It wasn’t the first time that John Pope had seen the pictures his father took when he was a B-25 tail gunner in the South Pacific during World War II, but when he found them after his mother died last year, they took on new meaning.
“I never really had looked at them that intensely before,” said Pope, 63. “I wished that he had talked to me about them, but he had a little PTSD and he didn’t want to talk” about the war.
Pope brought the pictures, along with a collection documenting his grandfather’s life on the front lines during WW I, back to his home in Windsor, after finding them while going through his mother’s home in Red Cloud, Neb.
The collections depict life during the two greatest military conflicts of the 20th century.
Pope’s father, Edsel, who died in 2002, went into the Army Air Corps after graduating from high school in Red Cloud.
The pictures he brought home from the war were taken between bombing runs, many of them at a base in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island in the western Philippines.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope during World War II at a base in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope was a B-25 tail gunner in the South Pacific during World War II stationed in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
The base where Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope was stationed in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
The base where Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope was stationed in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
The base where Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope was stationed in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope in a destroyed plane in the South Pacific during World War II stationed in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope during World War II at a base in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
The base where Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope was stationed in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
The base where Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope was stationed in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
The base where Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope was stationed in Puerto Princesa, on Palawan Island, in the western Philippines. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A photo Edsel Pope saved from his service during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope, right, and an unknown fellow soldier during World War II. Pope served in the United States military during World War II. He brought back dozens of photos from his time overseas, mostly from where he was stationed in the South Pacific.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
A group photo from Gowen Field, Idaho, where Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope trained. The top four men from left to right are Officers Olson, Shanks, Mayer and Melnek. The front six are flight crew members Edsel Pope, Thomas, Nesbitt, Conner, Lewis and Harbaugh.
Edsel’s father, Elton, fought in WWI and left behind photos that document his time as a Doughboy in Europe. Pope plans to donate those pictures to the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo.
The grainy black-and-white photos that Elton left include a horde of German prisoners, a soldier in a gas mask, artillery pieces, blasted buildings and shattered railroad tracks, but there are no pictures of the trenches strung across miles of muddy battlegrounds that are so emblematic of the first world war.
The former machine gunner, who was with the U.S. Army’s 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, told his grandson that “we were pushing and moving so fast we never had time to dig in.”
By the time his son was eligible for the draft, Elton was serving on the local selective service board. Pope said Edsel “didn’t want his dad to have to draft him, so he signed up while he was in high school.”
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Staff Sergeant Edsel Pope, left, and his father Private Elton Pope in front of the family home in Red Cloud, Nebraska in their military uniforms from World War II and World War I. Edsel Pope enlisted in the military before graduating from high school because he did not want his father, then a recruiter, to have to draft him. He left for training right after his high school graduation.
Edsel was allowed to finish his education before beginning active service.
In Edsel’s pictures, thatched roof huts line a beach, young men play cards on a blanket and pose beside aircraft, a native carries bunches of bananas, and others go about their lives.
Photos taken in the heat of battle provide a treasure trove of information about the horrors of war, said Megan Friedel, curator of photography and moving images at History Colorado.
But pictures showing combatants during their downtime are just as valuable. A collection like Pope’s may not reflect the experiences that led to his father’s post-traumatic stress, instead showing a more cheerful side of military life, Friedel said.
“They may be taking them for people back home and want to portray a particular life on the military campaign that depicts it as rosier than it really was,” she said. Or the photos may be taken to document the experiences of those doing the fighting.
Pope, a psychiatrist who worked for 25 years with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care system, knows well the signs of PTSD. Many of his patients struggled with the condition.
But growing up, he had no idea that his father was living with trauma, he said.
Pope remembers a few conversations about the war that he had with his father. On one mission, he told his son, shrapnel hit both his helmet and chest, but he wasn’t hurt.
On a mission over Vietnam, his crew bombed Japanese troop transports, and Edsel told his son he regretted having to attack soldiers who weren’t shooting at them.
The missions he flew were often close to the ground and rarely attracted enemy aircraft. Instead, the danger came from anti-aircraft guns, and other ground fire, that peppered the sky around them with exploding shells and shrapnel.
Pope once gave his father a tape recorder and asked him to record his memories of the war.
Edsel held on to the recorder for a time, and then returned it, saying he couldn’t resurrect that part of his past.
He preferred to tell stories of those he served with, or met while stationed in the Philippines, where local people were fighting the Japanese. He remembered a local chieftain who would paddle his boat around the islands and spy on the Japanese military.
“Dad became a friend, and he gave Dad a sword and offered one of his wives when he found out Dad wasn’t married. Dad said, ‘I have a girl back home.’ ”
Edsel’s pictures include photos of him and his fellow crew members posed in front of the bombers “with girls painted on them. Those were kind of classic.”
After the war ended, Edsel served in the Army of Occupation in Japan. “He was really fond of Japanese people. He knew they didn’t cause all the trouble.”
The war in Japan ended after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Pope once asked his father what he thought of the bombings that killed or injured as many as a quarter million people in the two cities. “I thought it was a pretty good deal, because we were packing up, getting ready to invade,” he replied, “and we knew that not many of us were not coming home.”
Pope wonders how many more photo collections like the ones he has are sitting unnoticed in the homes of veterans who rarely speak of them. “How many thousands of these photos are out there of these men that are sitting in their houses that nobody knows much about and they don’t talk about.”
Shortly before his grandfather died, Pope asked him what he had done in the war. “He looked at me shocked, and said nobody had ever asked him about it,” Pope said.
The old man, who was 87 when he died in 1984, left the room and returned with a collection of pictures.
Pope has favorite shots among both collections.
There are several of his grandfather, where “he was trying to look kind of studly.”
“That was something that I never knew about him. This was a young man, he had all that jet-black hair, and it was a totally different picture I had of him,” Pope said. “As my grandfather, he was just this stately old gentleman.”
Katie Wood, The Denver Post
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Private Elton Pope during World War I. Elton Pope was drafted into World War I and went with the Army Expeditionary Forces to France and Germany. It wasn't until he was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he did in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about his service and fighting in the war.
Photo courtesy of John Pope
Elton Pope, standing, second from right, in the Fall of 1913 in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Just a few years later, Elton was drafted into the first world war. Initially he was a bugler and then became a machine gunner when they trained for deployment to Europe. It wasn't until Pope was 87 years old, when his grandson John Pope asked him what he had done in World War I, that he brought out photo albums and memorabilia from the first world war. Until that time, Pope's family had assumed he didn't want to talk about the war.
