RESERVE — Within a five-mile stretch in St. John the Baptist Parish live five veterans of World War II. Four are residents of the Southeast Louisiana War Veterans Home in Reserve.

Mary Roussel Dupépé volunteered and served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

“I was sent to Washington, D.C. and worked at the Pentagon,” Dupépé said. “We encoded messages to send to the troops. Whenever I had a furlough, I was instructed on what I could and could not say about my job.”

About 4,000 miles away from D.C., Charles Hebert served in France in the 26th Infantry Division.

“I was one of the ones who won it,” Hebert recently said with a soft laugh.

Hebert was wounded while his platoon was in the process of capturing a hill.

“I was shot while I was halfway up,” Hebert said. “I saw the German sniper too late. His bullet traveled faster than I did.”

He thought he was lightly wounded and began to escort prisoners back to the station along with other walking wounded soldiers. About a mile into the walk, he started to get dizzy and could feel the bullet right under his skin. Hebert received the Purple Heart for his injury.

Another Purple Heart recipient is Joseph Sciambra, who volunteered for the Army right out of high school.

“I was in France just a few months before I got hit with a mortar shell,” Sciambra said. “Both hands got it very bad.”

He spent 11 months in the hospital, then was discharged and sent home.

“People would ask me questions about the war, but I only talked with buddies who went through the same thing,” Sciambra said. “Whoever said ‘War is hell’ knew what he was talking about.”

Harold Iles, who also received a Purple Heart in World War II, was a sheet metal mechanic in the Air Force. His two-and-a-half years in the service took him to Australia, New Guinea and Indonesia, where he was injured in an air raid.

“I was part of a crew who patched bullet holes in fighter planes,” Iles said. “We went where they had to go.”

Iles also went to Ie Shima and was there at the end of the war when the Japanese surrender delegation landed, then got on a C-54 to go to Manila to meet with General Douglas MacArthur.

“We lined the strip, but we didn’t get too close,” Iles said.

Sally Hymel Martin always knew that her father, Garyville native Clyde Hymel, was in the war, but it wasn’t until the past few years that he began to talk about his experiences, and even more recently, write of them.

“For the past year-and-a-half, he has been writing down the stories about his life,” Martin said.

Hymel, who recently celebrated his 90th birthday, enlisted in the Marines in 1944 and was stationed on a ship near Pearl Harbor.

“After about a month, we were sent to Tinian, where there were 9,000 Japanese,” he said. “We secured the island in nine days. I carried a 16-pound Browning automatic rifle and someone else carried the ammunition.”

Once the island of Tinian was secured, airstrips were built for B-29 Bombers that would take off from there, including the Enola Gay.

“The plane carrying the first atomic bomb took off from one of the airstrips on Tinian,” Hymel recounts.

Hymel’s unit also went to Guam, where he was assigned to the 9th Anti-Aircraft Battalion. Each member of his battalion was awarded the Silver Star for shooting down the most enemy planes with the least amount of ammunition.

Following the end of the war, Hymel remained on Guam until he was released from the Marines in 1946.

“They dropped me off on Airline Highway in Garyville and I walked home,” Hymel said. “When I got to the house, there was a little girl who stared at me and said, ‘Mama, there’s a man at the door.’”

Hymel’s sister, who was born while he was in the service, did not recognize her brother.

Because he sent money home to his family while serving, Hymel could never afford to buy his dress blues. Several years ago, his family bought the special Marine dress blues as his Christmas gift. Hymel said it’s the outfit he intends to be buried in.