In Judge Aaron Cohn’s Columbus Government Center office, there’s a worn photograph of five soldiers from the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. It was taken in April 1945, a month before Germany surrendered to the Allies. Cohn is the man in the middle.
The 93-year-old Juvenile Court judge has plenty of posters, photographs, framed letters and other items documenting his accomplishments as an attorney, judge, tennis player and University of Georgia letterman.
But it is the war memorabilia that stands out amid the clutter. And it is there for a reason, Cohn says. The war helped mold him and define his sense of fairness.
“The Army was a great training ground for my being what I consider a pretty good lawyer and later a judge,” Cohn says. “When I came back out of the Army, I had to make sure what I did was exactly right and proper. I never assumed follow-up. That made me a better lawyer because I didn’t assume anything.”
Cohn is not alone. Many of those who fought in World War II say the experience helped shape them later in life. It taught discipline. Teamwork. Selflessness in a time of national crisis.
For Bill Turner, who came from a prominent Columbus industrial family, the time he spent as an officer on a U.S. Navy mine sweeper in the Pacific Ocean taught him valuable lessons in leadership.
“I gained a lot of confidence in myself,” says Turner, the 87-year-old retired chairman of the W.C. Bradley Co. “I found out I could perform on my own. It was something that I felt I was good at without any family support.”
He says he could have made the Navy a career.
“I was just like everybody else,” Turner says. “If I hadn’t had something I felt like I had to come back to, I would have stayed in the Navy. I loved it.”
Cohn and Turner signed up to serve after finishing their college educations.
Gen. William B. Caldwell III was 16 years old when he first experienced war. His father and family were stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
For the next two months, Caldwell drove an ammo truck on the island, waiting until he could go to the U.S. Military Academy.
The lessons of his youth were not lost on him as he rose through the command ranks to earn three stars before retiring in 1980.
“At that time in my life, I was a young kid doing menial jobs,” Caldwell says. “But there is no doubt that I learned a lot about people — knowing people, working with people and trusting people. I learned very early that people were the name of the game whether you are in business or in the Army as a three-star general.”
Richard Hecht, an Army officer attached to the Air Force on the Pacific island of Saipan, learned a lot about following orders.
His unit had a five-word directive from Gen. Hap Arnold: “Protect B-29s at all cost.”
“That was my job for more than a year,” Hecht says.
E-Mail
Print
@Nyx.CommentBody@