamond ring for her seventy-fifth birthday. I was also present in 1986 at the home of my father, Jean Shelton, when the boys were together for the last time.

I was there in San Diego when Grandma Shelton died on March 13, 1981. That was the beginning of the sad times. Next to passed away was Willis Edward on July 4, 1988, in Santee, California. Next was brother Glenn Elbert who passed away in Wichita Falls, Texas, on January 9, 1990. In February of 1991, I was headed back to Sacramento, California, where I lived from San Diego where I grew up. I stopped to see Uncle Bob. I had grown up with Bob and his family that lived in San Diego too. On March 31, 1991, Bob passed away in Hemet, California.

The saddest moment for me was the passing of my dad, Jean Arthur Shelton, on December 28, 1994, in San Diego, California. Our family had been together for the Christmas holiday. My dad was dying from lung cancer related to his military career (asbestos). At the Christmas dinner, he looked at the family and stated, I guess I did a pretty good job. Indeed, he did. I left on December 27, telling my mom that I thought that he willed himself to live through the holidays to see his family and would probably die soon after. Little did I know, it would be less than twenty-four hours.

On December 8, 2003, I finished typing up the first draft on this manuscript. As was my custom, I would next send copies to Uncle Bill and Stan for their editorial eyes to peruse and correct. Unfortunately, as I was leaving work, I got an email from Steve Shelton, Stan’s son, that Uncle Bill had passed away on December 7, 2003, in an auto accident. It hit me like a led balloon. He couldn’t pass away. I had too many questions to ask him and more details to get regarding the family history. He never got to see this final copy. I will miss him as I do all the brothers and my dad who had passed away. They were all a great source of inspiration and pride.

The War Years cover the period of World War II and the sons of Willis Oscar Shelton. His two youngest, Keith and Jerry, both served the military and our country in later years. Two of Willis’s brothers mentioned in chapter 12, Arthur and Albert, both had sons serving in World War II. Arthur’s son, John Hadley Shelton, served in Europe. Albert’s two sons, James Leroy and Philip Monroe Shelton, both served in the US Army. James Leroy was a captain in the Army Medical Corp in the Southern Philippines and New Guinea. He received the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with two bronze service stars, Philippine Liberation medal, WWII Victory Medal, and the Honorable Service Lapel Button. His brother, Phillip, was a first lieutenant in the US Army and is buried at the Riverside Military Cemetery in Riverside, California. Nothing is known of Phillip and John Hadley due to the loss of US Army Military Records in a fire in 1983 in St. Louis, Missouri.

—Eric Mark Shelton, December 11, 2003

Chapter 1

Warm Up for War: 1938–1939

The Shelton brothers of Altus, Oklahoma—Willis Edward, Glenn Elbert, Robert Alan, Jean Arthur, Bill Lee, I (Stanley O.), James Keith, and Jerry Martin (no sisters)—became involved in the military, especially World War II, at an early age. As their father, Willis Oscar Shelton, wrote to his sister on August 17, 1938, This is some military family. Ed is a lieutenant in the Officers Reserve, Glenn has had three years of National Guard and four months of Army flying, Robert and Jean in the Navy, and Bill and Stan in the National Guard. A war would reduce the size of my family quick.

Edward, the eldest, enlisted in Howitzer Company, 179th Infantry Regiment, Forty-Fifth Division, Oklahoma National Guard, on August 3, 1931. During his high school days and while in Altus Junior College, Ed took correspondence courses aimed at receiving a commission in the Army. He and his buddy, Carl (Casey) Turner, had a friendly rivalry to see who reached that goal first. It was almost a tie as both were commissioned at about the same time. After World War II, Turner ended up a major general, the provost marshal general, top cop of the Army, and Ed retired as a full colonel.

Ed joined the Enlisted Reserve Corps on January 17, 1934, and resigned to accept a commission as a second lieutenant in the Officers Reserve Corps on March 27, 1934. He was promoted to first lieutenant in 1939.

Glenn enlisted in Howitzer Company at the same time Ed did and served until August 2, 1935. He qualified and took pilot training at Randolph Field, San Antonio, Texas, before he was eliminated (washed out in USAAF terms). As his father wrote, Glenn washed out of the flying school on account of his academics. He finished the first stage with sixty-seven hours of flying but didn’t know enough astronomy to make the second stage. It takes a wizard to get into that school and a super-wizard to stay. Hundreds of West Point, Harvard, Yale, and Annapolis graduates wash out the first week they arrive. Glenn stayed four months with only two years of junior college from a small country town, which I think is something. He was associate editor of the field paper and was very popular with the commandant, but sentiment doesn’t make Army fliers. He took further military training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, with the Citizens Military Training Program (CMTC).

