Heroes by land, sea and air

COEUR d’ALENE — Noble Brewer was 6 years old in 1918 and still recalls the day World War I ended.

"All of his neighbors came out and shot their shotguns to celebrate," said Rotarian Janet Atchley, who shared some of Brewer's exciting life Friday during the Coeur d'Alene Rotary Club's Veterans Day honor ceremony in The Coeur d'Alene Resort.

Although he was never officially enlisted, Brewer was appointed as a lieutenant colonel of the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, serving with Air Transport Command.

Brewer and his team flew supplies into the Aleutian Islands when the Japanese took control in 1942, and they volunteered to fly the dead and wounded home.

"The Americans landed 11,000 troops on the island of Attu," Atchley said. "Men suffered from frostbite, gangrene and trench foot because of the conditions.

"His team flew into a live war zone, making daytime flights," she said. "They flew without a radio because they thought they might be intercepted. Instead they used a method known as ‘dead reckoning,’ the calculation of their position based on compass readings, speed and distance. Their team completed several of these missions, all successfully."

Brewer and his grandson, Navy veteran Mike Williams, were seated next to each other on the dais as Janet and Les Atchley took turns at the microphone telling the stories of the heroes and patriots they selected to honor this year.

North Idaho College president and U.S. Army veteran Rick McLennan was among the honorees.

"Rick told me that his path to college president was really quite strange, for being a president of a college. He never graduated from high school,” Les said. "He ran away when he was 16 years old and lived on friends’ couches for a while."

Les said McLennan told him a story that literally chilled him to the bone.

"He told me that two Februarys in a row, he and nine other guys were in Yukon tents out in the tundra of Alaska, part of the Jack Frost Arctic squad, part of the Army’s 60th Infantry. Their mission was to protect the Alaska pipeline, not yet built, in case the Soviets tried to destroy it," Les said.

"They were housed in 10-man Yukon tents and they never entered another structure for 30 days. At all hours, five of the 10 men were required to be outside," he continued. "With temperatures at minus-20 degrees and worse, they could stay outside for just one hour. So, think about this: Rick would go out for one hour, then return, take off his gear, try to sleep for 30 minutes, put his gear on and head into the cold. They did this 24 hours a day for the entire month of February. Talk about sleep deprivation. Rick said he learned the value of teamwork because all the men made life and death decisions every day."

Also honored during the ceremony were World War II Navy veteran Vic "The Pickle Man" Eachon and his lovely wife, Kathy, as well as Army National Guard medic and Vietnam-era veteran Rob Robinson, who served in military hospitals in and out of the field during his six years enlisted.

"Bottom line, my military service was not too glorified, nor did I serve in combat overseas," Robinson said in his interview with the Atchleys. "However, to this day, I would say over and over again, I never considered my time spent serving as a medic in the many hospitals, clinics and field hospitals, doing a wide range of medical service and treatment, to be 'work.' I enjoyed every minute of it and enjoyed helping people who were injured, sick and infirmed."

The Eachons have lived in North Idaho their entire lives and will celebrate their 71st wedding anniversary on Dec. 20. Vic helped build Farragut Naval Training Station when he was 15, trained there for boot camp and helped dismantle it when the war was over. He and Kathy both worked in civil service at the Naval Ship Research and Development Center, Acoustic Research Detachment in Bayview from which they retired in 1986 and 1988, respectively.

This was the eighth year the Atchleys coordinated the Rotary Veterans Day program. They put about 150 hours into interviews and writing the biographies, but they wouldn't trade it for the world.

“We love our veterans," Janet said. "Every story that we hear from them is just wonderful. It’s really fun to get to know them and honor them."