Look into the back of one of the dozen or so convertibles in Pardeeville's Fourth of July parade Saturday and you'll see a neighbor from Rio, Wyocena, Pardeeville or Portage.

You'll see a poster on each door, too. The poster will tell a short story - name, hometown, branch of service ... and perhaps an indication that the rider is a Purple Heart recipient. Or a prisoner of war. Or a Gold Star mother.

There are more than 10 honored guests who plan to participate in this year's parade. They served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam or Iraq, or lost someone in one of those wars.

Here are some of their stories.

• Wilfred W. Gray, 84, Portage. World War II. Purple Heart recipient.

Wilfred Gray entered the war as a member of the 101st Airborne Division. It's the U.S. Army division of which Easy Company, chronicled in Stephen Ambrose's book "Band of Brothers," was a part. Soldiers were trained to parachute into combat.

"I jumped on D-Day," Gray said. "I went through the whole war, and I'm home."

Gray said his first, practice jump was frightening. "After that I enjoyed it," he said.

But in the early hours of June 6, 1944, the jump wasn't for practice.

"It was bright - there were so many shells flying around. Tracers going through the air," Gray said. "It looked like the Fourth of July."

"I was very nervous," Gray said. "I landed away from the DZ (drop zone) into a marsh. I had to dig like heck to dig down into the ground because they(German soldiers) were shooting tracers over my head all the time."

Gray said that during the war, he sometimes would be on duty at night and see what looked like a German moving in the distance.

"But it was just a fence-post."

Gray stayed with the 101st through Operation Market Garden, in the Netherlands. Later, he was sent to Bastogne, Belgium. He said he and others in his unit expected to have an easy time.

"When we went to Bastogne, we had just got done with our third enterprise and we were pretty happy. Just sit around and shoot the bull," he said.

His unit was marched into a field, where Gray saw several tanks. He assumed the tanks were there to protect his unit. But German soldiers had them.

"All of a sudden they broke loose and were just shooting at us like crazy," he said.

Germans had encircled Bastogne. The siege, part of the Battle of the Bulge, lasted for a week near the end of 1944. When the German commander called on the Americans to surrender, it was the 101st's commander who replied, "Nuts."

By the end of the war, Gray had a Purple Heart, although he doesn't remember the details. Afterward, he learned auto body repair work. Later, he opened Gray-Bahl Collision Repair in Madison.

• Ford J. Greene, 85, Pardeeville. World War II. Purple Heart recipient.

Immediately after high school, Ford Greene was drafted into the Army and sent to Gen. George Patton's Third Army in France as a replacement rifleman in 1944. After several months of fighting in Europe, Greene's unit became part of the American counterattack that pushed back the German advance during the Battle of the Bulge.

"I got as far as Luxembourg," Greene said.

In January 1945, he was wounded outside Diekirch and sent home. Greene left the war as a private first class.

"I made that because I got into combat. I was a private before that," Greene said. "I heard that in the hospital."

After the war, Greene went to college and became an aeronautical engineer. He retired from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

• Arden "Bill" Klimke, 83, Pardeeville, World War II. Purple Heart recipient.

"The most stupid thing in the world is to stand out there and shoot one another," Bill Klimke said. "What's done is done ... I hope my grandkids never have to."

Klimke entered the U.S. Army in July 1944. After basic training, he was sent to Hawaii and then to Saipan, which had been captured from the Japanese. He helped "mop up" the area and trained.

"Then we departed for 'parts unknown,'" he said.

For Klimke, "parts unknown" meant Okinawa. The battle was the largest amphibious invasion in the Pacific Theater of Operations of World War II. It lasted three months and killed more than 12,000 Americans, more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers and as many as 100,000 Okinawans.

Klimke was hit by a mortar round and rifle fire on April 19, 1945, and evacuated.

He spent time at the fleet hospital on Guam and then was shipped to hospitals in California, Texas and Michigan. He was discharged in Michigan Sept. 28, 1945.

Klimke joined the American Legion's Montello post in 1946 and still goes even though he moved to Pardeeville 30 years ago.

"I don't want to get into the killing part of it," Klimke said. "I'm thankful I'm home. I came back home, and that was the best part," he said.

