Windom's Meyers delivered troops to shore via landing craft in World War II

• Meyers

Warren “Bud” Meyers, Windom, is planning to embark on the fourth and final journey of Honor Flight Southwest Minnesota Sept. 30-Oct. 1.

Talk about it

WINDOM — While many young men in the early 1940s waited for Uncle Sam to come calling with draft papers, there were a fair share who volunteered — some stepping up even before they could legally sign their name on enlistment papers.

Such was the case for Warren “Bud” Meyers of Windom. He dropped out of his senior year at Wilder High School in March 1942 — just after celebrating his 17th birthday — and volunteered through the Jackson County Draft Board to join the Navy.

“I could join with my father’s consent,” said Meyers. “He didn’t make a lot of fuss.”

Meyers’ parents operated the grocery store in Wilder back then, and there wasn’t a whole lot for a teenage boy to do.

Said Meyers, “Why not (enlist)?”

His first stop was Camp Perry at Williamsburg, Va., for basic training. It lasted nine days before he was pulled out and transferred to Camp Lejeune, N.C. The military decided he was needed more by the Marine Corps.

“Who knows what was going on in those days?” he said. “When you’re (17), you don’t ask a lot of questions. I was just a poor, stupid kid.”

Meyers received his secondary training at Camp Lejeune, which included learning how to navigate ships.

“We’d go down to Wilmington, get on an old ship and they’d haul us out to Cape Hatteras on the Outer Banks,” he described. “They dropped us off and gave us a compass.

“I made three trips there before I made it back into New River and Camp Lejeune,” Meyers said, adding that it took him too long to make the 10- to 12-mile journey on his first two attempts. “After you made it once, you’re out of here.”

As the old adage says, the third time is the charm, and that was the case for Meyers.

When he’d accomplished his feat, he was sent across country, to Camp Parks, Calif., where he completed both diver’s school and rigging school.

“After most of my tour of duty, I did a little diving off of Okinawa,” said Meyers. “I was basically hard-hat diving. We did the first scuba diving in flannel suits.”

Post-California, pre-Okinawa

Meyers shipped out from California to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was then assigned to the Landing Craft Pool. From there, he was sent on missions to Australia and numerous islands in the South Pacific, from New Hebrides to Guam, Tinian and Saipan.

“The Saipan invasion was … I just don’t like to talk about it,” said Meyers as he shook his head. “You wouldn’t want to see what I saw.”

Briefly, he spoke of island natives jumping from cliffs to their death as the U.S. military approached.

“They had learned to live with Japanese for I don’t know how many years,” he said. “The Japanese persuaded them that we were going to kill them. They were brought up stupid.”

Meyers described the invasion of Saipan as “like a kamikaze raid on land.” The Japanese swarmed the U.S. vessels, and the U.S. troops were not quite prepared.

“They give us carbine rifles with 20 shot clips,” he said. “They give us each three clips. You just stand there and spray.”

It didn’t take long to run out of ammo.

Steering into battle

“I operated off of an Advanced Personnel Attack (APA) ship — I ran a landing craft,” said Meyers of his assigned duty. “Our craft were on the stern of the APAs. We were pushed off and dropped (into the water).”

After the vessel was situated, cargo nets were dropped from the side of the ship and the soldiers had to climb down and into the LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel).

Meyers’ job was to steer the LCVP — also known as a Higgins Boat — to shore.

“We would get so close to shore and we dropped an anchor — 600 yards of cable on the anchor,” he said. “You run as far as you could. When you either hit something solid or the anchor stopped you, you dropped the gate.”

As the gate dropped, the soldiers and tanks — the LCVP could carry two tanks or up to 80 men — would make a run for shore.

“When I got them to where I dropped the ramp, bye guys,” said Meyers. “It’s a little hairy experience for the guys you’re hauling in.”

Initially, Meyers said he thought the job was fun.

“You’re too young and stupid to know any better,” he added.

At Eniwetok, an island in the South Pacific, Meyers realized his job wasn’t fun — it was dangerous. It was there, in 1944, that he lost his first LCVP in the war effort.

Landing at Iwo

The Battle at Iwo Jima is considered one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, and Meyers was on the Japanese-held island before the worst fighting took place.

“We didn’t use conventional landing craft (there),” he said. “We used am-tracks (for amphibious tanks) so we could run right up on the beach, spin around and go back down.

