The Unexpected Friendship with WWII Hero Joe Brown

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Some models, trims and features may not be available or may be subject to change. This is our American stories, and now it's time for another story from our friend Jay Moore. Jay is a retired history teacher from Abilene, Texas, who's known for hosting presentations about his city's history to over 900 fellow citizens that show up for them. And by the way, if you have someone like Jay Moore in your neck of the woods, send him our way.

Send him to our American stories dot com and send her our way as well. Today, Jay brings us the story of a friendship forged after the first time he saw one of the most powerful war films ever made. A friendship that would be even more powerful than the movie itself.

Take it away, Jay. Well, back in the summer of 1998, one Friday night, my wife lined up a babysitter for our two young daughters, and we met some friends at the mall theater. We wanted to go see the newly released Steven Spielberg movie Saving Private Ryan. It had rave reviews, and I was looking forward to seeing it, but I'll have to say I was not ready for that movie. I was certainly not prepared for the intensity of that long opening scene. The depiction of the D-Day landing was unlike any movie scene I had ever watched. It was as though the cameraman himself was one of the soldiers, and in those jumpy staccato movements puts you right in the middle of that jarring reality. The camera was in the turmoil.

It wasn't filming like some removed onlooker, and you felt it. It was hypnotically gripping. Starting with those young guys who found themselves on board landing craft that was churning and lurching forward, and that would deliver them to what's going to either be a life-changing or a life-ending appointment. You could feel their breathing, their nerves, that cold trepidation. You saw their trembling hands, their vomiting, that look of a dreadful surrender that was mixed with a determined hope that they might somehow pass through that onshore crucible that was drawing ever closer.

And then they reached the beach, and the bow ramp drops, and some don't live to make it three feet. The reenactment of the storming of Omaha Beach was raw. The realism was mesmerizing and even terrifying. It certainly felt as if I was in the middle of the chaos and that helter-skelter every which way disorder. Bullets buzzing and pinging, that flying sand, blood-soaked waves, the gore, men destroyed by mortars and just cut down.

And the psychological toll was so well-portrayed, that look, that determined stare, knowing that if you wanted to live, you had no choice but to make your legs run straight at the death. You had to move. You had to move.

Move. Like most everyone, I found the opening scene to be not just jarring, but spellbinding and draining. And later I read that men who had actually been there, and others in similar fights, said that Spielberg got it right. So on the way home, I told my wife, well, now that I know what to expect, I think I'd like to see that movie again. And she said, no, it was too intense for her. Once was plenty. But I couldn't shake it. So on Sunday afternoon, I went back alone. I bought my ticket, but there was about 30 or 40 minutes before the show started. So to kill the time, I walked down the mall into one of the bookstores where I went over to the history section.

That's where I always gravitate to in a bookstore. There was a man standing in the aisle. He was older. I took him to be about 80. He was intently looking through an oversized book, and I could see it was about World War II. Since he looked like he was old enough to have been in the war, and friendly-looking enough to be interrupted, well, I pointed at the book and asked him, were you there? He looked at the cover and said, oh, yeah, I was there. So I asked, did they send you to Europe or the Pacific?

He said, Pacific. I asked him what branch he served in. He told me he had been a Marine. I remember being surprised.

I think my mental image of a Marine, even an older one, was different. He was shorter than me, maybe 5'8", but not anymore. He had silver hair, and it was thinning, but very neatly combed. He had a friendly face and an easy smile. There was a ready kindness that came through. He had blue eyes that glistened.

To me, he looked like a grandfather straight out of Central Casting, a nice, approachable, soft-hearted kind of guy, the kind of grandad who might give his grandson 20 bucks because he knew it would help. Just by appearance, he was not at all what I thought of when I heard the word Marine. But he said he had been in the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines, 2nd Marine Division. I asked where he was in the Pacific.

He smiled and said, Oh, I got the full tour. Guadalcanal. Tarawa. Saipan. Ended up on Tinian.

That's where I got my ticket home. As a history teacher, I knew a bit about what those names meant. Mostly, I knew that they just weren't cakewalks. Each one had been a serious fight. It cost lots of Americans their lives, even more Japanese. Omaha Beach, four times over. And he told me with a hint of pride that on Tinian, he and his platoon had been part of a group that cleared the area for the airstrip that would later provide a spot for the Enola Gay to lift off from and bring an end to that war. The Battle of Guadalcanal was the first serious land offensive by the United States in World War II. Over 1,200 Marines were killed, over 2,800 wounded. More than 1,000 died at Tarawa. At Saipan, 3,400 more. And on the island of Tinian, there would be nearly 400 Marine deaths. And many of those were victims of fierce, suicidal Japanese forces screaming, Bonsai!

