Don Clouston could pack on several pounds and still fit easily into the 1943 U.S. Army uniform that he'll button up this morning at a Santa Rosa convalescent hospital.
At 83, the former boy soldier — he was just 17 when he parachuted into the D-Day invasion of Europe — remains one lean (141 pounds) and keen ex-fighting machine.
He's awfully proud of his old uniform, with its combat ribbons and 101st Airborne Division sleeve patches. Each Memorial Day he likes to shine and lace up his original leather jump boots.
"I've taken care of them," he said in a hearty voice tinged by his upbringing in Maine. Checking his reflection in one of the boot's toe, he said, "I get &‘em polished to where I can almost shave in &‘em."
Clouston doesn't regard himself as anyone special: a former New England farm boy who attended school just through the eighth grade and who, of course, answered his country's call to stand up to Hitler, Hirohito & Co.
"I did what I thought was right, that's all, sir," he said.
But this vet does possess a few noteworthy distinctions.
He was only 15 when Imperial Japan attacked American ships and installations in and near Pearl Harbor, so today he's a fairly young member of the fast-fading corps of World War II veterans. And he's part of a dwindling brotherhood who saw battlefield action in two wars.
Just six months after enduring the Allies' June 6, 1944, assault on dug-in German forces in Normandy, Clouston was in frigid Belgium for the Battle of the Bulge bloodbath at Bastogne. He was honorably discharged after the war, then returned to the Army five years later to serve in Korea.
He'd clearly understood why America went to war against the Japanese in the Pacific and against the Germans in Europe, but it was less clear to him why the U.S. was in Korea.
"I wouldn't give you one Maine lobster for all of South Korea, and North Korea," he said with a shake of his head. Even so, he said, he fought in his second war as hard as in the first.
"I've seen all the combat I wanted," he declared, his blue eyes seeming to scan not his simple rehab-center room but battle scenes most Americans wouldn't care even to imagine.
Clouston came through the two wars in pretty good shape. He's not shy about unbuttoning his shirt to show the right collarbone that healed badly after he snapped it, he said, in a jump from a burning tank in Korea.
Almost 60 years later he's still wiry and nimble, a pretty tough old bird.
He made the news — and received a phone call from TV comic Jay Leno — after he reported to Santa Rosa police in March of 2008 that he was on one of his daily multi-mile walks when a teen-ager with a knife tried to rob him on Fourth Street.
Clouston said he told the mugger he'd been attacked with rifles and bayonets, and there was no way he'd hand over his wallet to a kid with a knife.
"Son," he recalls saying, "you take one more step toward me and I'll take you out." He said the young man took that step, so he kicked him where it hurts most. He said the would-be assailant writhed on the sidewalk as he continued his walk.
Until last month, Clouston took a daily constitutional of two miles or so from the apartment in the Salvation Army's high-rise Silvercrest tower that's been home to him and his wife, Ruby, for 21 years. His walks ceased the day he fell in front of Silvercrest, fractured a hip and ripped open a long wound on his left arm.
He underwent hip surgery and he's healing now at Creekside convalescent hospital, where he's been assured he'll get a ride to today's annual Memorial Day commemoration and Avenue of the Flags at Santa Rosa Memorial Park.
Clouston can't imagine not being there to honor all who've died for their country, not after he lost so many friends and comrades at Normandy, Bastogne and Korea. Early on at Bastogne, he said, he was serving with 163 men.
"In six days," he said, "I lost every man but six. And that's a lot of men, buddy, believe me.
"I cried for two days. I'll never stop remembering them until the day I die."
Clouston shakes his head at the thought that on this Memorial Day, a lifetime after some of his friends in the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment were shot dead before their boots touched the soil of France, American troops continue to die in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"I believe in fighting for something. And I don't think we're fighting for anything over there," the old vet said.
His voice softened as his thoughts turned to the men and women fighting America's new wars.
"I have a lot of respect for them, I'll tell you that," he said. "They're going through hell over there."
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