Paying tribute to 70 years of sacrifice

If You Go

• What: Vancouver Memorial Day Observance.

• When: 11 a.m. Monday.

• Where: Bandstand at Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, opposite Officers Row.

Some of them died on European battlefields or in the Pacific. Combat in Korea and Vietnam claimed more lives. In the last dozen years, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan expanded the roster of wartime fatalities.

For about 575 families, the names on Clark County’s Veterans Memorial represent a loss that can’t be measured. They are the husbands and fathers, brothers and sons, uncles and cousins who went off to war and never came back.

Looking ahead to Memorial Day, several local families shared their memories of four of those soldiers who died over the last 70 years or so: Pfc. Francis McCoy (World War II); Master Sgt. James Ellis (Korea); Cpl. Timothy Mattson (Vietnam); and Master Sgt. Robb Needham (Iraq).

Decades later, members of those families can still find echoes of what they lost in vintage photographs, yellowed newspaper clippings, military documents and letters from the front.

One letter written 72 years ago hints at the sacrifice all families endure when they send someone to war. James Ellis wrote it in 1943 from somewhere in North Africa; his daughter-in-law, Donna Ellis, and her son, Curtis Ellis, still have the letter. The soldier was hoping that his little boy would write him back, but he noted that the youngster probably was pretty busy helping his mother and grandmama. After all, Dickey had to be the man of the house now.

James Ellis did return home after the war. A few years later, Ellis left his wife, Dorothy, and their son behind again — this time for Korea, where he was killed.

The family’s loss was not met with universal sympathy, according to Donna Ellis. She discussed it with Dorothy before her mother-in-law died a couple of years ago. When Dorothy would talk about the death of the 38-year-old husband and father on a faraway battlefield, this was one response:

“What was he doing over there, anyway?”

That, unfortunately, was not a unique sentiment. There was an echo in 2006, after Master Sgt. Needham was killed in Baghdad. He also was a husband and father, as well as a grandfather. At 51, he was one of a very small group of soldiers older than 50 to die in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCoy was a member of the 187th Glider Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division.

Before McCoy shipped out, he posed for a photo in front of his folks’ Vancouver home at 3315 V St., during what must have been a family send-off. In the photo, the Army private holds his little niece, Janet Durgan. She now is Janet Ritter, who lives in the Salmon Creek area.

McCoy was killed during fierce fighting in the battle for Luzon, in the Philippines. His unit was part of the push to take heavily defended Mount Macolod. The Japanese had used slave labor to fortify their positions and create underground defenses and tunnels.

U.S. troops used flamethrowers to eliminate some of the enemy bunkers, but the Japanese attacked during the night and following morning with “banzai” charges, according to an online history of the battle.

That supports the family’s account that McCoy was killed while manning his machine gun during a predawn banzai charge on March 29, 1945.

“Every Christmas, we would go to our grandparents, and then to the 11 p.m. service at the Lutheran church,” she said. After church, there were aunts and uncles to visit, and “we’d get home between 2:30 and 4:30 a.m.”

According to a history of the 19th Engineers Battalion (Combat), the Seahorses, as they were nicknamed, “displayed extraordinary heroism in action.” Despite constant enemy harassment that included mined roadways and sniper attacks, the battalion built crucial transportation routes — including one dubbed “Seahorse Highway.”

Kivinen still remembers the last time she saw her cousin.

“He came to see us before shipping out,” she said. “He held my son, Scott, who was probably 3 months old. My last memory of him, Tim was picking the fuzz from between Scott’s toes.”

IRAQ WAR

MASTER SGT. ROBB NEEDHAM

Born: Oct. 26, 1954

Died: Sept. 20, 2006

Baghdad

When Cait and Robb Needham met in 1978, in a community college English class, she was smitten.

“I literally stalked him,” she said. “These days, I’d be arrested.”

Robb apparently didn’t mind, since he and Cait were married for 27 years before he was killed by enemy fire in Baghdad.

He left behind Cait, son Dylan, daughter Robi, and two grandchildren. Her husband was just shy of his 52nd birthday when he was killed, Cait Needham noted.

Robb’s job category in the Army was 11 Bravo — the designation for infantry. He was on active duty with the Army Reserves 1st Battalion, 356th Regiment (Logistical Support), 4th Brigade, 91st Division.

“He was on his second deployment. In August, he told me, ‘Things are getting bad,’ ” the Vancouver woman said.

According to Army sources, Needham was killed by a sniper when his patrol came under enemy fire.

Cait Needham said that her recovery still is a work in progress. The family was rocked by another tragedy in 2008, when Dylan took his own life; he was 23.

Cait said she doesn’t know if her husband’s death was a factor in Dylan’s death, but it certainly didn’t help.

Someone must have notified military officials about Dylan’s death, she added, because a surprising tribute showed up in her mailbox about three weeks later.

“It was a White House envelope, with a coin from President Bush.”

Cait Needham is working on a second master’s degree now, in English and creative writing, to go with her master’s in education. She hopes to wind up in the same sort of place where she and Robb met decades ago by teaching at a community college.

She said she hopes to be a voice for veterans on campus.