Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org
Surnames: Wylie, Short, Tesmer, Hediger
----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 11/11/2015
American Legion Honors Veteran (John Wylie - 2015)
Wylie is Proud of WWII Air Force Service
John Wylie, 90, served in the U. S. Air Force from 1943 to 1945. The WWII veteran posed in his Town of Washburn home Thursday, as he recalled details about his military service in observance of Veterans Day Nov. 11. Photo by Todd Schmidt/Clark County Press)
By Todd Schmidt
John Wylie, 90, of the Town of Washburn is proud of his service in the U. S. Air Force during WWII.
With less than a week to go before Veterans Day, a quiet and humble Wylie shared his story Thursday at the kitchen table of his modest home southeast of Neillsville along STH 73.
Wylie was drafted April 15, 1943, and served until Nov. 30, 1945.
Wylie was a strong farm boy from Tabor, IA, the son of John Earl and Francis Wylie. His family lost their property in Minnesota during the Depression and moved to Iowa in 1936. He had one sister and three brothers.
Wylie graduated from the Tabor High School in 1942. He saved enough money picking corn by hand to buy a train ticket to Chula Vista, CA, to begin a job at the Aurora Airplane Factory.
“Workers were there from all over the country,” Wylie said. “I had aunts, uncles and cousins all working there.”
Less than a year later, Wylie was drafted into the Air Force. He was inducted at nearby Ft. MacArthur, CA, and shipped to Kearns Army Air Force Base in Utah for basic training.
“That was not a real popular place to be,” Wylie recalled. “Most of the recruits there were foot soldiers, so we had a lot of general army training, including marching and rifle training. We learned about discipline and how to take orders.”
Wylie and his fellow soldiers spent 16 weeks there, before moving on to a base near Arlington, TX, for an introduction to a flying course. Instructors took the recruits out over the Gulf of Mexico in a single engine plane to determine their tolerance to flying.
“Pilots stalled out the planes and did different maneuvers to see if you could stand it or not,” Wylie said.
From there it was on to Lowry Air Force Base near Denver, CO, for gunnery and armament schooling. The recruits split time at a training facility close to Salt Lake, UT.
They got familiar with firing machine guns at moving targets in all kinds of weather and handling and detonating bombs. Wylie said one time the troops were standing ready to be dismissed and in instructor mishandled a gun and blew a hole in his own foot.
Flight training followed at a base near Boise, ID. Recruits put in practice on B-24 Bombers. Runs included night flying and bombing lighted targets.
“They got us greenhorns used to flying,” Wylie said. “We found out what combat would be like.”
Wylie recalled one practice flight that never got off the ground. The plane couldn’t get up enough speed to take off because the bomb bay doors were left open.
“That sucked all the Air into the plane,” Wylie said. “After that, practice went much better.”
Now that the recruits were fully trained, it was time to ship them out for active duty. Wylie and approximately 8,000 other men headed out aboard the Victory Ship from Newport News, VA, to Naples, Italy.
The trip took 11 days. The ship used evasion techniques to avoid attack by German U-boats and submarines.
A huge storm kicked up after a few days out to sea. Waves 50 feet high battered the ship around. Wylie said everybody got seasick.
“We bunked one on top of another down in the hold,” he recalled. “It was a challenge to eat, because it was hard to catch up to your dishes. Most of us were too sick to eat anyway.”
Two destroyers escorted the ship through the Strait of Gibraltar. That area was tough to navigate, but the Victory Ship made it fine.
It was summertime, and the streets of Naples were dusty from continuous bombing raids. The Germans had just headed out and the Americans were moving in.
“There was the smell of dead bodies all over the place,” Wylie said.
The troops arrived at the railroad station in Naples. They boarded a narrow train powered by a small locomotive.
“When we got to a rise in the terrain, most of us had to get off and walk alongside the train,” Wylie said. “The engine didn’t have enough power.”
Many young children tagged along, begging for food and candy.
The train arrived at Foggia, Italy. A truck took the troops to an Air Force base a few miles away.
The men slept in tents near the base, six men to a tent. They dug a 2-ft. by 5-ft trench around each tent. The site was a small plateau in a rural area.
