To a U.S. hero, with reverence

We read that some 2,000 World War II veterans die each day, which is a shocking fact to those of us who remember that somber time in our history.

One of those men, Willard H. Buxton of Houlton, died at the age of 87 on Jan. 29. I write to help keep alive the memory of this good man and his comrades who fought and bled for us, and because he was my friend and mentor for 50 years.

He was called up in 1939 when President Roosevelt began to build up the skeleton peacetime army. The call up was supposed to be for one year, but his service spanned the next six. He landed in France in 1944 and fought as an infantryman through the hedgerow country of France, through the terrible Battle of the Bulge and on to the final victory in Germany.

Buck rarely spoke of his wartime service. But sometimes, around a campfire, he would call up memories of the small luxuries of a combat soldier. Dry socks, a free egg found at a deserted farmhouse, and the warmth of a fire.

He also remembered sleeping in a foxhole, the terrible cold of December 1944 and the sheer terror of being under mortar and artillery fire.

But despite the awful sights he witnessed and the suffering he and his comrades were part of, he never lost his humanity. Once he spoke of buying ice cream for the street children in France, an act that was witnessed by an elderly English woman who later invited him to tea served on fine china. The memory stayed with him for 60 years and still gave him pleasure as an old man. He spoke of sharing a simple meal with a farmer and his wife and cherished the generosity of people who had so little themselves.

He fought with Patton’s third Army to the surrender and did not get home until two months later. There were no bands to greet him and his fellow soldiers, nor parades. He simply boarded a train in Boston and reached Houlton on a Friday night. On Monday morning he reported for work with the Bangor and Aroostook Railroad and stayed for nearly 40 years.

Like most of his fellow soldiers, Willard Buxton was a child of the Great Depression. It was an experience that left him with a physical and mental toughness – and an extraordinary competence – so typical of his generation.

He took great pleasure in his family, his wife, Dottie, who waited for him those long years, and his three children, Sheila, Bill and Dottie. He was a good citizen and one of the most thoroughly decent men I have ever known.

I will always remember him poling his home-built canoe on the Allagash or walking on a grassy woods road with the October sun on his face. And I will never forget this man and his generation of soldiers and what they did for us. They were truly the greatest generation.

We must keep alive the memory of who they were and what they did, for we will not see their kind again. R.I.P.

Richard W. Sprague of Bangor knew Willard Buxton for more than 50 years and also worked for Bangor and Aroostook Railroad.