Long live the Emperor. Looking at him in the bookstore, it was just hard to imagine that such a pleasant older gentleman, just a guy in my West Texas hometown, had been there for all of that, for the bombings and the shootings and the destroyed lives. It seemed oddly incongruent that he and I would be standing together in the comfort of a bookstore on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. Then he surprised me. He asked me if I wanted to see his ticket home from the war.

I said sure, but I didn't really understand exactly what he meant. And as he put the book back on the shelf, I thought maybe he was going to take out his wallet and unfold some piece of paper or maybe a military discharge that he had kept all of these years. But instead, he unbuttoned the cuff on his left sleeve and he pushed it up past his elbow. When he turned his arm over, I saw his ticket home. It was a scar running from his wrist to the crook of his elbow. He said that scar had saved him from the bloodiest Pacific battle of them all, Okinawa. Now we were both looking at his arm and I asked the obvious question, how'd you get that? He said I got it one night on Tinian.

He then went on to tell me this. We cleared that airstrip the last week of July of 44 and then my platoon moved on up the island. By August 1st, we had pushed the Japanese back to a pretty small area. They couldn't get out.

So at night, they would come at us in these desperate bonsai attacks. Every so often, the big US Navy ships offshore would fire star shells and light up the sky so we could see what was happening around us and try to pick them off. I was in a foxhole with another guy. He was a lieutenant named Stacy Davis. He manned the machine gun.

I only had a carbine and it kept misfiring. After a while, the rest of the platoon had fallen back and it was just the two of us out there. As I listened to his story, I just shook my head. I said it all sounded pretty terrifying. He assured me it was. How old were you?

He told me he was 26. He went on and said Lieutenant Davis and I were in a foxhole, both on our knees. We were peering into the dark and listening with our senses on high alert. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a Japanese soldier ran right towards me, screaming with a wild look. His bayonet was coming straight at my chest.

So I put up my arm and that thing went in here at my wrist and followed the bone all the way here to my elbow. And you're listening to Jay Moore from Abilene, Texas, telling the story of his encounter with a World War II vet at a bookstore on his way to seeing Saving Private Ryan a second time. I think I've seen that movie 50 times. And any time it comes on, well, I'm gone. And I won't come back until it's over because it's that good. And I learn just a little bit more about life watching it each time.

I'm changed and the movie seems to change. When we come back, more with Jay Moore, this remarkable story here on Our American Stories. Tis the season of making the perfect wish list and the perfect playlist. Level up your listening and gift more than just a headphone this holiday with Bose QuietComfort Ultra Earbuds and headphones. Breakthrough Bose immersive audio uses rich, spatialized sound to bring your fave holiday classics to life. World class noise cancellation straps you in for a not so typical silent night. And custom tune technology analyzes your ear shape, adapting the audio performance so each whistle note hits higher and each sleigh bell rings even brighter than the last. It's everything music should make you feel taken to new holiday highs. It's more than just a present and it gifts like a party. So turn your ordinary moments into epic memories with the gift of sound.

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Chumba casino dot com. And we're back with our American stories and with Jay Moore's story of his unexpected friendship with a World War Two hero, Joe Brown. He stopped talking and again, we were both looking at his arm. So I asked, well, what happened after that? And he said, well, we fought. He told me that a lot of folks don't realize that very often the fighting in World War Two came down to a fight between two guys with a bit of astonishment. I said, well, I take it you won your fight.

He smiled. And as he rebutted his shirt cuff, he said, yeah, I won. He then said, you know, I have that bayonet. It was the real ticket home for me.

And in the fighting with that dadgum thing stuck in my arm, I managed to bend that metal bayonet. I've got it at the house. Dang, I'd like to see that, I said. He told me to come by, told me to call, and I could tell him in it. So about a week later, I did call.

And over the phone, he said, how about tomorrow? I rang the doorbell and he and his wife invited me in. He said he had been born in 1918 in Wichita Falls. He was raised there with two brothers and two sisters. He told me that after the war, he took a job with an oil-filled service company. They had lived in Abilene since 1959, raised a daughter and two sons. He told me that he and his older brother Marcus had been together for much of the war, including on Saipan and Tinian.

They both spent 32 months overseas. He told me that he made it home from the war on a Friday. He looked at his wife and said, and we got married on Monday. After a while, he asked, well, you want to see my ticket home? He and I walked down a short hall to a back bedroom.

And there, on top of a dresser, he had already laid out the things he wanted to show me. There was a telegram that had been sent to his mother in 1944 telling her that her son had been wounded. There were medals and citations, one for a Bronze Star and two for Silver Stars, citing heroic service, devotion to duty, conspicuous gallantry.

Although wounded, he continued to lead his men, inspired them by his example. And there were newspaper clippings. One was from the Wichita Daily News dated October 1944. It was written after he and his brother Marcus had returned home. He told about the experiences of these two hometown boys. Lieutenant Stacy Davis had recounted for the reporter the details of that night on Tinian. Davis said, we were in the same foxhole.