The runway where the planes were kept was about two miles from the tent area. The bombers were scattered on asphalt pads and set up so enemy fire couldn’t hit them all at the same time. The actual runway consisted of metal panels assembled on the dirt.
Wylie said there were about 25 planes in each unit. He was a member of a team that included pilots, mechanics, radiomen and cooks.
For safety, bombs and other munitions were kept a few miles away from the tent area. Wylie and others loaded the bombs on trucks and distributed them to the planes.
Payloads included 250-lb. and 500-lb. bombs and 100-lb. cluster bombs. Each one had to be hand cranked into the bomb bays and shackled securely.
Bombing runs were generally conducted from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Planes were loaded to the gills, and at times they struggled to get airborne. Crews consisted of a pilot, co-pilot, engineer, radioman and gunman.
The B24s flew around in a circle until about 100 were grouped. Then they advanced on bombing raids of factories and enemy personnel groups.
“We bombed everything, every day the weather was suitable to fly,” Wylie said. “At the start of the missions, we lost about 25 percent of the planes each day due to anti-aircraft fire. At times, the planes were running out of fuel when they landed.”
Mechanics worked hard getting returning planes ready to fly the next day. Planes that were too badly damaged to repair were taken out to sea and dumped.
New personnel were brought in regularly to replace ones lost on bombing sorties. Every morning sergeants would pick up the men in jeeps and take them in their various workstations.
“Orders came down from headquarters,” Wylie said.”The sergeants were tough guys who did their business.”
Wylie said the officers and enlisted men didn’t associate with each other. They ate in separate mess halls.
“The officers had pretty good food,” he said. “The rest of ate junk.”
No matter what the fare, older Italian men rummaged through the garbage cans after each meal. There was no food of substance available in most of the country.
Young boys used crocs to bring water to the troops. Some of the boys took laundry into town and washed it up for the troops. Payment came out of a potion of the monthly ration of cigarettes, candy bars and soap.
Later, in the war, Wylie and his unit served at bases in Africa, Tunisia and Libya. His duties included checking the way planes were loaded to make sure the payload was distributed evenly.
Wylie and many others landed in New York. He was sent to a demobilization center in Sheridan, IL, and honorably discharged Nov. 30, 1945.
Wyle advanced to the rank of corporal during his tour of duty. He received a conduct medal, a victory medal, silver and bronze star, and ribbons for serving in the American, European, African and Middle East theaters.
He returned to the family farm new Sidney, IA, where his brother still lived. He worked around the home place, doing chores and cutting wood.
In the spring of 1946, Wylie rented a nearby farm. He moved to his present farm near Neillsville in 1960. He purchased 120 acres, added 80 acres, and bought land near Granton and Rozellville.
In addition to farming, Wylie did construction and concrete work and served as a guard at Short’s Mink Farm. He worked for a short time at Tesmer Construction and was employed for 17 years at the cheese factory started by Herman Hediger.
Wylie and his wife, Carolyn, were married in 1949. They had two children, John Jr. and Carol (Russell) Smith.
In 1984, Carolyn was killed in a car accident on her way to work in Marshfield.
Wylie has two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Wylie is a member of Neillsville American Legion Post 73 and St. Mary’s Catholic Church. His hobbies through the years included woodworking, reading and playing chess.
Most of Wylie’s military records were lost in a fire. Due that situation, getting needed hearing aids through the Veterans Administration (VA) has been a problem. “It is taking so long, because my records were lost,” Wylie said. “They don’t know what to do about it. I get a letter from the VA every month saying they are still working on it.”
In a reserved sort of way, Wylie is proud of his service time in the Air Force.
“While I am proud of my service awards, there are plenty of other foot soldiers and infantrymen that deserve the medals more than I do,” Wylie said. “We do the preparation, but they had to do the dirty work and get the Germans out of there.”
Wylie keeps up intently on current events. He simply said, “The world isn’t going very well.”
He continues to be a very religious man.
“The Lord has been with me all my life,” he said. “He has been standing right beside me. This country has to get back to doing the Lord’s commands, or it will never amount to anything. We are all put on Earth to serve the Lord.”
