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Always Faithful, Always Free: Local man’s third book takes him from “holler” to the other side of the world and back The stars were all wrong. That’s the first thing Thurman Miller would notice as he crawled bleary-eyed from his tent those cold mornings in Australia.
As a boy growing up in Wyoming County in the 1920’s, Miller loved to roam the hills, exploring every little bend of his beloved Cedar Creek homestead. He can still remember how clear the skies were, in those days before electricity and exploration of the rich coal seams beneath the hills.
But now he was in the Land Down Under, retraining for a new South Pacific assignment against the Japanese who threatened the small island chain. His new brothers in arms had been sent to replace those lost in the bitter fight on Guadalcanal, and they all knew another battle was imminent.
On those clear mornings when he first looked up at the sky, before the sun was up, he saw not the familiar Milky Way and Big Dipper but the Southern Cross. “I always took a moment to marvel at the chain of circumstances that had brought this country boy so far from home. I wondered, as we all did, whether I’d ever see my familiar stars again.”
Born in 1919, Miller grew up in a huge family on a subsistence farm near Otsego. Still very mentally alert as he approaches his eighty-ninth birthday, he can clearly recall the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, and the rumbles of war from far-off Europe. He enlisted in the Marine Corps the year before Pearl Harbor, and made Gunny Sergeant before being shipped off to the South Pacific. He would go on to fight in several historic Solomon Island battles before returning to his beloved America. He taught future officers at Camp LeJeune before his discharge, then had a long career in the coal mines before his retirement.
But his time in the South Pacific cast a long shadow across his life. The malaria and other diseases he picked up there would lay dormant for years, only to erupt time again. As with many soldiers, memories of the horrific bloodshed he witnessed would sometime overwhelm him.
As one way to deal with this post-traumatic stress, Miller bought a small Royal typewriter and began writing about his experiences. He wrote about the war but also about growing up in the country, recalling how they lived off the land and thereby grew to respect it. He wrote about being the first human to see the fossils embedded in a coal seam he’d just brought down with a dynamite charge. He wrote about sharing his life with a woman who understood what a price he’d paid for protecting our way of life. And there was more: Letters to the editor, short fiction, even poems.
Miller never intended to publish his writing. Much of it was too personal and his war experiences too raw to share with just anyone. However, when he reached his eightieth birthday he finally agreed to let his son David organize his work and see who might be interested in it. The younger Miller had experience editing books, and together they spent a year sorting and revising the material.
“I was astounded at how much he’d written,” David says. “Because he lived the se days, and could still recall everything from even before the Great Depression, I recognized that this was primary source material for historians. But it’s also a great human interest story. He really overcame a lot, and writes with so much humor and clarity I knew others would see how valuable it is to have an elder set this down.” David reminded him of the old saying: When an elder dies, a library burns. Convinced, he and his father set to work. They found they had enough material for several books.
The first, “War and Work,” focused on his youth and service in the war and was published in 2001. “Coal Bloom” followed in 2003, with a great deal of material about life in the country. It also included material from numerous interviews the Millers conducted with surviving members of the First Marine Division’s K Company. Thurman was one of the first men off the boat on20Guadalcanal, and other Marines were quick to recall his leadership, but were also forthcoming about how the war had affected the rest of their lives. Miller’s third and (he says) final book has now been published. It includes much additional material about old-time West Virginia ways of living, from medicinal plants to old children’s games, and more memories of his wartime experience. But as the manuscript was being prepared he recalled an old acquaintance from Australia who had contacted him asking about his South Pacific service.
Rob Crawford,a retired martial arts insructor, travelled extensively in the Solomon chain retracing the steps of the brave Americans who literally saved his country.
Crawford writes, “ I have written many articles on the war in the past twenty years, made many trips to Guadalcanal, and undertaken thousands of hours of research. Still, I am still unable to g rasp the reality faced by these heroic men. It is only through the writing of men such as Thurman Miller that we can gain an understanding of the truth and power of the human spirit in such conditions.”
Crawford was happy to assist with material on the Marines’ time in Australia, and even shipped Miller a small vial of sand from Guadalcanal—sand that may have at one time been soaked in the blood of his comrades. Miller writes, “I can forget very few things about that time, for the images are embedded in my memory so deeply that the mere mention of these islands, where my life changed forever, brings them back immediately. That small vial of sand is a tangible reminder of the sacrifice paid for the freedom we enjoy here in the U.S., but also in that small chain of islands Down Under.”
Miller’s new book, “Always Faithful, Always Free,” has just been published by iUniverse. (The title is taken from the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fi, and the West Virginia state motto, Montani Semper Liberi.) 20 The emotional heart of the book, and, Miller says, the most difficult to write, is his tribute to his beloved wife Recie, who passed away in January. “She was my rock, my doctor when I was sick, the best mother any man could wish for his children.” Rather than sadness, Miller hopes his decription of their six decades of marriage is seen as a celebration and testament to the power of a faithful commitment between two people.
After fifty years in the coal camp of Helen, Miller moved to near Mt. Hope a few years ago, where their daughter Gloria could help him nurse Recie through her final days. He still works in his shop every morning, still writes most afternoons. And when the sky is clear, late in the evening, he goes out to a clearing and looks up at the stars, remembering the Southern Cross. He still marvels at Milky Way and the chain of events that took him so far from his mountain home and brought him safely back to live the extraordinary life he’s been granted. |