World War II veteran remembers time in service

By Matt Smith/msmith@trcle.com

John Trussell doesn’t consider himself to be a hero.

“No, not at all,” he said.

As far as Trussell is concerned, he simply did his job.

Most would disagree and consider his service in World War II to be heroic and adventurous and his life since then to be inspiring.

Although he’s spent most of his life in Cleburne, Trussell was born in Argyle in 1923, not because his family lived there but because they were passing through in a wagon.

“Two of my brothers were born in Oklahoma;we used to go to from here to there in a wagon,” Trussell said. “The first was born in Oklahoma. I was next. Coming back to Texas from Oklahoma where we camped at, which was Argyle. We went back to Oklahoma and my other brother was born there.

Trussell said he’s not sure why his family traveled so much in his early years.

“No, I don’t know what they were doing,” Trussell said. “Wherever the grandfather went, the whole tribe followed. Uncles, aunts, everybody. Kind of like gypsies.”

The family soon settled in the Johnson County area permanently.

“We lived east of Alvarado, then close to Alvarado, a place called Happy Hills,” Trussell said. “Then went to Cleburne and never left except for my time in the service; lived the rest of my life here.”

Trussell began school in Cleburne but wasn’t able to finish.

“I went to Santa Fe Elementary, and I had to quit in the sixth grade to help take care of my mother because she had to have surgery,” Trussell said. “She’d had a set of twins. Well, she had two sets of twins, ’39 and ’41, or ’40. They were just babies when I went into the service.

“It was the only way I could help. My mother, she worked hard in the fields and everything. My dad was a good worker and a good man but just an alcoholic. And to help raise the family, I had to quit school. The teachers all knew my situation.”

Several years later, while working in a cabinet shop in Cleburne, he said a girl passing by who smiled and waved caught his eye.

In time that girl, Betty Jane Eastus, became Betty Trussell. But World War II and Trussell’s stint in the U.S. Army Air Corps came first.

Trussell and Eastus dated for about a year before Trussell joined the service.

“We didn’t have cars back then,” Trussell said. “So I’d take her home on my bicycle.”

Although life circumstances prevented him from completing school, Trussell said he never forgot his teachers.

“When I first got in the service, I got a uniform, and they gave me four days to come home and straighten my business, which I didn’t have any,” Trussell said. “So I visited the school in my uniform and talked to my old teachers.”

From Mineral Wells, Trussell shipped to Camp Mackall in North Carolina, where he had to help build the camp before he received basic training.

“Then they sent us to Louisiana,” Trussell said. “Out where the swamps and wild hogs were. I didn’t realize it then, but they were training us to go to the South Pacific.”

Trussell’s last stop before heading to war was San Francisco.

“We went to get on the ship and a sign above the door said ‘Through these doors walk the best damn soldiers,’ I didn’t even know what that meant,” Trussell said with a laugh. “The Red Cross was there. They gave me a deck of cards, packet of cigarettes and a Bible, which I still have.”

After 31 days aboard ship, the group made a beach landing in New Guinea. Trussell was all of 19 at the time.

“They had so many killed there that they was asking for paratroopers,” Trussell said. “When I was in training I was in for gliders, and I crashed two of them and decided I didn’t like them anymore. So me and my sergeant joined the paratroopers, and we built our own jump towers and made all our qualifying jumps. We had to have five to get wings.

“Back then, chutes weren’t as good as they are now. Old style, they estimated when you hit the ground it was a sudden stop at 35 mph. They taught us how to take up the shock by rolling over and then collapsing your own chute.

“From there we just went island to island. I can’t remember all the island names.”

Trussell does recall having his canteen “all shot up” on Leyte Island and being surprised by the Japanese.

“They dropped Japanese paratroopers in on top of us,” Trussell said. “The planes looked just like our planes, C-47s. They caught us when we were lined up to eat and our rifles were stacked ,so we had to run for our foxholes and stay there overnight. They made a big circle around us and kept us in that area.

“I remember the code that night was Coleman Lantern. So if anyone came in you’d say Coleman, if they didn’t say lantern, you started shooting. And I was, we was all, scared. They were throwing hand grenades and cussing [Gen. Douglas] MacArthur trying to get us to fire so they’d know our location. Of course, everyone could tell by the way they talked it was them.”

The Japanese took the airfield and burned several American planes, which caused the pilots, armed only with pistols, to take cover behind the lines of Trussell and other soldiers.

“There was a sniper in a tree; nobody could find him,” Trussell said. “And I just happened to see his feet. When they climbed the trees, they’d tie themselves in and stay there until somebody killed them. I know I didn’t fire over three shots before I got him. Anyhow, they boxed that rifle up, bayonet and everything, and sent it home for me. It’s down in the Hillsboro Museum at Hill College now.”

At Lake Taal, Trussell and others jumped in, surprising the Japanese who were doing calisthenics with their rifles stacked up.

“Everything worked perfect that day; we must have had real good observation,” Trussell said. “We didn’t lose a man, and we got all the prisoners out. They had Australians, Filipinos, Americans, all kind of people. Some were so weak they could barely stand.”

Trussell detonated bombs, saw the first American flag raised over Tokyo, and was on hand when the Japanese surrendered.

“They came up wearing long sabres,” Trussell said. “And my general told them to take them off, but the main Japanese guy said they would keep them as they show their honor. The general said, ‘You don’t have any damn honor other than honoring us.’ Boy, my heart skipped. I thought we were going to have to start shooting. But anyway, they dropped them. Which I later found out meant total surrender on their part.”

Trussell said he was afraid to go home after the war because he had been away so long.

“They gave us books on how to return to the U.S.,” Trussell said. “How to act and get a job. But I don’t owe the government nothing cause the Lord blessed me and carried me right through.”

Trussell wasted no time in reconnecting with Betty Eastus.

“Yeah, real quick,” Trussell said. “I got home on the 13th, and we married on the 26th. We just liked being 61 years married. I tell you she was a wonderful wife.”

Now at Heritage Trails Nursing Home in Cleburne, Trussell concentrates on bringing people to God and holding daily Bible study.

“I read the Bible everyday,” Trussell said. “Everyone should. It tells you to in the Bible.”

Trussell also found time to play matchmaker between his son, Mark Trussell, and speech therapist LeAnn Trussell.

“They had so much in common, broken marriages, but said they didn’t want to have anything more to do with anyone else,” Trussell said. “But I told them they’re too young to waste their lives and that God’s got plans for you. So I kept on them. Kept on Mark to ask her out. Even after that they told me they weren’t going to fall in love. But, that didn’t last too long.”

The pair married soon after, holding the wedding at Heritage Trails.