The Ohio Veteran's Home's numerous historic residences house a declining number of World War II veterans. Ohio's military sons and daughters are appreciative of the renewed attention being paid them this year... but themselves had never forgotten what they accomplished; or how.
Joe Steele: I don't like to think about it if you want me to tell you the truth. It's hell for a bunch of young kids... but somebody has to do it.
Army Staff Sergeant Joe Steele of Defiance, Ohio was bound for the Pacific Theatre after war erupted. But orders changed; and when his 37th Division finally saw action... it was on the beach at Guadalcanal, the six month campaign marking the first major offensive against Japan by Allied forces.
Joe Steele: I'll tell ya what, it wasn't no place to be. You don't realize what goes on. You ever seen em clean out a cave? ...Flamethrowers.
86-year-old Steele's memories were sharp but not very pleasant. Having first illegally joined the National Guard as a 14-year-old, he continually spoke of "the youth" of the American fighting forces. Too young, in many cases.
Joe Steele: We had men that was with us at Guadalcanal who had already been in the Army 2-3 years, and they tried to send them back home; because they wasn't old enough to sign up.
Back home is where resident and former U.S. Navy machinist Janet Sanders Overhuls served. American women were needed for the war effort, but; hadn't been planned for.
Janet Sanders Overhuls: There were two things they knew to do with us - one was Yeoman, and one was Machinist. And I ended up a Machinist. They had a bunch of old planes there for us to work on.
Serving at Naval Air Station Atlanta, she repaired instrument panels from damaged aircraft, and helped train pilots to fly by those instruments.
Janet Sanders Overhuls: They were just learning, just beginning. Tyrone Power came through. He was in the Air Corps, just learning to fly with instruments.
After training with Overhuls, Ohio native and Hollywood heartthrob Power became a decorated war pilot, flying transports in Saipan during 1945. Janet Overhuls watched the war unfold from Georgia, as her new Ohio-born husband John headed back to Pearl Harbor.
Janet Sanders Overhuls: He said he dreaded going back. He said nobody comes home a second time, and he wasn't even in combat. He was in ordinance.
Based in England, Lieutenant Carl Abele of Lakewood knew all about combat. His job was to plot courses American bombers flew, to devastate Axis targets.
Carl Abele: I was a navigator on a B-17 bomber. We were sitting ducks for the German fighter planes. We had to fly straight and level, you don't do evasive maneuvers in a bomber. And on my 5th mission, Black Thursday, October 14th, 1943, I was shot down, and made a POW. I was a POW for 16 months. Fighters could dive in and pick us off 1 by 1. Sad thing trying to count chutes, and you never get a full count. That means someone died. And soon enough came our turn. Bail out, Oooooo. My parachute knocked me out and broke my back. I landed on a church roof near Metz, France, and I slid off the roof to the graveyard. Got all broken up, so I'm lucky I can walk. Sort of. War is hell.
Following rehab, Abele was transported to prison camp Stalag Luft 3, south of Zagan, Poland.
Carl Abele: There's so much I can tell you about life in a prison camp. We walked around the camp border, same as animals in zoo. Food was an obsession - we'd never talk of women - just food. Young and healthy as we were, it was just food.
Deemed unable to fight, Lt. Abele was eventually swapped by the Germans for American-held prisoners in February '45.
Carl Abele: I see others with terrible disfiguring burns, I knew I was lucky. I had only a broken back, and foot.
60 years later you have to wonder; would they deal with the pain and the devastation again? To a person, they say WWII was worth the cost paid. Staff Sgt. Steele.
Joe Steele: I was scared just like anybody else. But as I think back... through the years… it had to happen.
In Sandusky, Rick Jackson, 90.3.