Some people believe that the Nov.11 holiday was established to honor American military personnel who died in our nation’s service. However, Memorial Day, the last Monday of May, is the day set aside to honor America’s war dead.
Veterans Day honors all American veterans, both living and dead, and is largely intended to thank living veterans for dedicated and loyal service to their country. It was originally designated as a national holiday in 1938 and called Armistice Day to commemorate Nov. 11, 1918, the day when World War I effectively ended. In 1954, following World War II and the Korean War, Congress renamed it Veterans Day to honor American veterans of all wars.
In September the News attended the monthly meeting of the veterans group at the Culver City Senior Center. The group, which is almost entirely composed of men and women who served in World War II, was formed by Marilyn Hess, who presides over its meetings. “I couldn’t imagine a senior center without a veterans group,” she said.
The group was created to provide camaraderie and information of interest to veterans and their families. That afternoon, a presentation was made about qualifying for the Title 38 pension plan that outlines the role of veterans’ benefits. Additionally, one member described his assisted-living quarters for which veterans who meet certain specifications are eligible.
Prior to the meeting, there was an opportunity to speak with four of those in attendance. Two of the interviewees, although not veterans, had contributed to the war effort in other ways.
Dixie La Medora sung in a group composed of herself and her siblings. “We entertained at U.S. Army training camps throughout the country,” she reminisced. “They were the best audiences I ever had, always thanking us. They didn’t want us to leave the stage.”
Martha Sigall, an inker and painter in the Hollywood animation industry for more than 50 years, recalled working on training films that provided valuable information to the troops. “My husband, Sol – we were not married at that time – was in the Navy and part of a group providing supplies overseas to aid the war effort,” she said. “He knew shorthand, so he was in demand.” Sol Sigall interjected, saying he served as a yeoman to the skipper and had “the best job possible.” He laughingly recalled an incident when he took an officer into the mess hall and got him a real fried egg, “he just couldn’t believe his luck.”
Bernie Tuvman’s story was spellbinding. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps on Aug. 30, 1941, a few days shy of his 19th birthday. Slim to begin with, he was 30 pounds lighter when he came home almost four years later. But his weight loss was not by choice.
On his sixth and last mission to Stuttgart, Germany, on Sept. 6, 1943, Tuvman was serving as left-waist gunner when his aircraft was shot down. When it went into a counterclockwise spin, he “found out what centrifugal force is,” he recalled. He bailed out, was captured moments after landing and added prisoner of war in the infamous camp known as Stalag 17-B to his wartime resume.
During his imprisonment, Tuvman memorialized his camp experiences in a YMCA-issued “Wartime Log,” a hardback book of blank pages. The book, which he brought to the meeting, was encased in a hand-sewn wool flannel cover, the battered and non-functioning zipper of which came from the flight coveralls he was wearing when he was captured. It is replete with cartoons and scenes drawn by artists in the camp in exchange for bartered items. One of the artists, Don Bevan, who drew a caricature of Tuvman, later co-authored “Stalag 17,” the Broadway play on which the 1953 movie of the same name was based.
In addition to sketches and notes, the book contains a variety of items, including letters from home, the German propaganda newspaper distributed to the POWs, portions of German newspapers and magazines gleaned from the guards, postcards and even a candy bar wrapper.
Several guards spoke English and with his high school German, Tuvman had little difficulty communicating. “I’ve never forgotten how pervasive their propaganda was,” he said, recalling that regardless what part of Germany they hailed from, their spiel was virtually identical about Germany being a small, poor country with a large population that needed “lebensraum.”
His many memories include makeshift candles made from oleo, with burlap wicks that the prisoners secretly used after lights out and the perishable Red Cross goods with the tins punctured by bayonets to prevent prisoners from hoarding food to escape. Desperate for freedom, some prisoners still tried to escape. Tuvman remembered two men being shot after a botched escape attempt.
He saw Russian prisoners starving in their own adjacent compound, where conditions were especially brutal, as Russia had not signed the 1929 Geneva Convention agreement regarding humane treatment for prisoners of war. “Every day, you would see them carrying out a dead Russian under a burlap cover,” Tuvman said.
On April 8, 1945, he was among the 4,000 prisoners deemed healthy enough to travel, as the Russian army was nearing. They were split into groups of 500, each including an American leader and 20 German guards, for a grim forced march toward a Russian prison camp outside Branau, about 291 miles away.
On May 3, the prisoners were rescued from their makeshift camp in the open woods by American forces, forerunners of Patton’s Third Army, 13th Armored Division.
On May 9, after having consumed “a lot of eggnog to build us back up,” the men were taken to Camp Lucky Strike. Shortly afterwards, Tuvman was on a liberty ship bound for home.
He said he had difficulty getting acclimated. People at the welcome home party thrown by his family said he kept looking off into space, he recalled. “I was sitting there like I was in Neverland,” he said. But he had survived, along with the powerful chronicle of his POW experience.