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VETERAN’S DAY: Honor our service men and women by attending a ceremony. PAGE 3
Veteran recalls WWII Experiences BY JULIE KINK CONTRIBUTING WRITER
STILLWATER TOWNSHIP — World War II veteran Bill McDonald remembers jumping out of a plane, parachuting down behind German enemy lines ... helping build airfields in Benghazi … shooting craps with Mickey Rooney ... meeting Jack Benny ... and seeing more of the world in three years than most people see in a lifetime. “He still tells stories about the day-to-day aspects of the war” said McDonald’s son, Scott. “About going over on the troop ship across the
Pacific and past Australia all the way to Egypt.” At 91, the Stillwater Township resident vividly recalls the experiences he had serving in World War II, when he was “just a kid.” McDonald was 18 when he entered the Army in 1942, “because a lot of people were doing it at the time.” He trained at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and underwent desert training in California before shipping overseas with an engineering unit. “We left out of San Francisco, crossed the Pacific, stopped in New Zealand, Melbourne, Bombay, crossed the Red Sea, and got off at Egypt,” he said. After serving in Africa for about a year, and
then Italy, he left the engineers to attend a jump school near Rome. “Why he volunteered to do that is a good question — we would all like to know!” son Brad remarked. “Foolishness,” the elder McDonald said. “I sort of wondered about it myself.” Soon, as a member of the 17th Airborne Division, he was traveling all over Europe. The division was sent to France and then Belgium to fight in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge. SEE MCDONALD, PAGE 7
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