• Ralph Pulver, 85, Wyocena. World War II. Purple Heart recipient.

Ralph Pulver was aboard the escort carrier USS Salamaua on Jan. 13, 1945, in the Pacific Ocean when it was hit by a kamikaze plane. Fifteen people were killed.

"We weren't at general quarters or anything," Pulver said. "Just a boom, and we were confused."

Pulver was an aircraft mechanic and was working on a hydraulic problem under the bomb bay of an Avenger torpedo bomber. He said the aircraft helped protect him from the flash.

"I was burned," he said. "I was wearing nothing but a pair of coveralls, and I had my sleeves down as I was told to have."

Some sailors nearby had their sleeves rolled up and suffered burns on their arms.

"I was badly blistered on my hands and face. No eyebrows, no eyelashes," Pulver said. He said his partner looked the same.

"He and I looked like a pair of twins," he said.

He said he didn't immediately feel pain and began fighting the fire that had started after the explosion. Eventually the sprinkler system started.

The damaged ship was repaired, and Pulver recuperated. He served on it through the end of the war.

"We were in Tokyo Bay ... the time the peace was signed," he said.

After the war, Pulver spent 37 years at Oconomowoc Canning Co. in Poynette.

• Juanita Cumpton, 84, Pardeeville area. Gold Star mother.

"One time I was riding in the parade, and this guy said, 'Gold Star Mother ... what company is that?'" Juanita Cumpton said. The man had mistaken "Mother" for "Motor," she said.

A Gold Star mother has lost a child in war.

"My oldest son was killed in Vietnam," Cumpton said. "He was 18 years old."

Ralph Anderson enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after high school graduation. She said part of his reason was to earn a college education. He went through boot camp and visited home before being sent to Vietnam in 1968.

"He got to come home for five days, and then he was sent right out," Cumpton said. "He was only there for 3 1/2 months when he was killed."

"He saved three other Marines, but he didn't get back," she said.

She was living in Florida when she learned of her son's death.

"I was working in a factory, and the girl from the office came out," Cumpton said. "And she said, 'Juanita, you're wanted in the office.' "

Cumpton followed, she said, and the office worker suggested she pick up her purse and lunchbox, too. She followed her into the office.

"Here were these two Marines standing there, and I knew what that meant - and I passed out on the floor," she said.

Her son was buried in DeSoto, Wis., near relatives. Cumpton said he had recently visited the cemetery with his grandfather, a veteran of World War I, and told him that he wanted to be buried there if anything happened to him.

All four of Cumpton's other children enlisted - one in the Army, two in the Marines and one in the Air Force.

"My dad had a lot to do with it," she said. Her husband was a World War II veteran.

Cumpton said she has a heavy, framed certificate that she was given after her son's death. Her son's name is on it, along with his rank, lance corporal, and a mention of the Silver Star he was posthumously awarded after saving his fellow Marines. The date is there, too: May 2, 1968.

Cumpton is active in the local American Legion Auxiliary and the Veterans of Foreign Wars auxiliary. She said she has participated in most of Pardeeville's Fourth of July parades since moving to Wisconsin in 1969. She said she goes to honor her son.

"I tell them I go because I'm thinking of him," she said. "I think of him the whole time I'm in the parade.

"I think of him."Coming Monday

More extensive stories about the following parade participants will appear in Monday's Daily Register, with coverage from the parade:

• Jay West, 86, Portage. World War II. Former prisoner of war.

• John Reilly, 81, Portage. Korean War. Purple Heart recipient.

• Ken Griffin, 65, Pardeeville. Vietnam. Purple Heart recipient.

• Tom Kruger, 60, Rio. Vietnam. Purple heart recipient.

• Kurt Collins, 19, Pardeeville. Iraq veteran.

If you go

What: Old-Fashioned Fourth of July Celebration.

Where: Pardeeville. The parade will start and end at Pardeeville Elementary School and run through Main Street again this year.

When: Step-off time is noon Saturday.

Details: More than 70 units are signed up to participate. The parade will include several convertibles to carry honored guests.

mthompson@capitalnewspapers.com

745-3510