Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, November 12, 1994 TAG: 9411140043
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PETER BACQUE RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: RICHMOND (AP) LENGTH: Medium
First, Eugene left in 1939.
Then Thornton in 1940.
Then John.
Then Joe.
Then Sam.
Then Booker.
Six of the 10 Glass boys from Lynchburg served in World War II in the American military.
Five of the six volunteered, said Booker B. Glass, who's known as ``B.B.''
They soldiered in all the regular armed forces - Army, Navy, Marines and the Army Air Force - in that dire conflict half a century ago, their paths ranging from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Calcutta, India, from the South Pacific to the beaches of Normandy.
And they all came home alive, though not all in one piece.
Friday was Veterans Day, honoring men and women like the Glass brothers. They were among 16.1million American men and women who marched, sailed and flew in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, who were scared, exhausted, bored, exhilarated, hurt - or were among the 405,000 Americans killed.
Today, fewer than half - 7,795,000 - of the World War II veterans are still alive, 709,000 of them in Virginia.
The youngest son of a Campbell County sharecropper, B.B. Glass joined the Navy when he turned 17.
With the unskeptical patriotism of the time, Glass said, ``I was determined to do my part, even though I was only 17 ... I wasn't satisfied to sit back and not do my share.''
A boatswain's mate, B.B. Glass was assigned to the naval armed guard force, small teams of sailors who manned the defensive guns on merchant ships during the war.
He sailed the seven seas during his two years and nine months of service, finding himself docked at Buenos Aires, Argentina, when the fighting ended.
With the insouciance of youth, Glass said, ``Funny thing, I never did worry at all about it.''
Nor did he spend time fretting over his brothers' safety. ``When you have six in there, you almost figure that one or two of them won't come back. It was one of those things I didn't worry too much about.''
The American military learned a terrible lesson during World War II when the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, insisted on serving together on the same Navy vessel.
They all died when the cruiser USS Juneau was sunk in 1942 off Guadalcanal.
Today, three of the six Glass brother-veterans are still alive. B.B. Glass, retired from the hotel business, lives in Richmond; Thornton Glass in Vinton; and Joe Glass in Lynchburg.
Of the other four brothers - who were considerably older than their servicemen siblings - two spent the war in defense-related occupations, one was an FBI agent, and the fourth was disqualified from service for physical reasons, B.B. Glass said.
The stories of the far-serving Glass brothers reflect the experience of the nation itself during the 1941-45 war.
For instance, Joe went into the Marines, sailing on the heavy cruiser USS Santa Fe in the Pacific, while John, drafted into the Army, served with Virginia's 116th Infantry Regiment in the 29th Division through D-Day, losing his right leg in the battle for St. Lo.
Thornton, who in 1940 had ``j'ined the cavalry'' - as the old horse soldiers' song went - also stormed ashore at Normandy, where he, too, was wounded.
Sam enlisted in the Seabees - the Navy's Construction Battalions - and Eugene went into the Army Air Corps, which became the U.S. Air Force.
As for many young American men, the war confronted the Glass boys with a Hobson's choice: enlist and choose your service, or be drafted and assigned by fate.
``I didn't decide [to join], really,'' Joe Glass said. ``I was going to be drafted or either join. I didn't want to be drafted.''
So he volunteered for the Marines. ``It's a good, tough outfit,'' he said. ``I liked it - I'd rather been home.''
``You name where we didn't go in the Pacific,'' said Joe, a 72-year-old retired Lynchburg policeman. ``We bombarded just about every land the Army and the Marines had in the Pacific.''
The Santa Fe took him to Guadalcanal, the Aleutians up in the frozen north Pacific, the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Wake Island.
Those places were the scenes of bitter fighting, heroic deeds and tragic deaths. They are moving from news of the day to musty history as the soldiers and sailors grow old and die.
But in Joe Glass' mind, the shells still spit from his 20mm anti-aircraft cannon; the kamikaze planes are as real as memory.
``Lord have mercy,'' he said, counting the number of times he was in combat. ``Fifty times, I expect. We had had suicide planes diving at us, bombers and torpedo planes coming at us, every time we got into a big battle.
``I saw a lot of suicide planes.''
by CNB