RAYMOND G. LIRES
Age: 92
Born: Sept. 13, 1917
Hometown: Santa Paula
Residence: Palm Desert
Military branch: U.S. Army; 37th Infantry Division
Years served: July 1940-April 1946. Recalled in 1950. Served in the Korean War
Rank: First lieutenant
Family: Wife Edna; two children, Steve Lires of Tustin and John Lires (deceased); one grandchild
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
Coming tomorrow
U.S. Navy veteran Phil Davies of Rancho Mirage.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
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Raymond Lires was awarded two Bronze Stars for directing precise artillery fire on enemy positions in the Philippines during World War II.
Lires, a forward artillery observer with the 37th Infantry Division, first set foot on Luzon, Philippine Islands, at the beaches of Lingayen Gulf.
“I made the landing on the first day,” Lires said. “I climbed over the side on the rope ladder and into a Higgins boat.”
When the boat hit the shore, “I noticed that the Navy and Air Force had bombed the landing site so intensely, we made the landing without resistance.”
“I was with the infantry and they fought their way to Clark Field and pushed the Japanese south to Mt. Pinatubo we overwhelmed them. We pushed on to Manila. We liberated Santo Tomas University that had been made into a prison camp. They had thousands of civilian prisoners.”
Lires directed artillery fire to free the prisoners.
For these actions, Lires was awarded his first Bronze Star.
Lires was awarded his second Bronze Star during a tank battle in Northern Luzon.
“The wet season is so severe, the whole countryside turns to mud,” Lires said. “Our six-wheel, four-wheel drive trucks couldn't move in the mud. The only place we could move was on the road.”
The roads were very narrow and had been built by digging a ditch on each side to build up the road.
“We were now forward with the infantry, and I was with the jeep off the road to the right,” Lires said. “There were some tanks leading the way. Way up ahead, a Japanese gun shot the lead tank.”
Lires watched as the second tank was hit and the third tank was being shelled by the Japanese.
He had to get up on the road to determine where to tell the artillery to aim their fire.
“My radio wasn't working too good,” he said. “I had to climb down to direct the fire then back up to see where it hit.”
Lires went back and forth, calling the adjustments to the artillery, then climbing back up to the road to see the results.
“Everything was happening at once,” he said. “When we left the area, nobody tells anybody anything,” about casualties. “It all happened at once and we had to move on.”
“Lieutenant Lires maintained his position until he was sure the hostile emplacement had been well-covered by artillery. After the area was captured, it was found his fire had destroyed two Japanese 70 mm field guns,” reads his Bronze Medal award citation.
Lires volunteered for the California National Guard in July 1940 while living in the town of Hueneme in Ventura Country.
“We knew we were going to go to war,” he said. “I wanted to join so I could go in with friends. Everyone was joining in that area and they were all volunteers.”
A new artillery unit was forming up at the time.
“They appropriated two guns (French artillery field guns used in World War I) from another unit and formed the Battery E of the 144th Field Artillery Division,” he said. “They selected a captain to run it. He was the local president of the Bank of America in Hueneme. One of his underling officers was a bartender in town. We kept that secret because the colonel was a teetotaler,” he said, laughing.
The men were inducted into federal service on Oct. 15, 1940, loaded on a train and delivered to Ft. Lewis, Wash., where they trained until Dec. 7., 1941.
“We heard on the radio about Pearl Harbor,” Lires said. “Everybody in camp had to load up all the equipment on trucks and scatter out in the woods. We didn't have intelligence to tell us where the Japanese were. We didn't want to get caught with our pants down.”
A few weeks later, they were sent to Fort MacArthur, Calif.
“They placed us one gun, every 15 miles apart, from San Diego to Goleta to protect the coast of California from any attack from the Japanese.”
Around July 1942, Lires was assigned to officer candidate school at Fort Sill, Okla.
After receiving his commission as second lieutenant, he returned to California and was soon on his way across the Pacific, to Schofield Barracks in Oahu, Hawaii, where he was put in charge of a labor battalion.
“One of the jobs I had they sent me with a squad of men to a little island. We later found out it was Lanai . I was the military governor of the island for over a week, a green second lieutenant. That was fun.”
From Lanai, Lires was sent to the Solomon Islands, landing on Guadalcanal as the fighting ended there, then on to Bougainville and finally to the Philippines, where he fought until the end of the war.
If the war had continued, the division would have been one of the first to attack Japan.
“The predictions were 95 percent casualties,” Lires said. “The atom bomb saved my life.”
