The interaction only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed like forever.
It was near the end of the fighting in the Pacific in World War II.
The Philippines.
The centerpiece of the Pacific Theater’s brutal, island-hopping campaign.
Francis Dalton froze when he heard the rustling.
The Japanese soldier moving those leaves and vegetation, the one who had just emerged from the greenery of the jungle wall to come face-to-face with Dalton, did the same.
Two young men.
One, hailing from the hills of West Virginia who had felt compelled to enlist after Pearl Harbor.
The other, a conscript to the cause of Imperial Japan, bound by a code of honor and duty that had been around for a thousand years.
Both stood and stared, in the amber of the moment.
Until that soldier from the other side … did something.
Something that left Dalton utterly amazed.
Said soldier nodded.
And surrendered.
Dalton who couldn’t have been more than 23 or 24 years of age, was by then a grizzled veteran.
He grew up fast.
Everybody in his outfit grew up fast.
He had already been wounded twice, doing his work with the 65th Brigade Engineer Battalion, building bridges and carving out roads, while bullets snapped the air over his head.
A buddy right next to him was shot dead, when their armored bulldozer had turned into a slow-moving, easy target during one such skirmish.
Dalton would say later – once he started talking about it – that even with a Purple Heart, he had never felt more vulnerable in the war than on that long-ago day when he made direct eye contact with the enemy.
Saturday morning at his house in Star City, on the day that also happened to be his 103th birthday, he never felt more loved.
And many more …
He emerged from his door to regard all those people who came armed with a birthday cake – and an official missive from Star City Mayor Sharon Doyle, proclaiming the day as Francis Dalton Day in the town.
The sudden honoree grinned and shook his head.
“Are you kiddin’ me? Look at all this.”
“Well, you are turning 103,” said Sandy Harper, who works at the Louis A. Johnson VA Medical Center in Clarksburg where Dalton receives care.
She lives in the area and looks in on him regularly.
“Hey,” Harper said, “you didn’t think we were gonna let your birthday get away, did you?”
Doyle wasn’t about to either.
That’s why the town’s top official brought that proclamation with her, along with the news that Dalton was going to serve as honorary marshal of the Star City Christmas Parade in December.
“Francis is a true gentleman,” the mayor said.
“We need to honor all of our veterans,” she continued, “but we especially need to honor the ones from World War II. There aren’t that many of them left.”
(In)frequent flier
Dalton, in fact, was the only veteran of that war who boarded a plane from Clarksburg to Washington, D.C., two weeks ago for an official honor flight and tour of memorials in the nation’s capital city to those who served.
Harper went with him, to help him get around.
Believe it not, it was his first airplane ride.
The guy just never has had occasion to get off the ground, except when he shimmies part way up a ladder (even at his age) to clean out a gutter – which people wish he wouldn’t do.
“It was kind of funny how that all worked out,” said Dalton, who went to his war in a troop ship, then took another boat home when it was done.
Everyone there Saturday had worn the uniform, save for Doyle, Harper and Dalton’s stepson Pat Ryan, who taught history in Monongalia County’s school district for decades.
All were honored, they said, to be in the presence of a member of the Greatest Generation.
Wilbur England, who served in Vietnam and is a Veterans of Foreign Wars honor guard member, nodded in Dalton’s direction and said, “You’re looking at the Greatest Generation. That man right there.”
Thanking him for his service
On the subject of labels, Dalton has long eschewed one, which makes his personal history a bit of an anomaly: given that so much of his life has been defined by his military service in war.
He never necessarily regarded the Japanese soldiers in the South Pacific as the “enemy,” he said.
No personal animosity, he said – since they too were young soldiers, carrying out their orders, same as him.
Ryan, meanwhile, feels the same about one other label.
“Well, he’s not my ‘stepdad,’ he’s my dad,” the educator said, emphasizing the latter.
“He’s always been here for me. He’s here for his neighbors. If you need help, he will. I’m blessed.”
Since Dalton outranked his guests Saturday, he got to give one order.
“Everybody has to eat a piece of cake.”
Everybody did.
