Page 109 - Senior Link Magazine Fall 2020- Online Magazine

ARMY AIR CROPS
WWII

LUBBOCK
ranch and sold it. I went to
Colorado for a short time doing ranch work. I moved to
Muleshoe and ranched and farmed there. I met Sondra
Wagnon, who was still in high school; I was quite a bit
older than her. We got married in December 1951. We
lived there for 27 years and then moved to Lubbock in
1979. I went to work in real estate in 1981 and did that
until sometime in the early 2000s.” Clarence’s pride
and joy are his three children, three grandkids and five
great-grandkids.

Mason’s long and illustrious family history of
military service did not romanticize his own personal
experience. Looking back on his time in the service
during WWII, Mason just philosophizes matter-of-
factly, “War was a necessity.”

the lines, then on to an evac hospital. I was put on
a plane with other wounded and flown to an Army
hospital in Taunton, England. It was there that
I received my Purple Heart. I stayed there three
months because I developed an infection in my leg.
If you were able, you went back to the front, but I
was sent back to the states on a Liberty ship. I was
sent to Halloren Hospital in Staten Island, New
York (the world’s largest Army Hospital at the
time). I stayed there a week and was then loaded
on a train and sent to Modesto, California. The
trip took five days down the old original Union
Pacific railroad. After a few days, I was sent back
to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.
I was home on leave in Snyder when Germany
surrendered in May 1945.”

His time in the service was not quite over. “I was
worried that I might be sent to the Pacific but was
still having trouble with my ankle. I had surgery
on my ankle at McCloskey General Hospital
(named after the first U.S. Army doctor to be
killed in WWII on March 26, 1942 on Bataan). I
was finally discharged on September 28, 1945.
I returned to Snyder, but Dad soon split up the

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