A hero back at home

Noaki Schwartz

World War II veteran Earl Fusselman is a planner.

On the first Tuesday of every month, he cuts his hair. When he enters a

room, he instinctively straightens crooked pictures. And when he has a

date, he may be an hour early but never a minute late.

But despite a lifetime of calculations, he never did get to fight the war

on a foreign battlefield. Instead, after training troops of men and

eagerly waiting for his chance to go overseas, fate intervened.

Fusselman, 82, is one of those rarely recognized war heroes, the kind who

worked behind the scenes. Though none of the bullets fired from his gun

ever made it onto enemy positions, the lessons he taught hundreds of men

were instrumental in winning the war -- and more importantly, in saving

their lives.

In 1944, at age 27, Fusselman joined the National Guard. Back when

cigarettes were 20 cents a pack, he earned $21 a month as a private. From

Topeka, Kansas he went to Little Rock, Ark., and began training in the

Army to go to the Philippines.

But his train to Los Angeles, the first trip in his journey to Asia, was

late and he instead found himself headed for officer candidates’ school.

Again, he almost made it to Europe, but the assignment of duties to

soldiers, based on the alphabetical order of their names, led Fusselman

to school and the man ahead of him to England.

“We were hyped up and ready to go. We wanted to get into it,” he said,

recalling the enthusiasm people felt at the thought of serving their

country.

However, he proved an adept student. Within a month, he was a lieutenant

and nine months after his commission, he was promoted to captain. All the

while, as he trained and waved companies off to fight the war, Fusselman

yearned to join them.

He became so frustrated that by the last company he trained, Fusselman

nearly commanded a colonel to send him off to war. And then, just as he

was once again close to shipping off, Fusselman caught spinal meningitis

from a rat bite while sleeping in the desert. The sickness left him with

a 106-degree temperature, debilitating headaches and a month of sticking

six-inch needles into his spine to drain the fluid.

“My fingers bled from grabbing on to the bed coils so hard,” he

remembered, shuddering at the thought.

Six months later, Fusselman was recuperating in Palm Springs, still

determined to fight once he recovered. But fate had other plans.

One night he went out to dinner and met Gigi, who a couple months later

would become his wife for the next 44 years. Now experiencing newfound

love, thoughts of gunfire and falling bombs in a foreign country

evaporated. He received an honorable discharge and remained on domestic

shores.

These days, Fusselman neatly divides his time between different

organizations for which he volunteers, such as American Legion Post 291

on the Balboa Peninsula, where he serves on the board of directors. Each

week, he also goes to the Veterans Administration hospital in Long Beach

to assist wheelchair-bound patients.

And just before going to the hospital each Sunday morning, like

clockwork, Fusselman visits his wife’s grave.