World War II vet not slowing down

Every morning at 5 a.m., Camet "Rudolph" Edwards arises to head for the milk barn to tend to his some 100 head of cattle. At age 83, Edwards isn't slowing down one bit. "Somebody who just quits won't live no time," he said with a smile. "I know if I'm not doing nothing, it makes for the longest day I've ever lived."

Edwards, a World War II veteran who was recently selected as one of two grand marshals for the July 4 Parade in Sparta, had just finished putting up his first round of hay and was getting ready to clip the pasture the week before last. The other parade marshal selected for the honor was Cleo Reeves.

Edwards was pulled into the World War after having worked for many years as a young boy milking cows on his father's farm. As he grew into a young man, he traveled to Maryland, where he worked for White Westinghouse around the time war broke out.

"At that time I was in Baltimore working," he said. "I came home for a little leave and they must have found out about it because I was drafted into the Navy." Edwards had gone to work in Maryland soon after finishing his lessons at Sparta School. He said he started school at Blevins Crossroads, a small two-room schoolhouse near his family home, which he still inhabits with his wife, Alice. Looking back on the two-room schoolhouse, in which the boys would fetch water and cut firewood, Edwards said, "People can't imagine now how it could have been that way."

After being drafted, Edwards began his service in the U.S. Navy in 1943, aboard the USS Reno, second of four 6,000-ton Oakland class light cruisers built to serve in the war against Japan. The ship was built at San Francisco and was commissioned in December 1943, then deployed to the Pacific war zone in April 1944.

Edwards, who came aboard as a deckhand and later rose to the rank of Seaman First Class, started his tour operating a 40-milimeter gun on the ship. He was later transferred to the laundry, where he would work until the ship entered a battle situation. Then he would join other crewmen in carrying shells for the ship's guns.

"I never did believe it, but the ship fired at a Japanese plane seven miles away and that plane went down," he said. "It was all done with radar." Radar, the ability to pinpoint the location of enemy aircraft and ships using sound waves, was at the time one major advantage the U.S. had over its enemies.

Get the rest of this article in this week's issue of the Alleghany News! Back