With Veteran’s Day next Monday, the Courier wanted to reflect on some of the stories we’ve published in decades past about Ceres veterans, many who served during World War II and have since passed away.

Gene Welsh

Gene Welsh was an unforgettable veteran who showed raw emotion at public events where he and other veterans were honored. He passed away in July 2012.

 In March 2008, students in Marilyn Wood’s history class at Central Valley High School felt a greater appreciation for the men and women who fought in World War II following a visit by Welsh who lived through the experience.

Welsh was an infantryman who helped flush out the Japanese from islands in the Philippines and tears flowed.

Welsh grew up in Oklahoma and came to Ceres at age 15. He received his Army draft notice in 1943. He became a platoon sergeant with the 24th Army Division, 19th Infantry Regiment at a young age. Welsh saw intense fighting as his platoon was charged with cleaning the islands of Luzon, Mindoro and Leyte of Japanese strongholds.

Welsh, shot seven times in the war, told the class 16 years ago: “They were a good fighter but not as good as Americans. The American fighter is the best in the world.”

Welsh grew emotional when sharing about the loss of his men.

“We lost a lot of guys. I wrote a lot of letters home to moms and dads.”

He hung his head to regain his composure. “I get kind of sentimental when I talk about these things so bear with me.”

Welsh recalled the intense fighting in the Philippines, saying the Japanese “were vicious soldiers. Everyone died to the end. I couldn’t take a prisoner in all my life.”

Welsh said he let one scared Japanese soldier go after seeing the fright in his eyes.

The Ceres serviceman kept in touch with his family through piles of letters, which he usually got to read aboard the ship between islands. He remembers making night landings on islands only to find “all hell broke loose in the daylight.”

One of those writing him “just about every day” was future wife, Bettye, who lived in Texas and whom he never met.

Welsh saved up $10,000 during the war and sent it home, asking his parents to buy him a house in Ceres for him when he returned and because of the affections growing between them from ink on paper, Gene was determined to get Bettye – sight unseen – and bring her hone for their wedding. At the end of the war in 1945, Gene and Bettye were married.

Students asked Welsh what he thought when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Welsh said he wasn’t much interested in world affairs at the time but it definitely changed his life.

His presentation included a slide show of the equipment used in the field and weapons like the Browning automatic. It was with that weapon that he used to kill untold number of Japanese.

“I’m not proud of what I’ve done but at 18 years of age you don’t know any better.”

Wood’s father, Earl Wood, spoke about a much different experience. Wood joined the military in 1944 and found himself taking Japanese prisoners in Okinawa. He recalls how large caves – some five to 10 miles long – were turned into secret hospitals. Children who were born underground had been living underground so long “you could almost read a paper through them.” He remembers seeing rotten clothing fall off the prisoners as they brushed along the cave wall.

Hall told the students that Americans had far different attitudes towards those who served in World War II and those who served in Vietnam. He said while all fighting men often wrestle with nightmares and “dreams of warriors” for life, men like Welsh led productive lives back home.

“I wonder how many of us came home. There was a lot of shooting and killing.”

Welsh saved up $10,000 during the war and sent it home, asking his parents to buy him a house in Ceres. Welsh recalled being glad to be back in Ceres in 1946 and got involved in the Ceres Twisters Square Dance Club. Gene supported his family in the auto body and painting trade starting in 1967. Sons Mike and Ron Welsh eventually took over the business when he retired.

Hall and Welsh both veterans support group meetings. Gene suffered from 100 percent service related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

At a 2007 Veterans Day event hosted by the Ceres Ministerial Fellowship in Whitmore Park, Welsh mentioned watching approximately 28 comrades died in battle against the Japanese and personally wrote letters of consolation to the families of all the men. Welsh gripped a small American flag as he wiped his eyes.

At the same event, an emotional Raymond Hill of Ceres spoke up for his son, Captain Raymond D. Hill II who was killed Oct. 29, 2005 during Operation Iraqi Freedom. The Ceres War Memorial is engraved with the name of Hill, a Ceres High School graduate, who was killed by a roadside bomb that exploded near his Humvee near Baghdad.

“He would have been here,” said Mr. Hill. “This is a nice thing.”

Pastor Randy Clark of First Southern Baptist Church, also a veteran of Vietnam, spoke about veterans’ sacrifices.

“Those who have known war, up close, do not forget it,” said Dr. Clark. “They have forged a fellowship while facing the fire. They have had more occasion than the rest of us to ask themselves what is worth fighting for, to wonder what the real values that must be defended.”

Bill Boyd

Billy Gean Boyd, a two-time World War II Bronze Star recipient and former commander of Ceres Post #10293 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, shared his experiences with the Courier and the community. He passed away on Nov. 16, 2014.

