U.S. NAVY Harold "Buster" Ingalls Eighteen days after graduating from Bryant E. Moore High School in June 1941, Harold “Buster” Ingalls enlisted in the Navy, honoring a commitment he had made to a recruiter who had visited the school four months earlier. A native of Surry, Ingalls was 17 when he entered the Navy. To his surprise, he would spend the next five years there. “I was in the service five years, five months and 17 days — before and after the war,” he recalls with precision. His Navy career started with boot camp in Newport, R.I., and ended with an extended tour of duty in Guam. After two months of training in Newport, he reported to the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Fla., where he spent the next two and a half years. In the fall of 1943, he was ordered to report for overseas training in Port Hueneme, Calif. He received a two-week liberty to return home before heading to the West Coast. He remembers leaving Jacksonville on a coal-burning train with a string of train tickets as long as his arm. “That was an experience,” he said. “I had this long string of tickets to take me from Jacksonville to here to California.” After visiting home, “I headed for San Diego,” he said. “That was really a long trip. We kept getting sidelined for military supply trains.” After two months of training, Ingalls shipped out for Guam on a troop ship. “I never was assigned aboard ship,” he said. “I was always stationed at naval air stations.” Arriving in Hawaii in spring 1944, Ingalls sensed some indecision on the Navy’s part. “I don’t think they knew what to do with us because the war was moving so fast at that time,” he said. Soon after, he reported for duty at U.S. Naval Airbase 939 in Guam. He would remain there from April 1944 to April 1946. Most of his duty in Guam involved office work and administration. He also stood guard duty at the airbase. He said he never saw battle. “There was plenty of protection wherever I was because I was always on big naval airbases,” he said. His service days weren’t always a pleasant experience. One harrowing aspect of his overseas training at Port Hueneme remains vivid in his memory. “This is something I won’t forget,” he said. “We were put in a gas chamber with gas masks on. After five minutes, we were ordered to take the masks off. It didn’t take us long to vacate that place. The point was really made. He also remembers his 60-day voyage home aboard a Liberty ship that had delivered supplies to Guam and was headed back to the States. He remembers passing through the Panama Canal and sleeping on cots “down in the hold.” “It wasn’t too pleasant,” he said, adding that part of the voyage along the Atlantic coast involved the “worst, rough seas” of his life. “We’d be on waves then drop 20 feet or more,” he said. “It was quite unnerving. But we made it.” He and his mates were given a one-week shore leave after reaching the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. “That was greatly appreciated after two years on Guam and a couple months at sea,” he said. More appreciated was two months of accumulated leave, which he took at home before his discharge on Dec. 5, 1946. “That put me home in time to enjoy deer-hunting season,” he said. “I’m a very avid deer hunter. I’ve only ever missed five seasons” — the five seasons he spent in the Navy. After his discharge, Ingalls immediately set to work at taking it easy. “I took the winter off,” he said. “I didn’t work until April 1947. He went to work at the Hancock County Creamery in Ellsworth, where he made ice cream and rose to the position of manager of the ice cream plant before leaving the company in 1961. During the final two years of his 14-year stint at the creamery, he also worked as a substitute at the Ellsworth Post Office. “Whenever the post office called, I’d go,” he said. “After a couple years of running back and forth, I quit the creamery and went to work as a regular at the post office.” He retired in January 1985. Ingalls married Irene Grindle in 1947. They had two sons and were divorced in 1957. In 1961, he married Juanita Martin Card, a widow who lived next door to him. Ingalls helped raise her four children, and the couple had two of their own. Ingalls will celebrate his 83rd birthday in October. “I have one goal,” he said, “to be the last survivor of World War II. I think I’m healthy enough to do it.” — James Straub