Politics & Government
'Honor Flight' Rekindles Patriotism for Sussex Ex-Marine
Arthur H. Kuether, who survived the bloody Battle of Peleliu, touched by experience of "Honor Flight."
I guess it was the times. Our country was in danger. I enlisted so I could hopefully help protect it. I love our country.
– Arthur H. Kuether, former U.S. Marine
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When Arthur Harry Kuether enlisted in the Marines at the tender age of 16, the recruiter told him he wouldn’t have to go overseas until he was 18.
The recruiter was wrong.
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The year was 1943 and the Kuether (“my sonny boy” as his mother called him) had decided he’d had enough of his junior year at Custer High School in Milwaukee. With World War II raging, Kuether believed he had something to offer to his country. He convinced his father to sign the papers allowing him to take a Marine Corps physical. Kuether was such a small, skinny kid that his dad’s friend quipped, “Heck, they’ll never take him.”
His dad’s friend was wrong, too.
Kuether boarded ship on New Year’s Eve, 1943 heading for Marine boot camp in San Diego and rifle training. To say he passed the test is an understatement.
“I shot a score of 300 out of 305 in the prone, sitting and off-hand positions,” Kuether proudly recalled. “I missed only five bull’s eyes out of all those positions.”
Kuether's marksmanship would serve him well as he and his fellow Marines were shipped to the island of Espirito Santos in the Pacific for further training. Little did he know he would very soon have his first brush with death.
September 15, 1944. D-Day Plus 1.
“The captain of the ship said, ‘Make sure you Marines have two canteens filled with water’ because the Japanese probably poisoned the water, ‘and two 800 calorie bars because you probably won’t see food for a couple of days,’” said Kuether.
In the dead of night, a 17 year-old Kuether was among the Marines landing on the beaches of Peleliu, one of the Palau Islands of the western Pacific. More than 10,000 Japanese troops awaited, deeply entrenched and heavily fortified in the caves of this tiny island only six miles long and two miles wide. The island’s air strip allowed Japanese war planes to threaten any Allied operation in the Philippines. The mission was to take over that air strip.
“When we hit the beach we were supposed to scatter with our M-1s (rifles) and go in,” Kuether explained. “There was no going back. I didn’t see what was ahead of me and I ran into bales of barbed wire. I hit the barbed wire so hard my M-1 flew out of my hands and went over to the other side of the barbed wire, laying on the ground.
“I’m trying to free myself from the barbed wire and I looked up on the hill about 250 yards away and there was a Japanese sniper. Every fifth shot his flare (went off) so he could see how close he was coming to me. Those shots kept going lower and lower. That’s when I ripped myself off that barbed wire. I was a bull’s eye lying there, you know?”
Kuether survived this harrowing experience and two others, including a time when his friend suddenly pulled him back by the shoulder, preventing him from stepping on a land mine.
The Battle of Peleliu, codenamed Operation Stalemate II, was projected to last a matter of days. Instead, the vicious fighting raged on for the next several weeks. Of the 28,000 Marines and infantry troops involved, 1,800 men were killed and another 8,000 were wounded.
Kuether knows he was lucky to survive. Just talking about that battle still brings back the tears and a flood of emotions. He never sought public acknowledgement for what he went through in the war. However, he finally experienced that warmth and appreciation last year when he took part in the Honor Flight trip to Washington, D.C.
“I think this Honor Flight was really something great,” said Kuether. “It made up for a lot of things where you didn’t receive or expect to receive (recognition). People would see you in your uniform when you came back to Wisconsin, shake your hand and say ‘Thank you.’ But it was nothing as elaborate as this Honor Flight. It’s really a great way to say, ‘We haven’t forgotten you.’ Honor Flight is tremendous. That was first class treatment all the way.”
Kuether says his big wish is for more veterans to get their chance to go on the Honor Flight trip. To see the World War II and other battle memorials. To travel first class in coach buses with a police escort. To feel “like a big shot.” To be appreciated in grand style.
“I love our country,” Kuether repeats.
And, thanks to Honor Flight, he knows that his country really loves him back.
