Generations At War

by Molly Boren

You'll find many of them gathered on Friday nights for the fish fry at the Naperville VFW post, but you also can find local veterans selling insurance, driving a school bus, building houses, enforcing the law, going to school and continuing to serve in the military. Their experiences overseas are not just events in the past but part of what makes them who they are. And although this may be something only other veterans can truly understand, their insights offer an intriguing perspective-and useful reminder-for us all.

World War II

The Japanese bombed Hawaii's Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and that Christmas Eve, Leo Kuefler and four other young men from Naperville received draft notices requiring them to appear for a physical examination on Dec. 26. After basic training at Fort Knox, Kuefler "wound up" in the Army's 4th Armored Division. He was stationed at Pine Camp, N.Y.

"When Hitler took over Africa, our division got sent to California to practice desert warfare," he recalls. "Boy, was it hot in our tanks."

Kuefler and his unit eventually were sent to England in anticipation of D-Day, but when June 6, 1944, arrived, the tanks weren't equipped to cross the English Channel. Thirty-six days later, after they'd "taped up everywhere water could get in," Tank Commander Kuefler and his division went over the channel into France.

While in Europe, Kuefler was awarded a Silver Star after he ran nearly a mile back to a disabled tank, rigged its shells with fuses and shot them toward the top of the hill where a contingent of Germans was firing at his men. When their shooting stopped, Kuefler rejoined his men, and shortly thereafter 18 Germans appeared with their hands up. His shooting had made them believe they were surrounded.

After Kuefler's platoon lieutenant was wounded, Kuefler, the platoon sergeant, led the men for seven weeks in combat, until his tank was hit in November 1944. Kuefler's legs were crushed in the tank's turret, but he managed to get out and, after lying in a ditch with his comrades, was loaded into a convoy of ambulances. Before the two vehicles could make their way to a field hospital, another shell hit.

"I laid there for awhile and then decided the ditch would be safer," Kuefler recalls. "So I picked up my legs and rolled out of the litter to the door."

Eventually another ambulance came along, but when Kuefler urged the medics to check on the other men first, he learned that everyone else-10 men in two ambulances-had been killed by the shell. Kuefler was flown to a hospital in England for a few months and eventually made his way to an army orthopedic hospital in Topeka, Kan., where he stayed for a year. He was discharged, after the war was over, in May 1946. Shortly before he was injured, Kuefler had been offered a battlefield commission.

"I would have been a second lieutenant," he recalls, refusing the position to stay with the men he already knew. "But if I had known I was going to get hit in two weeks, I would have taken [the position] so I could have drawn that pay!"

"I'm lucky I came back the way I was," adds Kuefler, more seriously. He served as chief of the Naperville Civil Defense upon his return and worked 38 years as a school-bus mechanic and driver before his retirement.

When asked about those fighting today, Kuefler, now 90, says: "I hope they get things settled pretty soon so they can come home. But coming home without getting things settled-I don't go for that because there will be trouble again."

Vietnam

Jack Shiffler, 62, was born in Naperville and graduated from Naperville Community High School (now Naperville Central). He attended North Central College for a year and a half before his performance led the school to conclude they "didn't want my attendance anymore," he recalls.

"The draft had started, and I knew I would get drafted, so I wanted to go in with the best," he says. To that end, Shiffler enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1965 and served with the Second Battalion, First Marine Division in Vietnam in 1966 and '67.

"I went over as an engineer, and I was trained to be a fueler for everything from jets to jeeps," he says. "But that lasted about 10 seconds because they didn't need a fueler, they needed a grunt."

Shiffler describes his experience as an infantryman in Vietnam as "the greatest, most disgusting, most fantastic, un-damn-believable thing I'd ever done in my life."

He had never fired a weapon before joining the Marine Corps.

"The training alone shell-shocked me bad," he says. "Then when I landed in Vietnam, and everything I thought I had figured out changed, I just didn't figure I was coming home. With my luck

I shouldn't have, but I was never scratched or wounded."

The war in Vietnam was the first "360-degree war, Shiffler says.

"We didn't have a front line, a back line and a rest area," he says. "We didn't know who to trust."

Shiffler recalls seeing one of his best military friends blown in half after a woman handed him her baby, which was rigged with explosives.

"This kind of culture shock is hard to accept," he says. "But it's what the kids [in Iraq] deal with now."

His experience returning to civilian life was a "mixed bag," he recalls. "Coming back at that time, the general populace was very against the military," he says. "They didn't believe in the war, so they took it out on us. We were more or less called drugged-up baby killers and spit on&This country needed a lot of healing when that mess was over."

Before his retirement, Shiffler ran his family's business, Shiffler Builders, for years, and also worked in financial marketing.

When asked about the current war, Shiffler says: "I have to feel these kids are doing something right. They're making headway."

He tells the tale of an Army Corps of Engineers unit that rebuilt an entire electrical grid in Iraq in eight months.

"That would take 10 years here," he says, and adds that not enough of these positive stories make their way into media coverage. "We can't stay there forever, but [we should] at least give [the Iraqis] a chance and a way to have a level meeting of the minds."

