ESCANABA - An event that changed the entire world almost went unnoticed by Leslie Kallio. He had spent the weekend at his family home in Chatham as usual and returned to CCC Camp Evelyn near Munising on that fateful Sunday in 1941. Although he had heard the news earlier in the day, he didn't pay much attention to the report the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor until he returned to the camp that evening.
"When I got back to camp, I saw all the guys standing around the radio," he said. "By Monday morning, we started marching."
By Tuesday, Kallio enlisted in the Army along with four buddies from the Chatham area.
"I guess you could say I traded one uniform for another," Kallio said with a smile. "We enlisted and took our physicals in Marquette, and that same day we were on the train to Fort Sheridan outside Chicago."
Born in Kipling, the youngest of four children, Kallio moved to Chatham with his family when he was a youngster. After his mother's death when he was 12 years old, Kallio was cared for by his older sister until her marriage a year later. He then lived first with one uncle, and then another.
"My dad wanted me to live in Marquette where he worked, but I wanted to go to school in Chatham," he said. "He was on the road and the only time we saw him was on the weekends.
After graduating from Eben High School in the spring of 1941, Kallio signed on for a six-month stint with the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), planting trees for the U.S. Forest Service.
"The CCC camps were part of the government, but our actual work was for the Forest Service," Kallio explained. "Everyone signed up for six months at a time, but by then it was the end of the Depression and CCC camps all over were starting to close." Many of the CCC workers came to Camp Evelyn because it was about the only one left in operation in the Upper Peninsula.
Even though he was glad to have a job, Kallio laughingly said he wasn't really cut out for the work he was assigned to do.
"I drove a tractor, plowing furrows to plant trees in," Kallio said. "I didn't know how to drive a tractor in the first place, and once I ran over a log and landed on the hood of the tractor and hurt my back. After that, every time I hit a bump, it hurt like heck."
Realizing that tractor driving wasn't working out for him, Kallio's next assignment was working in a line with other tree planters.
"We were planting trees in the furrows I had plowed earlier," he said with a laugh. "After we planted the trees, a foreman would come along and pull on the trees to see if they were planted tight enough. If it came up, we had to go back and plant it again."
Kallio said his next job was more suitable to him. "I got a job driving truck," he said. "Then I hauled the guys out to the furrows. I like that a lot better. But that didn't last long because I went into the Army."
A month after enlisting in the military, Kallio underwent basic training in Atlantic City, N.J.
"That's where they held the Miss America pageants," Kallio said. "We all lived in hotels right on the boardwalk, but we did most of our marching in the city dumps. Early in the morning, before it was even daylight, we could hear the clump, clump, clump of the guys marching across the boardwalk. It was pretty scary."
After 20 days of basic training, received orders to begin his schooling, however, just before he was scheduled to board the train for his next assignment., Kallio found himself quite sick and he spent 10 days in the hospital.
"While I was waiting for orders, I spent one day on KP and the next day on guard duty," he said. "That went on for three weeks. We had testing almost every day."
The military's decision that he attend radio school in Athens, Ga., came as quite a surprise to him.
"I'm not sure how that came about," Kallio said with a chuckle. "Before that time, I didn't even know what the back end of a radio looked like. But that's what I was told to do and it wouldn't have made any difference to the military anyway. I did alright, but it was definitely not my line of work."
After 13 weeks of schooling, Kallio was sent to Palm Beach, Fla., for radar training.
"That was really interesting," he said. "We lived in six-men pup tents and the first thing we did every night before we turned in was to shine our flashlights in the tent looking for snakes." Shuddering at the memory, Kallio said, "I hate snakes."
Whenever they were granted leave, Kallio said he and his fellow soldiers went into town.
"That was also interesting," he said. "There were lots and lots of roads, but almost no houses. All the streets were laid out during a land boom in the '20's, but then the stock market crashed in '29 and nobody had any money to build houses."
It was a full year after enlisting that Kallio arrived in Boston in preparation for shipping out for Europe in December 1943.
