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Veteran Spotlight

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by Priscilla Rall

Sniper Wings Seiss

The Seiss family had settled in the Frederick area in the mid-1700s. Born in 1925 in Graceham, Sterling Seiss was a descendant of these first settlers. The family home, where he now lives, was built in 1825, near what is thought to be an ancient Native American trail. Sterling found many arrowheads in the fields by the house. The original stone spring house near the old home still stands. Sterling had six brothers and six sisters, and he remembers that his grandmother kept butter and milk cool in the spring house. When the kids were sent to get milk from there, they were allowed to bring up one bottle of homemade root beer that was also stored there.

Sterling’s father worked as a barn builder for Ralph Miller, and also farmed. The children were kept busy with daily chores. Sterling gathered kindling and eggs, while his older brother filled the wood box. The other boys cared for the horses, Prince and Bob, as his father never owned a tractor. For Christmas, the Seiss children got hard candy, oranges, and sometimes a new pair of socks. They enjoyed the many church festivals nearby. Family was everything to the Seisses. Their cousin, Russell, had lost his mother at an early age and he often stayed with the Sterling family; it was not unusual for the children to stay with aunts and uncles or grandparents for a time.

Sterling left school after seventh grade and worked for a time at the Gem Laundry in Frederick, helping to pick up and then deliver the cleaned clothes. At this time, he lived with his brother in Frederick and earned $6.00 a week. When the laundry closed, he rode his bicycle back to Thurmont, where his parents were living. At that time, Thurmont was quite a hopping town, with a movie theater that charged 17 cents a ticket. Even Graceham had a store, a warehouse, a post office, and, of course, the Moravian Church.

However, as the Depression loomed over the country, it affected the Seiss Famly. They lost all of their savings when the Central Trust bank folded and, consequently, lost their farm. Sterling’s father took any job he could find, and they moved from one rented farm to another. Sterling remembers hobos who rode the rails and would split wood for a meal. At one point, Sterling worked for John Zimmer on his nearby farm. He also helped deliver milk on a horse-drawn wagon.

When he turned 18, although he could have asked for a farming deferment, he decided to join the Army. He was inducted in January 1944, and after training, he shipped out to New Guinea. There, with Company F in the 34th Infantry, they searched for any Japanese still remaining in a “mopping up” operation. They were warned to beware of snakes and “head hunters.” Sterling recalls thinking “that doesn’t sound very good to me!” Thankfully, they found no enemy soldiers, snakes, or head hunters. Then they sailed off for the Philippine Islands, landing in Leyte, where again they were in a “mopping up” operation.

On December 11, 1944, as the company was digging in for the night, Pvt. Seiss felt a stinging sensation in his left shoulder. When his buddy called for a medic, the captain quickly came; stripping off Seiss’ jacket, he found a bullet hole through his shoulder and a burn mark made by the enemy sniper’s bullet across his back. He was ordered to report to the field hospital, but he had no idea where it was! Just then, a young Philippino boy spoke up, “Me know.” So, Sterling left his company and reported to the field hospital, where the doctor told him that he was going back to the states. The doctor told Sterling how lucky he was—an inch lower or an inch higher and he would be dead. After his recovery in Georgia and then at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, he was discharged in May 1946, with a Good Conduct Medal and Purple Heart.

Sterling had always loved working with animals, so it is no surprise that for the rest of his life he was involved in farming. He had a brief first marriage that produced a son. He then married the love of his life, Mary Jean Harbaugh, in 1952. Together, they had three children, and farmed, raising heifers and pigs. Finally, in 1972, he was able to buy the home place where he lives to this day.

In the 1980s, I was one of many who bought piggies from Sterling, and I remember seeing him in his red pickup filled with crates of outdated milk he got from local dairies to feed his hogs. Sterling Seiss is one of the dwindling number of the “Greatest Generation,” to whom our country owes a great debt.

