Soldier salute: Parade grand marshals recall WWII service

The Flathead Valley saluted five surviving World War II soldiers of Montana’s highly decorated 163rd National Guard Regiment on Saturday as honorary grand marshals of the 2010 Fourth of July parade.

Almost 60 years ago, William DeVall, Ray Hall, Irwin Jacobson, Leslie Slyter and Ronald “Buck” Torstenson made good on their regimental motto, “Men Do Your Duty,” when their companies and detachments were called to active duty as part of the 41st Infantry Division. Now in their 90s, all but Slyter rode in the parade alongside a few of their younger 163rd counterparts who will soon deploy to Afghanistan.

In interviews last week, Torstenson, 90, and Jacobson, 92, shared their memories of serving in the Montana National Guard, an organization with a history of stellar service stretching back to territorial days.

Like many others in his day, Torstenson lied about his age to join the National Guard in 1936 when he was 16, just as he had done to get his full-time job with the Great Northern Railway. When he enlisted, he hadn’t given any thought to going to war.

“It was kind of the fad at the time to get a little extra money,” Torstenson said.

He got $20 a month, a great help to his mother who worked to support them as chief operator for a telephone company. Torstenson joined Company E in Bainville, then later transferred to a small headquarters detachment of the Second Battalion in Culbertson.

Even after activation on Sept. 16, 1940, he wasn’t overly concerned as his unit along with Company F in Kalispell and the Medical Detachment in Whitefish headed to Camp Murray adjacent to Fort Lewis in Washington.

“We were just going for some training,” he said. “We went by train, picking up troops along the way.”

Jacobson was among more than 100 soldiers of Company F picked up in Kalispell. He had joined the Montana National Guard just a week earlier to fulfill his service obligation.

By joining, he hoped his brother might get a draft deferment and keep food on the table for his family. Both were helping support their parents during the Great Depression, but his brother had a better paying job — more than a dollar a day — at London Moe Grocery.

“No one had any money,” he said. “If you made $15 a week, you had a [real] job.”

Like Torstenson, Jacobson, 22 at the time, didn’t really expect to use the training at what he called Swamp Murray, even with the news full of the war overseas. He also hadn’t counted on the constant rain adding to the misery of living in tents and rigorous training, but he let it roll off his back.

“I don’t think I minded it that much,” he said. “We were young and tough.”

The rain left an impression on Torstenson as well. He recalled the water washing right through the tents and the damp chill before they finally got flooring and wood stoves.

Eventually they moved into barracks, making their extension of service by presidential order in August 1941 a little easier to bear. Torstenson still remembers the moment he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

“It was Sunday and I had a brand new car that we took down to Portland,” he said. “We had the radio on. The next thing that happened was they were calling all units of the 41st Division to return.”

Torstenson quickly turned the car around and headed back to Fort Lewis. It didn’t take long for the troops to man battle stations along the coast, since no one knew if the Japanese would attack the mainland.

“We were on beach detail that night,” he said.

A few months later in March, Torstenson, Jacobson and hundreds of others were boarding the Queen Elizabeth in San Francisco headed for a mystery destination. Jacobson was extremely impressed by the cruise ship remade into a troop transport.

“It was super,” he recalled. “It was just spotless.”

Because of his friendship with a first sergeant, Pfc. Jacobson wrangled a berth in a stateroom.

Torstenson, a sergeant, called the Queen Elizabeth a marvel. He was detailed to post soldiers at various points on the huge ship to watch for submarines. One of the benefits was an arm band that gave him complete access to all parts of the huge ship with multiple decks and long passageways.

“It was quite an adventure,” he said.

Their journey ended on April 6 in Sydney, Australia, where their mission was to help defend the country against a feared Japanese invasion. The country and people mightily impressed both Torstenson and Jacobson.

“It was just wonderful,” Torstenson recalled.

Jacobson called Australia a great place even though the 41st Division soldiers trained day in and day out, sometimes six days a week. At the same time, the Japanese continued their southern offensive through the Philippines, Singapore and the Netherlands Indies to Papua New Guinea, a potential staging area to invade Australia and New Zealand.

