howeenterprise.com
Monday, May 28, 2018
Remembering Howe alumni’s first war casualty knew how important it was that those planes stay airworthy, Tony might have been able to get away for a little rest, but he elected to stay on the job he was doing magnificently. The shells had been exploding all around our airfield for 10 or 15 days when Tony finally got it. But his death did not go unavenged. The same planes that Tony had helped put back in the air had blasted those Jap guns. Tony was just a boy, but he was doing a man’s job.”
Bougainville Island. “They did a lot of repairs from the ships. I never saw how they landed on those ships. I still don’t know how, but they did every time. They’d repair them and back up they’d go.” said Kirby. “I was on a land operation. He was in the Navy and I was in the Army. I wish we’d have been able to stay together.” Kirby figured that if the officers wouldn’t let them communicate, it was because if one would have been shot, the other friend would have been there to try and rescue Finally, in July 1948, Brinkley was him and ended up with two given a military reburial. The casualties instead of one. dedication was held at First Baptist Church in Howe (where Skinner Kirby remembers that he would get Tony Weber Brinkley Plumbing Supply now sits at 200 S. really upset when he came back Denny St.). The Rev. Lowell and people were laughing at some From the archives of the Howe Brinkley, chaplain of the Hughes- of the war veterans that came home Enterprise. Originally published in Brinkley Legion Post of Howe after the war. the Memorial Day publication of officiated. He was formally buried Monday, May 26, 2014 at Hall Cemetery in Howe. “People didn’t understand what we were doing over there. One man Tony Weber Brinkley entered the Brinkley was a classmate, asked me, ‘how was the hunting’? I US Navy as a 16-year-old Howe teammate and fellow World War II said, ‘there was no hunting. We High School graduate in December veteran with L.B. Kirby who is killed people and they tried to kill 1942. He wanted to serve his Howe’s own most decorated living us.’ They didn’t really realize what country that was deep in the midst veteran in the state of Texas, with combat really was. I didn’t even of World War II. Sixteen months later, he lost his life in the Southwest Pacific. Brinkley, a Howe native, was born to Joe and Lillie Brinkley. He was a star football player that lettered four years for the Bulldogs and led them to a district championship and bi-district playoff tie as their quarterback and “coach.” Because of the war, Howe had no head coach, so the team coached themselves and Brinkley called the plays and helped structure the practices. Brinkley was an aviation machinist’s mate, third class and was the first Howe High School graduate to be lost during World War II. His father had passed away before he entered the Navy, therefore, his widowed mother received the news on a Thursday afternoon that Brinkley had died in the service of his country and his remains were buried in allied territory, outside of continental limits. The message requested that no information on names or location be given. It was later publicized that Brinkley was killed on Bougainville Island.
Howe’s famous war hero L.B. Kirby (third from left) was a classmate and teammate of Tony Brinkley seven Bronze Stars, two Bronze Arrowheads and a Purple Heart, awarded for his service in the Army during World War II. Kirby often gets teary-eyed when discussing his friend Tony Brinkley.
“What I remember most about Tony is that he was a leader. He would always step to the front,” Lt. Stuart Dyckman, USNR, of Kirby said in an interview in 2014. Dallas told the story about the “He was good at calling the plays. casualty of Brinkley. We won. Tony was an exception. He very seldom ever mentioned Dyckman said in 1944: “Tony was what he did, whether football or an aviation metalsmith. It was his any sport.” job to help repair the fuselages of our fighter and bomber planes Kirby would have liked to have when they returned from battling been with Brinkley during the war the Japs from the air. The job was a but recalls that the officers grind. The planes were coming in wouldn’t let friends be together and going out all the time. Tony under any circumstances. “I never worked and worked fast from 12 to got to see him or talk to him or 14 hours a day. The pace of the job anything. I don’t know why, but would have been enough, but the they didn’t like old friends to talk Japs on the island got the range of to each other. I never understood the airfield and were dropping that. What would it have hurt? shells on it trying to wreck the Combat or not, it didn’t make a lot installations. of a difference.” said Kirby. Sometimes the shells hit pretty close, but Tony kept at his job. He
Kirby talked about the job that Brinkley had to do off the coast of
realize what it was. But it doesn’t take you all day to learn. War is a dangerous thing. War is a business of killing people and being killed. We understood that there were going to be people that were going to be trying to kill us. That’s what our job was, killing people. It’s a dirty business.” Tony Brinkley is a name that most Howe citizens don’t recognize. However, the sacrifice he made for his country is enormous and the leader that he was should be an inspiration to all of this community. He was only a kid.
Page #10