Robert served in the Oklahoma National Guard and the Kansas National Guard before enlisting in the Navy on July 7, 1938.

Jean served with both the Oklahoma National Guard and the Kansas National Guard. He enlisted in the Navy on January 21, 1938, some six months before Bob’s enlistment. Quoting again from their father’s letter, Willie states, Jean is on the Southard and was in Frisco during the Roosevelt visit…the size of the town had him scared… Robert is in the Naval training station at San Diego, and he and Jean are together quite a lot. Bob is going to the Yeoman’s training school as soon as he finishes his base training. He is quite a pencil pusher and typist.

During the prewar period, Bill was attending Altus Junior College, and I was playing right guard for the Altus High School Bulldog football team. Both Bill and I continued to serve as members of Howitzer Company, 179th Infantry Regiment, Forty-Fifth Division before we were inducted into federal service. Both Bill and I enlisted in Howitzer Company, 179th Infantry Division while in our mid-teens, age regulations being very lax in the National Guard. Bill joined the unit when he was fourteen, and I signed up early in 1938 when I was barely sixteen. The company consisted mostly of teenagers and World War I veterans.

Keith, too young for World War II, served in the Army of Occupation in Germany following World War II, and Jerry, also too young for the war, later had a distinguished career as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, serving in Vietnam and the Far East throughout his career. Jerry, too, served with the National Guard unit in Altus before enlisting in the Marines, the seventh brother to do so.

In 1938, Germany had invaded Austria, ostensibly at Austria’s request. The Japanese had captured Canton, China, in that long and bitter war and was charged with the rape of Nanking. And Jewish shops were smashed and looted throughout Germany on what became known as Kristallnacht. Mussolini declared Libya to be part of Italy, and Adolf Hitler, British PM Neville Chamberlain, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and Benito Mussolini met and agreed to cede part of Czechoslovakia to Germany.

Orson Welles was broadcasting his The Mercury Theatre on the Air; hit songs were My Reverie, Larry Clinton with Bea Wain vocals, and one of the top records was Two Sleepy People, vocals by Bob Hope who would become better known and play a major role in entertaining troops during World War II.

Brother Bob had finished training at the Naval Training Station at San Diego and had served briefly aboard the USS Farragut and the USS Warden. He was assigned to the USS Southard on June 9, 1939, for operations in the Pacific.

Jean, too, had completed training at the Naval Training Station in San Diego and also had served aboard the USS Southard. He later was assigned to the USS Sterett, a destroyer, which compiled an outstanding combat record during the war.

Brother Ed was called to active duty in 1939 and served six months at a Civilian Conservation Camp (CCC) near Cache, Oklahoma. Glenn, after the CMCT program, while attending college at Weatherford, Oklahoma, signed up for the Civilian Pilot Training program for college students. Brother Bill and I in 1938–39 were still serving with the National Guard, attending National Guard camps at Camp Bullis, near San Antonio, Texas, and Fort Sill, while still attending school.

On August 22, 1938, the world was shocked when Germany and Russia signed a nonaggression pact, a pact of convenience for both, and an agreement which neither intended to honor. British PM Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler also signed the Munich Agreement of September 29, 1938, in which the Allies allowed Germany and Russia to carve up the Balkans. The document stated: This declaration is symbolic of the desire of our two peoples never to go to war again. And back in Britain, Chamberlain told the populace, My friends, there has come back from Germany peace with honor. I believe it is peace for our time. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Germany, of course, had no intention of honoring that agreement either. And in late August 1939, the German army invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland. On September 3, 1939, England and France declared war on Germany. World War II was on. The United States was not yet in it, but the US Navy would start shooting at Nazi subs in a few weeks.

Months of waiting on the Western Front followed the declaration of war in what became known as the Sitzkrieg. The Germans had struck eastward, and the Russians in November invaded Finland in what would be one of the cruelest wars of all, a war in which entire units were sometimes frozen stiff. But all was quiet on the Western Front.

Some people in Europe and America called the lull on the Western Front the Phony War. The French, in particular, seemed unworried about the Germans. Didn’t they have their impregnable Maginot Line? The only war that drew much comment was the Russian Bear’s invasion of little Finland, the only country to pay off its World War I debt.

But Germany had merely put France and England on hold while its troops overran Denmark on April 9, 1940, in one day, and occupied Norway with the help of Vidkun Quisling, whose name would forever after become the synonym for traitor.

