By Kate Lohnes

In Westerville and communities across the country, there are heroes that walk among us.

They are men and women who devoted years – in some cases, decades – to preserving democracy and freedom abroad. Today they are sharing their stories.

Bob Sterchie, 90
World War II
Robert “Bob” Sterchie was drafted into the Army in 1941 at age 21. At the time, the Chicago native says he thought his service would only last a year. Instead, Sterchie attended Officer’s Candidate School until February 1943 to become a second lieutenant; he then shipped overseas to serve in World War II through 1946.

Sterchie’s primary assignment took him to North Africa, where he supervised a prisoner of war camp for Axis soldiers. At “PW Camp 134,” trains would arrive from the front lines filled with Italian and German prisoners. Sterchie and other American soldiers would clean them up and send them to the United States, where they worked as laborers in the Southwest.

After the war ended, Sterchie continued his service in Europe, delivering Italian prisoners back to Italy via train. Sterchie has since documented his time in the war into several albums, which contain photos and letters to his wife. The albums also contain snapshots of starving prisoners and bodies from the Buchenwald concentration camp shortly after the Allies entered (Sterchie received the pictures from a friend, who took the photos).

“I thought, ‘Could this be something human beings did to each other?’” he says of the photos. “I couldn’t believe it. It was barbaric.”

In 2008, Sterchie visited the World War II memorial and Arlington Cemetery in Washington D.C. as part of an Honor Flight, a program that flies World War II veterans to the memorial at no cost. Sterchie was one of nearly 50 men from Central Ohio on the flight.

“It was beautiful, beautiful,” he says. “It was very touching, and it brought back a lot of memories.”

At 90 years old, Sterchie has been retired from the American Can Company for 33 years, but he keeps busy at the Westerville VFW and the Westerville Senior Center, among other places. He also carves out time to lecture Westerville students about World War II. He shows them his albums, including the images from Buchenwald, and he tells them his stories.

“I was a little bit hesitant about showing them, but at the same token, I figured they should see them, and give them an idea about how horrible war can be,” he says.

Morris Briggs, 82
World War II, Korean War and Vietnam
Morris Briggs’ dreams of becoming a pilot stemmed from the silver screen. As a teenager, Briggs found himself drawn to films that portrayed the heroics of U.S. Army Air Corps (which later became the Air Force) pilots.

“When I was a pre-teen, I saw the movie I Wanted Wings,” the Nebraska native says. “I was so impressed with the movie that that’s what got me wanting to be a pilot.”

In 1944 at age 17, Briggs enlisted in the Army while still in high school. He received active duty orders for World War II shortly after graduating. He wanted to attend pilot training, he says, but couldn’t because the war was winding down. Briggs still served two years active duty, including a year in the Philippines, before returning home and attending college.

Briggs was recalled to active duty during the Korean War. He could no longer pass the physical to become a pilot, he says, so he became an Air Force navigator. As a navigator, Briggs flew more than 50 combat missions over North Korea in a B-26 bomber. After Korea, Briggs became a squadron navigator and then went into the plane refueling business, refueling planes en route to Europe and back for the Cold War. Morris’ Air Force career also included an assignment as professor of aerospace studies and the commander of the ROTC program at Otterbein College. After that, he went to Vietnam and served as an advisor to the Vietnam Air Force for a year. He retired from active duty in 1973.

Because of his connection to Otterbein, Briggs was offered a job as the dean of admissions of records, where he worked for nine years. One of his two sons, Alan, also entered the service, becoming an avionics technician for the Air Force and serving in Desert Storm.

Looking back on his career, Briggs says he never imagined his Air Force career would last so long.

“My original intent was, I was called to active duty, and I expected to take the minimum time I needed,” he says. “The challenges were so great for me that I think that’s what steered me in the direction of making it a career. It’s not just like going to work from 8 to 5, getting in the cockpit, flying a mission and coming home. It was a rather demanding job.”

Greg Wood, 62
Vietnam
Greg Wood always wanted to be a soldier. Specifically, the Columbus native wanted to join the Marine Corps, so he enlisted five days after graduating from Eastmoor High School in 1965.

“I always wanted to be a Marine,” he says. “It was one of the goals I had. There was never any doubt that that’s what I wanted to do.”

After completing 13 weeks of basic training in San Diego, six weeks of advanced infantry training and three weeks of jungle training, Wood says he boarded a plane for Vietnam.

In the 18 months Wood spent overseas, the majority of his time was spent defending Con Thien hill in the northern reaches of South Vietnam. Wood says he worked as a “tunnel rat,” exploring underground tunnels created by the Vietnamese. The tunnels were first created in the 1950s, he says, but during Vietnam they were prime locations for Viet Cong soldiers. In one particular exploration, Wood nearly lost his life when a tunnel led to an enemy soldier with a machine gun, which misfired.

“I was able to shoot him. Then I backed out (of the tunnel) and told my captain that I wasn’t going back down there ever again,” he says. “It’s one of the scariest things to ever happen to me.”

In 1968, Wood’s company went to the siege at Khe Sanh to help relieve the marines there. It was frightening, Wood says, because of the artillery shells exploding all around.

“For an infantry man, the worst thing you can fight are the artillery shells,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do to defend yourself except duck.”

Wood finished his service as a battalion radio man and was discharged in October 1968. Today he works as an inhalation therapist at a Columbus-area hospital. He also works with the Westerville VFW to speak with Westerville students about his experience.

“There’s a lot of stuff that’s being lost and not being taught in history classes, and we need to let them know this is part of American history,” he says.


Jonathan Kem, 27
Iraq War
Jonathan Kem was raised in a military household: his dad was in the Air Force, and he and his family moved frequently when he was young. In July 1999 at age 18, Kem enlisted in the Army.

“I joined the military because I didn’t feel my life was going down the right path,” he says. “I needed to do something with my life.”

Kem deployed to Iraq immediately after completing basic training in 2000. Kem’s mission with the 4th Infantry Division was to haul captured enemy ammunition that had been abandoned across Iraq. The unit also acted as convoy security, completed humanitarian missions and, at one point, searched for kidnapped American soldiers. His deployment ended in November 2003.

Kem was again deployed to Iraq in October 2005 with the 101st Airborne Division as a heavy transportation unit. They hauled artillery, equipment and other items across the desert.

“We were attacked by IEDs, small arm fire, land mines and mortars,” he says. “Our unit had six people hurt. Four of them had second and third degree burns from the roadside bombs. The other was a friend of mine who was shot in the head and lived.” Another person in the unit, a medic, bled to death from a gunshot wound.

Kem says his two tours differed significantly, in the conditions both the Iraqi people and American troops endured.

“On the first trip, the Iraqi people were starved and poor. I remember kids on the side of the road asking for any scraps of food or water, and we would throw anything that we had to them,” he says. “It was so hot there, and on the first tour we were limited to only two bottles of water per day, because they couldn’t get the supplies to us.”

Kem returned home from his second deployment in September of 2006 and was discharged in December that year. Kem says he currently “serves the soldiers” as a quality assurance specialist for Defense Supply Center Columbus, where he sends parts and equipment to service members around the world. His time in the military taught him about himself and the world, he says.

“(My service) gave me a much better understanding of how fragile life really is, and how fast things can change,” he says. “I look at life in a very different way now.”

Kate Lohnes is assistant editor of Westerville Magazine.