World War II veterans at the Spiritwood at Pine Lake assisted living facility in Issaquah shared their stories in a moving Veterans Day ceremony led by Issaquah/Mount Si VFW Post 3436 Commander Dean Van Dyke and Vice Commander David Waggoner, along with Spiritwood’s executive director Michelle Strazis.

“We just wanted to come out and say thank you for your sacrifice … all of you who served in whatever capacity, because you served, we’re free,” Waggoner said.

Most of the veterans were just teenagers when they marched off to Europe and the Pacific to face the very real possibility of death.

Nick Grossi, 91, said that he was “18 and still in high school” when he was told he had to go to war in 1943. While fighting behind the front lines in Dahl, Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge, Grossi was wounded by shrapnel along with everyone in his unit.

Though Grossi was wounded on his lap so badly that his three layers of clothing “were all ripped,” he made his way through the snow, all the while ducking from enemy fire, to the headquarter group to report the casualties.

Grossi explained how the hatred spread through war can poison entire cultures against one another.

“We had been indoctrinated to hate the Germans — we couldn’t wait to get into Germany to see these terrible people,” Grossi said. “It turns out they were just the opposite.”

Henry Finkle, 99, recalled “swimming among enemy fire” with two broken ribs in the ice-cold waters of the Pacific after he was forced to abandon ship in the Aleutian Islands. Despite the horrors, the Navy veteran was able to laugh about the experience, noting that he would have made it through the jump without injury had he not looked down at the last second, which prompted him to land at an angle, breaking his ribs.

In the Air Force, Bob Nuss, 96, experienced the “island hopping” of 1945, when the Allies focused on gaining control over individual islands so as to weaken Japan. Nuss called this time period “the amazing summer of 1945.”

“In May, my organization was based in New Guinea,” he said. “Four months later we were in Japan. If it hadn’t been for those two (atomic) bombs, the war would’ve gone on much longer; we’d have lost millions more men.”

Harry Burke, 90, agreed, stating that “the atom bomb saved my life” while serving in the Pacific as a young Marine. Like Grossi reported in Europe, Burke said that the war on the Japanese side also included plenty of outrageous rumors about the enemy.

“The Japanese told the people of Saipan that we were cannibals, and moved them to caves” to hide them, he said. “It was our job to go up and bring them down.”

Though not a veteran, Daphne Willsmore, 90, offered a look at the war experience in one of the Allied nations. Growing up outside London, Willsmore was barely into her teens when the Blitz made losing her family and home to bombs a daily possibility.

“We lived in the air raid shelter at night,” Willsmore said. She recalled that one time the siren had sounded while she was taking a bath, causing her to run to the shelter in a towel, and laughed that the family’s cat always was the first one to the shelter.

Especially terrifying were the V-1 flying bombs, known colloquially as “doodlebugs,” the remote-controlled missiles launched at Britain by the Luftwaffe. Willsmore remembered one time that a flying bomb had been coming right at her and “we ran like hell.” It was quite a lot for a teenager to deal with, she said, but she and her family took things “one day at a time.”

“You did what you had to during the war,” Willsmore said. “You carried on.”

Harry Burke, 90, recounts his time fighting in the Pacific Islands during the final days of World War II. Nicole Jennings/staff photo

Nick Grossi, 91, was sent to Europe to fight in World War II at age 18, before he had even finished high school. Nicole Jennings/staff photo