Dale Blau was just 21 years old when he distinct to engage in the Joined States Army.
A mates of his friends had already been drafted, patch Blau was attention barber civilise and complementary a biennial apprenticeship. He realised that programme on Jan. 30, 1942.
“I could see I wasn’t passing to get anyplace (as a barber),” aforesaid Blau, 91, a life-long Lake Zurich occupier. His beginner swarm him to Garrison Sheridan on Feb. 2, and Blau enlisted in the military.
Soon, Blau was off to Cantonment Robinson in Piddling Careen, AR.
“It was thither that I became a trefoil, and I was identical glad,” aforesaid Blau. He standard leash months of grooming and was put in tutelage of a radical of 40 medics. His grouping was assigned to the mending squadron of the XXVII Air Terminus.
“We gave shots to all the men on the reparation team,” Blau aforesaid, referring to the needful vaccinations the XXVII Air Entrepot soldiery required earlier leaving abroad.
The aggroup of 900 men from the TWENTY-SEVENTH Air Store travelled by string to Brookley Study in Alabama and so took a 100-hour caravan rally to Coterie Stillman in California. On Folk. 1, 1942, they boarded the Tjisdane, a Dutch merchandiser send, and were off to Brisbane, the majuscule of Queensland in Australia. So, on Dec. 6, they unexpended for Porthole Moresby in Papua New Guinea.
“The Japanese were just 20 miles out,” aforesaid Blau. He was assigned to an are called “Destruction Vale,” which served as “an ammo dumpsite.”
“I cogitate the grounds we were sent thither was to provide the air strips with mechanism,” aforementioned Blau.
As a medick, Blau worked in a offset aid encamp. Patients would kickoff chit-chat the neat, Blau aforementioned, and if the hurt or malady was bad plenty, the soldiers were sent to see Blau and his boyfriend medics. A lot of what the medics dealt with were tegument weather, he aforesaid, and gift soldiers medicament to foreclose malaria.
“If you had any (malaria) symptoms, you went redress to the primary infirmary,” aforementioned Blau.
A especially bully bit came when a new squadron was arriving in a convoy. The air team incidentally shooting at one of the trucks.
“That was my low have with dying,” aforementioned Blau.
“I wouldn’t say I loved my job, but I was a consecrate trefoil,” he aforesaid.
During his help, Blau put his barber schooltime skills to full use, thinning soldiers’ pilus to realise a footling excess money.
He was sent to employment at a saw pulverization in 1943, where he helped draw saw debris from the trees that men were chopping consume for log. That pound, Blau aforementioned, was ill-used to brand bases for tents and frames for transportation plane parts.
“We were real more comparable civilians,” aforementioned Blau. “We didn’t deliver to do formations.”
It was during his clock at the saw pulverization that Blau experient a Japanese air foray.
“I matte the tremors of the bombs falling approach the air disrobe,” aforesaid Blau. “They were on their way to Embrasure Moresby.”
Blau finally unexpended Papua New Guinea and was sent to the Philippines, where he was reassigned to a new grouping. By 1945, Blau was service in Okinawa, Japan. Patch thither, he erstwhile hitchhiked to see a twosome of friends from Lake Zurich. He likewise experient a typhoon. He and former soldiers crawled into the hillsides for aegis.
“I was make to ejaculate family. I had the points. And so hither comes this typhoon,” aforesaid Blau.
When he eventually was shipped abode, the send he was on hit approximately storms that sent the transport itemization 35 degrees in both directions.
“Everyone was airsick,” aforementioned Blau.
The transport arrived in Seattle and the soldiery were affected to Fortress Lewis.
“I was hoping to get abode by Christmas,” aforesaid Blau. He cherished to conclusion his military overhaul where it had began - at Fortress Sheridan. He took the string plate, arriving at Garrison Sheridan on Christmas, 1945.
In January 1946, Blau enrolled in beaut cultivate. His commencement job was at Olga’s in Skokie. He likewise worked in Chicago. In 1953, he returned to Lake Zurich, where he worked in the rear of a barber grass. He open his own salon, Dale’s Whisker Salon, in July 1955. He retired from the line in 1988.
