Peak Performance
Mel’s Roles Include Co-ops, Combat, Hollywood
Fifty years as an electric co-op director is only part of the story.
Born in South Dakota in 1920, Melvin Pederson moved with his parents to Canada just shy of his second birthday and they farmed there until 1937. When the Great Depression cost them the farm, the family moved to Hayward, Wisconsin, where Mel’s mother’s brothers owned farmland.
Mel and the family worked in the woods in the winter, ran a sawmill in the summer, and farmed year ’round. His education, through the 9th grade, ended when the family left Canada.
On March 6, 1942, at age 21, Mel was inducted into the United States Army and entered basic training at Fort Lewis, Washington. Assigned to the 174th Infantry Regiment, his unit was given the task of guarding Seattle’s Boeing aircraft plant from saboteurs. A short time later, he was sent to southern California and assigned to guard gun emplacements protecting the California coastline against Japanese invasion.
He was just a regular GI, but Mel was about to have an experience few others would share.
One day the company commander called everyone out for a "dress rehearsal," Mel recalls. As the company stood in formation, the commander and "guys in suits" walked through the ranks. One hundred and fifty men—including Mel—were chosen.
A Casting Call
The new assignment would be very different from anything Mel had been trained for by the Army; all 150 soldiers were to go to Warner Brothers studios in Hollywood to shoot a motion picture.
The film was This is the Army, directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca), with music by Irving Berlin, and featuring Ronald Reagan, George Murphy, Joan Leslie, George Tobias, Alan Hale, Dolores Costello, Una Merkel, Frances Langford, and Kate Smith.
Mel and his comrades would be in the grand finale, performing on a stage where they did a trick manual of arms and sang Irving Berlin’s "This Time is the Last Time."
Being film personalities was full-time work for the soldiers, who put in full days on the Warner Brothers lot for about four weeks, Mel recalls.
He had the opportunity to meet a number of Hollywood celebrities, including Reagan and Berlin. "I visited with them just like you and I are talking here," he said. "We had lunch in the cafeteria with them and got autographs."
He showed me his scrapbook, with photos of the Warner Brothers studios: a picture of the green room commissary where he dined with the stars, a snapshot of Ingrid Bergman walking across the lot, Irving Berlin chatting with a group of men.
More Mementos
There’s also a Life Magazine clipping, showing a soundstage with the finale, the scene representing Mel’s Hollywood career, being shot. It’s huge, with replica pirate ships hanging in the rafters awaiting use in other pictures, cameramen on booms, and the soldiers grouped on the stage. An "x" marks the spot in the group where Mel believes he was standing.
Mel turns the page to the sheet music for "This Time is the Last Time." On its back are autographs of Hollywood celebrities, including Irving Berlin, Joan Lester, Dennis Morgan, Paul Henreid, Ida Lupino, and Gary Cooper.
"Good Luck Melvin," Ronald Reagan wrote.
There are also scraps of movie film, cuttings left scattered on the floor.
Mel had never really sung before, but learned the tune the soldiers were to perform. During rehearsals Irving Berlin would walk among them, coaching them on their singing.
"He was as close to me as you are now," Mel says, sitting next to me on the couch while showing me the scrapbook.
The experience ended as quickly as it began. "That’s my movie career!" Mel says with a laugh.
Time for Two
Mel’s California posting brought another important development when he met Ferne Fosterling at a USO dance. "I took time out for some good things, too."
Ferne was an X-ray technician at a hospital in Ventura, Calif. The two were soon married.
The scrapbook is filled with mementos of the time they were able to spend together. Ferne lived in nurse housing, so when Mel got leave they would stay in motels. At the time, Mel recalls, the longest you could stay in one motel was three days, so on longer leaves they moved from motel to motel.
The scrapbook holds pictures of 1940s motels, tiny bars of soap bearing the names of the motels that provided them, matchbooks, receipts from hotel stays, and military passes Mel says were supposed to be destroyed as soon as they were used, but Ferne saved a few.
There’s an 8-by-10 picture taken about this time that Mel says is his favorite. He’s in uniform, standing straight, obviously in peak physical condition.
"I was in tip top shape."
Given the situation, Mel and Ferne were lucky to share as much time together as they did.
Back to Business
Soon Mel was sent to advanced infantry training in Oregon to prepare for his next assignment.
He and Ferne planned a rendezvous in San Francisco, but just before they were to meet she received a telegram, also preserved in the scrapbook. It reads, "Darling: Unable to see you in San Francisco as planned, will write later. You can answer care of this office. Love, Mel."
Mel was sent to Honolulu, from where he was able to contact Fern. Then he went to sea.
In the scrapbook, in her neat handwriting, Ferne wrote, "Mel left Hawaii. I didn’t hear from him for well over a month, until after the invasion of Leyte."
Mel spent more than a month shipboard, where he joined the 96th Infantry division preparing to invade the Philippines and begin forcing the Japanese off the islands.
"October 20, 1944, is a day I shall never forget," Mel says, getting very quiet as he contemplates the landing on Leyte.
"It wasn’t fun. That’s all I’m gonna say."
