Local WWII veteran takes once-in-a-lifetime trip

Published 4:00 am Monday, November 9, 2015

Robert Earl thought his daughter was nuts.

Sharyn Earl sat in the living room of her 87-year-old father’s Federal Way retirement community apartment and silently smiled back at her father.

“I thought I had a cold chance in hell of getting it,” Earl said.

“You’re a veteran of three wars dad, you deserved to go,” Sharyn Earl said.

Robert Earl paused for a beat as color filled his cheeks before averting his gaze and changing the subject. He extended a worn hand, showing off the itinerary for the two-day Honor Flight trip he just returned from.

His daughter had heard about Puget Sound Honor Flight, part of the national Honor Flight Network, on a news broadcast and brought the necessary paperwork to her father to complete. Honor Flight Network is a non-profit organization that transports American veterans of foreign wars to Washington, D.C. to visit the memorials that were built in their honor.

Honor Flights depart often, leaving from more than 125 travel hubs in 41 states. As of 2012, the organization has taken more than 98,500 veterans to Washington, D.C.

Despite Robert Earl’s skepticism and humility over being chosen, the Honor Flight Network’s top priority is World War II veterans like him.

He began his military career just short of his 17th birthday when he joined the Merchant Marines as a mess steward near the end of the war. After the war was over, he turned his sights to the U.S. Army, and headed to Fort Lewis for basic training in 1946.

Robert Earl slowly rises from his recliner and shuffles to a table across the room, picking up a pile of photos from his trip and begins flipping through them, pointing to this person here, that memorial there. Then he stops on a photo of him and a younger man standing together, smiling.

“Oh, there’s Walter,” Sharyn Earl said.

“He was my nursemaid the whole time,” Robert Earl said. “You talk about dedication, he’d been on 10 trips as a guardian and it cost him $1,000 a piece out of his own pocket to go.”

He said that Walter Liang watched over him throughout the trip, and made accommodations for him before they even left the Puget Sound area.

“I surprised him because he kept asking me if I wanted a wheelchair, and I said, ‘No I don’t want a damn wheelchair.’ I think I out-walked him,” Robert Earl said.

Liang is a veteran himself who served two years during Vietnam. Having been on so many honor flights, Liang was used to veterans like Robert Earl.

“Many veterans may need a wheelchair on occasion during the trip, they are always available if the veteran needs one,” said Liang. “Mr. Earl did not have the need for one; these veterans are very independent and are proud of what they can do on their own.”

Liang continues to volunteer for Honor Flight because he thoroughly enjoys helping fellow veterans like Robert Earl.

“It is a powerful experience to see other veterans who have worn the same boots and shared the same experiences during the war with each other,” Liang said. “The best part is seeing the smiles on their faces when school-age children come shake their hands and thank them for their service.”

Robert Earl continues through the photos and stops on a photo of himself at the Korean War Memorial. His red Honor Flight shirt stands out in stark contrast from the subdued, shrouded figures of the memorial behind him.

He lingers on the photograph for a beat before speaking.

“It was the one I appreciated the most,” he said. “Soldiers in their ponchos coming across the field and it’s raining — of course the day we were there it was nice and sunshiney, which ruined the effect — but I appreciated it.”

During his enlistment, Robert Earl found himself in the Korean War where he was injured twice in combat, earning him two separate Purple Hearts and more than two months in the hospital.

He flips through another group of photographs and stops on a photo of himself smiling with a young couple.

“The whole place was filthy with tourists all over the place,” he said. “I’d say at least half of them were foreigners. I had two Chinese couples and one Korean couple come up to me. A Chilean couple and a Brazilian couple asked to take photos with me. I was a good American and I let them take my picture.”

He flips to another photograph, this time the black granite face of the wall of names at the Vietnam Memorial is depicted in the photograph.

After Robert Earl’s commission, he joined the explosive ordnance disposal division of the Army and his unit was sent to Vietnam. While he was there, all of the soldiers in his unit were killed when unstable bombs they were disposing of were detonated. Robert Earl and a fellow officer were the only members of the unit left to finish disposing of the bombs. This earned him his third Army Commendation Medal before he returned to the states and retired.

Robert Earl said the Vietnam Memorial was also one of his favorite stops on the trip despite his fruitless search of names etched upon the wall of those who died during the war.

“I tried to find the names of the EOD guys from that explosion. Never did find ’em,” he said.

This experience was vastly different from his previous trip to D.C. 40 years earlier.

“I’d been to D.C. before, but all of the memorials weren’t built then,” he said.

Despite the ghosts of soldiers past that were resurrected during the trip, Robert Earl speaks of his trip fondly.

“I thought it was an honor and a privilege to go,” he said. “It’s something that, at my age, I wouldn’t do on my own again, that’s probably the last trip I’ll ever take to Washington D.C. In fact it’s the last trip I’ll ever take on an airplane — I don’t like ’em, there’s no room for your feet — but it was really something.”

Joanna Kresge is a student in the University of Washington News Laboratory.