MEMORIAL DAY TRIBUTE TO JOHNNY PHILLIPS



  My father-in-law Johnny Stewart Phillips was one of the proudest and hardest working men that I ever knew. I am not sure that he was all that fond of me because I am very opinionated and my opinions and his opinions didn't match. Naturally a very curious person I asked him one night about his military service and war record when Debbie and I were dating. Since it is Memorial Day weekend I wanted to tell you what he told me that night and honor his service in World War II. He was an Army Cook and was drafted in 1944. Johnny was nearly thirty years old with a wife and two children. My father was five years younger but was drafted the same year and he also had two children. 

 One of the misconceptions to come out of World War II is that after Pearl Harbor more men volunteered than were drafted. There was an initial surge of patriotism and many men volunteered for the military. Most men, however; were drafted that served in World War II. Before September 1943 the bodies of American soldiers were not allowed to be photographed so American morale would not be affected. Life magazine published pictures of three dead American soldiers at Buna beach in New Guinea. When Franklin Roosevelt saw the bodies of dead American Marines, killed at Tarawa in the Pacific, he ordered this policy changed. Before Buna, andTarawa only the bodies of the enemy could be shown. He wanted Americans to realize the sacrifice of the American military. After Tarawa it was harder to recruit new troops so the draft was crucial to keeping the military supplied with new people. Older married men with families were called to serve.

  Mr. Phillips told me that he was standing in a bombed out building on the Saar River in March 1945. He was with several other cooks and I believe they were preparing a meal when the Germans opened up a barrage of German artillery from the other side of the Saar river. A shell landed nearby killing everyone but him. My sister-in-laws Judy and Sylvia said that he was only found when someone heard him moaning. He told me that a piece of shrapnel the size of a dime hit him in the head critically wounding him. Johnny remembered nothing until he woke up in a hospital in England.

  He was wounded on March 16, 1945, about a month and a half before VE Day, which was May 8, 1945. Johnny was treated in an aid station at the front and on April 1st he arrived at the 1149 Hospital in England where he would regain consciousness. On May 5th he arrived at camp Kilmer New Jersey. By May 9th he would be at Kennedy General Hospital in Memphis Tennessee. It would be months before he was able to return home. He would earn the Purple Heart and the Combat Infantry Badge. A section of his brain had been removed and a steel plate was inserted. I know it was there because I used to run my metal detector over it. Johnny took anti-seizure medicine the rest of his life. Like many actual combat veterans he never talked about the war unless you were able to drag it out of him like I did. Although we disagreed on many things I always had tremendous respect for him. I was told that he was eligible for 100% disability but he always refused it. He to chose to work instead twelve hours a day on average, six days a week, as a butcher at Kemp's Bi-Rite in North Nashville. Johnny did that kind of work for many years. He had his faults but he was a good father and husband. Johnny died in 1996 at the age of eighty.
The date of wounding is wrong








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