This is the portion of Mel’s story he would rather not recall in detail. Mel and his comrades met savage resistance, with aircraft overhead strafing the beach.
Recording a bit of his history for his children, Mel wrote the following about the invasion:
"Prior to our landing, the big guns on the navy ship reduced the beach to big shell holes and considerable debris. This, however, did provide protection from enemy fire. Once the beach head was established and a supply of ammunition, supplies, and equipment was on shore, we proceeded to move inland."
The beachhead took a week to 10 days to secure, Mel remembers.
In the scrapbook is a magazine article about the 96th’s invasion of Leyte, the headline reading, "They were combat virgins."
Mel laughs at this.
"I think we were well-prepared. We had advanced infantry training and were well-trained. The 96th was a well-disciplined, highly trained division."
Guerilla Fighters
As they started moving inland, the Americans met members of the Philippine Liberation Army.
"They were very beneficial to us," Mel says. "They knew the area, knew what to expect, and proved to be our guardian angels. I met up with an old man from the Philippine Liberation Army. He was a real friend and stayed by me as much as he could. He was great."
Mel was astonished at the Filipinos’ ability to use a simple blade, called a bolo knife, as a deadly and also utilitarian weapon: "I was amazed at how fast they were with them. When we were walking through jungle, they would see a snake and cut its head off faster than the wink of an eye."
Mel kept admiring his Filipino friend’s bolo knife and his ability to use it.
"He was deadly with it. After our friendship developed, he presented me with a bolo knife."
As he told this part of his story, Mel left the room and returned holding the knife, a foot-long sheathed dagger with a handle curved to fit the user’s hand, wielded more as an extension of the arm than a conventional knife.
The scrapbook contained many photos from the island of Leyte: men cutting coconuts, island residents cooking outside bamboo huts, soldiers in camp with their pants rolled and shirts off, soldiers holding captured Japanese flags. In most, the men are smiling or laughing, often with an arm on a buddy’s shoulder.
Even during the hardship of war, "We were always cutting up," Mel remembers.
Mel got a brief glimpse of his shining achievement as a movie star when the cast of This is the Army toured the Philippines. Mel met many cast members again when they were on Leyte, and he was given a preferred seat at their performance. He was the only soldier there who had been in the movie.
Sidelined by Illness
While on the island, Mel was stricken with schistosomiasis, a liver and intestinal disease contracted from wading through rivers and rice paddies.
"As we were getting set to go to Okinawa, I got very ill. I spent a great deal of time in Army hospitals in the Philippines. A number of us had it. They didn’t want to ship us to the U.S. I guess they were afraid that it would be spread."
The disease was common among the islanders, Mel says. In its severest stages victims are seen with huge, distended stomachs and thin, emaciated arms and legs.
Mel and the other Americans, though, received the best care available and the disease never progressed to that point. As far as he knows, none of the Americans died of the disease.
While he was in the hospital, Mel’s unit shipped out for Japan.
"The unit went to Okinawa," he says, "and got shot up very bad there. Most of the outfit were killed on Okinawa."
He was on a hospital ship headed for the U.S. when word came that the war had ended.
Mel spent the rest of his army days in the hospital. He was sent to Harmon General Hospital in Longview, Texas.
Discharged from the Army on November 25, 1945, Mel was required for several years to report to Veterans Hospitals to check for lingering effects of his illness. Fortunately, there were none. His military honors include the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, a Philippine Liberation Ribbon with 2 bronze battle stars, the Good Conduct Medal, and Asiatic Pacific Campaign Ribbon.
Back Home
Mel and Ferne headed to Hayward to make their way into civilian life but found, as did many returning GIs, that returning to peacetime life was not easy. Jobs were hard to come by, especially in Hayward.
He accepted an assignment helping discharge returning troops at Fort Sheridan, Illinois, then worked at a Highland Park grocery store, returning in 1948 to Hayward and the grocery department at the Co-op food store, where he worked until 1965.
Mel became Hayward’s postmaster and he also worked as a meat salesman, in emergency medical services, and with his son operating the Hayward Liquor Store. Eventually they sold the building and business to a cooperative supermarket, where Mel worked part time in the liquor department until retirement.
Mel and Ferne were able to build a happy life for themselves in Hayward. They raised five children—four girls and one boy. They enjoyed 51 years of marriage before Mel lost Ferne, who passed away October 10, 1995.
Mel’s life has been characterized by a desire to serve not only his country, but also his community.
He served several years in the National Guard and on the Round Lake Town Board with a long stint as town chair. He was elected to the Hayward Board of Education and served 15 years.
Now 87, Mel marked 50 years as a director of Jump River Electric Cooperative at last month’s annual meeting.
Looking back at his Army years and what he learned then, Mel feels military service is an experience all young people should have.
The horrors of war, however, are not something he would wish on anyone.
Mel points out the lyrics of the Irving Berlin song he and his fellow soldiers sang in This is the Army.
"This time we will all make certain, that this time is the last time."
"Unfortunately," Mel says, shaking his head, "that hasn’t happened."
This story, written by Paul Mitchell, first appeared in the Sawyer County Record on Veterans Day 2004.