This quiet hero survived a Japanese sniper to return to his beloved Frederick County, where he lives out the last of his life in anonymity, few realizing the sacrifices he made in WWII.

Eric Smothers thanks Sterling Seiss for his many years of commitment and service to Graceham Volunteer Fire Company, during the company’s annual banquet held on April 27, 2019.

Veteran Spotlight

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The Significant Signal Corps

by Priscilla Rall

Few people realize the importance of our Signal Corps, but one of our local citizens certainly does. He is George Harlis Bolling (pictured right), born in 1940 in Tennessee. His father met his mother while he was driving cattle through a small town. Motivated by the tremendous loss of life from the Spanish Flu epidemic, his father became a doctor, who during WWII served over four years in what is now Ethiopia.

After the war, the family settled in Tennessee on a small farm they called Cloverbottom Farm. George graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1962 and served in the ROTC there. After graduating, he married and was commissioned an officer in the Signal Corps. He served in Germany in telecommunications for more than three years and observed “the piles of rubble” and pillboxes, gaunt reminders of the war.

By late 1967, he was sent to Vietnam, leaving behind his wife and two young daughters. Captain Bolling served at the Tan Son Nhat Airbase, outside of Saigon. As the Systems Control Officer, he happened to be on the line to Washington when the Tet Offensive began at 2:00 a.m. He provided the Pentagon with the first report of the huge enemy offensive. Every base was reporting enemy attacks and, soon, Tan Son Nhat, itself, had rockets pouring over them. Over one thousand enemy soldiers infiltrated the airbase dressed as South Vietnamese. At one point, a nearby sniper trapped George in a shell hole for nine hours. When he related these experiences to me in his interview for the Fredrick County Veterans Project, he said, “I feel like I am there…bullets were whizzing thru the metal buildings…it is so vivid to this day.” Soon Gen. Creighton Abrahams took command and “things tightened up.” Everyone worked filling sand bags and making bunkers. While in Vietnam, George visited at least fifteen different outposts to secure their communications.

After one year, now Major Bolling returned to the United States and remembers being shocked at the new style of miniskirts! He was stationed at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and trained with AT&T to learn more about running a telephone company. Later, the Bolling family, now complete with a son, moved to Alexandria, Virginia, and into their first real home. Major Bolling was now in charge of all telecommunications in the Western Hemisphere. His next move was to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. After one year, he was sent to South Korea as the Executive Commander of the Signal Battalion at Uijeongbu between Seoul and the DMZ. The next year as a lieutenant colonel, he went to the Pentagon to be on the staff of the Army Chief of Staff. He oversaw the difficult task of base closings and, in this capacity, met President Jimmy Carter, whom George recalled that, despite a soft exterior, started many difficult, important defense measures for which he is not recognized.

George’s next move was to Ft. Hood, Texas, where he commanded 1,000 soldiers of the 57th Signal Battalion. Then, it was back to the Pentagon, where he was assigned Inspector General. In this position, his team would spend a month at a base and examine its operating efficiency. Soon, he was selected for the prestigious War College at Ft. McNair, Virginia, as a Senior Research Fellow, where he wrote the seminal book on the breakup of AT&T in 1983.

Before his retirement in 1985, now Colonel Bolling was involved in what is described as the “Black World,” more than “top secret” and essential to our national security, and of which he cannot speak. George left no grass growing under his feet, and he was soon working for Martin Marietta in Bethesda, and then he was onto COMSAT as a vice president. He started his own consulting business in 1998, and has lived in Thurmont for the last thirteen years. George was a member of the Damascus American Legion for twenty-seven years and was its commander for two years. He is the past president of the Thurmont Lions Club and a Lions International Melvin Jones Fellow. Sadly, last July, his beloved wife, Mary, passed away. When you learn about this, then you should think about the introduction of gaming technologies, as do successful online gaming sites. Today, in essence, a game can be made from any task, and at the same time everything becomes more interesting and useful.

