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Unlikely friendship honors Mt. Pleasant World War II veteran
A friendship forged through a random pairing on an Honor Flight remains strong nearly a decade later
MT. PLEASANT — While some honored veterans in public ceremonies and with memorials across the state over the weekend, others, like Nancy Love, do so through service and friendship throughout the year.
Warren Burns, who turns 100 years old in January, is one of the more than 276,000 Iowans that joined the United States military during World War II.
According to the National World War II Museum, only 1,227 of these World War II veterans are still alive today across the state.
Nancy Love, of Altoona, expressed her gratitude that she met Burns through her time serving as a guardian with the Eastern Iowa Honor Flights.
Somehow out of the 47 flights and 4,243 veterans served since Eastern Iowa Honor Flights began in 2009, Love and Burns were randomly paired on the 2014 flight.
“You get assigned to a veteran and that’s the only one you work with that trip,” Love explained her experience as a guardian on Honor Flights.
Throughout the trip guardians like Love help their assigned veterans in any way they need as they make their way around Washington, D.C. visiting monuments and memorials.
According to Eastern Iowa Honor Flights, their mission is “to provide veterans with a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to visit monuments and memorials built in their honor for the sacrifice and service they made for our freedom.”
The flight provided Burns with a trip of a lifetime, but also a long-lived friendship with Love that never would have happened if it weren’t for the flight.
“She was so nice on that honor flight and it was the seventh time she had gone on it,” Burns said. “She told me different things and then she wheeled me around the whole day in a wheelchair. That was some day!”
Seeing the World War II Memorial was Burns’ favorite part of the trip.
“I think that stands out the most,” Burns said. “We stayed there for a while and [Love] told me all about it and it was real nice.”
Burns could not believe how many people wanted to shake his hand and thank him for his service as he made his way through the trip, because for him, serving was just the right thing to do.
Burns served in the United States Army Air Corps for three years with the sole purpose of fighting for what he believed in.
“I thought it was for a good cause,” Burns said was his reasoning for enlisting in the military at 18 years old. “During World War II, I thought we were doing some good then.”
Nearly a decade following his Honor Flight, Love still keeps in touch with Burns and even recently visited him with her daughter so they could take a drive to enjoy the autumn leaves.
While Love is not a veteran herself, she holds a special place in her heart for those who served because her father was a veteran.
“I was just too young and naive when I lost my dad to know how important this stuff was,” she said. “We were so close and everything, but we just didn’t talk about the military part of it all.”
With her friendships built through the Honor Flights, though, Love is making up for that.
“These veterans are a dying breed,” Love said. “There's just so few of them left, and he just knows so much.”
Love enjoys hearing all the stories Burns has to tell about his time serving in World War II. Because she thinks these stories are important to remember, she has even begun to keep a journal of the ones Burns tells.
“Yesterday when I was talking to him, he’d gotten into a box of letters that he had written to his mom and grandma when he was in the service,” Love said.
According to Burns, his mother and grandmother saved all of the letters he wrote.
While Burns says there were plenty of “real scary” moments during his service in Italy, such as arriving in Naples and hearing explosions in the middle of the night, he more often wrote to his mother and grandmother of good moments.
“I was up on the mountainside and ran into this olive tree,” he shared. “There were purple olives all over that tree. They looked so beautiful, and I tried to eat one, but boy it was bitter!”
“It was no good, but boy it was just as pretty a color as could be,” Burns said.
Burns recalled another time he was working out of an office in Italy during his service when he took another break on the mountainside.
“I took the 45 caliber pistol up on the mountainside,” he recalled. “There were lizards running around and they were, I would say, a foot long. They were great big! I would try to shoot and hit one of them, but I couldn’t ever hit them. Those things were so quick. Boy, they were fast.”
Burns recently found a noteworthy letter in the box his grandmother and mother kept.
“I found [a letter] the other day that said, ‘Grandma, I’m glad to tell you the war just ended,’” Burns shared.
Burns remembers that moment 78 years ago as a 21-year-old man on duty at 2:15 a.m. when a man came in and started handing out newspapers declaring the war had ended.
He still has a copy of that newspaper along with his military uniform from the day he arrived back home.
While Love encourages Burns to keep all his memorabilia items that tell of an important period of time in world history, she really thinks that Burns himself “is just a treasure. Everybody that meets him thinks that.”
The sentiment is reciprocated as Burns said, “We sure wish we could have been closer together. We just enjoy it to the fullest when we get together.”
Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com
