Harold Gibbens will do what he does on most Veterans Days. He will wake up early, go to the gym for his daily workout, then enjoy some food and fellowship at one of the several locations in town serving a Veterans Day breakfast.
There won’t be a lot of pomp and circumstance for this WWII veteran; just a fairly routine day with his wife of nearly 75 years, Marianna Gibbens.
Often referred to as The Greatest Generation, sixteen million Americans served in WWII. But due to the inevitable process of aging, most are in their 90’s (or older) and according to the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs, are leaving us at approximately 180 a day. Only 167,284 are still here to tell their stories, and only 1,596 of them live in Kansas.
Emporian Harold Gibbens is one of them. He is 99 years old.
It’s not that this special day of remembrance and honor isn’t important to him or that there aren’t a plethora of options from which to choose from to celebrate here in this Founding City of Veterans Day. It’s just that for Gibbens, like most vets, every day is “Veterans Day.” There’s rarely a day that goes by that he isn’t reminded of the three years of his life he served his country during the Second World War. The time he served may not have been long, but it made a lifetime of difference for the serviceman.
Seventy-six years after the Allied Powers declared victory, Gibbens can still recall the stories of his days in the service like they were just yesterday.
A KANSAS BOY
Gibbens was born May 17, 1923, in Stafford, Kan., a small town straight west of Hutchinson. In a nation on the brink of the Great Depression, at only four years old, he was sent to live with his aunt and uncle in Ness City as a way to ease the financial burden on the growing family.
He graduated from Ness City High School and on May 12, 1943, was inducted into the Armed Forces.
Gibbens can vividly describe the day he was drafted. “I walked in the door and on the mantle was this letter,” he recalls. He knew immediately what it was.
“It was kind of a sick feeling.”
His number was coming up and all of his buddies had already been called for duty. It was his turn to go.
He remembers doubting that he physically had what it took to make it in the military, but once he started basic training at Lincoln Air Force Base, he was determined to prove that he should be there alongside nearly every other young man of that generation.
And he did. He initially enrolled in the Army Specialized Training Program (at the University of Wyoming) but then when the program closed down, he was sent to the 66th Infantry Division at Camp Robinson in Little Rock, Ark.
“This was one of my saddest days in the service,” he said. “I had left a nice room in a dormitory on campus to move into a six-man tent with cots to sleep on.”
Assigned to the anti-tank company in the 262nd regiment, in the spring of 1944 they were given orders to head overseas.
THE WAR
Gibbens served a year and a half in active duty during the bloodiest war in human history, claiming over 400,000 lives of American military men and women; 60 million lives lost worldwide.
He was one of the lucky ones, he claims, able to serve and come home. But he is quick to acknowledge that it certainly may not have ended that way.
One of the most indelible memories — and most emotionally charged for him to talk about — took place on Christmas Eve in 1944:
“Our orders to go to France came to us a couple or three days before Christmas,” he recalls. “We were moved down to Southhampton [England] and were moved from our train directly to our ships. We were scheduled to board the S.S. Leopoldville.”
He was part of the 66th Infantry Division that was headed to the Battle of Bulge, the battle that eventually ended the war in Europe.
Gibbens was in the first squad of the first platoon and one of the first to board the ship. But because of a mix-up surrounding the company roster he and his platoon were ordered to disembark the ship while the roster got straightened out. It turned out that his company ended up on a sister ship, the S.S. Cheshire, and both ships took off for France.
Sometime around 6 p.m. on Christmas Eve, about five miles out of Cherbourg, France, Gibbens remembers there was a “very loud explosion.” The Leopoldville, filled with 2,000 American soldiers, had been torpedoed (by a U-486 German submarine) and within a matter of hours, he watched as the ship sank to the bottom of the English Channel.
One of the worst disasters in U.S. history, that is still unknown to many, there is a lot of emotion for Gibbens remembering what took place that night.
On one hand, he felt very lucky that the “roster mix-up” meant he didn’t end up on the Leopoldville. Unable to swim, it is very likely, he said, that he would have perished along with the 763 who were killed that night or the 493 who were never recovered from the frigid 48-degree waters of the English Channel.
“I always felt like God was looking out for me,” he said.
On the other hand, when the ship went down he lost many good friends.
“One of the guys on the ship was my roommate while at the University of Wyoming. He was married and had a little girl back home,” he said, eyes filled with tears.
It’s one of the blessings and curses of war, Gibbens shared: the camaraderie and friendships built in such extraordinary circumstances and the reality of losing them in a moment’s time.