George has served his county with honor for more than twenty-three years, earning the Bronze Star, the Legion of Merit, and many more honors. Our community is fortunate to have such a dedicated Veteran in our midst.

It was an honor to interview George for the Frederick County Veterans History Project and to record his service to our community and country.

If you would like to help with the Veterans History Project, contact Priscilla at priscillarall@gmail.com.

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Bernard “Bernie” Fink, Sr.

Moonshine to Ship Shine

by Priscilla Rall

One of the few remaining WWII Veterans from Thurmont is Bernard “Bernie” Fink, Sr.

Bernie was born in 1923, one of the six children of Margaret Elizabeth and Clarence Fink. Clarence was a tinner who owned a plumbing and heating business. As the oldest son, Bernie often accompanied his father onto Catoctin Mountain to make or repair moonshine stills. Bernie remembers soldering the coils of the stills and recalls the local youngsters washing bottles to be reused for the ‘shine. He has tried “mint gin” and found the dark green drink very palatable.

Growing up during the Great Depression, Bernie saw many hobos “riding the rails,” who would stop by his home where his mother had dishes ready to feed them a meal, often in exchange for repairing umbrellas or sharpening knives. Like many others, the family lost all of their savings with the collapse of the Central Trust Bank, and Bernie lost the $36.00 he had earned delivering newspapers.

At age seventeen, Bernie left school to take over the family business, as his father’s health deteriorated. His “Pap” was a hard taskmaster, no after-school sports for his children. The children had to come home after school to do chores.

In the first years of WWII, Bernie had a deferment because the family business was in charge of the Thurmont Water Works, but he eventually joined the Navy in June 1943. After basic training at Bainbridge, he went to Little Creek, Virginia, for amphibious training.

After training, he was ordered to Pier 92 in New York, where he joined the crew of the LCT 1012 (Landing Craft Tanks) that was loaded on LST 1048 (Landing Craft Troops). It left port with a convoy of ninety-six ships to North Africa. After twenty-nine days, the convoy landed in Bizerte, Tunisia. LCT 1012 was then loaded with five tanks and troops for the invasion of Southern France on August 15. As Bernie’s LCT reached the shores of France, two of the five LCTs hit enemy mines, which “blew everything to pieces.” The action was fast and furious as German shells came in overhead from artillery hidden in the hills above the beaches.

Bernie wondered “Lord, am I going to get out of this?” as he manned the vessel’s only .22-mm gun. His only order was to “point the gun and fire.” It took an excruciating thirty minutes to unload the tanks and men before the LCT was finally able to get off that deadly beach and out of range of the deadly shelling.

Next, the ship went to Marseilles and Naples, where the sailors went on leave. They travelled to Sicily, where Bernie transferred to a ship bound for the states. There, 2nd Class Coxswain Fink boarded the AKA 97, a troop ship that carried a crew of 200 and 1,000 troops. He was in charge of the galley.

Before he headed out to the Pacific, his sweetheart, Mary Ellen Saylor from Motters Station, met him at Newport News, Virginia, and they married on May 10, 1945.

Bernie shipped out on May 11, going through the Panama Canal and then on to Pearl Harbor, where they were greeted with the news that the war was finally over! Bernie spent the next four months ferrying troops from Guam, Saipan, Guadalcanal, and Iwo Jima to Pearl Harbor for the final leg of the journey home. Bernie remembers being shocked to see Marines accompanied by their war dogs. The crew was never able to leave the ship when it docked, as the government wanted the troops home ASAP.

While Bernie was in the Mediterranean, his mother had a stroke that he only learned of when he returned home in December 1945. Later, when his father died, Bernie bought the plumbing and heating business and continued it until his eyesight deteriorated, forcing him to sell.

Bernie and Mary Ellen raised their four children in the house his father built on the corner of Frederick Road and Howard Street in Thurmont, which was called Late’s Alley after the butcher shop located on the alley next to the old stone jailhouse.

