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Chance meeting: WWII veterans rediscover each other in Yuma after 70 years

Sun - 3/25/2018

Through a coincidence of chance after 70 years, two World War II veterans have been reunited in Yuma, where they were amazed to find that they were living on the same street a block away from each other in a local RV park.

Before rediscovering each other here, Gene J. Snyder, 93, and Kenneth Carter, 94, from their youth had grown up living a block apart (but not on the same street) in Compton, Calif. There they had attended the same grammar school, junior high school, high school and a junior college adjacent to that high school.

At age 18 Snyder was drafted - as were most men at his age at the beginning of the war - and Carter joined the Naval Reserve. Once in the military, they lost track of one another.

Fast forward 70 years. Carter learned of Snyder's living in Yuma through a mutual friend of theirs in California who provided him with Snyder's phone number. It was after Carter initiated a call to Snyder that he discovered that they were living in such close proximity again.

So how did they both come to live on the same street in Country Roads RV Village?

Snyder said that friends had bought a lot here when Snyder had recently retired and had been traveling around in a fifth wheel. When they invited him to stay, he and his wife liked it so well here that they bought a lot and later put a park model on it, where they lived for 28 years.

On the other hand, the economic downturn in 2008 in Southern California led Carter and his son "to fold up our offices and quit real estate, mortgages and construction companies." They moved to their date farm in Bard. It was a temporary move for Carter though.

"I met a rich widow here, and she rented me a place," said Carter, referring to his move to the same RV park where Snyder lived.

Nowadays they visit one another weekly to reminisce about their lives, enjoy the camaraderie and banter with one another over an occasional rum and Coke.

"He sold me my first automobile," said Carter, "which was a Model T Ford for seven dollars. And when I saw him after 70 years, he complained that he sold it too cheap. Said it was worth ten bucks."

When the Navy lowered the age of flight training to 18, Carter took advantage of it and soon found himself "moving around so much" mostly on the East Coast. Meanwhile Snyder returned to Compton, where he married Florence Minser, now deceased. Both Snyder and Carter had at one time or another had dated Florence while living in California and before Snyder married her.

"She liked him, and he knew her, too, you know," said Snyder, referring to Carter.

"She liked me better, but I was on the East Coast; so I couldn't do anything about it," retorted Carter. "So when I came down to see him here, he had Florence with him - my old girlfriend that he stole."

"Yeah," laughed Snyder. "But you robbed me out of a car almost."

"Oh, you cheated me," Carter replied. "I had to push that thing home. It took me a week to get it running."

While Carter was on the East Coast, Snyder was overseas with the Army's paratroopers. He has the medals to show for his efforts, too, including the Purple Heart for wounds received in Italy. Despite his wounds, he never was evacuated nor did he miss a day of combat, says a website that features his service record. (http://www.517prct.org/photos/zoot_snyder.htm)

"He didn't avoid the war," said Carter. "I managed to get into that flight training. It took so long that by that time, the war was almost over. While I was out there having fun going through flight training, he was out there getting shot at. I love to listen to his stories," said Carter. "You like people and have fun even under difficult conditions. Most of the time we have a lot of humor in our conversations. We never get serious about anything. And he's got a lot of good stories to tell."

According to Carter, Snyder's best stories are those about what occurred between battles.

"That's why war stories are so good," said Carter, who ultimately rose to become a Naval commander. "He did so many interesting things in between battles. Just shootin' at each other - those stories aren't as good as the ones in between battles when he'd go to town in a stolen jeep or something."

Carter recalled the story that Snyder had shared with him about being in France, when some of the men took a jeep into a small town where no Americans or Germans had ever been.

"Of course, they'd had a big time with drinking and chasing all the ladies there," Carter recalled. "On the way home, they crashed the jeep. So then they had to get back to town where their company was. And they went to a local bar and claimed that they got into a fight and claimed that they were injured. And one of the fellows was injured so badly they sent him home. But Gene just got a few days off to recover and have light duty, you know. But by the time they found out what happened to the jeep, they were long gone off in another battle somewhere."

Escapades such as these enabled Snyder to remain in the rank of private.

"That's just what I liked to be," said Snyder. "I was a radio operator and a runner and a rifleman; and I was in the same company for the whole war. I was with a company commander all the time, and I was kind of like a bodyguard for the company commander. I really liked doing that, and I liked my job being a radio operator, so I just stayed where I was. You had plenty of opportunity for advancement in the paratroops. There was always a vacancy - almost every day there was another vacancy or two," he laughed. "The first five times I ever flew on an airplane, I jumped out."

"Every time he'd get promoted," added Carter, "then he'd go town to celebrate before he half sewed them on (his stripes) and then be late coming back. Maybe a couple of days, you know. They don't like that."

While Snyder was being demoted but earning medals in the war, Carter was collecting titles as if they were medals.

"I've got a bunch of titles that I never use any more: commander, captain, professor, doctor - not a medical doctor, a Ph. D type," said Carter. "You know they call you those things. Now everybody knows me as Ken. It's a lot better. They don't expect as much."

While Snyder may not have achieved higher ranks in the Army, he has been approved to receive the French Medal of Valor, the highest medal that France can issue to a non-citizen. He said that it will probably be awarded in California when the paperwork processing has been completed.

"Then I will be a knight, and they will have to call me 'Sir'," he chuckled.

Snyder's military colleagues nicknamed him "Zoot" at the time of his induction into the Army because he was wearing a zoot suit, which most folks there had never seen, when he joined. The name stuck throughout the war. He still has many friends in Europe, who held a reunion for the regiment in 1994, 50 years after they had first parachuted into France.

"We fought our way along the coast and in the coastal mountains all the way back to Italy from there. That took 90 days. And during that 90 days, we liberated probably 40 or 50 small towns. And each one that we liberated from the Germans, naturally there was a monstrous celebration and everything, because those people had been occupied for six or seven years. So they still celebrate those days that we liberated, and we're always invited, and we are given free lunches and dinners, free rooms and are treated like rock stars. And everybody knows about the liberation and occupation of the Nazis."

When the war ended in Europe, Snyder transferred to the 82nd Airborne Division to remain in Berlin for the German occupation. So the two veterans have many memories to share after once again finding themselves living within a block of one another in a different state from their beginnings 70 years ago.