For WWII vet, as recent memories failed, the hard memories of war returned
The late Palmer Holmes sent this photo to his mother, Ethel Holmes, while he was still serving with the Army during World War II. Because the photo is dated 1945 and Palmer is shown wearing his Class A uniform, it’s thought that the photo was taken after the end of hostilities in Europe, and he was most likely in Germany, perhaps in the occupational force. His rank insignia indicates he held the non-commissioned officer rank of “technician fifth grade.” The star-shaped patch marks him as a member of the 2d Infantry Division, and the two hashmarks on his lower left sleeve show that he had served a year in a combat zone. Palmer’s badges, at right in the shadow-box frame, show that he held an expert (the highest of three levels) weapons qualification in machine gun, rifle, carbine and pistol, and a marksman qualification (the first of the three levels) in mortar. At the bottom of the picture, the wreath-encircled rifle, is probably what was Palmer’s most coveted award, the combat infantryman badge. (Thanks to Army retiree Mike Sparks for help in identifying the medals and insignia.)
As this year’s Veterans Day approaches, Mammoth resident Danny Holmes was thinking of his dad, the late Palmer Holmes, who left school during his senior year at Gainesville High School to volunteer to serve in World War II.
Danny isn’t sure what year that would have been, but Palmer was born in 1924, so he would have been 17 in 1941, possibly set to graduate in the spring of 1942. Instead, he soon found himself fighting his way across Europe, serving with the Army in battle after battle.
Like so many other young men from Ozark County, Palmer was a highly skilled marksman and earned the top weapons qualifications in rifle, carbine, pistol and machine gun, and he also held a marksman weapons qualification in mortars. For a while he was an MP, but most of his time in the Army was spent with the infantry.
In December 1944 and January 1945, Palmer fought in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, a battle described on the history.com website as “the costliest ever fought by the U.S. Army.” The Army suffered nearly 90,000 casualties, including 19,000 deaths. And after that came the Rhineland Offensive in February and March 1945, described as a huge “amphibious and airborne operation” when the Allies fought their way across the Rhine River.
After the war, in 1946, Palmer came back home to Ozark County, where his family – parents C. I. “Ivy” and Ethel Holmes and brothers Earl and Leo – eagerly awaited his return. On Sept. 4, 1947, he married Delphia Duggins; Danny, their only child, was born in 1948.
After he returned home, Palmer worked for awhile at Amyx Auto, the former Ford dealership in Gainesville, as “the cleanup guy,” Danny said last week. Later, he worked for several years as the manager of the former Purina Feed Store in Gainesville. Eventually he went to work for Baxter Health Care Corp. (“the lab”) in Mountain Home, Arkansas.
The war-weary Palmer surely carried home a burden of difficult memories after all he had seen and experienced in combat. But during all those years, “he never, ever, ever talked about his time in the service,” Danny said.
Most remarkably, perhaps, was what the battle-hardened veteran did when his little son, Danny, started first grade in 1952.
“He came back and went to school with me to finish up 12th grade,” Danny said. “That was back when all the grades were in the building where the post office is now. So we were even in the same building--me in first grade, Dad in high school. He and his friend Jerry Lyons had both left in their senior year, and they both went back just long enough to get their diplomas.”
Palmer Holmes and Jerry Lyons are listed among the graduates in the GHS class of 1953, perhaps 10 years after they would have graduated if the war hadn’t intervened.
One can only ponder what it was like for the two men, home from war, to return to the world of bobby socks, basketball and high school shenanigans. It might have been that maybe a history or social studies teacher asked Palmer about his war experiences. But Danny feels sure his dad never talked about what he’d seen or done.
“Never, not once,” Danny said, adding that one of Palmer’s only hints of combat memories was to build a replica of a machine gun so he could show Brody Meek, his great-grandson, a gun like the one he had used in the war.
Still, Palmer kept his war stories to himself, never sharing them. Then, as the years went by, his short-term memory started to slip, and eventually he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
“That’s when I found out exactly how much he’d stuffed inside and kept to himself all those years,” Danny said.
The war stories started one day when Danny went to visit his dad in the nursing home, “and he was sitting there crying,” Danny said. “He mentioned something about the kids. I thought he was talking about Brody or Shai (Palmer’s great-granddaughter). I talked with him awhile about it, and it turns out he was worked up about the people where they had bombed those towns. They killed a lot of people, including kids. And remembering those kids was definitely working on him.”
Another time Palmer described a night when he and his fellow soldiers were working their way across an area that had been bombed. “He talked about being in a foxhole – a bomb crater. They were going from one crater to the next, working their way across this area that had been bombed, and when he jumped into one crater, several dead Germans were in there and he didn’t know it,” Danny said. “It must have been really bad.”
Another time, Palmer told Danny about being with one of his buddies, “and they shot a German who was trying to shoot their battalion,” Danny said.
It was hard hearing what his dad had hidden inside through the years. “And another sad thing,” Danny said. “It made me think there are so many other people in this realm that I know went through the same thing. A boy I worked with, he said his dad never, ever wanted to talk about it either. I know they saw a lot of bad stuff. But they held it in. They thought that’s what they needed to do.”
Now, 75 years after World War II ended, few veterans of that conflict are still living. But America’s appreciation hasn’t diminished for what they did – and for what they wrestled with after they came home.