It was an honor to interview Bernie for the Frederick County Veterans History Project and record his service to our community and country.


Bernard “Bernie” Fink, Sr.

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by Priscilla Rall

Raymond Lloyd

Raymond Lloyd was born in 1921 in Hanover, Pennsylvania, and graduated from high school in 1939. He is a small, unassuming gentleman, who lives near Ladiesburg with his wife. He worked at the Naval Ordnance Plant in York, Pennsylvania, but left to join the Navy in May 1942. After completing basic training, he volunteered for the submarine service and received his training at the submarine base in New London, Connecticut. This included practice in the escape tank and pressure tank as well as extensive psychological screening.  Raymond then had further training at their sound school learning construction and the use of sound gear.

He was finally assigned to his first submarine, the USS Gunnel that left the United States, going through the Panama Canal on his way to Pearl Harbor and then onto Midway Island. The submarine’s captain was John S. McCain, Jr. (the father of the late Sen. John McCain). The Gunnel’s first war patrol was in the area west of Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan. Raymond described just one of the ship’s battles with the enemy when the crew sighted two freighters escorted by three destroyers.

“All aboard immediately went to their battle stations, although only three of their four engines were operating,” he said. “After closing to about 2,500 yards, the captain ordered the firing of three torpedoes at the closest freighter and three at the second one.”                 Unfortunately, the torpedoes left a blue smoke screen which gave away the sub’s position. The first torpedo hit home and within minutes the first freighter went down. Seconds later the second enemy vessel was hit as well. The Japanese destroyers lost no time in closing on the Gunnel’s position, and the Gunnel went into a step dive as the captain ordered to “rig for depth charges.” The Japanese dropped seven depth charges on the Gunnel at 150 feet, and according to Raymond, “they almost deafened us.”

A few exploded underneath the Gunnel, knocking out the lighting circuit and the bow and stern planes which caused the bow to rise toward the surface. Capt. McCain quickly ordered the safety chamber to be flooded in order to submerge the Gunnel. Raymond vividly remembers that “another attack of depth charges came down on us really tearing up the boat and the captain ordered ‘silent running’ while the crew stripped off all their shoes, keyrings, etc. … and secured all operating machinery” to prevent any noise that the enemy might hear. The crew operated the bow and stern planes manually.

While still at a depth of 150 feet, a grappling hook or chain rattled slowly down the ship’s port side. This was a method to try to hook a sub and then force it to the surface. The captain ordered the Gunnel to 300 feet and to run as close to the bottom of the sea as possible. After staying submerged for more than 30 hours, the sailors could no longer hear any enemy ships and using their last power, they slowly rose to the surface and immediately began to recharge their batteries and pump out the flooded bilges.

Lloyd continues, “Just 15 minutes later, a destroyer was sighted at about 5,800 yards. We went to battle stations and got two after-tubes armed with torpedoes. From a distance of about 1,500 yards, the Japanese destroyer began shelling the Gunnel with projectiles on both sides of us. We then sighted two other destroyers and all three began firing at us.”

With this, the captain ordered the two torpedoes on the stern tubes to be fired “down the throat” meaning that rather than aiming at the side of a vessel which is a large target, you aim for the narrow front, a dangerous and risky move. He then immediately ordered a deep dive as a torpedo hit the first destroyer which sunk. “But while we were only at 35 feet, five depth charges went off at our stern,” recalls Lloyd. The Gunnel soon leveled off at 200 feet as more charges exploded around her.

The captain called a meeting in the ward room to review the condition of the boat and crew. He explained that they had only 30 to 50 minutes of battery power left for propulsion, the crew was exhausted, foul air was making breathing difficult, carbon dioxide absorbents were used up, temperatures in the boat were reaching 120 degrees, and the humidity was 100 percent. McCain then told the crew his intentions; if they did not surface soon, they would never be able to. He wanted to ease the Gunnel to the surface with the 5-inch guns, 20mm, and machine guns manned in order to “shoot it out with the enemy.”

