U.S. NAVY Maynard Leeman In the fall of 1945, when Petty Officer 3rd Class Maynard Leeman was told he’d be “discharged immediately,” he’d already been through a lot. He had a new baby waiting for him at home in Bucksport, he was on the other side of the world in Japan and, in the short year and a half he’d been in the Navy, he’d gained plenty of combat experience. But even the boat ride home turned out to be perilous, despite the fact that World War II had ended several months earlier. When the cruiser Leeman was on entered the Columbia River, it was knocked on its side. “I was going forward at the time and when she tipped, I skated across the deck and went by an open porthole with a solid stream of water coming straight down,” he said. The boat straightened out and docked in Portland, Ore., where Leeman and the other sailors went ashore. But that was the last time he stepped foot on a ship. “A heck of a lot of experience in a short while,” said Leeman about his time in the Navy. Leeman was born in 1921 in Millinocket. When he was 9, he and his family moved to Bucksport, where he attended grammar school at the Spofford School (now the Masonic Building). He then went to Bangor High School. After high school, Leeman started working in the Bucksport paper mill as an electrician. Leeman was 23 years old when he was drafted into the Navy. He left for training on May 18, 1944, five days before his third child was born. Leeman attended boot camp in Samson, N.Y., and then shipped out of Savannah, Ga., aboard a merchant ship loaded with 3,500 tons of TNT as well as blockbuster bombs. They were headed for Russia. “When we left to go across we were hounded all the way with submarines,” said Leeman. They left with 86 ships in the convoy and arrived on the European coastline with 22. On the Russian coast, they unloaded Sherman tanks and then left because “things were hot on the shore.” It was on the ship’s trip back through the North Sea that Leeman remembers his most harrowing encounter with the enemy. German planes began bombing the ship and it was only a hurricane they were in that saved Leeman and the rest of the crew. “They were all around us,” said Leeman. “I can still picture in my mind me shooting a man to death in that plane. I helped get a bomber, too.” Fortunately the only damage to the moving merchant ship was a cable between two masts that the planes had shot down. “A lot of the stuff you can’t tell it the way it happened — you just can’t do it,” said Leeman. From there, the ship went to Hull, England, where the crew unloaded the blockbuster bombs and TNT before returning to New York. Leeman was then taken off the ship. He was sent to an electrical school in Rhode Island and then on to Boston to test out a newly built auxiliary repair ship. When everything was deemed in working order, Leeman and others headed down to the Panama Canal in the repair ship and then on to Pearl Harbor to service other ships. After they had serviced the ships at Pearl Harbor, they headed to the Aleutian Islands to repair another ship and then on to Japan when they heard that the war had ended. It was in Japan that Leeman was told that all men with three children were to be discharged immediately. On Nov. 4, 1945, Leeman was discharged. He went back to work in the paper mill and had put in a total of 15 years, before and after the war, before he quit to become a farmer. For the next 20 years, until about 1970, Leeman farmed dairy, poultry and sheep. Leeman said he wanted to be his own boss and to work outside. “[The mill] was just like going to jail every day for me,” he said. From 1970 until 1974, he built a house and did carpentry and worked in a couple boat shops. When he was 53, Leeman became too sick to do any more physical work. He said it was the war that caused him to lose his health so early. Maynard and his wife Lena have three children, nine grandchildren and “a lot of great-grandkids,” he said. The couple celebrated 66 years of marriage on Oct. 5. As for the current war in Iraq, Leeman said the United States never should have gotten involved in the first place. “If they had stayed in Afghanistan instead of going to Iraq that would have been all taken care of,” said Leeman. “That was just the president as far as I’m concerned. He just lies and crams it down everyone’s throat. It’s a sorry situation over there.”  — Nick Gosling