Publisher’s note: We met Mr. George McGee at the Veterans Day Program on November 11. He is one of the few remaining Clarke County World War II veterans, and has many stories left to tell at 97 years old. Amazing man!
Seventy-seven years have passed since the end of World War II, and many of the brave military men who so bravely fought in that war have also passed away, taking stories and real experiences with them. While there aren’t many World War II veterans that remain, Clarke County is blessed to still have a few brave men from that war.
George McGee is one of the World War II veterans in Clarke County, and he can vividly remember his life before and during the war. His childhood was much different from the lifestyle most children know today.
“I was just a young kid way back, going to school learning to read and write,” remembered George. “One plantation owner told my dad that I didn’t need to be in school and that I needed to be out in that field, so that’s where I had to go. I plowed a mule until I was 18 years old. I finished tenth grade.”
When he was 18, George decided to fight for his country and enlisted in the military. It didn’t take long for him to go overseas.
“I joined the army and fought in World War II. For five months I was in training. I took training down at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi. From there, they sent me overseas, and the rest of the time I was over there,” recalled George. “They sent me down in New Guinea in the Philippines. That was it until after the war was over.”
While in the Philippines, he had a particular job he was responsible for doing. Although it was something new for him, he was determined and never backed down or hesitated to do what he was instructed.
“I was in quite a few battles. They gave me this big truck to drive. I had never driven a truck before, and they gave me that big old truck. I could crank the truck up, and I couldn’t move it. My officer looked at me for a while and then said to move over. If they told you to do something, you didn’t say that you couldn’t do it; you just go out there and try even if you couldn’t do it. He got in and moved the truck, and the very next day they told me to take that truck and do something. From that day on I was the lead driver. I’d watched him do it,” explained George. “When we would go in on invasions, my truck would have to be the lead one. We’d have to do what you call establish a beachhead. If you made it up on that beach without rolling over a mine, then the rest of the troops had a chance. I was always the lead driver, and when I made it up on the beach, I’d stop and tell them you go that way and you go that way and hope you don’t run over a mine. I was under General Douglas McArthur, and the President was Harry Truman. They didn’t care about anything but beating the enemy.”
He hauled supplies across some pretty treacherous terrain.
“We were stationed at a couple places in the Philippines. The headquarters was in Manila,” informed George. “I’d haul supplies to Manila, and then I’d have to go to Subic Bay. There was what they called the zigzag mountain in between. You had to climb that mountain up, and then you had to go down that mountain to get to Subic Bay. That old big truck would do it though. I blew up a transmission and broke a few axles in it, but that truck would do it. I’d cross that mountain and go to Subic Bay and back.”
In his time driving the truck, he eventually became known as the crazy driver.
“They called me a crazy driver because I didn’t care,” George reminisced. “They bombed our trail once, and they had this big tank that would pull us through where we were bombed out on the road. I had this pretty good sized truck, and if you knew how to drive you could make it go just about anywhere. I remember this one night I had supplies to take up, and trucks were lined up waiting for the tank to pull them through there. They said we had to wait in line cause they were out there in that big reed break. I got mad and said I wasn’t gonna wait in that line and if there were Japs out there then I would just run over them. I turned my lights on cause that would blind them. I turned my lights on and went out through that reed break. I didn’t see any, but I made it through that reed break with that big army truck. I got back on the trail and cut my lights back off.”
The surprises from that night didn’t end with him just going through the reed break. He decided to take a rest after his excursion and woke the next morning to a surprise on where he had slept for the night.
“When I got up on the frontline, some soldiers said they’d park the truck,” recalled George. “I asked one guy who said he was on guard all night where his bunk was. We had to go by so many paces this way and so many paces that way to get to the bunk, so he told me how to get there. I told him I wasn’t going back that night, so he said he’d have the truck ready for me to go back in the morning. I woke up that next morning in the cemetery between two graves.”
While driving the truck was his job, George had to do a lot of fighting on the ground as well. Since he was placed in the Philippines, they were up against the Japanese. They had different names they would call the Japanese based on the different forms of fighting they witnessed from them.
