Band of brothers

• Brothers

julie buntjer/daily globe Glenn and Stan Dammann were each drafted in World War II. Glenn served in Occupied Japan, while Stan stayed state-side. Together they will embark on Honor Flight Southwest Minnesota’s final journey.

Talk about it

SANBORN — Stan and Glenn Dammann don’t recall their parents hanging blue-starred banners in their window during World War II, but they do remember their dad was pretty upset when draft papers arrived first for Stan, and then 16 months later, for Glenn — the two oldest boys in the family.

“They just kept pestering Dad all the time,” recalled Glenn. “He said, ‘You keep taking all my boys and I don’t have anyone to help me.’ They didn’t care.”

Stan, the oldest, was drafted on Dec. 31, 1943. He was 21 years old and had been working every odd job he could find to earn a little money.

Before his draft papers arrived, he and a couple of other buddies from their hometown of Sanborn had tried to make their way to California to work in one of the factories aiding the war effort, but their car “fell apart” and none had the money to get it fixed.

“So, we waited to get drafted,” Stan said.

All three of them eventually were, and more importantly, they all came back home when it was over.

As for Glenn, he reported to Fort Snelling on April 28, 1945. The best he could hope for would be to serve state-side like his older brother, but the Army had other plans. They sent him to Japan.

Stan’s story

After reporting for duty at Fort Snelling, Stan and his fellow soldiers lined up and, one by one, were told where they would be sent. It was a regular rotation — Army, Navy, Air Corps, Marine, Coast Guard and then back to Army.

“I got pulled out and I was in the Air Force,” said Stan.

After each of the Air Force designees took a three-and-a-half-hour test, two of them were pulled from the group and sent to Amarillo, Texas, for basic training. Stan was one of them.

“(There,) you were supposed to learn how to kill people,” he said. “The M1 was the best to shoot with — the carbine you could never hit anything with it.”

After basic training, Stan boarded a train and headed for the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, the troops stopped in Oakland and the entire trainload of soldiers was quarantined. Scarlet Fever was discovered and they had to wait it out for three weeks.

When the quarantine was up, Stan left the group after orders were issued for him to attend flight training in Wayne, Neb.

“When I got there, my name was not on their list,” he said.

For two months, he wandered around base without getting the training and feeling like he didn’t belong there. Bored without an assigned task, he finally found work in the mail department.

“All at once, I got tapped on the shoulder,” he said. “They told me I was supposed to be in Biloxi.”

Before he left Nebraska, Stan made a quick trip up to Windom, where his dad picked him up and took him home to Sanborn. The next day, he was on his way to Keesler Field in Biloxi, Miss.

From June 26 through Nov. 9, 1944, Stan took 691 hours of training to be an airplane mechanic.

“We learned all about the plane — what we do if there is damage here or damage there,” he said.

As part of that training, Stan spent more than seven hours in flight aboard B-24 bombers.

“The last time I was in a B-24, the major couldn’t land it. He overshot the field the first time. He just didn’t get it down soon enough and the brakes were skidding. At the end of the runway, he put the right fork down and the wing just went all the way around. We got off and said, ‘That’s enough — we’ll work on ’em!’” Stan said with a laugh. “That was the end of our training.”

Stan was then sent to Ypsilanti, Mich., for one month and one week, where he took the cracked engines off B-24s, changed heads and put them back together. Once it was finished, he’d take them apart again for the next class to train.

“Where we were, we could see all the B-24s coming out of the Ford plant,” said Stan. “Women flew all of the B-24s away from the factory.”

After completing two training schools, Stan still had more to learn. His next stop was Chanute Field, Ill., where he spent six weeks and 240 hours in hydraulic school. Basically, he and his fellow students tore planes apart and then fixed them again, working on hydraulic systems on the B-25, B-29, A-20, P-47 and the P-48.

“It was a good school,” said Stan.

When he completed the training and earned his certificate, Stan was sent to MacDill Field in Tampa, Fla., where he was supposed to work on B-24s. When he arrived, however, there were no B-24s on the base.

Instead, Stan would service the B-29 bombers, checking their brakes, wheel bearings and bombay doors during daily morning inspections. He performed inspections on the bombers until the end of the war.

Hoping to be finished with his tour of duty when the Japanese surrendered, Stan quickly learned his discharge wasn’t going to be that quick.

“They locked all the gates and you couldn’t get out,” he said.

On Nov. 25, 1945, Stan was moved from MacDill to Drew Field, also in Tampa. When he arrived there, however, there was nothing for him to do. Unwilling to waste the days away, he volunteered to help work on motorcycles in the motor pool. He learned to take them apart, fix them up and ride them.

“I learned how to lay one down at 30 miles per hour,” he said, adding that the air field’s runway was used for practice.

Then, one day he saw a notice on the bulletin board that volunteers were needed to drive motorcycles for the Military Police back at MacDill Field. Stan returned there on Dec. 25, 1945. His first call as a military policeman was to respond to a murder. After that, he was tasked with helping to direct traffic.

Stan earned his honorable discharge on May 17, 1946, in Atlanta, Ga., and hitchhiked from Georgia to his family’s home in southwest Minnesota.