"We were part of a 50-100 ship convoy of battle ships and destroyers," he said. "I was on the second to last ship and a man in the last ship fell overboard. That ship fell way behind. I guess they were trying to find him. After a time, we heard an announcement over the loud speaker, 'Anyone who goes overboard will not be rescued.'"
The 10-day journey was hardly a pleasure cruise.
"We all shared a bunk with another soldier," Kallio said. "One got the bunk one night and the other slept anywhere he could find a space. I was lucky, though. The guy I shared a bunk with was so afraid of attack, he spent the entire night on deck, so I had the bunk all to myself."
Just as he signed on to work in the CCC camps six months before they were scheduled to close, Kallio's ship docked in Glasgow, Scotland, during the closing months of the war.
"We were sent to England where they were preparing for the invasion of Europe," Kallio said. "The invasion started in June, and Paris was liberated in August."
After spending six months in Paris, Kallio's unit traveled to Belgium and then into Germany.
"I was assigned to Headquarters Company as a back-up crew about 100 miles behind the lines," Kallio said. "We were already in Germany when we heard the war was over. Boy we all celebrated!"
Although he never took part in any military action, Kallio said it was during his sojourn in Germany that he saw the devastation the war had on the German people. In a letter Kallio sent to his sister in Marquette dated Nov. 6, 1945, Kallio wrote, "I'm at an airbase now just outside of Schweinfurt, the city over which we lost so many bombers last year. Boy it sure is bombed to... just a pile of bricks is all that is left."
He also saw horrors that were even more hard to believe. Grimaces are still very evident as Kallio describes what he saw when his unit was bussed in to view the Buchenwald Concentration Camp shortly after it was liberated.
"None of us knew what was going on all during the war," he said. "But when we got there, we saw the furnaces where they killed all those people. There were hooks on the wall, probably where they hung up the prisoners like meat. It was awful. Some of the prisoners were still there and most of them were just skin and bones. The Army was feeding them to help build them back up. It's hard to believe that people could treat other people like that."
Although the war was officially over, Kallio remained in Germany where his unit was assigned to installing radio sites across the country. Most of them had been damaged or destroyed during the war.
"The war was over but it was still pretty scary," Kallio said. "There were reports of snipers and we didn't have any protection other than our own rifles."
Kallio was discharged from the military in December of 1945.
"I was supposed to go to Camp Grant, but I went with a couple of other guys from the U.P. to Camp Sheridan," he said with a wry grin. "My orders said I was going to Camp Grant so it took about eight to 10 days for them to find out where I was. If I hadn't done that, I would have gotten out four or five days earlier."
Kallio wasn't the only member of his family to serve during World War II. One of his brothers signed up for paratrooper training but failed to pass the physical and ended up selling war bonds in the United States. Another brother was sent to the Philippines.
"I got a letter saying Bob was drafted, and by the time I got the next letter, he was on his way to the Philippines," said Kallio. "One day he was part of a rear guard on patrol and when he was going over a hill, he came face to face with a Japanese. Bob got off the first shot. He was lucky."
When he returned to civilian life, Kallio finally settled in Escanaba. He met and married the former Betty Vanlergerghe on Aug. 6, 1949, and the couple raised nine children.
Kallio worked for a time dismantling the ore dock in north Escanaba, and then got a job piling wood at Mead Paper.
"I hated that job," he said emphatically. "I didn't like piling wood when I was a kid so I thought why should I like it now?"
He eventually landed a job as a welder for Harnischfeger, working there for 33 years before retiring shortly after the company closed in 1983. Too young for Social Security, Kallio worked as a motor route driver for the Escanaba Daily Press.
"I was able to get a pension from Harnischfeger, but I still needed some extra money," he said with a laugh. "My wife rode with me and all I had to do was drive. She put the paper in the box. But once she turned 62, she quit and I had to do it myself."
A widower for the past five years, Kallio makes his home in the Soo Hill area in the home he built for his growing family many years ago. The dozens of photographs that fill the walls and line the shelves in his living room reflect his pride in his family. Although he says his memory is fading, he, nevertheless, enjoys reminiscing about his years of service with the CCC and the U.S. Army.
"I never really saw any real action," he said. "I was fortunate that I was able to come back home. Too many others weren't."
