Springfield South Dakota Veterans
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Movie in the Jungle-The Rest of the Story

4/26/2020

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Picture
Movie in the Jungle!
Submitted by Dick Martin

Excerpt from letter dated June 24, 1944 from Lieutenant Jack Martin to his uncles in Springfield:

“I just got back from the show.  It was “Song of Bernadette”.  I wonder if that’s been to Springfield yet.  If you folks haven’t seen it and it comes within driving distance – that must be on your must list.  If you can visualize an outdoor theater with a broken down screen, and a sound system in which you could hear a word every now and then.  Plus a battalion of soldiers sits in a hushed
silence strains patiently for two and a half hours to hear what they could and when it was all over leaving without a word being said.  That was “Song of Bernadette”. 

We’re coming along O.K. working pretty hard as usual but that’s only to be expected.  The war seems to be coming fine on all fronts.  We don’t have any radios. But have to wait for the daily communiques which don’t arrive every day unfortunately.” 
                                                         
                                 Jack


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Moe Berg - Baseball Player and US Spy

4/19/2020

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Submitted by Daryl Heusinkveld
Picture
Moe Berg
Picture
When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy
Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe
Berg was included. Although he played with five major-league teams from
1923 to 1939, he was a very mediocre   ball player. But Moe was regarded as the brainiest ballplayer of all time.

In fact Casey Stengel once said: "That is the strangest man ever to play
baseball.”


When all the baseball stars went to Japan, Moe Berg went with them and many
people wondered why he went with "the team".


The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover
with the CIA.
  Moe spoke 15 languages - including Japanese. And he had two loves: baseball
and spying.
  In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an
American diplomat being treated in St. Luke's Hospital - the tallest building in the Japanese capital.


He never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key
features: the harbor, military installations, railway
yards, etc. Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg's films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.


His father disapproved of his baseball career and never once watched his son
play. In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe
read at least 10 newspapers every day.


He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton - having added Spanish, Italian,
German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver. During further studies at
the Sorbonne, in Paris, and Columbia Law School, he picked up Japanese,
Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian - 15 languages
in all, plus some regional dialects.


While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe Berg would describe plays
in Latin or Sanskrit.


During World War II, Moe was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the value to
the war effort of the two groups of partisans there.


He reported back that Marshall Tito's forces were widely supported by the
people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for
  the
Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic's
Serbians.



The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more
to come in that same year.

Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the underground and
located a secret heavy-water plant - part of the
  Nazis'
effort to build an atomic bomb.


His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy that
plant.


Picture
Tito's Partisans
Picture
The RAF destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg
There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the
race to build the first Atomic bomb.

If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war. Berg (under the code
name "Remus") was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist
Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis
were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the SS guards
at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student.


The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill.
If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was
to shoot him - and then swallow the cyanide pill. Moe,
  sitting
in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their
goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to
his hotel.

Picture
Werner Heisenberg  blocked  the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb.
Moe Berg's report was distributed to Britain's Prime Minister, Winston
Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team
developing the Atomic Bomb. Roosevelt responded: "Give my regards to the
catcher.”
  
Most of Germany's leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis
mainly to Britain and the United States.


After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom - America's highest
honor for a civilian in wartime.
  But Berg refused to accept it, because he couldn't tell people about his
exploits.
  
After his death, his sister accepted the Medal. It now hangs in the Baseball
Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown.



Picture
Moe Berg's baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA Headquarters in Washington, DC
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Old Glory

4/12/2020

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Submitted by Daryl Heusinkveld

https://raulrubiera.smugmug.com/RaulRubieraPhotography/RRP-Final-Images/2020/Evangelo-Morris-Old-Glory/i-zWkvH7G/A
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William Rankin, The Man Who Rode Thunder

4/5/2020

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Submitted by Daryl Heusinkveld
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This web page is a work in progress. It has been created through the donated efforts of Laura Genant Martin, Dick Martin, and Jim Hornstra. When Laura was made aware of what we needed, she took the initiative to research and educate herself on how to create a web site to identify, respect and honor the military veterans in Springfield. The web site had to be easy to navigate and had to provide the viewer a method of providing feedback. Most of the written material has been provided by Dick Martin over the past couple of years with some important contributions from others, i.e. Jim Kirk.  Jim Hornstra has been the reliable source as he has been the collector of information concerning Springfield Veterans and has provided Laura much of what has gone into the web site.
  • World War I
    • Veteran Photos
    • Veteran Photos
    • Biographies >
      • Edwin Dwight Wood
  • World War II
    • The Rest of the Story >
      • Lawrence Namminga
      • Fred C Hornstra
      • Chuck Dawes
      • Grover DeLong
      • John Palsma
      • Clarence Ludens
      • Jack Martin
      • Bob Slade
      • Joe Uken Jr
    • Springfield Was There
    • Biographies A-H >
      • Walter Babcock
      • Wayne Barham
      • Charles "Chuck" Dawes
      • Grover DeLong
      • Jake DenOuden
      • Biographies K-Ma >
        • Bernard Kastein
        • James Kirk
        • Leonard Lange
        • Ted Lindeman
        • Clarence Ludens
        • John C. Ludens
        • John "Jack" Martin
        • Richard "Darby" Martin
      • Robert DeRoos
      • Shorty Halsey
      • Nanno Hiemstra
      • Fred C Hornstra
    • Biographies Mi-O >
      • Floyd Mitchell
      • Jacob Namminga
      • Lawrence Namminga Sr
      • Ode Odens
      • Lawrence Owens
    • Biographies P-S >
      • Allen Palsma
      • John Palsma
      • Virgil Rauch
      • Jack Rich
      • Robert Slade
    • Biographies Th-U >
      • Clark Thomas
      • Neil Thomas
      • Merle Toyne
      • Joe Uken
  • Korean War
    • Veteran Photos
    • The Rest of the Story >
      • Robert "Bob" Ludens
    • Biographies >
      • Donald Dempster
      • Gelvin "Gil" DeRoos
      • Robert "Bob" Ludens
      • Virginia McClure
      • Donald McMillan
      • Peter Monfore
      • Wilbert Renner
      • Clarence Vanderlei
  • Cold War
    • Veteran Photos
    • Biographies >
      • Robert McCollum
  • Vietnam War
    • Veteran Photos
    • The Rest of the Story >
      • Daryl Heusinkveld
      • Harvey Kastein
      • Dan Mejstrik
      • Lee Merchen
      • Larry Talsma
    • My Week in Hue City
    • Biographies >
      • Daryl Heusinkveld
      • Harvey Kastein
      • Perry Lundin
      • Dan Mejstrik
      • Lee Merchen
      • Robert Monfore
      • Larry Talsma
  • Middle East Wars
    • Veteran Photos
    • Biographies >
      • James "Uke" Uken
  • Army National Guard
    • Veteran Photos
    • Rapid City Flood
    • Japanese Internment