Pennies for war heroes

The Best of Stubble Mulch

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Monday, I’ll drop by the twin graves of brothers Gene and Mark Minier at Greenwood.

I never knew them, but I’ll pay my respects to those two World War II heroes and see if the penny is still on Mark’s gravestone. Out of respect, I’ll add to the granite decor.

The penny was there last year on Memorial Day.

Why?

Because there’s an ancient tradition of placing coins on the graves of war heroes. It started with the Romans, who paid their respects to fallen gladiators in that manner.

Mark and Gene were two of many from Brookings County who died in the war.

Of the more than 2,400 Brookings County men and women who served in WWII, they were among the 108 who didn’t make it back alive.

Brookings citizens mourned the death of young Army Sgt. Gene Minier, a 1939 Brookings High School graduate and son of Brookings Postmaster Earl Minier. On a night patrol at Anzio, Italy, a land mine exploded, killing him instantly.

Gene’s death in April 1944 wasn’t the end of the Minier family’s sorrows.

Almost exactly one year later, Gene’s brother, Sgt. Mark Minier, barely 21, was one of 10 airmen aboard a lumbering Liberator bomber hit by Japanese anti-aircraft fire over the Philippines. Mark was one of seven who managed to bail out before the plane crashed into the sea.  

Later, a letter to Mark’s mother arrived in Brookings, written by her son’s crewmates. They said Mark had been with them when they bailed out, and then in a small rubber raft bobbing on the Sulu Sea while the men prayed the Japanese in a nearby patrol boat hadn’t spotted them.

Mark, who had been a lifeguard at the Brookings swimming pool, decided to swim to a nearby island for help. Twenty-eight hours later, the raft had drifted far from where Mark’s swim started. It was spotted by friendly natives who rescued Mark’s six crewmates and guided them through Japanese lines to safety.    

Mark’s body was never found. He was declared missing in action for several months, and in November 1944 he was declared KIA.

After the war his father Earl took leave from the Post Office and traveled to the Philippines with a slim hope that Mark had survived. If not alive, perhaps natives in the area about where the crewmembers had landed had helpful information about his final hours.

Earl found nothing. Mark is to this day still lost at sea.

Gene is buried in Greenwood, and his brother Mark is there with only a simple marker placed in his memory and with a penny on his grave stone.

There’s another pair of WWII soldiers in Greenwood. In September 1943, newly married Mrs. Helen Severson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Anderson of 905 Medary Ave., was killed while training with the ferrying command in Texas. The women flew newly manufactured aircraft to bases around the nation. She was the first female to earn her wings in the flying school at SDSU.

Helen had married Lt. Robert Severson, also an SDSU alum, on Sept. 4, 1942. He flew an artillery spotter plane in Europe. A month after the death of his wife, he was killed in action, and they are now forever together at Greenwood.

I’ve mentioned only the Minier brothers and Mr. and Mrs. Severson.

You can read more about other SDSU and Brookings County heroes in my book, “Here and Over There.”  

And speaking of Brookings County’s part in past wars, the Brookings County Museum in Volga, which opens at 1 p.m. on Memorial Day Monday, has an interesting military section.

If you’d like to comment, email the author at cfcecil@swiftel.net.