Desert Shield/Desert Storm

"My dad threw me out of the house," says Ryan Rigby, 41, when asked what prompted him to join the Marines. "I was a rambunctious youth. I knew I needed a little discipline."

After graduating high school in 1986 and attempting a semester at College of DuPage, which ended in incompletes, Rigby enlisted.

He was stationed in South America for several years and activated in December 1990 for Operation Desert Shield. Rigby remained in the Middle East, working as a radio operator and load master for C-130 airplanes, as well as refueling fighters in the air, through the end of Operation Desert Storm. He was released in May 1991.

"The military made me a much better person," he says. "I came back and got straight A's. After the war I realized what's truly important. I started my own company, and [that experience] made me a more successful and kinder individual."

However, the transition back to civilian life was not entirely smooth.

"I can't imagine what the guys are going through now because we had it very easy," Rigby says. "But the stress level [during combat] is so high. You're doing so many things. I have a stressful job here, but it was nothing like there. I used to tell my wife I felt like getting in a car and just going as fast as I could to get the cops to chase me for grins. I had gotten used to that adrenaline pump, and then it was gone."

Rigby estimates it took him a couple of months to get acclimated.

"For the poor guys now [who deal] with bombs going off and having to go house to house-they really have to struggle with that," he says.

After a couple of years as a reservist, Rigby retired from the Marines and worked in insurance for just a few years before taking his clients and striking out on his own in 1995.

"The military trains you to be a leader pretty quickly," he says. Today he owns The Rigby Group employee benefits brokerage in Naperville.

There are "great similarities" between his military experiences and those of today's soldiers in the sense that "there's a brotherhood formed in the military," he says. "It's the world's greatest fraternity. But as for heavy day-to-day combat, there's no comparison. That's a whole other adrenaline level," he says. "My hope is that&[the Iraqis] can take over for themselves and all the Americans can be pulled. That even if they hate us they can live in a semi-democratic society and have rights for men, women and different religions. That would be an amazing feat. I love people, so I hope the best for them. Hopefully that's everyone's view. That's what they're fighting for anyway."

Bosnia peacekeeping/Operation Iraqi Freedom

Major Silas Bowman, 32, is on his third Army-financed academic degree (and second masters). When he finishes his current masters degree in math in a few months, Bowman will transfer to the United States Military Academy at West Point, in upstate New York, to teach. In addition to the opportunity to serve his country, Bowman says the chance for a free education is what drew him to the armed forces. After high school, he was accepted into an ROTC program, which financed his undergraduate studies at Pacific Lutheran University.

"I owed [the Army] three years after that, so I became an officer," Bowman says.

Bowman served eight months as part of the U.S. peacekeeping force in Bosnia during 1998 and '99 as a platoon leader and combat engineer. He assessed roads and bridges for safety and usability and helped the Serbians and Croatians remove landmines from their respective territories. Bowman has received both Airborne and Army Ranger training, and he was stationed in Germany from 2001 to 2005. During that time he was deployed to Iraq in 2003 as part of the "initial assault into Baghdad," he explains. This time Bowman was a company commander, with 100 people reporting to him, and his combat engineering duties included removing booby traps and explosives from roads and bridges, as well as searching door-to-door for weapons hidden in and around civilian homes. Bowman and his team also worked with Iraqis to remove 40 200-foot missiles "from people's yards."

"Saddam had placed them in orchards," he says, "and the fuel was caustic. One part per million would liquefy your lungs."

Using ventilated trucks and "space suits," the Iraqis would de-fuel the rocket, "then we'd blow it up and burn the fuel somewhere safe," he says.

His military experiences have given him a lot to reflect upon.

"I think before I went to Bosnia, I thought humans were generally good," Bowman says. "I saw some stuff there that told me otherwise. There was a lot of destruction and suffering&but it probably didn't look that much different than Germany after World War II."

Bowman says his experience in Iraq was even more difficult.

"Bosnia was a peacekeeping mission, making sure people didn't fight each other," he says. "But in Iraq we had to fight people that Saddam didn't give a choice. [He told them] "fight or your family will suffer." Just seeing what he did to his people, and now what they're doing to each other&I've lost the innocence I once thought humans possessed."

Bowman says military service "makes our complaints [as Americans] look so petty. It's opened my eyes to human suffering and made me more compassionate," he adds. "It's also made me one heck of a leader. I've led units of people twice in combat and brought them all back alive."

But the difficulties of such service cannot be overlooked.

"It's definitely been interesting for my wife and I's relationship," says Bowman, who has been married to Cindy for 10-and-a-half years. The couple has three children, one of whom was born while Bowman was in Bosnia and did not meet his dad until he was 2 months old.

"Not very many people in America understand being away from your spouse for a year at a time," he says. "When you come back, you've changed, and your family has changed."

A few weeks ago, Bowman spoke at the Naperville VFW Post to families who have members in the military. When a soldier gets back he'll be different, Bowman told them.

"And it's not because he's bad," he explains. "He might want more space or he might want to be close. It affects everyone differently, but it affects everyone."