U.S. NAVY George Lapaire George Lapaire of Ellsworth served in the Navy as an electrician on a destroyer, the USS Walke. He enlisted at 17 in 1943. Lapaire said he thought he was going to learn how to repair aircrafts and serve on carriers. At Norfolk, Va., he learned he would be an electrician on a destroyer. “So much for the Navy’s promises,” Lapaire said. The USS Walke was new and her crew was young. Two-thirds of the sailors on board were 19 or younger, Lapaire said. The captain, at age 32, was considered by his crew to be an old man. Most of the officers were in their early twenties, he said. “There was no sign of cowardice on that ship,” Lapaire said. “Not one case.” Lapaire was never wounded during his three years but he had close calls. Lapaire had to man a gunner at times. His orders were to look into the sight and fire when he saw enemy wings fill the second circle on the glass. Lapaire did and fired only to see the plane get closer. But he wasn’t hit. He said he thinks the captain turned the ship. Most of the time, Lapaire was not armed but was on deck watching battles unfold. He said the enemy planes were just like black flies. Some were flying low, some high. “They were all over,” Lapaire said. “It was so terrifying to watch them come down.” Another close call occurred when a wing broke off a plane and hit a mast on the destroyer. Waves overtook another fighter plane, which got too close to the water. That plane skipped over the water like a stone before submerging, he said. Lapaire witnessed planes hitting sister ships. And he witnessed deaths of his shipmates. On a mission in the Philippines, the ship’s gunners, were killed by a “downpour of fire,” from a plane that caught fire, Lapaire said. “Of course we had no way to keep bodies on ship,” he said. The sailors were buried at sea. “That was probably my realization of the completeness of death,” said Lapaire. “They were gone. “I was never going to play cards with this guy, never going to sleep next to that one, never going to stand watch with this one.” Lapaire visited with the parents of one dead sailor at their home in Rochester, N.Y. Another sailor who died was named Clifford Dodge. “His parents met me at the railroad station so a whole bunch of us got to talk to them,” Lapaire said. But, he added, “What do you say?” Lapaire was in the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of Okinawa. “Okinawa was the bitterest thing of all and the most terrifying,” Lapaire said. “Okinawa was the worst experience there ever was.” The U.S. lost more ships and more men in that battle than any other. After the peace treaty was signed, Lapaire and other sailors were in Japan doing patrols. That experience was heartbreaking, he said. Japan had devastation everywhere. Japanese people were starving. Little children were walking around with distended bellies. Lapaire and others brought whatever food they could to hand out onshore. The Japanese “were afraid of us,” he said. The sailors tried to talk gently to the women and children but they were frightened. They’d been told for years that Americans were savages, he said. In 1946, Lapaire returned home, which had its own struggles. “Coming home was kind of a letdown,” he said. On the ship, “I was trusted,” he said. “I was called on to do things. I had a rank. I knew that ship from stem to stern.” “When I got home I was a nobody,” Lapaire said. “You’re just one more sailor.” Lapaire earned the rank of electrician mate second class. He was honored with the American Defense Medal, Pacific Operations Medal, Phillippine Liberation Medal and the European Campaign Medal. He was also honored with five combat stars. Lapaire, 79, and his wife Dorothea live in Ellsworth. Dorothea is a Maine native. Lapaire is from Vineland, N.J. The Lapaire family moved here in 1966 when he took a job as industrial arts teacher at George Stevens Academy. He retired in 1983 from the Bar Harbor schools. The couple has three children and six grandchildren, one of whom, Joe, the only grandson and last of the Lapaire’s, is a soldier serving in Iraq. Joe Lapaire is a gunner on a Humvee. Describing the bugs, the sand and the threat of bombs everywhere that his grandson is dealing with, Lapaire said, “It’s a creepy war.” One struggle for Lapaire as a WWII veteran of the Navy, is that he has no memorial to visit. “There’s no place to really go and grieve,” Lapaire said. “We don’t have fields of white crosses because our men were buried at sea. “There’s no place to go and get closure,” Lapaire said. — Jennifer Osborn