During a time of national unease and the potential for war in Iraq, three retired officers from Patriots Colony were approached by Will Molineaux, a former editor from the Daily Press, to participate in a seminar where they spoke about their experiences in World War II. The series occurred in three parts during the month of September at the Christopher Wren Association for Lifelong Learning on the nearby College of William and Mary campus.

The Greatest Generation Remembers

The audience consisted of mostly retirees, and according to Jim Love, “We had a lot of great interplay. I’d say at least one

half of those present were old enough to have been in World War II. By sharing stories, we helped fill in the gaps about parts of the war they knew little about.”

Jim Love Recalls “The Battle of the Bulge”

Jim Love was an infantry company commander who landed with his troops on Omaha Beach on the 8^th of June, 1944. “We got into fighting about five miles inland,” he recalled. The Ardennes Counteroffensive in December was Hitler’s last gasp, and the battle involved over 600,000 U.S. Forces. Hitler’s objective was to seize the port of Antwerp in Belgium and split the Allied Forces in two. “He attempted to go through the Ardennes, a thickly forested part of the country,” said Jim. He continued, “we stopped him and he never got halfway. Hitler expended so many of his troops, weapons, and tanks that after this his air force was almost non-existent. We joined up with the Russians in late April, and on the 8^th of May 1945, the shooting stopped.”

Lee Rathbun’s Experience on a Submarine in the South China Sea

When Lee Rathbun was a young submarine torpedo officer fresh out of the Naval Academy, he shared a frightening experience on the South China Sea, just south of Japan in 1944. “I spoke about a submerged attack in which one of our torpedoes fired and made a circular run and headed back towards us,” remembered Lee. There were cases in World War II where submarines were sunk by their own torpedoes. Luckily, Lee Rathbun’s was not one of them. “When we heard the torpedo coming back, we went through a deep submergence and it passed over the after battery hatch of the ship. We heard it going over,” Lee said.