Teh One Who Knocks
11-11-2013, 12:28 PM
By Stephen Hudak, Orlando Sentinel
http://i.imgur.com/Wb8eC8Y.jpg
Fourteen-year-old Andy Caraker was questioned just once about his age when he signed up to be a Marine in 1941.
"How old are you, boy?" a drill instructor barked at the whiskerless kid.
"Seventeen! Sir!"
"I know damn well you're not!" the drill instructor hollered at the 150-pound Florida boy. "But I'm not telling anyone."
Now 87 and a resident of Longwood for the past 36 years, Caraker shared his unusual story for Veterans Day. He was among thousands of American boys who beat minimum-age requirements for military service during World War II by fudging birth certificates or fibbing about their age.
Caraker, who quit school in eighth grade, was working on a dairy truck in Jacksonville — a job he hated — when he passed a Marine in dress blues along the milk route.
"I saw this white cap and blue uniform with a red stripe down the leg," he said. "By golly, I thought, I'm going to sign up for that."
Marine Corps enlistees had to be at least 18 to join, though 17-year-olds could sign up with parental consent.
Caraker was nine days shy of 15, and he had no parents to give consent. His mother was dead, his father either absent or drunk. The boy had walked away from a foster home because his foster mom was a drunk, too.
Undeterred, he told the recruiter he was born in 1923, not 1926, and persuaded a woman who had rented him a room to sign the parental form.
"I was a prevaricator with a mendacious personality — that's a liar," Caraker said, chuckling at his fancy vocabulary.
But Caraker had no idea what he was signing up for. The nation was not yet at war when he arrived at Parris Island for boot camp.
In six months, Japanese aircraft would bomb Pearl Harbor, drawing America and Caraker into a worldwide conflict that would kill 400,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines. By the time he was 16, an age when most boys were reading comics or daydreaming about girls, Caraker was firing machine guns with a Marine detachment on the USS Wasp, an aircraft carrier.
"The Marine Corps raised me, if you want to know the truth," he said.
The USS Wasp, a launching pad for American fliers who strafed Japanese strongholds in the Pacific, was hit with three torpedoes fired by an enemy submarine on Sept. 15, 1942. The attack on the ship killed 193 men. Caraker escaped the burning vessel by climbing 80 feet down a rope to the ocean.
Floating on his back in a life vest, waiting to be plucked from the ocean, he saw sailors who had abandoned the crippled ship hanging on to a floating mattress and playing cards while the battle raged around them.
"It seemed surreal and crazy," he said.
Then in the summer of 1944, Caraker was part of the American assault on Saipan, a Pacific island where the Imperial Japanese Army was dug in, prepared to fight to the death. He remembered waiting in a shallow trench, his teeth chattering nervously, while a Japanese soldier called out in broken English, "Hey, Marine!"
"He wanted us to answer so he could lob a damn grenade on us," Caraker said.
More than 3,400 Americans were killed in the successful three-week campaign to capture the island, which was considered part of the last line of defense before the Japanese homeland. Caraker was shot July Fourth — one of 10,000 Americans wounded in battles there. His foot was nearly blown off.
While recovering in a military hospital in Hawaii, he met President Franklin Roosevelt, who would die nine months later.
According to veterans groups and some military historians, many World War II boy soldiers, some as young as 12, were sent home or court-martialed after their ruse was discovered. Others fought and died in some of the war's fiercest battles.
Like Caraker, many underage servicemen came from broken homes or poverty. Some sought adventure; others were spurred by patriotism.
"Take your pick," said John Henson, national commander of the Veterans of Underage Military Service, a group organized in 1991 to aid war veterans who circumvented age requirements.
Discharged in 1945, Caraker obtained his GED, went on to study at Syracuse University and worked in sales, retiring to Florida with Peggy, his wife of 67 years. He has no regrets about enlisting so young or fibbing to get in.