After spending some time out in the Dakotas helping farmers, Stan returned to Sanborn and found the love of his life just down the road — in Lamberton. He and Marcella were married on Nov. 24, 1947.

“All I had was 50 cents in my pocket,” Stan said with a grin.

That same month, he was hired by Interstate Power Co. of Lamberton to dig holes for power poles. He did that for seven years and, by the time he retired, he had worked his way up to service representative for the appliance repair division.

While Stan is well known in his small hometowns of Sanborn and Lamberton, people from points beyond the community may know him better as Stan the Clown — a sideline job he’s had for the past 49 years. His goal is to reach 50 and 90 — 50 years of clowning and 90 years old. He has a year to accomplish both.

Stan and Marcella raised six children — five daughters and one son. Their son died of cancer at the age of 35. Three of the daughters are teachers, one is a dental hygienist and one works in the offices of an appliance company in the Twin Cities.

Glenn’s tour of duty

Glenn Dammann dropped out of high school his junior year to stay on the farm and help his dad. They had 460 acres, and without Stan around to help, Dad needed a good, strong farmhand.

They had a few years to work side by side before draft papers arrived, requiring Glenn to report to duty.

Unlike Stan, who was put in a lineup and told which branch he would serve, Glenn actually had a choice — sort of.

“I said the Air Force, but I was color blind, so they told me I was in the Army,” Glenn said. He was sent off to Louisiana for basic training.

After four months in Louisiana, Glenn received a week off to visit home and say his good-byes. He was being sent to Japan.

“On Oct. 23, 1945, I headed overseas, and on Nov. 11, 1945, I arrived in Japan,” he said. “While we were on the boat, we saw where they dropped the atomic bomb.”

Most of the time aboard ship, Dammann wasn’t too concerned about his surroundings — he was too busy enduring the wrath of seasickness. All that good food they served aboard ship, he said, went to waste.

Glenn said Christmas Day that year was cold and miserable. He had ended up getting assigned to the general headquarters company in Tokyo, where he became a telephone operator. The destruction from the atomic bombs seemed to surround him.

“All you could see in Tokyo was just a few smokestacks,” he said.

As a member of the occupied forces in Japan, Glenn’s first job was to work guard duty.

“The captain gave us three shells and a rifle,” he said. Because the Japanese had surrendered, they were told they couldn’t shoot anybody. However, the captain’s orders were that if anyone gave them trouble, they were supposed to shout “halt” three times and then “do something” if the person didn’t listen.

One night, a trio of burglars broke into a place and one of the soldiers yelled “Halt, halt, halt,” and then fired his three shells, killing all of the burglars.

Glenn said the soldier was called in for questioning because of his actions, but he reported that he was only doing as the captain said. The soldier didn’t get into trouble, but the captain mysteriously disappeared — he’d been reassigned.

After his brief stint in guard duty, Glenn went to work in a telephone office with nearly 20 other soldiers. He worked a 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift, taking calls and getting messages to officers on base.

The schedule allowed for free time, and Glenn was able to see what there was of Tokyo during his tour there.

“We got to ride on a rickshaw and have a guy pull us around town,” said Glenn.

They couldn’t understand what he told them about important Japanese landmarks, but they still enjoyed the tour.

“He’d run all day for a package of cigarettes,” Glenn said.

Glenn left Tokyo on Oct. 18, 1946 — little more than 11 months after he landed there. This time, the ship ride wasn’t quite so bad and the food wasn’t quite as good. They lived on rice during the entire journey, he said.

They arrived in the United States on Oct. 31, 1946, and Glenn was sent to Fort Sheraton, Ill., to await his discharge. His papers were finally signed in December, paving the way for him to return home to Sanborn.

By then, his dad had plenty of help on the farm, so Glenn began looking for work. His goal was to become an electrician.

In April 1947, he began a 10-year stint working for a guy at an electrical shop in Sanborn — long enough to earn his journeyman’s license. He then bought the electrician out and started his own business.

Glenn went on to earn his master electrician certification and worked in Sanborn and Sleepy Eye until his retirement in 1992.

Glenn, who was engaged when he was drafted into World War II, married his wife, Arlene, on Sept. 9, 1949.

They made their home in Sanborn, just up the hill from the farm where the Dammann brothers grew up. There, the couple raised a son and daughter. The son is now a master electrician in the Twin Cities, and the daughter is a beautician in Richfield.

With honor

Stan and Glenn were the two oldest of six children in the Dammann family. There were four boys and two girls. One younger brother served in the Korean War.

The Dammann brothers are the only siblings signed up to take the fourth and final journey of Honor Flight Southwest Minnesota next week.

They will be among 110 World War II veterans who will fly out from Sioux Falls, S.D., to Washington, D.C., to view the World War II Memorial built in their honor.

While on the journey, the Dammanns will also see the Air Force, Marine Corps (Iwo Jima), and Navy memorials, view the changing of the guard at Arlington National Cemetery, and visit the Lincoln, Vietnam, Korean and F.D.R. memorials.

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