It was pitch dark. One of the Japanese charged our hole. I fired, but he kept coming. He leapt down, bayonet first, and the fight was on. The article went on to tell how this kindly grandfather, who was now standing in front of me as I read, how in the dark with a bayonet stuck in his arm and that had severed an artery and sliced a tendon, how he grabbed the barrel of that rifle and fought his attacker, fighting with such strength and adrenaline that the steel bayonet lodged in his arm was bent at the shank. It told how he managed to get the upper hand and how despite his wound, he was able to pull the bayonet out of his arm and wrestle the weapon away from the Japanese soldier.

After I read the article, he filled in more of the blanks, telling me that when the sun finally rose, he led the other walking wounded down the hill to battalion headquarters. His brother happened to be there, and he told Marcus about the fight. So Marcus went back to the area, found the bent bayonet laying on the ground.

He brought it back so his little brother could bring it home. I asked about Marcus. He told me that in one battle, a bullet struck the front of Marcus' helmet. It whizzed right across the top of his head, exited the back. He smiled and said, it parted his hair.

Doesn't get much closer than that. He said Marcus took his G.I. Bill enrolled at Texas A&M to become a veterinarian.

Then in 1949, five days before he was to turn 33, and having survived some of the worst battles of World War II, he lost his life in a motorcycle accident. He told me they named one of their sons for him. In that back room, I was hearing and seeing some of the most personal stories and meaningful trophies from the life of a man that I didn't really know.

Just a nice guy I had met in the bookstore at the mall and struck up a conversation. And there, laying on the dresser, was the bayonet, the one Marcus retrieved and brought to him. One just like it was issued to every Japanese soldier in World War II, designed to be held in a scabbard attached to a belt so the soldier could either pull it out, use it as a handheld weapon, or attach it to the end of his rifle and just run right at you.

Of course, that's how this one had been used, clipped to the end of a Japanese rifle. And that bayonet had traveled from Japan to Tinian, across the Pacific, and finally to the back bedroom of a home in Abilene, Texas, 1944 to 1998. I asked if I could pick it up, and he handed it to me. It was heavy, heavier than I thought it was going to be. It was about 15 inches long, had a single-edged blade, had a very menacing point. The metal tapered and was thick as near the handle. And right up next to the handle, the blade was bent. It was canted over at about a 45-degree angle. And staring at it, I asked, So, with this in your arm, you grabbed hold of the rifle barrel, and you fought hard enough. You created enough torque to bend this. He said, I did. When I finally got that out of my arm, I managed to turn the rifle around. I tried to stab that guy, but it would glance off, because I didn't know I had bent the thing over. But I managed to use the butt of the gun, and it turned out all right. So you killed him with his own rifle? He nodded yes.

It seemed surreal. A husband, whose wife was now in the kitchen. A proud father. A grandfather who put photos of the grandkids on the wall.

A guy who mowed his grass and kept his cars clean and went to church. And who a lifetime earlier, for his country, had killed a man in a bare-handed fight. Had won a victory in a world war. He handed me the bayonet's metal scabbard. On it was a white sticker that he had put there. And on the sticker he had written, in black ink, My Ticket Home. It was the ticket to the rest of his life. That day at the bookstore, he pushed up his sleeve and showed me his scar. A scar he had looked at every day for fifty-four years. A tactile reminder of a defining day. Of a victory.

Of a ticket home. Looking at him in the bookstore that day, I just couldn't get over how ordinary he was. And had he not been reliving his past, thumbing through a book that piqued my curiosity. Had I not asked, were you there?

Well, I never would have stood in his back room and held a bent bayonet in my hand. At the bookstore, he and I visited, right up until I needed to head to the theater. I told him I was going to see Saving Private Ryan. I asked him if he had seen it. He smiled and said, no, I don't guess I need to. I put out my hand and said, well, I've enjoyed visiting with you.

It's been an honor. My name is Jay Moore. He shook my hand.

He shook it firmly, just like you would expect from a Marine. He said, I've enjoyed visiting. Come see me. My name is Joe. Joe Brown.

Sitting in the darkened theater, I saw Tom Hanks and the others moving toward the beach. But all of it was fake. There was no real blood. No real injuries. No gore. There was no live ammunition. There was no actual dying.

And no two guys really fighting, rolling in the sand, sweating and swearing, kicking and clawing, clenching, yelling and squeezing, squeezing so hard, hard enough to bend steel. The movie remained powerful, but nowhere near as much. For I had just met Joe Brown. And my goodness, what a story different than watching a movie. Joe Brown's story, in a way, Jay Moore's story, too.

Here on Our American Stories. and headphones. Breakthrough immersive audio uses spatialized sound to bring your fave holiday classics to life, and world-class noise cancellation ensures a not-so-typical silent night and an epic holiday party of warmth. It's everything music should make you feel, taken to new holiday highs.

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