LEE GULZOW
Age: 86
Born: Oct. 26, 1923
Hometown: Grand Island, Neb.
Residence: Cathedral City
Military branch: U.S. Army Airborne; 13th Airborne Division; 513th Signal Corps
Years served: March 1942-September 1945
Rank: T-4 sergeant
Family: Lady friend Barbara Caliguiri; wife Betty (deceased); two children, Jim Gulzow of Battle Ground, Wash., and John Gulzow of Newport Beach; four grandchildren; one great-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. Women's Army Corps veteran Lucile Kraehling of Palm Springs.
LEARN MORE: Read about other Coachella Valley residents who served in World War II at mydesert.com/wwii.
More
Lee Gulzow, the youngest of six children growing up on a family farm in Nebraska, could have taken a pass on military service, but decided to follow his older brothers and join the fight.
In those days, you could get a deferment if you worked on a farm. Food production, be it crops or cattle, had to continue on pace, regardless if the country was at war.
“I had three brothers in the military and I thought I was no better than my brothers,” so he enlisted, he said.
His brothers — all in the Army — ended up serving in the Pacific, while Gulzow was assigned to the European theater.
Gulzow, 18 and married at the time, was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., for basic training.
After completing basic training, he was sent to Fort Bragg, N.C., where he was assigned to the 13th Airborne Division, glider troops, as a radio operator.
Glider training was not an uplifting experience for Gulzow.
“The first two times they flipped over when they landed,” he said.
Since there was no financial incentive for tumbling around on the ground in a glider, he decided to volunteer for the paratroopers.
He figured he'd take his chances jumping out of a plane, with a parachute — rather than risking crash-landing in an engine-less aircraft.
At least it paid better.
“It was $50 a month extra,” he said.
Gulzow completed jump school at Fort Benning, Ga., and his division was eventually shipped overseas, landing in Le Havre, France, in February 1945.
After years of training, however, the group never got the chance to get into combat.
“We were supposed to jump on four different occasions,” he said.
But each time the missions were canceled.
“Every time we got on a plane to go, General (George) Patton would break through the German line and the mission would be canceled,” Gulzow said. “You go back to base and wait until the next time.
“We got very upset with him,” Gulzow said.
“But you know, if it hadn't have been for him, I might not be sitting here right now,” he added.
Back at the base, Gulzow worked as a radioman, sending and receiving Morse Code messages.
The men also participated in an almost daily exercise ritual.
“Every morning we got up and ran 5 miles,” he said. “That was before you even ate — you ran when you first got up — at 5 a.m.”
Once, when the men were given a pass to leave the base, Gulzow and two of his buddies decided to take a walk to a nearby town.
Along the way, they found a quicker mode of transportation.
Walking by a farmhouse, “We saw three donkeys,” he said. “We rode them into town.”
After the 3-mile ride, “We turned them loose so they could go back to their farm.”
“When VE (Victory in Europe) Day came, we were assigned to a troop ship in a convoy to take us to the South Pacific,” he said. “But during our trip, the Japanese surrendered. The convoy just turned around and headed back for the States.
“Me and my brothers, we all came back — no wounds, no nothing,” he said.
In 1947, two years after the war ended, Gulzow moved California, settling in Buena Park.
“I just wanted to get away from the farm work,” he said.
He began running heavy equipment — “dozers and backhoes,” he said — working for companies including Los Angeles-based Pacific Pipeline and Hood Construction in Whittier.
Gulzow, who retired to the desert in 1991, worked in the Coachella Valley earlier in his career when “there was only one street through town — Highway 111,” he said. “There was nothing between Palm Springs and Indio.
“I probably put in 1,000 miles of underground telephone and Edison lines from Palm Springs to Indio to Yucca Valley and Joshua Tree,” he said.
Even in pre-construction boom days, the desert landscape was treated with respect.
While digging underground to lay cable, “If we had to move a cactus, we had to replant it,” he said.
