NEWBURYPORT - Though some were barely able to make the trip due to illness and inability to walk, the Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2 from World War II got together one last time this weekend.
The group has gone to great lengths to reunite each year to honor friendships and memories.
"We do this for camaraderie," said John Galles, whose daughter, Josie Dow of West Newbury, helped to organize this year's reunion and bring it to Newburyport. "We were part of the greatest generation. We survived depression, war and many hardships, and we are still alive."
The men, now in their middle to late 80s, was part of a 300-person unit stationed in Guam. An elite group, some were bound for medical school or already doctors whose careers were interrupted, while others ranked highly on assessment exams and were drafted into the unit.
The memories of their service still vivid, the reunions are the only bridge from their past to the present, and they travel to a different city each year to meet and reminisce about and discuss the atrocities of war and sickness, and to laugh about their own fleeting histories so many years later.
"It's just great to see all the guys you haven't seen in a year,"said Linwood McElroy, who served as a researcher in the unit. He added, sarcastically, "It's a chance to get together and tell lies and see who is crippled up worse than I."
Bill Hedgecock, an accountant for the unit during the war, said the memories have not faded.
"I have fond memories of the war," he said. "I remember it like it was yesterday."
NAMRU-2's chief objective throughout the war was the study of infectious diseases, which threatened and oftentimes claimed more lives of troops than combat.
First established at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the NAMRU-2 assembled doctors and scientists then at the top of their field to study such infectious diseases as malaria, prickly heat, diarrhea and hookworm.
Though first sent to Iwo Jima, the Solomon Islands, Guadalcanal and New Guinea, the unit was eventually stationed at an established headquarters in Guam under the direction of renowned doctors of the time.
"We lost more men to malaria than anything else," Galles said.
Galles was drafted into the unit with no medical background to work in the administrative offices assisting the researchers in the labs.
"I was 18 and still wet behind the ears," Galles said. "By a stroke of luck I landed in the unit and it changed my whole life."
The small 10-bed hospital in Guam was where a lot of what scientists know about infectious diseases today was found. The NAMRU-2 was among the first to use DDT in containing and treating diseases, Galles said.
Chuck Davinson, a pathologist during the war, often hunted in the jungle for fruit bats, rats and other small rodents that could help him understand what diseases the men were coming in contact with. The animals used for study were later stuffed and put in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, where many are still on display.
For the men who served in Guam, their lives diverged after they returned home. Though Davinson did study veterinary sciences for a short time, most of the men did not continue on with their medical studies.
Galles, 83, works full time at a sporting goods store he owns in Aurora, Ill. McElroy continued his career with the Navy after leaving Guam and now teaches at a university in North Carolina, leading hikers through the N.C. Sea Trail, part of the Smoky Mountain Trail that he helped build while he was in the reserves. Hedgecock worked in upper management of the Cincinnati Bengals for many years before retiring.
Davinson now serves as the NAMRU-2 historian, collecting stories and pictures from the war and sending information out in monthly newsletters he types himself on a typewriter left over from the war.
Over the years, the men have said goodbye to many of their comrades - it is estimated that more than 1,200 World War II veterans die each day - so some widows and family members of the veterans now attend the NAMRU-2 reunions in their place.
"I could not let the unit down," Davinson said. "It's important to stay in touch with the men that helped win the war in the Pacific."
The weekend reunion included a banquet at David's Restaurant in Newburyport and a day of sightseeing in Boston, culminating in a visit to the USS Constitution and a tour of Fenway Park.
Originally Davinson thought there would be no reunion this year, but he teamed up with Dow to make it happen for what most likely will be the last time.
"It's seeing all your old friends each year," Hedgcock said. "We've been through thick and thin, and now we can get together and see how our lives have changed."