The other option (which he was dead set against) was to destroy all the classified material and equipment and bring the Gunnel to the surface and scuttle her. Then all hands would jump into the sea with the hope that they would be rescued and not shot. The captain wanted the decision to be a unanimous one by all hands. There was no discussion as all hands shouted “Let’s get going skipper and shoot it out!” As they surfaced, all hands swept the horizon but the enemy destroyers were nowhere in sight! The severely injured Gunnel was ordered to Mare Island, California for repairs.

When the Gunnel was ship-shape again, she was ordered to proceed to the approaches to Tokyo Bay and attack any Japanese warships, oil tankers, or cargo ships she might encounter. On this war patrol, they sighted a large passenger freighter heavily laden and running low in the water. At a range of 1,000 yards, the captain fired four torpedoes and all four hit home. The crew could hear many explosions as the freighter broke up and quickly went down. The enemy’s destroyer escort promptly attacked the Gunnel with at least 36 depth charges. The Gunnel suffered only slight damage, but the crew’s eardrums felt the effects.

Raymond was then transferred to a new submarine, the USS Moray, captained by Frank Barrows. It patrolled the seas around Japan in “lifeguard” duty, picking up crews of downed U.S. planes. When President George H. W. Bush was a young Navy aviator during WWII, he was shot down near Iwo Jima, and it was a submarine that rescued him before the enemy could get to him. LadyX.ch

The Moray’s torpedoes did hit an enemy tanker that erupted into flames and sunk during their 52 day war patrol.

Raymond Lloyd, First Class Petty Officer, was discharged due to medical reasons after spending 11 months in a Navy hospital. He later attended Gettysburg College and Johns Hopkins University. Raymond was the assistant Commissioner, Division of Labor and Industry for the State of Maryland and retired in 1986.

Lloyd was just one of the almost 16,000 sailors in the Silent Service, 3,506 who never returned. Their casualty rate of 22 percent was the highest of any branch in the military. It took a certain kind of American to brave the depths in the close confines of a boat deep under the sea for months at a time. America owes these brave submariners a great debt of gratitude.

Raymond Lloyd

Drawing is the mascot of the USS Gunnel.

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by James Rada, Jr.

James E. Shankle

James Shankle of Woodsboro began life behind the eight ball, as they say. He was born in Frederick on November 21, 1925.

“My mother abandoned me on the streets of Frederick,” Shankle said. “I was found by a policeman and taken to the hospital.”

The police officer took the baby to Montevue, which served as the city’s hospital at the time. An advertisement was placed in the newspaper, seeking a foster family for James. Mildred Roddick answered the ad and took the child home to live with her and her husband in Montgomery County.

Shortly after, Mildred’s marriage broke up, and she moved back in with her parents who lived on MD 550, north of Woodsboro. James suddenly found himself with a larger family, as Mildred’s mother, Minnie Nichols, became his primary caregiver. She would be the woman that James would come to call his mother.

He lived happily as Minnie’s foster son until the Children’s Aid Society got involved in James’s life. The organization, which was established to take care of foster children and assist with adoptions, had other ideas for James.

“That wasn’t very good,” James said. “They farmed us out to work.”

At the age of eight, James was told he would have to get up each morning at 4:00 a.m. and walk to a nearby farm to milk the dairy cows. After, he would hurry home to eat breakfast and go to school.

When James was twelve years old, a fourteen-year-old boy named Bill showed up from Thurmont and told James, “I’m your brother.”

James also learned that he had three sisters, that not only had he never met but didn’t even know he had.

“Two weeks later, after meeting him (Bill), my sister got killed on a farm,” James said.

James’s siblings had also been farmed out to work, as he had been. His sister, Betty, who had been sixteen years old at the time, had been working as a cook on a farm in New Market. Part of getting the cook fire ready each morning was to add coal oil to the stove.

