WW II Veterans Recall Pride --and Prejudice

They are old soldiers from a generation that answered the call to combat as a righteous summons. World War II had that kind of clarity.

Even today, Marty Tregnan wears a replica of his original Army Air Corps bombardier’s jacket around the Griffith Park golf courses, where he is a familiar figure.

And Los Angeles bail bondsman Celes King proudly displays on his office wall the certificate proclaiming him one of the famed all-black Tuskegee Airmen. Racism kept King--but not all Tuskegee Airmen--grounded stateside.

King and Tregnan have occasion to remember their comrades--those who fell in battle and those who have succumbed to the passing years since World War II.

Only three members of Tregnan’s old B-17 crew survive. And King plans to take a greater part in the activities of the Tuskegee Airmen, whose ranks are being rapidly thinned by time.

Veterans such as these will be remembered today in ceremonies from the Los Angeles National Cemetery in Westwood to City Hall in Norwalk.

But as the solemn strains of “Taps” drift across dozens of gatherings where Southern Californians honor war dead, don’t look for Tregnan or King in the crowds. Nor will they be out along a parade route waving the flag.

Tregnan will be celebrating “what I fought for”--as he puts it--spending the day with his daughter, who flew here for the holiday weekend. “To get together with family--that counts for everything,” he said.

But he does not diminish his four-year military tour of duty. He picked up his bombardier’s jacket at his 390th Bomber Group’s 50th anniversary reunion, and he is quick to challenge “creative” veterans whose military exploits are figments of their own imagination.

“I tell off people who wear medals they don’t deserve,” he said.

And he is just as impatient with phony war stories. A man once told Tregnan that he was a war ace. When Tregnan asked what he flew, the man answered B-17s.

The men who piloted those Flying Fortresses “weren’t called war aces,” Tregnan told him. “We were called war asses. Fighter pilots were aces.”

Another loudmouth claimed that he handed Gen. Douglas MacArthur the pen he used to sign the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship Arizona.

Tregnan’s retort was to ask the man what kind of water gear he wore for the ceremony: The Arizona was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor, and still lies underwater as a memorial.

If the guy was going to lie, Tregnan said, he should at least know that the surrender was signed aboard the “Mighty Mo”--the battleship Missouri.

“I get upset with people who claim things they didn’t do,” he said.

And King gets upset with a military that did not allow him a combat role, a military that, until Eleanor Roosevelt intervened, perpetuated the lie that blacks could not be pilots.

That makes him ambivalent about his military experience, he admits, even though he is a general in the California National Guard.

King spent World War II in perpetual rounds of training as a B-25 pilot. Just as his outfit received orders to go overseas, the war in the Pacific ended.

“We were very discouraged, because we kept preparing ourselves to go, but the bell never rang [for black bomber pilots],” he said. “We really thought it would enhance the positions of black Americans to get into combat. We knew that historically, each time there had been a war, there had been a little improvement in blacks’ lives in this country.”

He also took a great deal of satisfaction, he said, from being able to do something “that most of white America said we couldn’t do.”

He has spent past Memorial Days at cemeteries, often as an invited guest--and, when his four children were younger, with one or all of them accompanying him.

“I wanted them to understand the sacrifice many black Americans have made,” he said.

Although racism kept black bomber crews out of combat, Tuskegee Airmen who were fighter pilots saw action flying escort for bombers over Europe--in fact, escorting Tregnan’s formation on one mission.

“Had I known I would get no opportunity, I would have gone the fighter route,” King said.

When he thinks about Memorial Day, King said, he thinks about all the people he knew who came back from World War II, Korea and Vietnam “in boxes.”

And when he looks at race relations, his attitude toward Memorial Day reminds him of black abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ comment upon being invited to speak at a July 4th celebration.

“Douglass told the audience that he did not know why they had invited him since the country had yet to live up to its declaration that all men are created equal,” King said.

Tregnan, too, saw equality as part of a fight that didn’t stop when the war was over. He was president of Los Angeles’ Municipal Golf Assn. for 25 years, and right after World War II, he fought to lift the restriction against nonwhites playing on city courses.

While Tregnan and King celebrate the fruits of their service with their families today, graveside observances began Saturday, as hundreds of volunteers went out to place flags on veterans’ graves in several ceremonies.

One of three touring replicas of the name-inscribed Vietnam Veterans Memorial will spend its final day at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes today. The 250-foot-long black aluminum replica, half the size of the original monument in Washington will end its stay with a military aircraft flyover and a service.

And today, at the National Cemetery in Westwood, an Army band will open ceremonies at 9:30 a.m. Officials expect more than 1,000 people at the event, which will feature a 21-gun salute by a rifle squad from American Legion Post 359 in Norwalk.

The squad was out at 6 a.m. Saturday, placing flags on veterans’ graves in three communities. After the Westwood ceremonies, the members will head back to Norwalk to take part in that city’s celebration.