To honor veterans on Veteran's Day, the Courier News spoke with a few veterans who are active members of the scene at the Mississippi County Veterans Center.
All veterans listed served during World War II.
Here are some of their stories:
LeRoy Ross, 88, of Blytheville, was the pilot of a P38 Fighter plane during the war. A member of the Army Air Corps, he flew 150 millions and shot down three enemy planes.
He served on bases in the South Pacific, from "New Guinea up through the Philippines," he said.
His plane was shot down over a city in the Philippines, and he crashed-landed in water, injuring only his hand. He was cared for by Filipinos for 15 days, then taken back to a U.S. military base. After only three more days of recovery, he got back in the P38 to fly more missions.
He served from 1942-1946 and received a Purple Heart, the Distinguished Flying Cross and "four or five" Air Medals.
Melvis Ellis, 88, of Blytheville, entered the Army on Aug. 3, 1942, he said. He was a medic to the infantry division.
His first trip overseas sent him to England, about 30 days after D-Day. He served in France, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria.
"I was about 30 miles from Paris and the same to Berlin and never got to see either one of them," Ellis said.
The hardest part of serving was "going places where you didn't know where you were," he said.
In France, he was wounded when a large piece of shrapnel hit him. He received a Purple Heart medal for his injury.
He left the Army in 1945.
Robert Earl Knipple, 82, of Blytheville, served in the Navy, but never went to sea. "Except for going to work at the San Diego Navy yard every day, we lived like civilians," Knipple said.
He worked on a "peperming barge" which used heavy steel cables to "demagnetize" the ships so that the ocean mines wouldn't be drawn to the ships.
The Navy yard at the time was just a seaport, not the large naval base that's there today.
"We lived in the YMCA," Knipple said.
The only injury he received while in the Navy was getting hit in the head with a large weight called a "monkey fist" on the end of one of the cables.
"I don't think it rattled me too bad," he said.
John Mitchell, 83, of Blytheville, served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1946-46. He was on a cruise ship across the Pacific Ocean when it was announced that the war was over. He went on to serve in Guam and in North China. He worked at a warehouse in Guam, but he was in an infantry unit in China. His job was to go on rescue missions for prisoners of war. "We walked 35 miles in one day," Mitchell said.
He most remembers North China as a poor country. "About every half mile or so, you'd see a little village with a brick wall around it," he said.
Bill Stewart, 87, of Blytheville, served in the Arkansas Army National Guard from 1940-1945. He was deployed to the western coast of the United States after Pearl Harbor was hit. He said his job was to walk up and down the coast, from San Francisco to San Diego, to make sure the Japanese didn't invade the U.S.
Later, he went to paratrooper school and made several jumps in practice, but hurt his left in training at Fort Benning, Ga., which kept him from getting to jump overseas. He did serve in the infantry in the South Pacific, he said.
Gene Williamson of Blytheville was drafted into the Army in April 1943, but given a choice whether he wanted to be in the Army or Navy. He chose the Navy and served as a gunner aboard ships. He took three cruises in his two-plus years in the Navy after arriving in Cardiff, Wales. One was to Italy where his ship was damaged when the port was destroyed in an air raid.
His first trip was to the Aruban Islands and he enjoyed his time in port there. "I got to dance with Aruban ladies," he said with a grin.
"It was a great opportunity for me."
His third cruise was to the Philippines. "It was the scenic route for me because everything else was so war-torn."
On the way back from the Philippines, the sailors were told that Germany had surrendered.
Jack Allred, 82, of Blytheville was in the infantry. He spent one and a half years in Germany during World War II and later went back there during the Korean War.
His main duties included observing the checkpoints on the Russian border to make sure none of the enemy got through.
The most difficult part of his service came on American soil at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. "I had to have an operation on my eyes before I could be discharged. There were many POWs there who suffered and died," he said.
dhilton@blythevillecourier.com