ITEM PHOTO BY OWEN O’ROURKE
Don Boyce, left, and his brother Earl Boyce, right, being interviewed about their service in WWII.
BY THOR JOURGENSEN
LYNN — Don and Earl Boyce were teenagers when they left Lynn and journeyed halfway around the world to drive back, one island at a time, the Japanese conquest of the Pacific Ocean.
The brothers dug foxholes, endured shelling and lost friends like the tent mates Don can still remember.
“We were together for a year,” Boyce said. “Seeing friends killed still affects me.”
Boyce is 92 and his brother is 91. They grew up on Sidney Avenue. Don graduated from English High School in 1942 and went to work for General Electric Co. before signing up for the Army Air Corps, training in Illinois and shipping off to war.
His 33-day adventure of the Pacific aboard an old troopship was tracked by a Japanese submarine and kept at bay by depth charges rolled overboard from the ship. At dusk, Boyce and other men donned life vests and braced for torpedoes that never came.
His unit hopped from island to island, enduring at one point, 90 days of Japanese shelling aimed at halting American attacks on oil-rich islands held by the Japanese.
“We were on a coral island,” he said. “Digging a foxhole was like digging in concrete.”
Family circumstances required Earl Boyce to spend part of his youth with an aunt on Prince Edward Island. He returned to Lynn in time to enlist in the U.S. Army on his 18th birthday. Assigned to the U.S. Army Air Corps, he trained in Hawaii before going into combat. He hit the volcanic island of Iwo Jima with his unit six days after Marines invaded.
“There were rockets flying over our heads,” he said. “We were told to dig foxholes and dig them deep.”
With Iwo Jima finally wrested from stubborn Japanese defenders, Boyce repaired American warplanes and used the island as a transit point during attacks on the Japanese. Earl Boyce remembered how soldiers fired their weapons into the air when word of Japan’s surrender reached the island.
After the war, he owned a radio and television shop on the corner of Rockaway and Essex streets before going to work for Raytheon Co. He eventually became a smoking cessation facilitator and travelled as far away as South Africa to help people kick cigarettes.
His brother taught and eventually became a principal in southern California schools. Don Boyce moved to Missouri a decade ago. He and his wife, Evelyn, have been married for 66 years. They have two children, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Earl Boyce and his wife, Mary, had four children. Today, Boyce, who is remarried, has five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He spent Sunday as the commander of American Legion Post 345 in Lynn remembering fallen comrades.
“Memorial Day means a lot to me,” Boyce said. “I lost a lot of friends and best buddies.”
“War,” said his brother, “is a horrible thing.”
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at [email protected]