The British Navy though was feeling the might of Germany. In October 1939, the British Home Fleet was based in Scapa Flow, Scotland. Islands protected the fleet anchorage and the entrances sealed with nets, booms, and concrete blocks. Nevertheless, a German submarine managed to get inside the harbor and put a salvo of torpedoes into the British battleship HMS Royal Oak. It sank in minutes.

HMS Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, Scotland

The British were having leadership problems at the same time, and on May 10, 1940, Prime Minister Chamberlain resigned, and Winston Churchill took over the reins of the British government with the admonishment: I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Two days later, the Sitzkrieg ended when German troops poured into France.

The Luftwaffe pounded Britain from the air on a daily basis, and the Royal Air Force pilots flew several sorties daily in their Spitfires in an effort to stave off the destruction of England. Prime Minister Churchill said of the RAF pilots in what was labeled The Battle of Britain, Never was so much owed by so many to so few.

But the Germans didn’t escape unscathed. The pride of the German Navy, the pocket battleship Graf Spee that was operating in the South Atlantic, was tracked down by British and American ships and bottled up in Montevideo Harbor. Rather than have the ship fall into the hands of the British, the German captain scuttled the ship on December 17, 1940.

The war was now on in earnest.

It had been on for Bob and Jean for some time.

From June 9, 1939, to October 5, 1940, Bob was aboard the USS Southard, a destroyer, for operations in the Pacific.

Jean was sent to Charleston, South Carolina, for the commissioning and fitting of the USS Sterett (DD407), a ship on which he would serve for three years and a ship that would earn a distinguished record in World War II.

They have a shakedown cruise for all new ships, Jean said. "Usually, it’s pretty good duty depending on what ports you go to. The object of the cruise is to find out if everything is working smoothly. Yard [shipyard] people are aboard to check out things. Among the stops we made were Mobile [Alabama], Savannah [Georgia], and Vera Cruz, Mexico. We stayed there a week, and it was nice.

Off the Charleston Navy Yard, South Carolina, September 13, 1939

"We got off every afternoon to go into the city, and that’s where I first ran into a lot of intellectual Jewish people who had been run out of Germany, and it was the first I heard about what was going on in Germany. I sat all one afternoon in a corner bistro [iron grates on all the windows and doors] with a friend of mine. We’d watch the world go by and talk with some of the Jewish people to find out what was going on.

"We had noticed a German ship in the harbor [the Columbus]. The officers of the ship invited our officers out for dinner. This was before the US and Germany were officially at war. Our crew checked with the State Department, and we were ordered not only to not accept but also to keep an eye on the ship and if it moved to notify the British. We did exactly that. And the British chased the ship into Port Everglades [Florida] harbor where it was scuttled just before war was declared."

The scuttling of the Columbus, December 19, 1939

Jean recalled another episode during his prewar career. "When I went to Charleston, South Carolina, to put the USS Sterett in commission in May of 1939, I got roped into a bad situation. The last thing you want to do is to attract the attention of your division officer. I was walking across the quarterdeck one day when I heard this voice say, ‘Shelton, come here.’ I went. ‘Stand right there,’ the officer said. I didn’t know what was going on, so I stood. Pretty soon, he had eight of us, all about the same size [six feet or more] lined up. He ordered us to report early next morning in dress blues for duty.

"Next morning, we went over to Greenville, South Carolina, to bury a guy who was a crewman on the Squalus, a US submarine which had accidentally sunk on May 23, 1939. Twenty-six seamen died on the Squalus although many were rescued."

Salvage operations above Squalus, with two heavy-lift pontoons about to be sunk and lashed to the hull.

Nevertheless, it was a terrible ordeal. The guy had been in the water a long time. The casket was lead and heavy as hell, but you could still smell him. On the way back, we got a bottle of whisky and got smashed. The next day, the officer in charge of the detail was called on the carpet. He defended the burial detail, telling his superior they couldn’t stand it.

Meanwhile, Hitler’s troops continued rolling across both western and eastern Europe while the United States, ill-prepared for war, struggled frantically to make up for lost time and to help Britain, a nation in desperate straits. At the start of the war, Britain had 4.5 billion dollars in gold and investments in the United States, but by January 1941, she had spent it all on food and armaments.

What to do?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew the American public was in no mood to go to war, and he wanted and promised all out aid to Britain short of war. He also knew Britain had to be prevented from falling to the Germans, else the United States would be next. Roosevelt and his close advisors came up with a splendid answer—The Lend Lease Act, which was passed by Congress in March