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Posted on Wed, Nov. 11, 2009

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A day to honor veterans

WWII vets recall people, conflict

BY FRED MANN

The Wichita Eagle

Veterans Day asks us to regard as special people who didn't think they were special at the time of war, and have them explain what they can't explain to those who weren't there. Floyd and Lloyd Simmons were 18-year-old twins from Yates Center when they were drafted in 1944.

They had quit school after the eighth grade to work different jobs here and there, but after basic training in Texas they found themselves under fire from German soldiers in Holland in World War II.

The brothers, 83 years old now and living in Wichita, served together as runners carrying messages among four platoons. Later they were assigned to put down communications wire along the front lines at night after fighting all day.

When at rest, they worried about home. Both were engaged to sisters when they went to war and both received "Dear John" letters while they fought the war.

Not that there was much time to dwell on that. Americans were advancing in a hurry to try to end things.

"We knew what we were over there for and we did our job," Floyd says. "We couldn't stop. We had to keep going. People were depending on us."

"They gave us a job to do and we did it," Lloyd says. "Thousands of soldiers did the same thing."

The twins emerged from the war unharmed, never even a splinter.

But they remember the close calls. They remember "Bouncing Betty" land mines blowing up their friends. Lloyd remembers watching a jeep blow up in a field, and freezing on the spot until a Dutch woman led him to safety and placed ribbons around the mines to warn others.

They remember the rain and mud and the confusion of battle that would sometimes separate them.

They remember the German prisoners they were asked to guard — 60 at a time — and the time Floyd pointed his gun at the head of one who was acting up instead of working. He said the prisoner had two choices: work or die.

They got to know some of the Germans, like the one who'd been farming in Oregon when he was drafted by the German Army during a visit to that country.

Floyd stayed in Germany for a couple of years after the war and married a German woman who became despondent and divorced him. He married again, to Mary, and they were together for 47 years.

Lloyd returned right after the war and was married to Nina for "61 years, one month and nine days," he says.

Back in Kansas, the twins worked railroad jobs until they retired on the same day in 1985.

Lloyd lives at LakePoint Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, which will honor its veterans today. Floyd still lives in his home.

"I have no regrets," Floyd says. "It's just like in Holland: We got there in this little town... and this little Dutch girl and Dutch boy were playing instruments — accordion and guitar — and I was asleep there on the floor, and I felt so at peace. That was right where I wanted to be."

The brothers earned Bronze Stars for courage under fire, and other medals. But the medals were lost in the post-war chaos and didn't catch up with them until 60 years after the war ended.

Their memories aren't of medals, but of death and accordions, Germans from Oregon, and men who fought with them, guys who had enough education to read "Dear John" letters in the rain and mud.

"You don't understand," Floyd says as he tells some of these things to a listener. "You never been there."

Reach Fred Mann at 316-268-6310 or fmann@wichitaeagle.com.