Local WWII veteran describes early language training.
By Bob Britton

Article published in 1995. Re-published with permission from   "The Globe" 

He's a veteran of the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Persian-Gulf-Command, a retired Army medic and a Persian graduate of the Army Language School. Retired Master Sgt. Edwin Larson of Pacific Grove fits all of these descriptions. During the depression era of the late 1930s when thousands of people had no jobs, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, in 1938, which was set up earlier by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. CCC provided jobs for able-bodied men who constructed military installations or did forestry work around the country. The next time you're running, walking or marching on Soldier Field, take a moment and look at the stone walls surrounding the area. You'll notice the Camp Ord CCC workers constructed the structure around 1936. Larson worked on CCC camps in Northern California near the Oregon border. "CCC employees worked under semimilitary rules and discipline," he said. "We had about 200 workers per company, slept in tents, ate in mess halls and were led by an Army major or captain. We received $30 monthly and were required to send $25 home to our families and keep $5 for ourselves."

He joined the Army in 1939 and remained a soldier until his retirement in 1959. One of his tours ended up with the Persian Gulf Command as a medic in Iran from January 1943 to October 1944. He traveled the country visiting different military clinics and met the villagers and town people. When you mention the Persian Gulf Command, people today associate it with military Operations Desert Shield/Storm in 1990-1991 driving the Iraqis out of Kuwait. For 30,000 World War II veterans, the term meant resupplying Russia by rail or truck convoys. Soldiers moved supplies from Iranian or Iraqi ports across scorching deserts and dangerous mountains reaching up to the eastern Russian front to help defeat Nazi Germany. Also, some of these former soldiers referred to Iran as Persia, its former name.

Before Larson's language training, he was assigned to the station dispensary at the Presidio of San Francisco and served as the medical orderly for Gen. Joseph W. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell, then commanding general for Sixth U.S. Army. Stilwell died there in 1946 and had many roots in the Monterey area. For example, Stilwell commanded Fort Ord and the 7th Infantry Division in 1940-1941. Then he served as the III Corps area commander at the Presidio of Monterey until his next assignment as commanding general of the World War II Burma-China- India campaign. While commanding Fort Ord, Stilwell began the idea for Stilwell Hall on the paM Annex. He envisioned a "million-dollar enlisted soldiers club" paid for by every soldier stationed at Fort Ord.Stilwell's ideas included a complete recreation complex with enlisted, NCO and officers' clubs, a chapel, and outdoor recreation facilities including a huge swimming pool.

However, funding shortfalls and the beginning of World War II prevented the other facilities from being constructed by what is now Stilwell Hall. Stilwell Park and Stilwell School are named after the "soldiers' general. "After the '.var ended, the Army realized it had a shortage of trained linguists in many languages, including Persian. In 1948, Larson became one of the first enlisted Persian students at the Army Language School, the predecessor of the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center. In those days, classes had all male students, he mentioned. "I was in Persian Class P-12-3, which meant it was the third 12-month Persian-language course taught at the school. Wegraduated Sept. 9, 1949," Larson said. "Our native instructors were old fashioned and taught us from kindergarten and first-grade primers. That's all the material they had at the time. We had tests every two weeks with no typewriters or computers. All tests and notes were handwritten, while instructors wrote coursematerials on stencils and reproduced them on old mimeograph machines. Besides Persian, our section taught Turkish, Albanian and Greek languages." Larson considers attending the Army Language School and receiving his diploma in Persian the highlights of his military career.

On several occasions, he has addressed DLIFLC graduating classes and spoke of his own experience with this difficult language. "I graduated with a B-grade as a translator and C-grade as an interpreter. I became a better soldier with this language experience, discipline and knowledge of other cultures." He said graduates should use their new language skills constantly or they may lose their effectiveness. Although he earned his language proficiency from the Persian class at ALS, he remained a medic until his retirement. He only used his language skills twice, once in Germany and once in Ethiopia. After his ALS schooling in 1949, he was reassigned to the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany. Shortly after his arrival, a Turkish general, the chief of the Turkish army medical service, visited his unit. During the visit, Larson conversed in English with a young Turkish officer. "I told him 1 had just graduated from our Army Language Schoolm Persian and was jealous of the Turkish section because they could write in Romanized letters while we learned Arabic script," Larson said. "The officer was surprised and approached the general, who then asked me to meet him. "We greeted each other in Persian when he asked me where I learned to speak the language so well," Larson continued. "I told him about the Army Language School. Then, the general explained he learned Persian as a young medical officer stationed on the Turkish-Persian frontier and enjoyed reading the poetry of Persian poets Saddi and Ferdosi in the original language. "Next, the general asked, through his interpreter, why I was in Germany and not in Iran as an interpreter," Larson mentioned. "Our European Command surgeon general replied that he never heard of the Army Language School before that time."

The medic's next chance using his language skills came in 1956 while stationed in Kagnew Station, Eritrea, Ethopia. He accompanied a small medical party looking for possible evacuation routes throughout the country during the height of the Suez Canal crisis. The group stopped outside a native medical compound asking for sanctuary from armed bandits. This was refused until the native doctor came out and said he spoke French, but not English. Larson detected a slight accent, took a chance and asked the citizen in Perrsian if he was Iranian. "The doctor, taken by surprise, greeted me joyfully and invited us inside his compound for the night," Larson said. "Speaking in Persian, he told me he belonged to the Bahai religion founded in Persia. The doctor mentioned he was sent to this remote region in Ethiopia to bring the message of this religion." Larson had a third time using his language abilities a few years after his Army retirement. He and his wife were dining in Sacramento, Calif., when he happened by chance to learn the restaurant manager was Persian. "I invited him over to our table," he continued. "When he arrived, I stood up and greeted him in Persian. Tears filling his eyes, he embraced me and said, 'I was adopted by a detachment of a railway battalion operating between Qum and Tehran. An American soldier sponsored me, I married an American, and you're the first person to speak Persian to me in years.' Then my family had the best meal in the house."