Bill served in the U.S. Army as a rifleman in the 41st Division, 162nd Regiment, C Company during World War II in the South Pacific. He served in New Guinea, the Philippines and Japan where he saw fierce fighting against the Japanese. He was awarded two Bronze stars for his service. He and several veteran friends were credited with starting the VFW charter in Ceres. 

It was a cathartic experience writing of his war tales in his book, “Survival beyond Courage: Memoirs of an Infantryman.”

“He carried his buddy out of the jungle which got him the Bronze Star and he got malaria when he was in the Philippines really bad,” recalled son Brian Boyd. “He had PTSD later in his life.”

Duryea Warn

In the summer of 2016 the Courier interviewed longtime Ceres resident Duryea Nathan Warn two years before his death in August 2018 at the age of 97.

Mr. Warn was born in Turlock on July 16, 1921 and graduated from Turlock High School and Modesto Junior College. He served three years in the Army Air Corps during World War II. He was a tail-gunner on B-26 bombers who carried out 25 missions over England, France, Germany and Belgium. Duryea survived Nazi ground-to-air flak and two crash landings. Warn’s second crash on Feb. 24, 1945 was caused when flak from German 88 mm guns damaged the plane’s hydraulic system. The pilot landed the plane on its belly but a harrowing experience followed when a second plane nearly collided with it while on the runway. The navigator of that plane, Kenneth T. Brown, wrote about the Roye-Ami, France crash in his book, “Marauder Man.”

Duryea was a member of the Air Force Gunners Association and the 391st Bomb Group Association. 

A year after his wedding to Arleen Buck in 1947, Duryea began a 33-year career with the Ceres Post Office, starting in the same building as the old Ceres Drug Store at the northwest corner of Fourth and Lawrence streets. Jack Gondring was postmaster at the time and Duryea remembered the soda fountain that town druggist Claude “Bud” McKnight operated inside. In the 1950s the post office moved north on Fourth Street opposite the drug store.

Jack Marshall

In July 2015 the Courier interviewed Jack Marshall of Ceres who fought in the 82-day Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest in the Pacific, serving as a recon man. The battle, which went from early April to mid-June 1945, saw Japanese casualties of 77,166 and 14,009 Allied troops killed. Jack was just 17 during the Dec. 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese but he decided that he wanted to join the Marines. As he finished up school early at George Washington High School in San Francisco, his mother had to sign for him because he was not an adult yet. He went to San Diego for training, and was off to the Pacific Theatre to fight the Japanese.

After Tarawa, the end of his Marine service had Jack assigned to China for nine months.

After his discharge in May 1946, Jack headed back to the Bay Area. He learned the trade of making and repairing watches in Alameda. He opened his own jewelry store, and then a restaurant. He also acquired Clary Business Machine Agency.

Mr. Marshall died in March 2016 at the age of 91, leaving his widow Shanna Marshall.

Tom Dimperio

It’s been nearly three years since WWII veteran Tom Dimperio passed away at the age of 102.

Wounded twice in battle, Dimperio’s body carried a piece of Nazi mortar shrapnel behind his left ear, a wide scar on his chest, a left arm shortened and mangled by a German bullet.

Dimperio was inducted into the Army on Nov. 19, 1942 and assigned to the Fifth Army 88th Infantry Division. He boarded a troop ship to Casa Blanca, North Africa, arriving on Christmas Day 1943. After months of mountain training, he and his comrades were sent to Naples, Italy in February 1944. Hitler had invaded Italy on Oct. 9, 1943 and advanced to Rome.

March 1944 was the first time the Ceres native saw combat. He was 24 and scared.

“We relieved the British Army,” Dimperio told the Courier in 2014. “The Italians had surrendered before we got there so we were fighting strictly just the Germans.”

By April 6, Allied Forces had entered Rome to take it back.

On May 5, 1944 in Castle Forte, Italy, Dimperio was wounded when a Nazi mortar shell landed near him. He was struck by seven pieces of shrapnel, healed and rejoined his company on July 3.

Tom’s near-life-threatening injury came on Oct. 2, 1944 between Florence and Bologna. Coming down a slope Dimperio and company were fired upon by a machine gun. With bullets zinging past him, Tom ran with his rifle through a muddy field as a round hit him in the upper left chest and exited out the arm pit and pulverized his upper arm bone. His life was spared after taking cover behind a large pile of manure.

Dimperio told the Courier: “He kept shooting and I could hear those bullets plunking into that manure. Thank God it was big enough to where the bullets wouldn’t go through. So let’s say that a pile of manure actually saved my life.”