“We’d call them yellow jackets,” proclaimed George. “They’d hide in caves, and they would climb coconut trees. They’d point the gun one way, and if you walked by that way you were dead. They wouldn’t move. Sometimes they would hide in bushes and point the gun one way. You could just walk up behind them and knock them in the head; they wouldn’t move. I was shot at a few times and was wounded a time or two. You weren’t safe over there anywhere. They’d get up in the coconut trees, and we’d be in the chow line. They’d cook outside out there, and you’d go by with your mess kits and get it and just eat whatever they put in those pots. Those Japs would be up in them trees with the guns pointed one way, and if you walked in front of them in the chow lines, you were hit. They’d holler ‘Fall out! Fall out! Coconut tree! Coconut tree!’ and we’d shoot that coconut tree up.”
While they had to endure a lot of attacks from yellow jackets at any point, they had to endure a lot of air attacks at night.
“When they would get ready to fly over and bomb us, we had radar that could tell when they were coming and would sound off an alarm,” expressed George. “They’d come at night so we couldn’t see them, but we had search lights. They’d turn those search lights on them, and we’d shoot a few of them down, but they’d fly so high. It was rough, but we outfought them and beat them down. The only light we would have was a bucket filled with gasoline. Believe it or not, you could light the top of that bucket of gasoline and it would just burn on the top to give you light. We had a big guy from Alabama. We called him Bam. We got word one night that they were coming, and Bam jumped up and ran over there and kicked the bucket over. You could hear the plane change direction coming right at us. We had to dig foxholes cause you could hide in them to shoot, and I’d already said I wasn’t digging a hole. When they got through with us that night you better believe I dug holes all night that night. I remember one time me and my buddy had had our run that day, and come that evening them Japanese planes came over. All of a sudden, there was nothing but Japanese paratroopers coming down. I remember my buddy was from Louisiana, and he said, ‘Oooooowwwweeeeeee, look at the Japaneeeese.’ All we could do was shoot them in the air. At first, we were shooting at the planes, but then the commander hollered to let the planes go and shoot the Japs. We started shooting them, and a lot of them didn’t know when they hit the ground. Some of them got down and went to our air base there and set our planes on fire. We got them, though. When they set one plane on fire, they made a mistake and started dancing around the plane, and we’d mow them down then.”
The threats were still prevalent when he would have to be on board ships moving to different locations in the area he was stationed. The pilots he was accustomed to dealing with at night took on a different form when dealing with the ships: kamikaze pilots.
“They would come after the ship. If you were on a troop ship going to different islands, then they would come after that ship and blow the ship up,” described George. “If the sailors on that ship couldn’t man that ship and shoot whatever was coming, then you just got bombed out. They’d set us down below when we were on our way to different islands. I remember one time they put us down below and said the kamikaze was coming. The ship I was on said they shot him down.”
There was one pilot in particular that they would fight and had a strong desire to capture.
“They had a great airplane flyer. Tokyo Joe was his name,” stated George. “We’d say we’re going after Tojo today. Old Tojo was bad. He was the Japanese general. After they lost the war, we were going after Tojo. He killed himself. He shot himself before he would let us get him.”
While he didn’t witness the atomic bombs being dropped, he believes that dropping the bombs are one of the major reasons he was able to return home.
“It saved me when they dropped that bomb and Japan gave up,” proclaimed George. “We were all packed up fixing to invade Japan, and they dropped two bombs to soften them up. They gave up when they dropped them on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. That’s what saved me because we were all going in there on that invasion.”
Despite the war being over, he didn’t return home automatically.
“We had to do what you call a six month duration,” explained George. “After the war, we couldn’t come home until six months after. We just occupied the area in case one of the other little countries tried to flare up. We were still there to knock them down.”
He was acknowledged for his acts of heroism and given different medals.
“I won the gold seal, the bronze, sharpshooter, and truck driver’s badge,” declared George.
Once he was able to return from the war, he found and married the love of his life and started a family. He didn’t live in Mississippi, however. Instead, he chose to take a job working hard in the State of Ohio.
“I went into construction work. I did the hardest work: concrete,” informed George. “I had an uncle who got me in the union up in Ohio. You had to be unionized to finish concrete for the state or city. I was in Cincinnati and finished concrete for 40 years.”
Once he retired, he and his family returned to Clarke County to settle down and enjoy themselves. At 97 years old, George still possesses the heart of a hero. He has some amazing stories from his life and is a blessing to all those around him.
