Students record veterans' war stories

Photo: Peter L. McGuire

WAR STORIES —  Fifth grade Rowe Elementary students Taylor Day, left, and Shaelyn Hanscom, listen to WWII veteran Bob Allan recount his action as a tank Sergeant in Europe.

Photo: Peter L. McGuire

LIVING HISTORY — Joe Brown, a U.S. Navy veteran, tells Rowe Elementary School students Kenneth Bing and Shianne Leonard about his service on the USS Wasp in the Pacific during WWII.

Photo: Peter L. McGuire

WORDS OF ADVICE — Bob "Gunny" Poliquin, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, shares some worldly advice with Sam Morton, left, and Gavin Hamm, fifth grade students from Rowe School. Ed. Tech Ben Goodall looks on.

PARIS — "I joined the infantry," said Bob "Gunny" Poliquin, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran. "Stay away from that, if you can," he said with a grin.

As he spoke, fifth graders Sam Morton and Gavin Hamm noted his words of wisdom and ask him more about his service, and life.

Morton and Hamm, along with around 15 of their classmates, visited the Maine Veterans Home in South Paris last Friday as part of a service learning project organized through the Bryant Pond 4-H Camp.

On the same day, another group of Rowe students visited the Western Maine Health's Market Square Health Center.

The goal of the exercise is to connect community service with scholastic study, said Danielle Odom, the 4-H program coordinator.

For the rest of the school year, students will be working on projects at the Alan Day Community Garden and Roberts Farm Preserve in Norway.

Students are expected to record and reflect on their experiences through composition writing, Odom explained. In that way, students give something back to their community, learn new skills and have a creative outlet for writing.

Engaging with and recording veterans' stories is particularly important, Odom said. It gives students a personal perspective on history they may only know about from the classroom.

She hoped to connect the stories with the national Veterans Legacy Project, which aims to preserve the stories and memories of the nation's veterans for generations to come.

Spread out across a number of tables in the community room last Friday, students joined the veterans for lunch and got a chance to ask them about their lives and military service.

At one table, Bob Allan recounted his WWII combat experience as a Sergeant in the Army's 12th Armored Division, commanding a tank and six soldiers.

With rapt attention, students Taylor Day and Shaelyn Hanscom listened to Allan explain how he lost a foot to enemy fire while crossing a river during some of the last fighting of the war – only two months before Nazi Germany surrendered.

At another table, WWII Navy Veteran Joe Brown described life on the  aircraft carrier USS Wasp in the Pacific to a group of inquisitive youngsters.

The students craned around Brown's commemorative photo book as he explained the different tasks required of the sailors and airmen on the vessel, and the danger they faced.

"My picture isn't in there, but I was on it," Brown told the students, "about 60 some-odd years ago."

Back at Poliquin's table, a group of boys were pumping him for information on his Marine Corps service. They wanted to know when and where he served, why he joined the military and what training was most useful to him.

"Being a mechanic," Gunny answered.

His mechanic training helped him get a job with a AAA garage right after leaving the service, he said. The fact his new boss was also a Marine helped too, he told the students.

Morton and Hamm furiously scribbled down his answers and competed to be the first to ask him another question.