MOUNT VERNON — Ed Dauchy was drafted into the military on March 1, 1943, at the age of 19. He had graduated from high school in the Cleveland area and was working for Western Electric as an installer of telephone central office equipment. That technical and electrical knowledge got him assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corps, installing radar in airplanes.
After training in Nebraska and at the University of Chicago, he entered the U.S. Army Air Corps and was stationed on Guam, which, along with Saipan, Tinian and other islands, make up the Mariana Islands in the North Pacific.
The Enola Gay, the B-29 piloted by Paul Tibbets of Columbus, who passed away earlier this month, took off from Tinian to fly to Japan, carrying the atomic bomb destined for Hiroshima. According to Dauchy, escorted by planes flown by his colleagues, the Enola Gay began its trip to Hiroshima, 600 air-miles away.
When B-29s went into use, Dauchy, a staff sergeant and part of a fast-working three-man crew, installed radar in the planes.
“They could hit a rowboat in a river from 10,000 feet,” he said.
The crews often worked through the night installing and maintaining radar in the 180 airplanes based at the Marianas. Dauchy and his fellow crew members remained friends for 30 years after the war, until the other men passed away.
“We pretty much worked seven days a week,” Dauchy recalled. “Because if the radar didn’t work, the planes didn’t fly.”
That kind of work led to one of his most vivid memories. He was working alone, and apparently forgotten, inside a plane parked near the runway.
“They were blacktopping the runway and they dynamited. They removed everyone from the area first, except me. The sound, echoing inside the plane, was pretty bad. They broke my eardrums,” he said.
His first thought was that the explosion was the sound of combat.
“The Japanese were still in the jungle next to the air field then,” he said.
Fortunately, Dauchy said, his ruptured eardrums didn’t cause hearing loss, although he did hear whistling noises caused by tinnitus for many years.
“But loud noises still bother him,” said his wife, Hazel, with whom he lives at Summerville at HillenVale. He moved there from Chesterville in September.
After serving overseas, Dauchy returned to the states and was stationed in California and Indiana until he was honorably discharged in March 1946.
He met Hazel while she was still in high school.
“There were three or four other girls before me,” she quipped.
“Or more,” retorted Ed.
“Can you imagine dating four girls in one week?” Hazel asked.
“And on $18 a week salary, too,” Ed said.
His brother, who served in France and England as an Army captain, married Hazel’s sister, who was an Army nurse there. They didn’t meet until they returned to the states, however. Ed attended Hazel’s high school graduation in 1947 and they were married in July 1948. She was 19; he was 24.
“We decided to keep it in the family,” Hazel joked.
Ed went back to employment, retiring from the Bell Telephone System in 1982 after 52 years of service. The Dauchys lived in Florida for 22 years before moving to Chesterville. They are the parents of four daughters, grandparents to 12 and great-grandparents to six, with another great-grandchild on the way.
Ed is a member of the American Legion and said he is proud of his military service.
“It was a great experience. I got to see much of the country, and some of the world,” he said.
Asked for advice he would give to other military veterans, of all ages and wars, he said, “Be active, and be proud of your country.”
The Dauchys said they have no plans for Veterans Day, as both are unable to drive.
Hazel is concerned about veterans of the Iraqi War and Afghanistan. Her father was a veteran of World War I.
“I practically grew up in the [Veterans of Foreign Wars],” she said. “World War II vets were thought more of than the Vietnam veterans, but all of them should be proud to be an American. I feel sorry for the veterans coming back now, because I don’t think they’re being as well treated as in World War II. I think they’re getting short-changed. They’re not getting the medical care they should be getting.
“And I think patriotism has gotten kind of diluted,” she said. “I was 13 years old when I heard on the radio that the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. That stayed with me my whole life. Those were things that inspired you [to be patriotic] and there’s nothing like that to inspire now. But just be proud to be an American.”