“She got up late one morning and picked up the wrong can,” James said.

Betty picked up a can of gasoline and added it to the fire. The resulting explosion burned the girl over 80 percent of her body, killing her.

It was only at her funeral that James first met his mother, Edith Shankle. He never did meet his other sisters, Alma and Gladys.

When James finished the seventh grade—all the schooling required by the State of Maryland at the time—he wanted to go to high school. The Children’s Aid Society didn’t want to allow this, but James persevered. Finally, he was told that he could attend Walkersville High School, but he had to “earn his way.” He began doing any and all jobs that would pay him, such as setting up pens and mowing. When he turned sixteen, he got a job at a bakery in Walkersville, where he worked after school until 11:00 p.m. each evening.

By the time he turned seventeen, the United States had been fighting in World War II for nearly a year. James tried to enlist in the Navy. Since he was underage, he was told that he would need a parent, not a foster parent or guardian, to sign his enlistment form.

So, James set out to find his father, Irving Shankle. During the search, James discovered that his father was “a drunk and a criminal.”

“I found him in a bar someplace on West Patrick Street,” James said.

He told his father what he needed. The man was a WWI Veteran, so he had no problem signing the enlistment form. James then bought his father a beer and left.

While James had been working to enlist, his brother Bill had been drafted into the Army.

“I saw him off at the train station on a Sunday, and I left by bus on Monday,” James said.

He reported to Bainbridge Naval Base at Port Deposit, Maryland, in 1943. The base was on the bluffs, overlooking the Susquehanna River. Originally a boys’ school, it had become a Navy training camp only months before James had enlisted. During WWII, 244,277 recruits trained at the camp in ordnance and gunnery, seamanship, firefighting, and military orders. When it was discovered that James had lifeguard training, he was given a job of training other sailors to swim.

During his basic training, he recalled once having to jump off a 70-foot-tall tower into a pool while wearing a life vest. Another training exercise was held in a repurposed theater. A large screen was set up, and planes were projected onto it flying in different directions. Recruits got behind a special .50-cal. gun connected to the screen. They were given 1,000 shots each, and they had to see how many times they could hit the planes.

“I scored 800 and something,” James recalled.

His accurate shooting earned him his first assignment. He was sent to North Carolina to patrol the coastline in a blimp, searching for enemy submarines. When he would sight a submarine off the coast, which “looked like a big cigar underwater,” he would notify the Coast Guard. James would track the submarine until a Coast Guard ship arrived to drop depth charges on the U-boat.

Once, a U-boat surfaced, and a small boat left filled with men. “They picked the guys up when they hit the beach, and we sunk the sub,” James said.

Landing a blimp was not easy. It involved a lot of men grabbing onto cables dropped from the gondola and pulling the blimp down to the ground. During one landing, a storm was approaching and brought with it high winds. The winds made it too difficult to land, and the order was given for the men to release the cables.

One serviceman got caught in the cables, and the wind lifted him and threw him across the landing field into high-tension lines. He was electrocuted.

The accident so scared James that he decided he needed to transfer someplace else. The amphibious force had been formed and was recruiting. James didn’t realize that it was a forerunner to the Navy Seals. He and his friend just wanted out of the blimp patrol.

“We jumped out of the frying pan into the fire,” he said.

He trained in Little Creek, Virginia. At the end of his advanced training, he left Boston Harbor on a landing ship tank (LST). It was a ship built for amphibious assaults because it could carry tanks, vehicles, and cargo. It had a large door on the bow that could be lowered and used as a ramp to unload or load whatever was aboard. It was not a fast ship, though, and James traveled across the Atlantic at 6 knots, which is just under 7 mph.

His ship took part in the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. More than sixty years later, he still teared up as he told how his ship lost 110 men out of a crew of 180 to land on Omaha Beach.

