In the News

By Debra McCown
© January 13, 2012
Full story here

ABINGDON, Va. --Anna Adkins has heard a lot of people tell war stories over the years, she says – but never her husband, Kermit.

“I’ve been married to him for 60 years, and for 50 I knew nothing about it,” she said of his service in World War II, during which he earned a Bronze Star.

The medal was issued in 1947, two years after the end of the war, but he never went to get it. At his wife’s prodding, he finally received it Thursday during a ceremony at the office of U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-9th.

When he was invited to go to the table where his Bronze Star and six other medals lay, he stood slowly. Now 85 and bent over with age, he walked cautiously to the front of the room.

His wife joined him as a local National Guard soldier pinned the medal onto his jacket.

The soldier saluted, and so did he.

Asked if he had anything to say, Adkins returned briefly to his days as a young man from Grundy, Va., who volunteered on his 18th birthday to help win the war in Europe, where he had just arrived.

He and a buddy named Goosie volunteered for an assignment that left the forest around them in flames, he said. He tells a comical tale that began with his machine gun and a poor shot that set a barn on fire.

After that, he said with a chuckle, they didn’t volunteer for any more assignments.

Then the tears squeezed from his eyes and he broke down.

“There’s things you don’t want to remember, and that’s why I didn’t ever tell my wife about it,” he explained, before leaning on her shoulder as he slowly returned to his seat.

In an interview afterward, he said he saw too much in the months he spent in combat in Europe. Like the weary night when he fell asleep near his machine gun in a bombed-out building, then woke up in the middle of the night when the building was hit and fired his gun into the dark.

In the morning, he remembers seeing a little woman who reminded him of someone he knew back in Grundy.

“It just comes back,” he said, “and I don’t want it back, so that’s why I don’t mention it.”

After serving in the war from January to May 1945, he returned home and finished high school at Fork Union Military Academy. He then went on to coach high school sports until he went to work for State Farm Insurance, where he spent his career before retiring in the early 1990s.

Now, he and his wife live in Bristol. They have four living children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Anna Adkins said while she knew her husband had been in the Army, she’d never seen any of his medals.

“He said, ‘I never got ’em,” she said. “I knew I had to do something about it. I knew he wouldn’t.”

She learned that not only had he been honored with several medals during the war, but two years later, in 1947, the Bronze Star had been authorized for soldiers who, like him, received the combat infantry badge, which was given to soldiers who were in direct contact with the enemy.

“We had visited with Goosie and his wife. They talked about funny things, but they had never mentioned anything about a war story. It was just not a topic of discussion,” she said. “The ones that don’t talk are the ones that have the stories to tell.”