Eighty-three names on the Veterans War Memorial remind us of Clark County’s participation in World War I. That salute to those killed in 1917 and 1918 wasn’t the community’s only long-standing link to the Great War, however.
Up until his death at age 103, we also had Willis Earl.
The centennial of America’s entry into WWI was observed locally on April 8 when the Fort Vancouver National Historical Site hosted a commemoration at Pearson Air Museum.
These big-number anniversaries feature a lot of archive imagery, historical artifacts and century-old letters and journal entries. But well into the 21st century, Earl provided the perspectives of a WWI veteran who served in France.
And as The Columbian noted in a story following Earl’s death in 2003, he wasn’t supposed to be there. Born on June 4, 1900, he was too young to enlist. Earl was working at a Portland railroad yard when America declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917. When the foreman assured Earl he could get his job back after the war, he enlisted on May 1, when he was 16.
“I told them I was 19, and I don’t recall ever having to show anything,” Earl said in 2001.
Earl’s uncle, a Portland attorney, told the unit’s commanding officer about the underage recruit.
‘Over in 6 months’
“The CO said, ‘This will be over in six months, and he’ll never get to France.’ In three months, I was in France.”
As a member of the Army’s 467th Aero Wing, Earl helped build an air base in France.
“It was the largest airport in the world at that time.”
The unit was transferred to the Atlantic coast, where it built an aerial gunnery school. Earl saw some unexpected action there. As a pilot wrapped up gunnery practice, his plane ran out of gas and crashed into the surf. Earl and a friend swam out and rescued him.
“He was unconscious and pinned in the wreckage.”
A piece of wreckage hit Earl and injured his left eye. He was sent to the hospital the next day. Doctors finally operated on it … in 1930.
One aspect of Earl’s enlistment paperwork stayed with him for the rest of his life, he said in 2001.
At that point, Earl was 101 years old. But since he lied about his age to sign up, Earl said, “The Army still lists me as 104.”
Off Beat lets members of The Columbian news team step back from our newspaper beats to write the story behind the story, fill in the story or just tell a story.
