HIGH VALLEY – As tough an an old sailor might be, he still can occasionally get a tear in his eye.
That was the case on Monday, when – as fellow veterans and Pearl Harbor survivors looked on – Jim Harris, 84, a longtime Lucerne resident, received a special token to recognize his service during World War II.
Harris was surprised by the honor during a special Pearl Harbor Survivors Association brunch at the High Valley home of Ronnie and Janeane Bogner.
Ronnie Bogner, who acts as the master of ceremonies of the annual Pearl Harbor commemoration at Library Park and is an honorary member of the group, arranged for a French Liberation Medal – the Medaille de la France libérée – to be given to Harris at the gathering.
To add an extra measure of authenticity, Bogner had his friend Michelle Price, a Lake County resident and a native of Lyon, France, explain the medal and present it to Harris on behalf of the French people.
A few minutes earlier, before Harris had any idea that the medal was waiting nearby, Bogner asked him to explain his efforts to receive the medal, which was first offered in the 1940s. “For whatever reason, I can't seem to get one,” Harris said.
He added, “I would like to have it.”
After Price presented him the medal, and gave him the traditional kiss on each cheek, Harris wiped his eyes.
“That's too emotional,” he said, as his wife of 59 years, Helen, looked on.
Harris was entitled to the French medal because, not only did he serve in the Pacific during World War II, he later found himself in the European Theater aboard the USS McCook, which was at the D-Day landing in Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.
According to historians, the McCook – which Harris said was in the wave so close to shore that she kept having to be put into reverse to avoid running aground or hitting mines – shot an estimated 1,000 rounds into the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc.
Germans had been posted there and were putting down serious fire onto the beaches below, as soldiers scrambled onto land from the amphibious landing. That was until the McCook's captain spotted the guns and began returning fire.
The D-Day invasion was the beginning of the end for the Nazi stranglehold on Europe, and the French Liberation Medal illustrates that fact.
On its face it shows a map of France surrounded by a chain, with shell bursts breaking the chain in the northwest and southeast corners of the country, symbolizing the Allied landings.
Before he had any inkling he was about to get a copy of the medal – issued by the French government to commemorate its liberation from the Nazis in World War II – Harris had shared some of his experience with the group of about 30 people.
Included in the group were fellow Pearl Harbor survivors Walter Urmann, Bill Slater, Henry Anderson and “sweethearts” Alice Darrow and Lynn Poehler, whose husbands were among the men who witnessed and survived that attack on Dec. 7, 1941. Darrow's husband, Dean, was aboard the USS West Virginia and Poehler's husband, Bud, was aboard the USS St. Louis.
On Aug. 17, 1940, a 15-year-old Harris lied about his age to a recruiter – he claimed he was 19 – in order to get into the military.
By the time of the Pearl Harbor attack, the 16-year-old Harris had been assigned to the destroyer tender USS Dobbin. Just minutes before the attack started, he had come up on the ship's deck from the mess hall and stood watching planes come in over the harbor.
He and fellow sailors believed the planes were coming from the USS Enterprise, only realizing they were Japanese as the planes banked and they saw the “red meatball” – the red sun of the empire of Japan.
Harris recounted pulled oil-covered men from the harbor waters. As he reached down to help one man up the man's skin came off in his hands, causing a stunned Harris to let go. The man disappeared beneath the water and didn't come up again.
“It was the greatest shock of my life,” Harris said.
He would later make his way across the Pacific Theater – at one point ending up in a hospital in Java that he and several others left shortly before Japanese forces came in and slaughtered all of the hospital's occupants.
Harris and several others found the destroyer John D. Ford as they were making their escape and he stayed with the ship for five battles.
He eventually even wound up in Australia, where he noted there were many pretty women.
“A lot of good beer, too,” chimed in Anderson, who had been aboard the USS Tennessee and later was in Okinawa and Australia himself.
Slater, whose wicked sense of humor is always on display, recounted the he was “happy to be at Pearl Harbor when the friends from Japan came to visit us.”
Ronnie Bogner made sure to rib Slater about the fact that, for many years, he hauled automobiles – most of them made in Japan.
Harris, still wiping his eyes after the event had ended, thanked Bogner.
“That's the most wonderful surprise I've had in many, many years," Harris said.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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