Service Remembered
FRANKLIN TWP — “For 75 years I wasn't recognized. Nobody knew I was around,” said Karl Herold, 99.
Recognition is still on hold for the former Marine, who was disappointed this year's Veterans Day parade in Butler County was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns.
“I wanted to be in the parade. I've been in the parade twice. I was looking forward to it,” Herold said.
He had a sign made up to attach to the vehicle he hoped to be riding, “USMC 100 Years Old.” Actually, he will turn 100 Dec. 29.
His daughter-in-law, Dorothy Herold, said, “He has this poster. He just changed the age.”
His son, David Herold, said he was going to drive his father in the Veterans Parade in his Polaris Slingshot, a three-wheeled motorcycle.“I feel like a big shot riding in that thing,” Karl Herold said.He remembered the day he enlisted in the Marines during the early phase of America's entry into World War II.“I volunteered June 2, 1942. I went to Pittsburgh with three friends. We lived right beside each other. We decided to go into the service.“The Marines handed us the biggest line. That's why we decide to join,” he said. “We went through boot camp and everything.“Well, the four of us came back. But I'm the only one left,” he said.Herold called his service in the Marine Corps two years of heaven and two years of hell.He spent two years stateside and two years in the Pacific Theater taking part in three major campaigns: the invasions of Saipan, Tinian and Okinawa with the Fourth and later the Second Marine Divisions.He was in line to take part in the invasion of Iwo Jima, but “they didn't use us.”“I hit the beach on all of them,” he said. “There was heavy fighting. I was in the bulk of it.“I never had any more training than I had in boot camp,” Herold remembered. “Most guys, when they got out they got a rifle. They threw a truck at me. I stayed with that truck for two years.”
After boot camp, he was assigned to motor transport school in Quantico, Va., and later in North Carolina before being sent to the Pacific.“I was a PFC (private first class) truck driver, but I didn't want to drive a truck in combat. It's too damn big a target,” he said.He got a brief break from fighting when he was assigned to an engineering group building roads, but that respite didn't last long. In fact, he was training for a planned invasion of Taiwan when the Japanese surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945.“We were on the highest point on Saipan Island on maneuvers when we learned. They kept us out there for two more days,” Herold said. He believes his unit was being punished for going up on the mountain overlooking the harbor and trying to figure out what was going on.With the war over, it wasn't exactly a hero's homecoming. Herold was shipped to Nagasaki, Japan, and then to a few other Japanese cities before being sent home in a repaired cargo ship.For more than a week, he said he didn't see any land, and just three days out of docking in San Diego, the ship encountered a storm.“I thought we were going to the bottom,” he said.Once in San Diego, he was given $45 for bus fare back to Pennsylvania.His wife, Laura, met him in Harrisburg.In the years that followed, they raised three sons — Karl Jr., David and Richard. Herold farmed and worked at Butler Burial and Halstead Industries in Zelienople.Herold began making wooden trucks, bulldozers and other vehicles in his workshop that he sold or gave away to friends.“I can't do it anymore. My hands don't work anymore and my eyes have gone bad,” he said.Since his wife died 15 years ago, Herold has lived alone and continued to cook and look after his house himself with an assist from two of his sons, who live nearby.“He was behind the push mower last year,” Dorothy Herold said.He never joined any veterans groups. He looked into joining the Marine Corps League once.“I asked them what they do and they said, 'We go along the road and pick up leaves and trash.'“I said, 'I did enough of that when I was in there. I don't want to do that now,'” he said.