"Some kids went to high school; I went into the Marines," he said. "I never wanted to end up digging ditches, and I needed discipline. I couldn't get it at home. The Marine Corps made me what I am."
http://i.imgur.com/Wb8eC8Y.jpg
Fourteen-year-old Andy Caraker was questioned just once about his age when he signed up to be a Marine in 1941.
"How old are you, boy?" a drill instructor barked at the whiskerless kid.
"Seventeen! Sir!"
"I know damn well you're not!" the drill instructor hollered at the 150-pound Florida boy. "But I'm not telling anyone."
Now 87 and a resident of Longwood for the past 36 years, Caraker shared his unusual story for Veterans Day. He was among thousands of American boys who beat minimum-age requirements for military service during World War II by fudging birth certificates or fibbing about their age.
Caraker, who quit school in eighth grade, was working on a dairy truck in Jacksonville — a job he hated — when he passed a Marine in dress blues along the milk route.
"I saw this white cap and blue uniform with a red stripe down the leg," he said. "By golly, I thought, I'm going to sign up for that."
Marine Corps enlistees had to be at least 18 to join, though 17-year-olds could sign up with parental consent.
Caraker was nine days shy of 15, and he had no parents to give consent. His mother was dead, his father either absent or drunk. The boy had walked away from a foster home because his foster mom was a drunk, too.
Undeterred, he told the recruiter he was born in 1923, not 1926, and persuaded a woman who had rented him a room to sign the parental form.
"I was a prevaricator with a mendacious personality — that's a liar," Caraker said, chuckling at his fancy vocabulary.
But Caraker had no idea what he was signing up for. The nation was not yet at war when he arrived at Parris Island for boot camp.
In six months, Japanese aircraft would bomb Pearl Harbor, drawing America and Caraker into a worldwide conflict that would kill 400,000 American soldiers, sailors and Marines. By the time he was 16, an age when most boys were reading comics or daydreaming about girls, Caraker was firing machine guns with a Marine detachment on the USS Wasp, an aircraft carrier.
"The Marine Corps raised me, if you want to know the truth," he said.
The USS Wasp, a launching pad for American fliers who strafed Japanese strongholds in the Pacific, was hit with three torpedoes fired by an enemy submarine on Sept. 15, 1942. The attack on the ship killed 193 men. Caraker escaped the burning vessel by climbing 80 feet down a rope to the ocean.
Floating on his back in a life vest, waiting to be plucked from the ocean, he saw sailors who had abandoned the crippled ship hanging on to a floating mattress and playing cards while the battle raged around them.
"It seemed surreal and crazy," he said.
Then in the summer of 1944, Caraker was part of the American assault on Saipan, a Pacific island where the Imperial Japanese Army was dug in, prepared to fight to the death. He remembered waiting in a shallow trench, his teeth chattering nervously, while a Japanese soldier called out in broken English, "Hey, Marine!"
"He wanted us to answer so he could lob a damn grenade on us," Caraker said.
More than 3,400 Americans were killed in the successful three-week campaign to capture the island, which was considered part of the last line of defense before the Japanese homeland. Caraker was shot July Fourth — one of 10,000 Americans wounded in battles there. His foot was nearly blown off.
While recovering in a military hospital in Hawaii, he met President Franklin Roosevelt, who would die nine months later.
According to veterans groups and some military historians, many World War II boy soldiers, some as young as 12, were sent home or court-martialed after their ruse was discovered. Others fought and died in some of the war's fiercest battles.
Like Caraker, many underage servicemen came from broken homes or poverty. Some sought adventure; others were spurred by patriotism.
"Take your pick," said John Henson, national commander of the Veterans of Underage Military Service, a group organized in 1991 to aid war veterans who circumvented age requirements.
Discharged in 1945, Caraker obtained his GED, went on to study at Syracuse University and worked in sales, retiring to Florida with Peggy, his wife of 67 years. He has no regrets about enlisting so young or fibbing to get in.
"Some kids went to high school; I went into the Marines," he said. "I never wanted to end up digging ditches, and I needed discipline. I couldn't get it at home. The Marine Corps made me what I am."