Veterans Day is Saturday, and services, parades and observations will be held throughout the Midcoast and the nation to honor those who served. In honor of Veterans Day, The Times Record spoke with two local veterans about their careers in military service. Here are their stories:
• Brunswick veteran recounts life at 93
“I thought, there’s nothing better than our country, and there’s still nothing better,” he said of his decision to enlist in the Navy. “When I see the American flag, I know I’m home.”
At 19, Di Edwardo left his New Jersey hometown for the South Pacific where he served in an assault outfit, Acorn 25, as an aviation electrician.
“When you take the oath, going into the service, the phrase, ‘I will defend the United States against all enemies,’ that alone should give people enough incentive to join,” he said.
Di Edwardo enlisted in the Navy in 1942 and retired in October 1969 as a Chief. He served in World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War.
‘My kingdom’
When asked if he came from a military family, Di Edwardo said no, his parents were Italian Democrats who immigrated to the United States in the early 20th century. His parents grew up in a mountain village near the Adriatic Sea, and Di Edwardo was raised in Newark, New Jersey, one of nine children, “ a good Catholic family.”
“My kingdom at that time was my block where I lived. At that time, immigrants were coming into the country, and every place in town you went — there was the Italian district, the Irish district, the Hungarian district, and when the war came along, and ended, that all broke up,” he said. “It was a different kind of world, you can’t envision what it was like.”
It was a world he loved.
“I got up every day and played a lot of baseball, and I ran,” he said, adding he loved music and frequented many shows at the Cafe Rouge in New York City where he saw Glenn Miller’s band play. The 93-year-old also recounts having coffee with actors Maureen O’Hara and Rod Cameron, and dancing with actress and dancer Joan Leslie, “if only for a second,” he said.
He said before the war, young people would attend dances for 10 cents a night, and that’s where he met Susan, who would become his wife of 65 years.
“I was 17 and a half years old,” Di Edwardo remembered of the time they met.
Their first date was at a New Jersey pizza parlor, and they were married when he returned from boot camp.
“Most of my life was married. That’s something you don’t have too much these days,” Di Edwardo said. “She and I had a saying that most people don’t have today, ‘you are always in my heart.’”
No regrets
Having served during three wars, he doesn’t look back with regret.
“My time during the war was not limited, but there was nothing I would go back and try to repeat,” Di Edwardo said. “I only have one battle scar, and the only thing I’m really sorry for is I lost my whole seagoing bag — all my clothes — on an air rig. So, I was one degree off the equator, and all through the war, I went through it with one pair of shorts and a helmet. That was my uniform during the war.”
When he returned home to New Jersey, he said many of the boys he grew up with, playing baseball and traversing the neighborhood, who also enlisted in the war, never returned.
“I lost a lot of my friends during the raid of Normandy,” he said. “People can’t comprehend what it was about. Of course, war today is different. All the romantic wars are done.
“Life is beautiful,” Di Edwardo added. “One thing I don’t worry about — I don’t care about materialistic things.”
• Osnoe American Legion member since 1945
Topsham resident Iona Osnoe was 21 and working as a cloth weaver in Cabot Mill when she joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. It was the fall of 1942, and her two brothers and then-beau were already in the service.
“Many years ago, my sister, Irene, used to say, if ever something happens and they take women in the service, she said she was going to go. When World War II started, she didn’t go — but I did,” Osnoe said.
When asked why Irene didn’t join, Osnoe simply said, “I don’t know, she was yellow I guess.”
Growing up on the farm
Osnoe was not, as she called it, yellow — she was accustomed to a rugged Maine farm life.
“Growing up on the farm is something I’ll never forget,” she said.
The farm where she was raised with her three brothers and three sisters was off Highland Road, situated five miles outside of town.
“We were sort of isolated, but the roads have improved. Growing up it was only dirt roads, and every spring we got stuck in the mud,” she remembered. “We had to do our share of work. We all had our things to do — bringing in wood, washing dishes, taking care of the lamp chimneys to make sure we could see, there was no electricity,” she said.
Signing up
Osnoe joined the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps in November of 1942 and was sworn in on the stage of the Strand Theatre in Portland. She joined a group in Boston and they were sent by train to Des Moines, Iowa, for basic training.
“I was excited about being on a train and seeing different parts of the country, so I had motion sickness and went to the hospital,” she said, laughing about her arrival to the Iowa Capitol.
She and the other women of the corps were ready to get to work — but it seemed, in one way, that the army wasn’t ready for them.
“Being so new, they didn’t have uniforms for us, so they dressed us in men’s uniforms,” she said. “In December, in Des Moines, it was cold. We had men’s overcoats, and of course, men, being taller than we are, the coats went down to our ankles. We asked if we could sew them, but they said, no, so we took safety pins, and put them up on the sides,” she recalled.
Still, leaving home and traversing the country was an adventure.
“I was never homesick, I enjoyed it, I really liked it,” she said.
Eyes on the skies
On New Year’s Eve, she was transferred to Norfolk, Virginia — landing just before midnight.
“The streets were full of sailors, all you could see were white hats,” she said.
While stationed in Virginia, Osnoe worked with the Army Air Force. They had what were called “spotters,” whose job was to identify flying aircraft and determine if they were Allied planes or manned by foreign enemies. Stationed at towers along the coast, spotters would identify planes and call them into the center where Osnoe was working. Osnoe would identify the plane called in and track the aircraft.
Coming home
Though she fought tooth and nail to stay until the end of the war, Osnoe was discharged after she fell ill while in Virginia, she said.
Back at home in Brunswick, Osnoe helped her mother on the farm while her sister worked in Bath for Hyde Windlass — a body of Bath Iron Works that made parts for ships. Osnoe joined her sister there, turning gears on lathes for boat engines.
Osnoe said women were well accepted in the labor workforce because men were at war, and it was up to the remaining women to take over, she said.
“And, most of the women did a very good job,” she said, but added she gladly gave up the job when the men returned home.
Legion legacy
Osnoe has been a member of the American Legion since 1945, when a clerk at the Brunswick Town Office told her she could join as she was getting her car registered.
She said she was taken by surprise, as she thought women would not be accepted. Osnoe said she always loved going to the parade with her family and said as a child she always wanted to join the American Legion, watching the members march by during the procession.
In her tenure as a Legion member, she has served in multiple offices at the county and district levels including adjutant, commander and chaplain. She regularly attends the monthly meetings at the George T. Files Post in Brunswick.
Osnoe said the war impacted her life most profoundly in the way it altered the direction her life took.
“It affected my life because I joined the service, it was an altogether different way I went had I not gone into service,” she said.
“I think, it was a hard life in the service, but still, it was a good life,” Osnoe said.
jlaaka@timesrecord.com
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