Bonaker honored
as grand marshal
Annually the Bella Vista Patriots host the Fourth of July Patriot Parade. The purpose of the parade is to celebrate Independence Day and we do that by honoring our past and present military personnel. Each year we choose a World War II veteran to be our parade grand marshal.
This year's grand marshal will be Army T-5 Russ Bonacker. We also interview and tape these grand marshal's war experiences as well as other veterans. We send these recordings to the Veteran's History Project, a program of the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. These Bella Vista submissions can be viewed at lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/vhp/html/search/browse-state.html.
Bonacker was one of the members of the "Battling Bastards of Bastogne." As a reminder of history, the Battle of the Bulge was the bloodiest battle of WW II. More than 600,000 troops were involved and more than 19,000 soldiers were killed and tens of thousands were wounded. Many of the wounds were due to the harshest winter in European history and the troops did not have proper winter uniforms.
On December 16, 1944, Adolf Hitler decided to make one last effort to sever the Allied lines and send troops north to the warehouses at Antwerp .
To get there, the German troops had to get through the crossroads of Bastogne. German officers under a white flag met with Brig. Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe, acting division commander of the 101st Airborne, and asked him if they could pass through Bastogne without conflict. Gen. McAuliffe's answer was the famous quote, "Nuts."
Russ Bonacker was born in Sue Falls, S.D. in 1923. Immediately after graduation from high school, he was drafted into the Army. He attended basic training at Camp Adair in Oregon and was certified as a medical and surgical technician. After boot camp, his unit boarded a troop ship in Boston Harbor and sailed on a ten day trip to Marseilles, France. From there as a combat medic he fought his way through many hellish battles to what was supposed to be a safe place near Bastogne.
In the interview Russ brought out an important point about what veteran's remember about their war experiences. Their remembrance of the war is limited to their own visual and hearing range. There is little recognition of the whole picture as to who is winning and who is losing.
Every soldier has a job to do and for Russ his view of the war was looking down into a torn laceration and trying to figure out a way to stop the bleeding and then how to get that wounded soldier from point A to point B to receive more definitive medical care.
Returning to New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty, Russ and other returnees were met with water cannons arching spays of water over the ship and throngs of people playing music and waving American flags.
On the home front, Louise remembers rationing stamps, collecting tin cans, kitchen grease, coat hangers and gold stars hanging in windows.
Since the war years, Russ and his wife, Louise, are highly respected in northwest Arkansas for their volunteerism and public service to all of us.
Jim Parsons
Chairman, Bella Vista Patriots
Editorial on 06/24/2015