He was scooped up by Army medics and spent the next two years in nine different hospitals. He was discharged from the Army in November 1945.

While recuperating at a hospital in Auburn he met his future wife, Genevieve Foster. They were married March 18, 1946.

After the war, Dimperio worked at the Texaco station in 1951 and 1952 and at the Modesto Post Office from 1952 until retiring in 1978.

Tom attended Ceres Grammar School (Whitmore School) where he graduated eighth grade in 1934. He remembered being paddled by both teacher Mae Hensley and Principal Walter White. Dimperio was a member of the Ceres High School class of 1938 but did not earn his diploma until after the war.

Jim Sanders

Another unforgettable Ceres boy who fought in WWII and came back home safely was James A. “Jim” Sanders who left this planet in 2018.

The 1942 Ceres High School graduate enlisted in the Army and was assigned to the 427th Medical Battalion which followed Patton’s Third Army across Europe, an experience he later chronicled in his book, “Saving Lives, Saving Memories: A 19-Year-Old Ambulance Driver in the Wake of Patton’s Army.”

Sanders was thrust into unspeakable horrors as a World War II ambulance driver.

“We were just innocent kids,” we quoted Sanders. “I still see that first load of casualties we picked up. I still see that man down on the right side with his head all bandaged and bloody and the doctor comes by and says, ‘Pull him out, he’s dead.’ That was our initiation. I was 19 by that time.”

He came out the experience psychologically scarred. For a time he was able to get past the bad memories by immersing himself in married life, family and a successful career, but in his twilight years the memories came on as strong as the rotting corpses he saw while moving around Europe.

“I think I’m more screwed up today over it than when I came out,” admitted Sanders in a 2009 Courier interview. “I came home ... finished San Jose State and we wanted to get married and I completely wiped it out ... and then it started to coming back to me at nights. If I wake up at night I’m still seeing that stuff. I’m probably controlled by that more today than I was all through my working life because I was busy.”

Sanders said he found the writing of the book to be therapeutic but wanted to record his personal experiences of family history purposes. That and to “try to counter these people who say there was no Holocaust because I actually saw two of those camps. They weren’t killing camps like Auschwitz. There were no gas chambers involved but thousands died for malnutrition, overwork or beatings. So it did happen.”

He wrote of one particularly disturbing incident after a German sniper had been shooting at Americans from a village bell tower and had surrendered to a lieutenant after running out of ammunition. The lieutenant told his prisoner, “You’re gonna shoot at us, then just stroll out and give yourself up?” The American raised his pistol and said, “Well, no way that’s going to happen” and squeezed the trigger.

“I was just absolutely amazed that he would do it,” recalled Sanders. “The guy’s problem is that he gave up to the wrong guy.”

On returning home, Jim persuaded a former high school sweetheart, Marian Gondring, to become his bride. They married in 1948 and settled in a home on Roseburg Avenue in Modesto. He operated a gas distributorship and operated an equipment rental business in Turlock from 1964 to 1975.

Toward the end of the book he tells of visiting the beach at Normandy, France, with his grandchildren and strolling among the glistening crosses in the cemetery there to announce that “the grandfather now standing beside them could very well have been under this lush green grass.”

Things are a lot different with today’s generation of Americans than those who endured the war, Sanders stated. While all Americans supported the WWII effort, dissention in the last wars is a result of newer generations being “more into themselves and their things.”

“War is bad,” we quoted Sanders. “It’s like they say, it’s hell. Mankind does not seem to be able to live on this beautiful station that we have without conflict. It seems incredible that we continue.”

Young brothers in WWII

World War II prompted the six sons of Aria and Eliza Young of Ceres to enlist in the military. Arlis Young, Connie Young, Otho “Boag” Young, Hershel “Trent” Young, Orville Young and Ezell “Easy” Young all answered the call to defend freedom and all came back alive. Two had close calls, though.

Ezell had been wounded by shrapnel and Hershel’s ship was hit.

Hershell earned his Purple Heart when the USS Osprey, a minesweeper, sank when clearing a pathway for the D-Day invasion. He died on Dec. 1, 2013.

All the brothers have since passed away.

Vietnam casualties

A number of Ceres boys were sent to fight in the Vietnam War, with at least two giving up their lives.

Billy Ray Owens – his name is etched on the Ceres War Memorial in Whitmore Park – grew up on Mary Street. Owens was a door gunner on a helicopter and became the first Ceres boy to die in the Asian war, on Aug. 22, 1966.

Brian Kent McGar, who was ambushed as part of a five-man patrol, was reported missing in action May 31, 1967. His remains wouldn’t return to American soil until 1997 when he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. There is a cenotaph for Brian at the grave of his father Edgar McGar at Turlock Memorial Park.