Page 94 - Senior Link Magazine Spring 2018 - Online Magazine

HONORING SENIORS

Eldie Scheffel

The Coldest

Winter I Ever Saw

by Katherine McLamore and Larry Williams
Veterans Liaison Co-Chairs Texas South Plains Honor Flight

His unit narrowly averted disaster before they
even arrived. Their ship was fired on by a Japanese
submarine, which fortunately missed both the
front and back of the ship. The soldiers spent over
a year on the islands. His memory of the chilling
experience is vivid. With temperatures reaching –59
degrees, he noted that “you would turn blue before
you could finish taking a shower.”

Eldie was drafted into the Army on January 18,
1942, 52 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He
or 97-year-old Eldie Scheffel, the time spent spent 13 weeks in basic training in Ft. Robinson,
on the Aleutian Islands was the coldest he’d California, many of them as a calisthenics
Fever experienced, either before or since. He instructor. He asked his sergeant for a transfer
was part of the Army’s 7th Infantry but was denied. He finally went to a
sent to rid the island of occupied “He was selected to be colonel who granted him a transfer to
one of the soldiers who
Japanese in 1943. The islands, part of escorted the president’s Ft. Benning, Georgia. There he began
the Alaskan territory, were critical to body to the train infantry training and continued as a
Pacific supply routes for both Japan station. ” calisthenics instructor. Toward the
and the United States. Eldie said he end of his “3 years, 9 months and 4
stayed in a “two-man foxhole on a cliff overlooking days” of service, Eldie was once again
the bay.” The assignment was to watch for enemy stationed at Ft. Benning when the news came on
soldiers still left on the island after the invasion. April 12, 1945 that President Franklin Roosevelt had
died at the “Little White House” in Warm Springs,
Georgia. He was selected to be one of the soldiers
who escorted the President’s body to the train
station. Eldie left the service on November 1, 1945,
but he comments that the military “helped him to
appreciate life and discipline.”

Upon first meeting or speaking with Eldie W.
Scheffel, one senses that there are some good stories
waiting to be told. His blue eyes sparkle as he tells
of his first memories of the two-room schoolhouse
in Prairie View, Texas. He remembers, with a smile,

94 Lubbock Senior Link