George Habernig Sr. served as a company clerk with the 77th Infantry Division in the U.S. Army during World War II, but he certainly wasn't out of harm's way.
In one terrifying incident, he said, he was aboard a U.S. ship off the coast of Japan when a Japanese plane crashed into it.
"I can still see that plane coming at me," he said.
Habernig, now 100 and living in the Dutch Village apartment complex on Washington Avenue in Kingston, said in a recent interview that he was a staff sergeant before being promoted to technical sergeant at the end of the war. He said his roles included preparing his company's payroll.
Habernig still can recall the day he was drafted: March 9, 1942. He was living in Newburgh, where he grew up.
"'Go in do what they tell you,'" Habernig recalled thinking. "I knew I was going to go in, so I had to be happy with whatever I get. 'Don't be miserable.'"
Habernig said he first went to Long Island, then to Fort Jackson, S.C., for basic training. He joined his division the 77th Infantry Division, which was known as the Statue of Liberty Division during World War I, then was deactivated before being was reactivated during World War II.
Habernig said because he had worked for Western Union, he was assigned to a signal company message center, but he never wound up there. Instead, he ended up as a company clerk.
Habernig said he spent time training in Louisiana and the Mojave Desert, which was intended to prepare soldiers to fight in Africa. But "we never got there," he said.
He said he later trained in Arizona before he was sent to Camp Pickett, Va., for amphibious training before his company shipped out to the Pacific Theater.
His company went first to Hawaii and then to Guam, where they and a Marine Corps brigade helped take back the island from Japan in 1943.
Next his company was deployed to Leyte, in the Philippines, where they served as reserves for two other divisions, he said.
But none of this prepared Habernig for his company's next deployment: Okinawa.
While the main campaign at Okinawa started in April 1945, his company arrived on March 24 with the task of taking 12 small islands, Habernig said.
He said his scariest experience during the war was when he was on the deck of a ship sailing along the Japanese coast on April 6, 1945, and saw a Japanese plane being pursued by a U.S. fighter plane.
Habernig said he ducked into the radio room while a friend went under a lifeboat as the Japanese plane crashed into the ship.
"There was an explosion, the ship went on its side, and the lights went out temporarily," he said. "The plane was completely destroyed."
The impact scattered plane parts — and body parts from the plane's crewmen — across the deck, Habernig recalled.
He said a total of eight Japanese planes hit the ship's convoy, claiming the lives of about 80 U.S. sailors and setting at least one ship on fire. His company lost one radioman, he said.
After Okiwana, Habernig went back to the Philippines, first to Cebu Island and next to Latey, which is where he was when the war ended.
He said he then was sent Hokkaido, Japan, in October 1945 and stayed for only about a month.
He could have stayed longer, but "I decided I got my points. I wasn't an Army man, but I accepted it. I just did my job, that's all."
When the ware ended, Habernig, a Bronze State recipient, went back to his old job at the Social Security Administration. He stayed there until he retired in 1981 as a district manager at the agency's former office in Kingston.
Habernig said he's outlived all of his friends but still can turn to his large family, including 21 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren.
He only recently gave up driving, when he was 99 and his car lease ran out and his license expired.
"I never thought I'd live this long," Habernig said.
(Source: Brian Hubert, Daily Freeman- 21/1/2020)
