By ROBERT A. DEFRANK

Times Leader Staff Writer

ST. CLAIRSVILLE ­– Gene R. Miller had made a career of military service and witnessed three conflicts firsthand when he served from 1946-67.

From 1946-49 he served in the U.S. Marine Corps in underwater demolitions and scouting. In 1950 he went into the Army. He retired as a master sergeant, E-8.

Miller recalled the day he joined the service at age 16.

“We were in high school that time and a group of us had gone for lunch,” he said. “One of the boys said, ‘Let’s go back to school.’ I said, ‘I’ll see you guys,’ and that’s when I went down and enlisted in the Marine Corps.”

Miller said he was motivated, in part, by his family’s military history and the example set by his older brothers.

“I had six brothers in. My oldest brother joined the Marines in 1940. He was a Marine pilot. Then when the war broke out, my other brothers started going in,” he said, adding that all of his bothers made it home. Two of his brothers joined the Navy and served on an aircraft carrier, another served in the Army Rangers and the other two in the infantry.

Miller joined after World War II, but there was no shortage of difficult and dangerous missions to carry out in the aftermath.

“Where I served it was in several different countries,” he said. “The war was over then, and we were cleaning debris along the beaches and in the waters where the enemy had planted obstacles to stop our landing craft from coming in.”

His work in underwater demolitions consisted of detonating mines.

“The danger was, when we dove in and set a charge on one of them to be blown up, we had a little red ball tied to us that we’d release and let it go up when we got clear. One time, it broke loose and we were setting the charge, and the charge went off and blew my buddy out of the water about 30 feet. I wasn’t quite that high. I was about 10 feet out of the water. We both spent 90 days in the hospital,” he said. “That was the only accident we had at that time.”

He also mentioned an unpleasant encounter with a squid on the coast of Alaska.

Miller recalled the devastation after World War II.

“We saw elderly people with little children going through the garbage to get something to eat,” he said. “Our mess sergeant saw them one day, and he took them out a little tray of food. He did that every day. He’d take out a tray of food to them.”

Five years of service took him to such ports as Italy, Germany, France and Greece.

“A lot of my service was overseas,” he said. “I saw a lot of things. Some of them I’d like to forget. In Germany we saw where the prison camps were where they burned and killed these Jews. I always thought it would be something if our high school kids could see, and know how lucky they are to live in this country.”

Eventually, he would switch branches. Miller saw more possibilities for promotion in the Army.

“In the Army they had the rapid turnover and the promotions were quicker,” he said.

Much of his time in Army was spent training recruits, but he saw his share of action during the Korean War and later in Vietnam.

“I was in long range patrolling in Korea,” he said. “I worked behind the enemy lines, calling back troop information and equipment. What units (the North Koreans) were and what equipment they had to fight with.

“We could only stay in one position at the most about 12 hours, then we had to move to another position or else we’d be discovered,” he said. “I can remember a time when we were down in a position behind enemy lines, and some of their patrols passed us within 10 feet because we were camouflaged they did not see us or they could not pick us out. We moved after that.”

He also remembered the resulting air strikes on enemy positions after Miller and his fellow soldiers had sent their intelligence.

“I was in Vietnam for a few months. We were doing jungle training,” he said. “The American soldier wasn’t used to this training. We trained them for that. How to camouflage yourself … checking for land mines and booby traps, things like that.”

Miller saw the changes in war and the necessary training. Miller’s training of recruits focused on scouting and related operations and hand-to-hand combat.

“We stressed discipline. Getting the people to react on command without asking questions about it.”

Miller did not choose to speak about any commendations he received.

“I had ribbons and decorations for my service, but I don’t talk about them and I don’t talk about other things that I’ve seen,” he said, adding that the rest of his family feels the same.

“We never discussed our decorations or anything like that. Our dad taught us that was something we owed our country, and when we did that we were just paying a debt for the freedoms we have and the right to speak when we wanted to.”

In civilian life, he worked as a surveyor until the mid-1980s, then taught ROTC. He served as a minister for 19 years at Lloydsville United Methodist Church and currently serves as minister of Morristown United Methodist Church.

He moved to St. Clairsville four years ago. He had lived in Barnesville since 1982. He is originally from Kalamazoo, Mich.