Happy Veterans Day!

Happy Veterans Day! Thank you to those who are serving or who have served our country. We asked readers to send in pictures and stories about veterans in your life. Below is what we have received so far. Feel free to email us at tips@myballard.com:

Updated:
“My grandfather, Oscar Metz, served in World War II. He was as a radioman in the Navy and served in the Pacific. He was out at sea on a communications ship when Pearl Harbor was attacked and relayed messages about the attack. He met my grandmother, Helen, when her brother, Bob, also in the Navy, brought Oscar home when they were on shore leave. Helen and Oscar began corresponding in May 1940 and were married in November 1943 at City Hall in San Francisco. They are pictured on their wedding day.

My great-uncle Bob is a wonderful storyteller. At any family gathering, he would captivate all us kids with his accounts of the War. Thank you Uncle Bob and Grandpa!” writes Amy.


“My father, Robert (Bob) Pheasant graduated from Ballard HS in 1937 and went on the University of Washington. When war broke out, he was still going to the UW and working nights at Boeing. He joined up at the same time as his best friend, Harry Otterson. Dad was shipped out of officer’s training school in La Jolla to the South Pacific…as a seargent, which he said saved his life. (he saw many officers killed by snipers.)
He was a seargent with the 161st infantry at the Battle of Luzon, where he saved 4 wounded soldiers during a mortar attack, and voluntarily removed live mortars from a burning ammunition pile. He was awarded the Bronze Star for valor.

During the war, his mom lived in the building she owned on the corner of 22nd and Market (where Tully’s was.) As her husband had died and her only child was at war, she was lonely…so she would read his letters to my other grandmother, who lived in the building. At one point she turned to my mom and said “maybe you’ll be my daughter-in-law!” When my dad came home from the war, she saw him in the hallway one day, and fell in love. And the rest, as they say, is history. They were married in 1948,” writes Julie.

Earlier:
“My brother Bill was in the second world war. He was in the Pacific theater. He was injured by shrapnel. He was an artist, and he used to send mom postcards that he’s created. He grew up in Ballard, as did I and my other three siblings. He was 26 years older than me so I didn’t know him very well. But the stories I’ve heard make him a hero in my eyes.” writes Linda in comments of this post.


“My son John Paine, the hero. This picture (above) was taken in Northern Iraq in 2005 in peaceful Kurdish country after after a hellish few months of combat, loss, and constant barrages in Mosul. Truly a well earned smile in an oasis of calm,” Tom writes.


“My grandfather Lloyd (Silver) Larson tried for years to get into the service during the war, but not one branch would accept him for medical reasons. Later in the war he said they would just take your pulse and ask you if you were alive before giving you your enlistment papers. He served in WWII as a bomber mechanic in the Army Air Corps, stationed in India.

He has a lot of great stories, like the one about the time they traded some British soldiers stationed nearby a tank for an elephant and a few monkeys (their commanding officer sternly demanded that they return the animals), but there are many he does not tell – a plane he was on crashed at one point and he somehow survived two weeks in the Burmese jungle.

I think this photo (above) of a well-deserved nap at the end of the war is one of the best images of WWII I have ever seen. That’s him on the cot in the foreground,” Brooke writes


My dad (above) was a Staff Sargent in the Air Force during Vietnam. He was stationed at the Phan Rang AFB from Thanksgiving Day 1968 to late October 1969. He was the lead mechanic on this B-57. He recently started writing down his memories for a book. This is one of the most emotional stories about the day that changed his life. (.pdf)

Geeky Swedes

The founders of My Ballard

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