By Cheryl Smith Kemp
Ninety-year-old Rafael Torres doesn’t have the mind he had back when he was growing up in El Paso, Texas, nor when he began penning his memories of World War II, but he still seems to remember quite clearly the torture of the head injury that eventually brought him home from the war.
Torres recalls going down Mount Rotondo near San Pietro, Italy, with the rest of his platoon on Dec. 15, 1943. Being assigned to rear guard duty, no one was behind him.
By Tim Garlitz
To see the world, not to mention to avoid getting drafted into the Army, Felix Soto Jr. quickly signed up for the Coast Guard upon graduating from high school in June of 1942.
Three out of Soto’s four brothers soon followed his lead by enlisting in the Navy. (His youngest brother, Mario, was ineligible for service because of his young age.)
By Lindsay Fitzpatrick
Growing up on her parents’ dairy farm in South Texas, Teresa Lozano Long learned the importance of education and philanthropy early in life.
“My parents believed that you went to school everyday,” Lozano Long said. “The best report card was one with zero number of absent days.”
She recalls her parents’ dedication to the education of not only herself and her two brothers, but also the children of their employees at the farm.
By Suzanne Hanshaw
It was the afternoon of April 30, 1945, on the Philippine island of Luzon. The first scout of the attacking squad had been shot and Pedro Perez volunteered to rescue him in a hail of machine-gun fire. Even after Perez was wounded in both legs, he crawled through the brush, sparing both their lives.
It would be a miserable 7 hours before he received medical attention.
“It was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon … and I bled from there until after 10 at night,” Perez said.
By Lindsay Fitzpatrick
From the fields of west Texas to the beaches of Normandy, Henry Guerra has fought adverse conditions to succeed. He spent much of his young life under the scorching Texas sun, picking cotton, spinach and radishes, and later participated in some of the most gruesome battles of World War II.
By Kristin Stanford
While still a teenager, Esteban R. "Steve" Garcia learned firsthand that destroyers -- unlike nerves or stomachs -- are made of nearly impervious steel.
As waves incessantly pounded the sides of the four-stacker destroyer he was on in the South Pacific -- a ship built six years before he’d been born -- he and other newly trained enlistees slumped over the sides, with crisp white uniforms and green faces. It was Dec. 18, 1941, and they were en route to Alaska on the USS Kennison.
By Barrett Williams
Flying at full speed above Australia in a C-47 during WWII, radioman Alberto Rede heard bullets ripping through the plane, followed by a sputtering engine.
His mind raced: If power to the engines is lost, the plane will become a gliding, uncontrollable mass that could drop out of the sky.
By Rebecca De Leon
At the age of 18, Rafaela Navarro’s faith was tested. In 1942, her soon-to-be husband, Anastacio Juarez, was called to fight in World War II, leaving her and his family to fret about his safety.
Anastacio’s cousin was Rafaela’s brother-in-law, so the two families had known each other since Rafaela and Anastacio were very young. Both Rafaela and Anastacio grew up in San Marcos, Texas, as well as attended the same Catholic church, Sacred Heart of Mary, in nearby Martindale.
So when Anastacio returned from the war in 1946, he and Rafaela got married.
By Julie Flowers
Richard Ortiz was a senior at San Antonio Technical Vocational School in 1941 when he heard a fellow classmate discussing plans to go to college. At that moment, Ortiz realized that pursuing a higher education was an option for him, too.
“Man, if you can go to college, I can go to college,” Ortiz recalled saying to himself.
With aspirations of becoming a pharmacist, he knew he needed more education. He also knew he didn’t have the money for tuition.
BY Juliana Torres
Raised in small towns and on ranches, Juventino Guerra never went far from home. Then WWII opened new opportunities to travel and learn other perspectives. He enlisted on Jan. 8, 1941, in San Antonio, Texas. Initially, he was promised two weeks to say goodbye to his family before leaving Texas. But the two weeks were reduced to a phone call in New Jersey just before shipping out on the USS Lusitania with the 324th Material Squadron, bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina.
