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Use invite code GETDROP777. This is Lee Habib and this is our American Stories and today we have a story of friendship from a former Marine Jason Porter. Here's Jason with a story of his best friend, Forrest Johnson aka Fari. I used to go to breakfast several times a week right over here at the Red Hot Inn and he was always there every single day at a certain time and he sat by himself and he had a hat on and it said 95th Infantry on it and it had a you know you see veterans wear pins and stuff on their hat but he had a combat infantryman's badge on his pin and I knew he was a World War II veteran and I observed him for several weeks or months never talked to him and finally I'm like I gotta go talk to this guy. We spent a ton of time just talking, drinking coffee and through that he brought me to the veterans group and this veterans group was very unique when I got there because I was by far the youngest guy there. Most of them were all World War II veterans. I'm actually seeing guys here at this group like you would read about just incredible events that you would see on the History Channel or study about. These guys were actually there. So, I met guys who actually landed at Iwo Jima who actually parachuted in on Normandy on D-Day.
There was a guy who was on the USS Indianapolis. I met guys who unlocked the gates at Dachau. Like these are the kind of guys I got to meet there and they talked among veterans, among friends, among peers, unvarnished and these guys are really the greatest generation, my heroes.
I really looked up to these guys. When people look at Europe everybody thinks of D-Day. Well, D-Day was like that was the very, very beginning of the campaign. When D-Day happened there was about four or five or six divisions that landed on the beach that day. The 95th is actually known for the campaign and met. Leading up to that campaign that's where Forey and his unit, you know, they were decimated there really. So, they form in 1942. They trained and lived together 24-7, 365 for approximately two years.
They're the plank owners. They're the first original organic group of guys that come together to form this division and once they deploy into France and they deploy into the battlefield, those outfits get consumed by casualties in the battle. So, he joined in 42 and he deployed to France with Patton's Third Army in the 95th Infantry and left the battlefield on November 10, 1944. In the assault on Ammonville, Forey talked about a guy was shooting at him, a sniper was shooting at him and he took a rifle grenade and a rifle grenade, you put it in the end of the barrel of your rifle and he shot and it went up in the top of a barn and he got the guy that was shooting at him. They continue the assault and Forey went to cross a road like a platoon is on one side, the other guy's on the other side and have you ever heard of a German 88? So, it's designed to shoot planes out of the sky at tens of thousands of feet. Well, the Germans actually then employed them as anti-tank and then anti-personnel and the thing that makes this thing so incredible was the velocity of the round. So, Forey and his guys, they're moving up the street and Forey at some point had to cross the street and there's a German 88 like two miles away has the street just dialed in and a German 88 hits the side Forey. So, it shoots down the road and blows up and just blows into a cone. So, had Forey been completely in that impact zone, I mean, he wouldn't have been alive.
I would have never been friends with him. But he's just on the fringe of it and it catches his side. It blows a bunch of his gear off. His leg and hip is just destroyed, blown apart and he talked about praying at that point and he said he knew that God had comforted him and he knew he was going to live to see his son.
How he knew that, I don't know, but that was his testimony. A couple of his guys run across the road, snatch him up. The German 88 continues the fire.
The German infantry is maneuvering on them in a counter attack. So, they scoop him up. They run him to the back to the basically the other side of a building or a courtyard. Another guy grabs him, but they throw him on the hood of a Jeep, not strapped down or anything. The Jeep takes off across the potato field, full bore. Well, guess what's happening to the Jeep? The Jeep is being fired upon and as Forry is trying to hang on, he's blown apart. They go across the potato field up over the hill. The guys never see him again.
That's it. It's like what happened to Forrest Johnson. So, after Forry was wounded and evacuated off the battlefield on 10 November 1944 from Ammonville, France, he went into the hospital. Recovery came home. He tried to pick up his life when he got home. He had a son and his son had lived with his grandparents, which would have been Forry's mom and dad. So, as when Forry came home, he tried to connect with his son. Well, his son didn't really see him as dad because he'd been gone after the hospital recovery and whatnot and all the time in service. He'd been gone nearly four years. So, the boy saw grandpa as the father figure.
