Soldier's path leads back to Ojai
by Kelly Feser Eells

Local rancher Bruce Vail, one of 33 veterans featured in "Ojai Valley's Veterans Stories," is retired, but far from idle.
The Ojai resident looks as fit and trim as he did in 1946, the year he graduated from Nordhoff High School. Must be "all those avocados" he and his wife of 47 years, Lavonne, planted on their Fairview Road property; "They keep us quite busy!"
The Korean War vet grew up in Meiners Oaks, "When there were only about 50 families living there. In fact, the population of the entire valley was less than 2,000 people."
The "Y," like most of the valley itself, "was a cattle grazing pasture. Hay ranches, orange orchards, it was wilderness!
"Everybody knew everybody," he smiles, adding that, when he was a teenager, "We hated that. Whenever anybody got into trouble, the whole town knew it!"
This "sleepy and tranquil place," however, was forever changed "with that momentous event at Pearl Harbor."
Some 5,000 infantry troops set up camp at the Ojai Valley Inn, "and started training at the mouth of Matilija Canyon. You could hear the rumble and roar of 60-mm mortars and 75-mm guns exploding just a mile from the Nordhoff campus. I remember seeing hundreds upon hundreds of infantrymen marching (from here) to Ventura, training."
Ojai's troops were, ironically, shipped to Attu and Kiska "to halt the Japanese invasion of Alaska. Here they were training in 100-degree heat" and being sent to what ("Ojai Valley's Veterans Stories" co-author) David Pressey describes as a "place where you'd just as likely freeze to death" as die in battle.
War colored every aspect of the teenage Vail's life. "As soon as you graduated high school, you were drafted. So a couple of friends and I decided to beat them to the punch. We went up to Santa Barbara (to enlist), but when we got there, we were told that, since the war had ended - this was June, 1946 - they were discouraging people from enlisting. But when the Korean War came along, guess who was No. 1 on the list?"
Though Vail had hoped to join the Navy, the Army had other plans for him. "The very day I filled out all these papers (at the Navy recruiting office) was the day I got my draft notice!"
He was sent to Ford Ord for basic training, then to "hot and humid Fort Benning, Georgia," for advance combat training. "As our training progressed, we were thinking we were going to Korea. So imagine our surprise when we found out we were going to Germany.
"All of a sudden, we realized something was up. We thought that, since the Army was engaged in heavy combat against the Chinese in Korea, that that's where we were going. But, as it turned out, Harry Truman had decided there was something going on with the Russians, so they put us up on the Czech border facing thousands of Soviet tanks." He shakes his head and adds, "and we're thinking, 'Great. So I'm gonna stop a Russian tank with an M-1 rifle?'"
Though Vail spent two icy winters "digging foxholes," there were certainly worse places to be. And he remains "ever grateful that," unlike some of his friends and acquaintances from Nordhoff High School, he was able to come home and "lead a long, happy and satisfying life."

© 2002 The Ojai Valley News

Back to the news