“I was only there for the initial landings,” Meyers said. “The (Japanese) were all back up on the hill.”

They took on some enemy fire, but “not like when they (U.S. troops) started up the hill. It was murder.”

By then, Meyers was on his way back to Saipan with the APA ship and his third LCVP — his second vessel was lost near New Hebrides. At Saipan, they planned their mission for the invasion of Okinawa.

Plan of attack

While stationed aboard the APA, Meyers had his living quarters right beside his landing craft.

“Of course, (prior to) any foreign invasion, we’d have documentary films and whatever information they could gather to pass on to us,” he said.

Meyers and his fellow troops were among the first soldiers sent in for the invasion of Okinawa on April 1, 1945. He remembers the day well.

“I lost my third landing craft there,” he said. “I had the ramp up and was standing over the engines. We got a shore battery — went through the front end, back to the engines.

“I left in a hurry — not by choice,” Meyers described. “Once the shell casing exploded, we all — myself and my gunner — we were gone.”

That moment, just before he hit the water, was the worst experience of his military career, Meyers said.

Life belts kept them afloat in the waters off the Okinawa coast until they could be rescued. They weren’t in the water very long, but when they were finally picked up, Meyers and his gunner were taken to the USS Hope, a hospital ship.

“We weren’t in the pink of conditions,” he said. Still, Meyers didn’t sustain a single injury from enemy fire or shrapnel.

While aboard the USS Hope, Meyers was given a choice to either go back to the LCVPs or transfer to the Navy’s Seabees (construction battalion).

“I got in the Seabees and had a real enjoyable life,” he said.

Final duty

Meyers was first assigned to be a motorcycle runner for the commander of the 7th Battalion, and later was transferred to the 101st Battalion and finally the 541st Maintenance Battalion. During his days with the Seabees, he learned how to run a bulldozer and Caterpillar blade.

“That’s where I got involved with mechanics, which I followed up after discharge,” Meyers said.

It was while serving with the 541st Maintenance Battalion that the war was declared over.

“All hell broke loose,” he said of the celebration. About a week later, after finding a shack for one of the fighter pilots in the U.S. military, Meyers added to the celebration by taking a flight into Tokyo.

“(The pilot) had to deliver some dispatches to Tokyo, so he let me sit on the seat and he sat on my lap,” Meyers said. “We flew into Tokyo, he got rid of his dispatches and we flew back to Okinawa.

Sitting underneath the pilot, Meyers said he barely saw anything of Japan, but he didn’t care. It was his first experience in a fighter plane.

After the war ended, Meyers anxiously awaited his letter for discharge, but quickly learned that his rank — Boatswain First Class — was frozen.

“You could apply, but they wouldn’t honor you for discharge,” he said. “So, my old commander, he said, ‘You went to Shipfitter’s school, why don’t we make you a Shipfitter?’

“He had to downgrade me so I went back to Shipfitter Second (Class),” Meyers explained.

The change in rank did little to advance Meyers’ discharge, however.

“They pulled my records and … when you join when you’re 17, you are in the regular Navy until you are 21,” he said. He was stuck in the service for another year.

“I left Okinawa March 2, 1946,” Meyers said. “I hit Treasure Island (California) on my 21st birthday (March 16).”

Nine days later, he received his discharge at Wold-Chamberlain Field in Minneapolis. In service to his country, Meyers was awarded the Good Conduct medal and the Marine Corps’ Expert Rifleman’s pin.

On the home front

After returning home from the war, Meyers took advantage of the G.I. Bill and received his training as a mechanic. At one time, he was told by the Cottonwood County Veterans Services Officer that he was the only Cottonwood County veteran to complete the G.I. training course in mechanics.

At the age of 46, well settled in his career as a car mechanic and service manager for then-Van Nest Motor Co., in Windom, Meyers decided to finally earn that high school diploma he’d lost out on because he volunteered to serve his country. He took the G.E.D. in 1971 and passed the test on his first try.

“It just seemed like the thing to do,” said Meyers, now 86. His career as a car mechanic spanned 42 years, the last 17 of which were spent with Higley Ford in Windom.

Meyers and his wife Laura, married in 1947, settled in Windom and raised three sons. Today, they have four grandchildren, six great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

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