DeKALB, Ill. (AP) - Had his ship not been delayed, Russell Wood says he might not have survived World War II - and not received such a royal treatment through Honor Flight Chicago 70 years later.
Wood, 88, joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1943 after dropping out of DeKalb High School when he was 17. When the war ended in Europe, Wood was sent to Hawaii to join the 5th Marine Division, which stormed the Pacific island of Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945. He then served for eight months as an occupational troop on Honshu, one of the southern islands of Japan.
“The ship I was on was seven days late to make the landing (at Iwo Jima),” Wood said. “I never got there, and that’s probably why I’m still alive.”
Wood, who now divides his time between DeKalb and Scottsdale, Ariz., was one of about 90 senior citizens from the Chicago area who participated in the April 8 Honor Flight, a one-day, all-expenses-paid excursion for area WWII veterans to visit Washington, D.C., and its several memorials. It was Wood’s first trip to the nation’s capital.
“It’s quite amazing, that flight,” Wood said. “I think it was a lot more of an honor than I actually earned, but I was very impressed and thankful.”
Honor Flight Chicago, a nonprofit, has flown 5,400 WWII veterans to Washington since it was established in 2008, but another 15,000 area veterans still haven’t taken the trip, co-founder and CEO Mary Pettinato said.
“They describe it as the best or second-best day of life,” she said. “It’s a day where they’re thanked or honored for the sacrifice they gave many years ago.”
She said the company is working diligently to get the rest of the veterans in the area on a plane.
“This is not just for the healthy,” Pettinato said. “We’re working hard to find the other veterans before it’s too late.”
Veterans flew out of Midway International Airport in Chicago and into Washington, D.C., in the morning and returned later that evening. Each of the veterans are provided with a wheelchair for better mobility and a chaperone - or as Wood called them, “babysitters.”
Wood’s experience was unique because his “babysitter” was his son, Larry Wood of Sycamore, a Vietnam veteran.
“Just watching him interact with the other guys was really unique,” Larry Wood said. “I was really impressed by how 1,500 volunteers got all that work in one day and that so many people got so excited about it.”
In Washington, the Honor Flight literally stopped traffic. Once the veterans were taken from their plane to the buses, traffic was stopped on the Interstate out of respect to the veterans, Wood said.
He said his favorite stop was the WWII Memorial.
“It was quite a beautiful memorial,” Wood said, “and what really impressed me, there’s a gold star on the wall that sticks out. For every star there was 100 men killed, and there’s a wall full of stars.”
When they returned, the veterans were greeted by family, friends, musicians and even strangers, Larry Wood said.
Barbara Berg, Russell Wood’s daughter and the person who signed her father up for excursion, was there to greet him.
“I think it was important from our family’s standpoint to have him recognized for the service he provided to our country,” Berg said.
However, Wood said he didn’t feel he deserved all the pomp and circumstance.
“I know a lot of people deserve it, but I don’t think I necessarily deserved it,” he said. “I never got hurt. I never got nothing. I just went like everyone else did. I lucked out and never got hurt or anything. I saw a lot of the world and country and then the war was over and I came home and was ready to have a family.”
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Source: The (DeKalb) Daily Chronicle, https://bit.ly/1QLpsDO
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Information from: The Daily Chronicle, https://www.daily-chronicle.com
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