In a book about the Flathead National Guardsmen titled “Men Do Your Duty,” local historian Carle O’Neil said the Japanese concentrated their forces at Salamaua, Gona, Buna and other landing point on the north coast after a failed attempt to land at Milne Bay on the eastern tip of Papau. Their goal was Port Moresby for a base of operations.

While in Australia, about a third of the company was transferred out to other units in planned rotations. The idea was to spare any one area of the country from losing a large number of men in a campaign.

By Christmas Day of 1942, the remaining soldiers of Company F and the Medical Detachment were aboard a Japanese freighter headed for their first combat in New Guinea to reinforce the exhausted but battle-hardened Aussie soldiers and the American 32nd Division. It was a holiday dinner to forget, with mutton chops a poor substitute for turkey.

Once on the island at Port Moresby, Jacobson recalled loading into a plane to fly over the Owen Stanley Mountains to Dobodura air strip.

“When we got ready to land, they said ‘You’d better come out shooting. We’ll have a lot to do,’” he said. “It was rumored that they (Japanese) owned half the airstrip and we owned the other half.”

Jacobson got a surprise at the pasture-like airstrip, but not from the enemy. He spotted Gen. Douglas MacArthur in a Jeep off to the side of the airstrip.

The general had given the men a speech before they left Port Moresby, during which he told them that President Roosevelt had ordered him not to go into the front lines of fighting. He apparently defied orders and landed there ahead of his soldiers.

“He shook hands with me and said ‘Kill me some Japs,’” Jacobson remembered.

As a communications technician, Jacobson carried a rifle, but spent most of his time stringing telephone wire always with an eye out for snipers. It was a never-ending job.

“We would string it during the day and the Japs would cut it at night,” he said.

The jungles were hot, humid and miserable where fox holes seeped water. Food supplies often were delayed.

“Sometimes we went three days without rations when we got too far ahead of the supply line,” he recalled.

Jacobson had one brush with death when a bullet brushed close to his head, making the characteristic explosion. He called it a hard way to get an education, adding that the Aussie soldiers were way ahead of the Americans with experience fighting in North Africa.

Many of his fellow soldiers were not so lucky as he was in the first days of fighting.

“We lost seven Kalispell boys in one day,” he said.

Torstenson recalled losing one of his best friends, Cpl. Earl Hall, a friend from Bainville. He had learned not to dwell on death, but in this case he got angry and volunteered to lead a patrol, a duty outside his normal administrative work for headquarters.

He said his colonel wanted to know if there were Japanese left in a certain area. Torstenson put together a patrol of 10 to 12 guys with a scout out front who soon spotted the enemy.

Instead of just returning with a reconnaissance report, he decided to lob a grenade into their midst.

 “I pulled the pin and threw it and it hit a tree and it came down right in front of us,” Torstenson said with a laugh. “The shrapnel went over the top of us.”

After several months in New Guinea, their division returned to Australia for some rest and recreation and more training. Montana soldiers returned to fight many more days in the Pacific, earning three Distinguished Service Crosses, one Legion of Merit award and 34 Silver Stars, according to O’Neil’s book.

For Jacobson, a severe case of malaria ended his fighting days with a medical discharge on his birthday on Jan. 27, 1944.

“It hit me so bad that I wasn’t reliable,” he said.

Torstenson also caught malaria but managed to serve long enough in Biak to earn a rotation back to the United States where he ended up with a traveling troop of soldiers selling war bonds. Both he and Jacobson ended up in the hospital back at home fighting malaria for months after World War II.

Both recovered and had successful lives. Jacobson married Margaret and drove trucks for a living while Torstenson married Rusty and owned a series of businesses, including a partnership in the Outlaw Inn.

Both have fond memories of their comrades in arms of 163rd Infantry and both display flags in their front yards today. Jacobson had but one regret.

“That was supposed to be the war that ended all wars.”

Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by e-mail at cchase@dailyinterlake.com