Jackson County recently lost one of its last living World War II veterans. Robert Walker, known to most as Buck, passed away on July 8. He was 99 years old.
Walker was a member of what is commonly referred to as the greatest generation. Born in 1925, he was just a small child living in Princeton, Alabama, when The Great Depression struck the United States, and as a boy, he helped pull the stones from the river bank that were used to build Paint Rock Valley High School. Walker was barely old enough to drive a car when we entered World War II. He celebrated his 18th birthday on August 19th in 1943. Two weeks later, still a senior at PRVHS, he was drafted into the United States Army.
Walker was soon sent to Flora, Mississippi, for basic training, then to Oklahoma for technical training and on to New York from there.
Despite the fact that many of the men drafted alongside him were much older than he was at the time, Walker found two boys his age – Howard Sturgell from Kentucky and Dale Baker from West Virginia. The three quickly became best friends, and soon the young soldiers were bound for Europe.
“We took the northern route through Greenland, Iceland and Scotland,” Walker said in a 2012 interview.
After landing in Glasgow on March 17, the boys were stationed in Tidworth, England, and served in the 3rd Army Armored Division under General George S. Patton. There, they trained and prepared for an upcoming battle that would soon take place on the beaches of Normandy, France.
“There was a big field behind us they called Perham Down Hill, and we had a lot of dry runs there before we went to Omaha Beach,” Walker said.
Before the battle, Walker said each soldier there received a card from General Dwight D. Eisenhower telling them that if victorious the blame would be to the soldiers, but if the troops were not victorious, the blame would fall to the general himself. Walker admired Eisenhower, and joked that even though he was a Democrat himself, he would have walked to Chattanooga to vote for him.
“He saved the lives of many, many soldiers by the decisions he made,” Walker said.
Walker and his two friends survived D-Day and the Battle of Normandy, though he did have a close call. His granddaughter, Monica McKenzie, said he sometimes talked about that.
“When he was younger, he always complained about being short, until he was shot in his helmet,” McKenzie said. “He realized that if he would have been an inch taller, that he would have been shot in the forehead. He said from that day on he never complained again about being short.”
Walker and his friends visited the military cemetery near Maastricht, Holland, where wooden crosses marked the final resting spot of their fellow soldiers.
“Us three boys, we promised to go back every three years to visit our buddies back where they were buried,” he said.
While at the cemetery, the caretaker told Walker that he had planted flowers there that would mature and look like the American Flag. When Walker returned home to Fort Knox in 1947 he remembered the caretaker’s story about the flowers and wrote a poem, titled “Little Seeds.” The poem says, “From little seeds big things do grow, so be careful of the seeds you sow. The seeds you have sown in the past, be they good or bad, they are forever cast. And as you travel along your way, be careful of the things you do or say, because come harvest time that’s when you’ll know from little seeds, big things do grow.”
In his 2012 interview, Walker didn’t want to talk about the things he witnessed in Normandy.
“I’m not going into the details of what we went through in World War II,” he said. “My respect lies with the boys that didn’t make it back, and the ones who were severely wounded.”
When his daughter suggested he take a trip to Washington D.C. to visit the WWII Memorial, Walker didn’t want to see his friends on the memorial. He wrote a poem called “Overseas” in remembrance of them. The poem says, “I want to go back overseas to visit my friends who fought with me. I’ll never forget that foggy rainy day when the bombs and shells took them away. My buddy was wounded by my side, but he kept on fighting and fighting with pride. They were high on the hill, and we were down below, but just like a ship that was under tow, the slower we moved the faster we would go. We took the hill in 28 days, but we couldn’t rejoice because of the price we paid. If I was granted one wish, that wish would be, to visit my friends buried overseas.”
When the war ended in 1945, Walker and his friends reenlisted together.
“We shared everything,” he said. “We were closer than brothers.”
Walker joked that they stayed in the Army until Dale “lost his mind and fell deep in love with this girl.” Where one went, the others followed. If they couldn’t all reenlist, none of them would, they decided.
Walker too lost his mind and fell deep in love. He married Betty Gattis on January 2, 1952. The couple moved to Chicago, and Walker worked as a mechanic for B&O Railroad for 10 years.
The couple decided to move back to Walker’s hometown of Princeton, where Walker sold insurance and drove a school bus for Paint Rock Valley High School. In 1968, Walker got into politics, and served the 4th district on the Jackson County Commission from 1968-1972 and 1980-1984.
“He and the other commissioners made a controversial decision to raise taxes in 1968, and those taxes went toward the building of the Jackson County Technical school, located in Hollywood, Alabama,” said McKenzie. “During his second term, his most notable accomplishment was adding a new bridge alongside the BB Comber Bridge.”
When Walker retired from the school system, he operated a cattle farm in Paint Rock Valley.
McKenzie recalled that her grandfather, whom she called “Papa”, never met a stranger.
“He loved to pull practical jokes on people, and was a huge cut up. I think he would like to be remembered as someone who always helped others. Over the years, he helped get people jobs, helped men work cattle, let people borrow vehicles and helped them work on their cars in his barn. I have had numerous people over the years tell me that he gave them money for down payments on homes or lent money during times of hardship.”
Walker was just six weeks short of his 100th birthday when he passed away, and he was a man who kept active as long as he could.
“He was still replacing wax rings on toilet seals in his late 80s, and in 2022 he was replacing pieces of siding on my grandparent’s house. I truly don’t know of anything that he could not do. He preferred to do it, and know that it was going to be done right,” McKenzie said.
McKenzie said she has many special memories of Walker, especially from her childhood.
“We lived out of state when I was little, but when we visited I can vividly remember him taking me dune buggy riding,” she said. “We moved back to Alabama when I was 12, and I would check his cattle with him. I remember him letting me drive the farm truck through the pastures while checking his cows. I remember going to watch him bowl when I was younger, and I loved watching him and my grandmother play Rook with their friends on Friday nights.”
Walker was laid to rest on Friday, July 11 at Clay Cemetery in Princeton.
Special to the Clarion by Danielle Wallingsford-Kirkland
