ROSE CREEK – Maurice E.

Thursday, November 11, 1999

ROSE CREEK – Maurice E. and Isabelle Halverson will go to the American Legion Club at Adams tonight.

They’re having a chili and oyster stew supper.

It’s a popular place throughout the year for locals and others. After all, it is a kind of shrine to the people and spirit that bind people together.

The headquarters of American Legion Post No. 146 is where the sacrifices of America’s veterans are embraced with public events and private moments.

This is where veterans come and share with other veterans the minutiae of their daily lives. This is where veterans should go on Veterans Day. Veterans like Maurice E. Halverson and his wife, Isabelle.

He was born on a farm two miles north of Adams, the youngest of 14 children in Otto and Mattie Halverson’s family and one of four surviving. The other three are 97, 92 and 85 years old. He is 81.

He graduated Adams High School in 1936, worked on a farm for awhile and then went to work for a brother who operated a grocery store in Adams.

When Germany invaded Poland and Adolph Hitler began his war against the world, Halverson was among the thousands of Americans watching from the sidelines of the heartland.

When it appeared likely he would be drafted into the military service, he volunteered and joined 20 other young men who left Austin by train March 19, 1941, for Fort Snelling in Minneapolis.

"We all dressed up for the event," Halverson remembered. "We wore suits, topcoats and hats, we were so proud."

Halverson volunteered for the 1st Medical Corps even though he had never performed any First Aid or rescue work before.

"In 90 days they made something out of you. That’s the way they did it back then," he said.

Other locals went with him. Howard Bellrichard and Joe James, among others. When their training was completed, they had the option to return home. At the time, the United States was not yet an active participant in World War II.

"Then came Pearl Harbor and we all stayed," he said.

The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, propelled America into World War II. It was the Japanese, not Hitler’s Nazi Germany, which brought America to declare war on the Axis Powers.

Altogether about 70 million people served in the armed forces of the Allies and Axis powers. About 17 million of them lost their lives.

Close to 400,000 Americans paid the ultimate sacrifice.

The 128th Evacuation Hospital was the first mobile surgical unit sent into combat zone during major battles in World War II.

It originally had 300 members, including about 50 nurses. Today, 50 members are still living.

Halverson was assigned to the unit and left for Europe in August 1942. Their first stop was Scotland and than England, but they would also be sent to North Africa and ports of call in Morocco and Tunisia before being sent to Sicily, then Normandy and France.

After June 6, 1944, D-Day, Halverson and the rest of the medics, orderlies, corpsmen and nurses, plus doctors and other medical staff of the 128th Evacuation Hospital unit, waded ashore at Utah Red Beach June 10, 1944 and began their life-saving work.

Halverson would remain with the surgical unit until his honorable discharge from the Army, Sept. 5, 1945.

Before arriving home, his brother, Orville, an infantry soldier, would find his brother and they had a reunion of their own.

He also met Ernie Pyle, the Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent.

When Halverson returned to Mower County, he was given a hero’s welcome like all the other returning GIs.

"They were all glad to see me come back home without a scratch," he said. "There were a lot of them, an awful lot, who didn’t come home. I was lucky."

"There was only one fellow that I really didn’t like during the war and that was a guy named ‘Hitler’," he said.

Eventually, he bought a grocery store at Rose Creek owned by Bill Holmquist and parlayed what he learned working for his brother at Adams into a career.

On Jan. 29, 1950, he married Isabelle Wohlers, an only child. The couple has one child, John born in 1956 and living in Jackson, Miss. The couple has three daughters.

After 14 years of grocery store ownership, Halverson sold the business. He then tried insurance sales until becoming a custodian for the Southland Independent School District, a job he held until retirement.

His wife, Isabelle, worked as a retail sales clerk and bookkeeper before going into the drapery business, working from her home and watch the business grow into a prosperous enterprise until retiring earlier this year.

This old soldier would not let the memories of World War II die. He attended the first reunion of the 128th Evacuation Hospital in 1950 at Pipestone and has been to everyone since.

Each summer, the men and women of the 128th Evacuation Hospital hold a reunion some place across the nation. Florida, Indiana, Nevada and last year, Louisville, Kentucky.

There were 18 men and women from the original unit in attendance at the reunion held in September.

The reunion was held in the Bullitt County Convention Center was made to look like a field hospital complete with ambulances, gurneys, Red Cross flags, IVs and other medical unit accouterments.

Isabel Halverson enjoys going to the 128th’s reunions with her husband.

"I’ve gotten just as close to the group as my husband," she said.

More likely than not, children and grandchildren of the original members of the 128th also attend the annual military surgical unit reunions. According to the Halversons, they do that to get to know more about what their parents and grandparents went through during World War II.

When the golden anniversaries of important World War II milestones were observed in 1991 – 1995, the reunions took on an even greater significance.

A half century is, indeed, a long time and the young men and women who marched off to war are now old men and women and the eldest American heroes of military service. World War I’s veterans are so few.

Age is not yet a deterrent to dreaming of the next time they will see their friends. Halverson and his wife are already planning to attend next year’s reunion at Sioux Falls, S.D., so enthusiastic about the annual get-togethers are they.

President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed Nov. 11 as Armistice Day to remind Americans of the tragedies of war.

Congress changed the name of the holiday to Veterans Day to honor all U.S. veterans.

Memorial Day each May is a more solemn occasion designed to honor those who gave their lives for their country.

Veterans Day is more celebratory.

So, Maurice and Isabel Halverson will join their friends at Post No. 146 tonight at the chili and oyster stew supper.

Eventually, there will be "war stories" retold and the reminiscing will take them back to when they were young and their country called them to fight still another war to end all wars.

There will be laughter and, maybe, tears.

Summertime reunions of old soldiers are annual events that forge friendships for all time.

More personal reunions take place every day of veterans’ lives and the remembrances are not always pleasant.

"We fought that war because we had to and because our country asked us," Halverson said of World War II. "I told you we even dressed up for the train ride up to Fort Snelling, so excited were we to go.

"If I had to do it all over again, I would do it," he said.