After the sinking of the Leopoldville, the 66th Infantry Division was only at half-strength, so they were not sent to the Bulge as previously ordered. Instead, they were deployed to France’s Brittany Peninsula near the town of St. Nazaire where the German submarine pens were housed.
“Our job was to contain [the Germans] and harass them with patrols,” he said.
It wasn’t a terribly exciting assignment, he recalls. In fact, it was somewhat “boring.”
They were essentially an outpost and lived in a dugout along the edge of an apple orchard and he remembers getting some artillery fire, mostly small caliber.
One of the best memories of his time in France, Gibbens recalls, was the delivery of a special telegram one day to his squad leader, Sergeant Paul Ciolli. It was a message delivering word that his wife had delivered their first baby (a girl) back home.
“The Red Cross came by in their truck with the telegram and then they gave him a box of cigars to pass out to all of us, and coffee and donuts.”
It was times like these, of celebration and bonding with fellow soldiers, that made the war tolerable.
When the war in Europe ended May 8, 1945, Gibbens was moved to southern France to help process troops headed to the Pacific until the Japanese surrendered in September.
Gibbens was moved to the 42nd Infantry Division and finished out his time in the service in Austria stationed for occupation alongside the French, British, and Russians.
Finally, in March 1946 he had accumulated enough points to be discharged. He boarded the “Florence Nightingale,” a transport ship that had been converted to carry troops to head home.
He remembers the journey on the Nightingale well:
“They had welded bunks from floor to ceiling about two and a half feet apart. I found out what sardines must feel like,” he said.
And smooth sailing, it was not. Spring on the Atlantic meant rough waters. “Our ship was not very long, so one end or the other was out of the water most of the time,” he remembered.
“Needless to say, I got seasick during the rough weather.”
When he finally arrived back in New York harbor one of the things he remembers most is the Red Cross waiting for the soldiers with donuts, coffee, and milk.
“Most everyone was at the milk stands,” he said. “I was overseas for about a year and a half and never had fresh milk.”
At 22 years old, Gibbens was formally discharged from the military in May 1946. He settled back in Kansas to begin life as a civilian and fell in love with Marianna Jackson shortly thereafter. The two married on May 22, 1948. In 1957 they moved to Emporia for Gibbens to work as a tooling engineer at Didde Custom Fabrications, where he built a career for 27 years.
LOOKING BACK; LESSONS LEARNED
Gibbens has lived through The Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, WWII, the 1974 tornado (that leveled their northwest Emporia home), and later in life, a bout with cancer. With almost a century of life behind him, his perspective on war, Veterans Day, and being an American is worth considering.
Gibbens looks back on his time in the service with a mixture of emotions:
“I’m glad I served,” he said. “I wouldn’t particularly want to do it again. But there are things about it I feel good about.”
Friendships — brotherhood — is one of them. There aren’t many of his war buddies left anymore, but over the years he’s made reunions with fellow veterans of his division a priority, traveling all over the United States (and even back to Europe) to meet, reunite and reminisce.
Another aspect of the war he can appreciate are the lessons it taught him that shaped his life, all of which are just as applicable to today’s generation, he said. Discipline, perseverance, respect for authority and others, even the importance of a sense of humor (if you know Harold, you know he likes to laugh), are all things he learned in the service that have helped him throughout his life.
“We were all in the same boat,” he said, of his time in the service (both figuratively and literally, at times). The war brought the nation together, uniting around a cause bigger 0than themselves.
Living day in and day out in the tight quarters of a ship or in a dugout trench for weeks and months at a time, it didn’t matter where a fellow soldier was from or what political party he was affiliated with, they were all in it together.
“You learn to get along with people,” he said. “You laugh. You learn to accept people for who they are and they accept you.”
It’s something this nation needs more of, he believes. “We need to be more understanding of ‘the other guy’ and where they are coming from.”
For Gibbens, Veterans Day is a day to remember the sacrifices that were made for this country and the freedoms that came with those sacrifices. He sees many people of this generation taking for granted what it means to be an American and to live in the United States of America.
“They need to stop [complaining] about what we don’t have and appreciate what a great country this is,” he said. “They expect too much from the government. But the government can’t solve all of our problems.
“And some problems just aren’t solvable,” he added.
When asked why he is most proud to be an American, it was an easy question for him to answer:
“The fact that we are free.”
There’s no doubt about it, Gibbens is proud to be an American and proud to be a veteran.
“Not everyone gets the chance.”
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