Pittsley's Tale of Service Cut Short in Last Week's Gazette; Here's The Full Story...A Correction

MIDDLEBORO GAZETTE, P. 1, CORRECTION, November 12, 2015: By Bob Barboza, Contributing Writer.

.....(We short changed our readers with the brief description of the military service of U.S.
Army veteran Russell Pittsley, 95, of Middleboro in last week's article on the two grand
marshals of the annual Veterans Day parade. Here's the full correct version of Pittsley's service...)

......MIDDLEBORO - Russell Pittsley was 20 years old when he walked into the local National Guard

recruiting station in the spring of 1940 with his buddies Ernest Ray and Earl Tetrault and

enlisted.

......After training in New York, the young soldiers were assigned to an anti-aircraft unit of

the coastal artillery; not long after, with war in Europe breaking out, "President Franklin D.

Roosevelt federalized the National Guard," Pittsey recalled. "We're in the regular Army now,"

he told his buddies.

......Soon after, the anti-aircraft battery was shipped to Texas for coastal defense duty. "I

was there 14 months before Pearl Harbor,the surprise attack that threw America into war with

Japan. Once the Japanese were identified as the most immediate threat to the country, the whole

battalion got on trains and headed for the West Coast. I spent the next three years in Alameda,

California on anti-aircraft duty."

.....When the war in the Pacific moved west, the unit was broken up, and the soldiers scattered

to various assignments. " I went to Louisiana for infantry training...that was back in

'45...and I wound up in the Phillipines for the liberation of the islands, assigned to the

158th Infantry Regiment, Company M, as a replacement. The main island was still considered a

hostile area, but Pittsley said his unit didn't see any action there.

......After Japan surrendered in the fall of 1945, the 158th went to Japan as part of the

Allied occupation army. Pittsley, 70 years later, will never forget leaving Japan "on

Thanksgiving Day, 1945, and sailing through the Panama Canal at Christmas time."

......" On New Year's Day, 1946, we were off the coast of Florida, headed towards Brooklyn, New York to be demobilized," Pittsley recalled.

......He was honorably discharged from service on January 11, 1946, another date vividly

remembered through the years. Pittsley got into the printing trade, married in 1947, and

remained in his home town of Middleboro for another 70 years.

......He continues to proudly serve is country as a member of the Middleboro Veterans Honor

Guard. (Posted by Post 64 Historian Bob Lessard.}