World War II ended 71 years ago and for most that conflict is something to read about in history books.
As Veterans Day approaches, the Lake Forester sat down with two local World War II veterans who shared their experiences and recalled the war that defined a generation.
William Sprague wanted to fly airplanes during World War II. Instead he served in submarines.
Sprague, now 94, entered the U.S. Naval Academy in July 1941.
After three years at the academy, he got married during a one-month leave then went for submarine training.
“I was in every department they had,” Sprague said. “Electrical, radar, torpedoes. They train you so you’re capable of everything. My skipper at the time use to have us take the submarine out and everyone on board (played) dead but you. You had to dive the submarine by yourself and level off at a certain depth. At that time it (normally) took 72 people to operate a submarine.”
Submarines were a bit different then. While there were oxygen tanks for emergencies, they had to surface after no more than two-and-a-half days.
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“When you were on the surface in those days, you could hear the diesel engines running,” Sprague said. “Now it’s all nuclear.”
He completed submarine training in December 1944 and spent the next six months patrolling the Atlantic coast.
“When I was there, there were German U-boats along the coast although we never saw any of them,” Sprague said.
He never experienced combat although his submarine was sent to Londonderry, Northern Ireland to escort back U-boats that had surrendered to Allied forces. Londonderry was notable as the British Royal Family reviewed the crew of his submarine.
“I met the present queen of England,” Sprague said. “She was a teenager then. I remember the queen asking me where I was from. I said Illinois. She said Chicago? I said no, downstate.”
In August 1945, he was shipped back to the U.S. on the Queen Mary and then, with the war over, sent to the Pacific.
“I think I hit every island; Guam, American Samoa, Guadalcanal, Pago Pago, Midway,” Sprague said.
He eventually returned to California before leaving the Navy in 1948.
“My first wife didn’t like the service,” he said.
He remained a Naval reservist, and in June 1951 was called back by the Navy and spent 18 months based in Hawaii, about six months of which he was in submarines.
Sprague stayed in the Naval Reserve until the late 1960s but was never again on active duty. He moved to Lake Forest in the mid 1960s, found work with a contractor and helped build roads including part of U.S. Route 66 near Dwight, Ill. Later, he helped started a sewer and water main business based out of Zion. He bought out his partner in the early 1980s and owned the business until he retired in 2004.
He still thinks about his years in the Navy.
“Oh yeah, all the time,” Sprague said. “Everything I ever did, the people around, where I was.”
Bruce Johnson, 92, experienced World War II differently. Raised in Highland Park, he was a senior in high school when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was drafted into the Infantry in February 1943, underwent basic training at Fort Jackson in Columbia, S.C. and later training on the 30-caliber machine gun.
He was shipped to Casa Blanca later that year and then to Italy in April 1944.
“The Germans were holding the 5th army at Cassino,” Johnson said. “My first combat was at Cassino. It’s very hilly. Being in the infantry, we walked. The machine gun weighed 51 pounds with a tripod. We broke it down and carried parts of it.”
The Italians had surrendered a few months before but the Germans were tough.
“They were good soldiers,” Johnson said. “It took just a few Germans to hold off a whole lot of men. They were in fox holes. Cassino was a monastery on top of a mountain. The Germans had visibility through the entire area. The Canadians and others had attacked two or three times. In May 1944 we got through (but) it took most of the winter.”
Johnson’s regiment continued north and was the first allied troops to make it into Rome on June 4, 1944.
“There wasn’t much recognition because D-Day was on June 6,” Johnson said. “We just kept going north. There was German resistance all the way through Italy. We got up north of Florence and that’s when the fighting got really tough.”
On Oct. 1, his company got to the top of a mountain about six miles south of the Arno River and found German soldiers about 30 feet away.
“They started throwing hand grenades,” Johnson said. “A hand grenade landed in front of me. I had pieces of shrapnel all over my face, lost sight in my right eye. That ended my career.”
He spent the next few months in hospitals in Rome and Naples before being shipped to a hospital in El Paso, TX. He was discharged from the Infantry a few weeks later.
During his service he earned two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star.
In fall 1955, he entered the University of Wisconsin and earned a degree in pharmacy. He married and had three children. Johnson worked in drug stores until 1964 and then went to work at Abbot Laboratories doing quality assurance. He retired in 1989 and now lives in Lincolnshire.
Johnson said he doesn’t think much about his service, although he occasionally talks about it at the Lake Forest American Legion post.
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“I’m proud of the time I put in there,” Johnson said.
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