63 years of memories

As the five World War II veterans celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversaries with their wives, the jokes kept coming from the husbands as their wives rolled their eyes in response.

The couples met for lunch at Carrows restaurant on Monday to mark their anniversaries and swap war stories.

The anniversaries came throughout the year, but the longtime friends, who have lived in Huntington Beach for some 30 years, wanted to celebrate the happy occasions together on the same day.

All the men served in World War II and seemed a lot more eager to talk about that than why their marriages enjoyed such longevity. They served their country in a variety of roles, including pilot, aviation mechanic, soldier and Air Force officer. One of the men was discharged honorably after his asthma acted up.

Stan Forster, for instance, recalled when he was a 22-year-old young man in charge of three airplanes and he was told to get his crews and planes to Berlin for air-lifting supplies.

It was 1948, during the Berlin Blockade, when the former Soviet Union blocked the Allied forces’ access to West Berlin. Forster flew cargo, including food and other supplies, into West Germany.

On his way to join the Berlin airlift, it was his flight to Berlin via Bermuda that presented some comical obstacles.

“After flying for three hours, the navigator came to the back of the plane and gave me a tap on the shoulder,” Forster said. His group navigator had just realized he had given wrong directions to the pilot.

Forster and his team had been immersed in a big poker game at the back of the plane, blissfully unaware of where their plane was heading until the navigator came up to him.

Realizing that they didn’t have enough fuel to change direction and reach Berlin, Forster directed the pilot to head back to Bermuda for refueling. When they finally landed in Berlin eight hours late, Forster’s base commander waited at the bottom of the airplane steps.

“He was still waiting after the entire crew got off the plane to ask, ‘Where in the hell have you been Forster?’ ”

It wasn’t funny at the time, but the 86-year-old vet can laugh about it now.

Wilfred “Finny” Martin remembers working his way through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, and was part of the first Allied forces to land in Cherbourg, France.

“We were in constant combat, moving from one place to another,” Martin said.

Martin was in the 104th Infantry division, relaying messages to various combat divisions. After the war ended, he was assigned to fight in Japan. He was getting ready to fly from San Luis Obispo when his unit got word about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After the war, Martin decided to go back to college and got his master’s and doctorate degrees from USC.

Charles Olson patrolled the Pacific and Atlantic oceans during World Wars I and II in dirigibles.

Olson was stationed on the East Coast, Key West in Florida and Brazil. He still wakes up at 3.30 a.m., an old habit he hasn’t managed to quit.

John Van Hise spent six years in the army but “never saw active duty,” he said. Van Hise was stationed in Pensacola, Fla., and in the Philippines as an aviation mechanic.

Bob Cummings was discharged honorably after reporting for duty at Fort MacArthur in Los Angeles. He was discharged when his superior officer discovered he had asthma problems. To make matters worse, the camp was suffering from a bout of measles.

The wives were plenty busy helping out the war effort. “The war was sort of the beginning when women started working,” Stella Martin said.

Martin and Marvyl Olson did clerical work for the Garden Grove and Los Angeles school districts. Doris Forster worked with a school in the 1940s.

Laurel Van Hise designed circuits for an electronic company while Pauline Cummings helped her husband with his business. The couples got to know each other through church and bridge groups.

“It’s so unique that five couples are celebrating 63 years of being married and all are in their 80s and still out and about,” Stella Martin said.

Even better, they all look 20 years younger. So what’s the secret to their youthful vigor?

Never do anything in excess and stay active. And if you have a happy marriage, that helps, too.