COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL APRIL 19, 2017
11A
Living 50 Plus in Cottage Grove
World War II veteran tells his story from Cottage Grove
Leonard Waitman went from WWII to college before settling in Cottage Grove
Leonard Waitman served in WWII and continues to frequent the Cottage Grove Veteran's
Post.
L
eonard Waitman's high school class graduated without him. In letters from the girls back
home, he gathers the ceremony was planned like it always was but there were a lot of empty
chairs. A light stopped on each and every one of them. The girls who did go said they had ini-
tially refused; they didn't want to walk without the classmates who had left for the war months before.
Leonard didn't like school. He didn't recieve his diploma but thanks to the GI Bill he went to college.
That, of course, was only after one of his commanders opened his eyes to education.
"We were waiting for the invasion the next day and they would send books with us," he said. "So, I
had this book my hand and my commander asks me what it is. I tell him it's a a history book but I don't
care for history. He tells me, 'If you live through this, what we're doing tomorrow is history. You'll be
in the history books. History is alive, it's happening now,'" he said.
Leonard retired as a professor of history.
His father was a machinist but during the Great Depression hardly anyone
worked. That didn't stop his parents from saving.
"It was Christmas morning and here comes my father with two big boxes out
on the driveway," he said. "There were two bikes. One for me and one for my
brother. We were the only kids in the neighborhood with bikes." His mother had
saved twenty-fi ve cents for months on end for the gifts.
That, Leonard said, is his greatest regret.
"When you have a family like I had and you don't do right by them, it's tough,"
he said. "Sometimes they would not eat a full meal. But I always had a full meal.
If I could say anything to anyone it would probably be my mother. And I would
apologize to her for not being the best son I could be."
It's a post card addressed to his mother that still sits safely in an album of his
wartime keepsakes. It reads, "Good news, I'm coming home."
That was the good news.
"I've been in battle throughout the years," he said. "It doesn't leave you."
He camped at the base of Mount Vasuvias and has the photos to prove it. He
still has the manual the Army gave out for troops landed in North Africa. The
picture of the Pope, who happened to bless him? He has it. The memories of
the lost pieces of art from the Louvre he got to tour, post cards from home, and
a binder full of photographs he has all of it. But he also has the memories of
battles and the nightmares of war.
"No one wins in war. No one," he says of the greatest lesson he's learned in
his 90-plus years.
"The enemy is fi ghting for the same thing that we think is right for us and you
don't realize that at fi rst. I didn't hate them until I got into combat with them," he
said. "And then you learn to hate them because they're trying to kill you. But no
one wins in war. You just can't win when you have 400,000 men that age dying.
It was his belief in God that got him through the war he said. "I've heard a lot
of people talk but no one is an athetist in the fox hole," he said. "Because in war
you don't have anyone else to help you. There has to be someone there to help
of Foreign Wars
you. Other guys are dying all around you and you are still here. Alive."
Leonard made it home and the boy who was kicked out of high school earned
an advanced diploma and went on to marry. Despite the horrors of war he didn't
fully realize what his commander had meant when he said they would be part of history until he was
on his way home.
"I fought with a lot of brave men. A lot of them didn't make it and the fi rst time you really realize that
is when you got home," he said. "We were pulling into New York Harbor and of course there's the signs
welcoming us home and the fi reworks and the big whoppers but at some point they told the smaller
ships to back off and we went right by the statue of liberty. And you look up at her and there wasn't a
dry eye on the ship. We were home."
Leonard was 19 when he joined
the war effort. Now, at 94 he's
settled in Cottage Grove with
his wife and makes frequent ap-
pearances at the local VFW. And
he's afraid of nothing.
"I would say, there's not a lot
of things I'm afraid of. I have the
Grant Gording, BC-HIS
Jenna Buetow
lord with me."
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