So, that was a real struggle and then just struggling to be back. But one of the absolute highlights of his life, which he talked about often, like this was like one of his best memories of his life, was the 95th Infantry Division reunion, 1950. So, this would have been five years after the war. They had it in Chicago and somehow, Forry found out about it. So, they haven't talked since 10 November 1944, right? Here comes the reunion in 1950. Forry shows up in the afternoon, maybe a day late.
I don't know. But he walks into the hotel in Chicago and he sees a whole bunch of his friends. And what a story we're hearing, folks. And when we come back, we're going to find out what happens when the 50th reunion celebration of the 95th Infantry.
Well, when all those guys meet the guy they hadn't seen since 10 November 1944. The story of Forry Johnson continues here on Our American Story. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we're asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming.
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The app for details. And we return to Our American Stories and Jason Porter, telling us the story of his friend and hero, World War II veteran Fari Johnson. Jason picks up the story in 1950 as Fari walks into a reunion full of his old buddies, men who thought that Fari was killed in action fighting Nazis back in 1944. Fari walks up behind him and says, what kind of clown outfit is you guys around here?
He gives some disparaging remarks and those guys turn around like they are just gonna belt somebody and they turn around and see Fari Johnson, the guy that they'd seen get blown up. He described how they just hugged him and just it was just an incredible, incredible reunion. So they were there four days and they went on a bender, talked about, you know, things that happened on the battlefield after Fari was hit, who survived, who didn't survive. So one of the things that they did is they had a gigantic Nazi flag. If you've seen the giant red flag with a big white background with a swastika in the middle of it, they had a huge one of them that they pulled off of Gestapo headquarters in Ham, Germany. Somebody brought this flag out and over the course of the reunion that was held at this hotel, all the surviving members of his company signed that flag. So when I met Fari 60 years later, as members of his company began to dwindle, over the time that flag, each guy would have it for a while and they'd maybe get a give a talk at a VFW post, a elementary school, stuff like that. So when I met Fari, he had the flag. It was his turn to have the flag and every now and then he'd bust it out and we'd look at it. We'd look at the names on it. One time we tried to call a couple of the guys on the on the flag, you know, this is kind of pre-Facebook and stuff. It was a little harder to find guys. So every year Fari would invite me to go to the division reunion.
Well, then the division reunion, it got to there was just nobody there. 2012, I talked to Fari, I said, Fari, that flag really needs to be in a museum. He's like, well, it's not my flag. I can't give it away. Okay, well, I'm not pushing them or anything, but I'm like, I don't really want to see it stuffed under a bed or something.
Like when you're gone, it should go somewhere as it means something. So he agreed to bring it to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. And at this time there was three guys from his company that were still alive.
I set up a meeting with the curator at the museum. I'm like, hey, these veterans are coming in. They have this flag.
I told them the background of the flag, you know, they want to pass it off to you. So I pack up Fari Johnson, bring him on flight. He's in a wheelchair. I'm pushing them all through security.
You know, it's quite a chore to get them down there. Once we get down there, Hal Smith and his wife, they roll in, I think on a motor home. And the other guy, I can't remember, he comes in and they're just hanging out and talking and they have the flag.
And the next day at noon or one o'clock, we're going to turn the flag over to the museum, right? So I sit back and I just basically serve these guys, bring them sandwiches, bring them drinks. And they're just, they're talking about the war, their life, you know, they're old men, but they're talking like they're 22. And they are, although 65 some years had passed, they are still brothers.
They're bonded by their time and service and what they did together. So the time is approaching. I'm like, all right, guys, you know, hey, it's 11 o'clock at one o'clock, we got to be at the museum, right guys? They're like, oh yeah, yeah, good, good. Get us another beer. I'm like, all right. And it gets down to one hour. And I'm like, all right, guys, in an hour, you know, we need to start pack up and go and the museum's ready to receive us. And I'm like, all right, guys, half hour, you know, let's wrap it up. And I don't remember what you want to, I want to say it was for, he turned around, he's like, tell them we're not coming, we'll decide next year. The guys didn't want to break up the meeting. They didn't want to give up the flag because that gave them a reason to see each other again.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-10-03 00:58:22 / 2023-10-03 01:05:25 / 7
