ADAM JACKSON
Tribune Staff Writer Memorial Day 2007
(Cass Co. Indiana) On a table in Elmer Vollmer's living room is a scarred and
weathered block of wood, not much bigger than a good stick of kindling.
The wood is dark with years of grease and oil; decades-old traces of planes with
names like Avenger, Dauntless and Hellcat. It is those planes that Vollmer, now
86, once watched as they roared away over the blue Pacific void, some never to
return.
And
it is that wood, once a part of the massive flight deck of the celebrated USS
Yorktown, that reminds the old sailor of where he shed his northern Indiana
boyhood forever.
"The Navy's where I became a man," he said. "We all had to grow up quick."
Pearl Harbor volunteer
These days, Vollmer leads a quiet life in a small lakeside community north of
Dowagiac. His days are spent in the company of the children he raised and his
friendly dog Blackie, fishing from his pontoon boat or traveling.
But back in 1941, as the country teetered on the brink of one of its deadliest
conflicts, Vollmer was like many other young Hoosiers in his outrage over the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
"I still remember when I made up my mind to join up," he said. "I was with my
brother, and we were watching a movie on a Sunday afternoon at the State Theatre
in South Bend.
"The lights came up, and they told us Pearl Harbor had just been bombed. I told
my brother right there that I was going in the Navy ... that I was going right
up there and enlist."
True to his word, Vollmer signed the papers, endured the induction and went
through Great Lakes Naval Station for basic training. Further training came fast
for the wartime volunteer, and he soon earned the rating of a naval ordnance
man, which was to lead him to his ultimate shipboard assignment of loading bombs
and ammunition on the Yorktown's complement of fighting aircraft. The 'Fighting
Lady'
It was the luck of timing that saw the young sailor working on the East Coast
when the freshly-minted USS Yorktown, an aircraft carrier whose combat career
would span three wars, was made ready to receive its first crew.
The ship, which would come to be known as the "Fighting Lady" during its Pacific
service, received its name after the previous ship to hold the moniker, also an
aircraft carrier, was sunk by the Japanese during the Battle of Midway early in
the war.
So when the new Yorktown slipped its mooring for sea trials in the Caribbean in
1943, Vollmer was one of the more than 3,000 sailors who lined its freshly
painted rails waving goodbye to loved ones as they headed out to make history.
After its shakedown cruise, the Yorktown steamed through the
Panama
Canal and into the hot sunny war of the Pacific, where the ship and its crew
were to quickly distinguish themselves in heavy fighting.
Baptism by fire
The first carrier of its class to launch planes in anger, Yorktown was to prove
a magic carpet of combat action for Vollmer and his fellow sailors.
Beginning with a 1943 raid on Marcus Island and continuing through such storied
battles as the Marshall Islands campaign, the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,"
where more than 300 Japanese planes were destroyed, and attacks on both Okinawa
and the home islands of Japan, Vollmer found himself busy in his jobs working on
the ship's airplanes, and, at times, in the thick of the action.
On one occasion, he recalled, a Japanese bomber attacked the ship while he was
walking toward the bow, a can of .50-caliber machine gun ammunition in each
hand." I look up, and out of the sun, here comes a plane," Vollmer said. "He let
the bomb go, and it landed about 50 feet in front of me.
"It went right through the flight deck and into the ship fitter's shop. Took
about six guys down there with it. That was the first close call I had," he
said.
The worst came during the assault on Okinawa. Considered to be home soil by the
Japanese, they defended the island with vicious zeal, and unleashed one of the
most frightening weapons of the war, the kamikaze suicide pilots.
"That was the only place in all the war, that we went through, that I was
scared," Vollmer said. "One tried to hit us, and he was just off by a little
bit.
"I could feel the heat from his engine when he came over. The good Lord was
watching over me," he said. Experiences like that, coupled with tragic shipboard
accidents that left other crewmen killed or badly wounded, were some of the
parts of life on the Yorktown that struck a deep chord within Vollmer.
B
ut
there was also joy in his service, during victories like the sinking of the
Japanese battleship Yamato, attacks on Tokyo and the humanitarian missions flown
by Yorktown pilots to drop food and supplies to U.S. prisoner-of-war camps at
the end of the war.
And then, of course, there was the announcement that Japan was finally finished.
"I cried," Vollmer said of his reaction to the news of the surrender. "We all
did. There wasn't a dry eye on that ship."
Finding peace after war
After the war, Vollmer came home to a grateful nation but a Navy that was
hip-deep in meaningless tasks and regulations that angered many of the combat
veterans.
So Vollmer elected not to re-enlist, and instead bought a brand-new
Harley-Davidson motorcycle, becoming a self-proclaimed drifter for awhile.
It took a square dance -- and the love of a good woman -- to pull him back down
to earth.
"I must have been 28 or 29 by then," he said. "I went up to a square dance at
the lake, and that's where I met Thera.
"The first time I laid eyes on her, I knew she was the one," he said.She must
have been. For the next 57 years, Thera Vollmer and her husband stayed together,
raising a pair of sons and a pair of daughters, and eventually reaching into
their community together through work at the Cass County Council on Aging.
Thera passed away in 2005, but she still lives on in her husband's heart.
"She was quiet but she was strong," Vollmer said. "She was a great woman."
A job well done
These days are good ones for Vollmer, in his comfortable lakeside home. He's
proud of his children and their achievements in life, and he enjoys things like
taking the pontoon boat for a spin or taking trips with friends. And after years
of keeping it squared away in the deep footlocker of memory, he is now at peace
with his war.
"I didn't talk about it for a long time," Vollmer said. "I tried to forget it.
"But its OK now," he said "We did what we had to do."
