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Histories of The Individuals Who Served

E. J. and Robert Shellman

father and son

World War II - U. S. Army

contributed by: Dick LaBrosse

News Article
November 2014
Times-Herald and Oconto County Reporter

This is a Shellman family snapshot taken to 1943 of Bob and his dad E. J. while they were both serving in the military and happened to be home in Oconto Falls at the same time. Left to right are E.J., Frederick (Fritz), Nell, Robert and Gary.

World War II devastated, enriched small Wisconsin town

By Gary Shellman

OCONTO FALLS MEN WHO RETURNED HOME AFTER SERVING IN WWII

» Eugene Behling, a Marine aviator, flew a Helldiver torpedo bomber in the South Pacific.
» The Lemorande twins, Ralph and Lenny, met the Axis in combat regiments. While working for Beam Chemical, Ralph was elected mayor of Oconto Falls during the 1970s.
» George Magnin, a naval officer, became a physician and later served as CEO of Marshfield Clinic.
» His brother, Orrie (Chubby) Magnin, served in the Army and came home to run the family hardware store.
» Bill Krahn received a commission as a Marine officer and settled in Green Bay as an executive of a food processing company.
» Bernard Matravers flew C-46 cargo planes over the "Hump" in Southeast Asia, supplying the idle Chinese Nationalists.
» Wayne Hammond was a crewman on a B-17, shot down over Europe, captured and spent time in a German POW camp, taught high school in his hometown before moving to Hartford.
» Parson Greene, pastor of our church, was called to active duty with Wisconsin National Guard's "Red Arrow" 32nd Division. He returned to his pulpit after witnessing Gen. Douglas MacArthur wade ashore several times for news cameras in the Philippines.
» Victor Bast was pilot in the Air Force, and returned home to be an elementary school prinicipal.
» Merdon "Buddy" Drews operated a trucking company after serving in the Army.
» Greg Martens managed a grocery store.
» Bob Mortell ran a photography studio
» Henry "Doc" Reidinger treated patients as a chiropractor.
» Donald Loberger
» Carl Lemorande
» Rueben Vandenbusch
» his brother, Jack Vanden Bush
» Sterling Bauman served in the Coast Guard. His brother Joe also served in military.
» Albert R. Kardoskee was in the Army Air Corps at Pearl Harbor when it was attacked by the Japanese. He went on to have a military career, and returned to Oconto Falls with his family after retiring.
» Ohio native Clyde Seifert, who who went to medical school on the Gl Bill, arrived in Oconto Falls in 1954 and delivered three generations of babies.

Veterans Day 2014 is a significant point in time to honor survivors of the Second World War who are still with us. Though I was in kindergarten on Dec. 7, 1941, I remember vividly the profound impact that horrific global conflict had on a small town in Northeastern Wisconsin.

Most graduates of the Oconto Falls High School classes of 1940 snd 194l either volunteered or were drafted into military service within months of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States on Dec. 10, inspiring an energtic crop of young Oconto County men, still too young to enjoy legal cocktails, to quit their jobs, leave their college studies and enter service in the Army, Navy, Coast Guard or Marines, in 1943, the Air Force was under the command of the US Army.

Ten of these recent high school graduates failed to return home, all killed in action between 1942 and 1945. That was one in roughly 160 residents who died in combat serving his or her country.

Killed in action were; George Sankey and Orville Depaer in 1942; Quirin Hostak, Royal Miller, Clarence Spice, Bernard McKeever, and Marvin Benson in 1943; Qrville Kehlman and Frederick Mark in 1945. Pilot of a B-47 Flying Fortress, Francis Smedley died when his bomber, "Sunrise Serenade," named for his mother's favorite song, was shot down over Belgium. Francis was my oldest brother's best friend in high school. News of his death in May 1944 stunned everyone.

My brother, ftoosrt Shellman, now 91, still lives in Oconto Falls. He enlisted after one semester on the University of Wisconsin campus, where he piayed trombone in Prof. Ray Dvorak's Badger matching band.

Before departing for Camp Hood, Texas, Robert helped our mother Nell operate the family-owned Oconto Falls Herald. Our father, "E.J.," a captain in tfce Army Reserve had been called to active duty in the week after Pearl Harbor.

The flag in our front window bore two blue stars. E.J. was promoted to major, commanding basic training battalions at Camp Edwards, Mass. and Ft. Lewis, Wash. The Army was still segregated to 1944. The son of Swedish immigrants from small town Wisconsin introduced more than 800 African American soldiers from urban ghettos to small southern towns to their first rigors of military life.

Bob served the duration of the war in Gen, George Patron's Third Army as an ordinance technician, sighting in and repairing overused artillery. He reached the Buchenwald concentration camp about the time he turned 21.

All of my brother's friends joined the national response to peart Harbor and Hilter's declaration. Most returned home to their businesses or earned college degrees and created the town's vibrant professional class. (See list.)

Nearly every OFHS graduate left home 1942-1944 helped defeat the Axis in some way, and most came back to their family farms, businesses or jobs at the Falls Paper & Power Co., which prospered during the war producing paper goods for the armed forces. The town had three churches, a humble hospital, four grocery stores, one restaurant, a sweet shop, a hotel where few people ever stayed, one drug store, seven taverns, two feed mills, and a depot for the Chicago & Northwestern railway branch line, which my brother later dubbed the OGB & F (Oconto, Gillett Back & Forth). The public school district, stretched from the Brown County line to Kelly Lake near Marinette County, consisted of a bus barn and two buildings for elementary and secondary education. St. Anthony's parish operated its Catholic parochial school.

For public safety, one of three county patrolmen lived in Oconto Falls to support its local force of one policeman, Bob Hammond and one constable, Ed Cain, who also maintained city hall and the adjacent city park. Chief Hammond stood five feet six or so, packed a 38 special revolver and baton, but did not drive and the town provided no squad car. His most effective "weapon" was a police whistle, which he used to stop cars he perceived speeding on Main Street, but rarely issued a citation, preferring to lecture offending drivers and let them go.

Oconto Falls celebrated VE-Day and VJ-Day in its small city park, but my most vivid memory is witnessing a joyful gathering in Johnson's Sweet Shop before I entered fourth grade. Freshly back from their respective combat zones, a group of newly-minted veterans filled the booths and traded stories about surviving the Battle of the Bulge or landings on Pacific Islands.

My brother is one of the last Oconto County survivors of what Tom Brokaw memorialized as "the greatest generation." Last year he participated in an honor flight from Appleton to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington. In Oconto Falls, the names of those who fell are cited on a memorial at the corner of what was the city park.

The outpouring of books, films, and scholarship focusing on the Second World War never stops. Sixty nine years later, the impact of the global conflict is still reverberating. It took a heavy toll on small town America, even Oconto Falls.

Gary Shellman now lives in the Milwaukee area. Before retiring, he was the deputy director of the UW-Milwaukee Institute of World Affairs.

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