Following that mission, he transferred to another LST that was tasked with delivering tanks to the French Riviera. His ship was one of three to be sent in to make a landing on the beach. The other two ships snagged on sandbars, but James’s ship not only hit the beach, when the ramp lowered, the tank was able to roll right out onto a road.

Germans, who were about 100 yards away, peppered the tank with small-weapons fire. The tank turned and went after them. A few minutes later, thirty-five Germans came back to the ship, running ahead of the tank with their hands over their heads.

James served on thirteen missions in Europe and the Mediterranean. They weren’t all troop movements. On one occasion, his ship had to deliver mules that were needed to take supplies over the Alps.

He was part of a mission to deliver supplies to a station in Italy, where PT boats were repaired. He only found out afterward that his ship was the fifth to attempt the mission, but he could believe it. U-boats torpedoed the other four ships. However, James’s captain had removed everything from the boat that he could so that it sat higher in the water.

James was manning a 20-mm. gun during the mission; he saw torpedoes glide toward the boat only to pass beneath it because it was sitting too high in the water for the torpedoes to hit.

They were also lucky because there was a dense fog that they could hide in so that U-boat periscopes couldn’t see the ship.

On his last mission in the Mediterranean, his ship was severely damaged. It was sent back across the Atlantic as part of a 300-ship convoy. His ship only had one working engine and screw, though, and it limped across the Atlantic at a snail’s pace, unable to keep up with the convoy.

They eventually made it to Norfolk Naval Base, only to be hit by a Liberty ship while they were at anchor. The crash damaged the ship’s magazine, and James and his fellow crewmates had to dump their munitions rather than chance fire setting off an explosion. Then the shipyard refused to repair the ship, telling the captain that the ship had to go to New Orleans for repairs.

James did get a thirty-day leave in New Orleans, and he returned home for a visit. When his leave ended, he was assigned to a different ship and sent through the Panama Canal to San Diego, California.

From there, his ship began traveling to various ports: Hawaii, Guam, the Philippines, Russia, Alaska, and Iwo Jima.

He took part in one of the later landings to wrest control of the island from the Japanese. He could see the pillboxes where the Japanese holed up and fired on the Marines.

“I don’t think they would have taken that island if it wasn’t for flamethrowers,” James said. The flames could penetrate where bullets couldn’t and forced the Japanese into the open, or they died in the pillboxes.

One night, the Japanese launched an air raid. Five planes tried to sink James’s ship. Four were shot down, but the fifth did a lot of damage. That attack also injured James, who was manning a 20-mm gun. The concussive force of an explosion threw him face first into a bulkhead. He had broken ribs and shoulders, but he also needed to have his nose rebuilt. Unfortunately, the ship’s doctor didn’t have any anesthetic. James had to endure the 15-minute procedure in excruciating pain, being held down by other sailors.

After Iwo Jima, his ship was sent to Saipan to prepare for the expected invasion of Japan. It was a scary time. James could tell by the training exercises, “When we hit the beach, we were probably never getting off.”

However, on August 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. When word reached the sailors at Saipan, “You could have heard a pin drop,” James said. “All day long, nobody was talking.”

After the war, he went back to work in Woodsboro, learning to be a Mason, but it didn’t interest him. He used the G.I. Bill to attend York Technical Institute and study electronics. However, he couldn’t find work in his field at first and had to take a job at a sawmill.

He married June Bostian in 1951, and they were together for fifty-six years.

James eventually found work at Fort Detrick as an engineer and worked there for more than thirty years until he retired in 1987.

James died at age 83 on June 24, 2009. He is buried in Rocky Hill Cemetery.

Note: This spotlight is based on an oral history collected by members of the Frederick County Veterans History Project. The group is interested in interviewing any local Veteran for inclusion in the Library of Congress Veteran History Project. If you would like to volunteer to help or know a Veteran who could be interviewed, contract Priscilla Rall at priscillarall@gmail.com or 301-271-2868.

James Shankle, 1943

James Shankle, 2006