Bombers and a rifle at Pearl Harbor -- Veterans Day

November 11, 12:13 PMDenver People ExaminerErnie Tucker

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Pearl Harbor battleships destroyed (Wikipedia)

Lucian "Lou" Weltzer found himself in an awkward position on Dec. 7, 1941 during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The young Marine was firing a 1903 vintage rifle at enemy planes as they roared overhead after bombing the U.S. ships about a block away.

"The planes would come overhead, then there would be a lull," says the 90-year-old Weltzer, who was seated on the parade ground with other soldiers trying to shoot down the enemy.

He could hear the explosions and see the smoke. But he wasn't frightened -- maybe, he chuckles, "I didn't have time to be scared" because it all happened so quickly, destroying a quiet Sunday in Hawaii.

"We did get credit for shooting down three," he says.

After that, he was assigned to guard a dry dock area with several ships, and spent tense hours in the misty, rainy dusk challenging various officers to halt and identify themselves as they were arriving back at the base.

The young man from Downstate Illinois, near Moline, had left his job with the railroad and enlisted in the service shortly before the start of World War II. He saw his share of combat, was strafed by enemy airplanes -- and even talked a shattered fellow soldier into putting down a rifle that the traumatized man was pointing at Lou as he re-entered a tent.

But it wasn't until last year, with the help of the Denver-based nonprofit Greatest Generations Foundation, that he returned to Pearl Harbor, and got to pay his respects to a friend who died on the USS Arizona that morning years ago. Welzter says he and a hometown friend, who he recalls was named something like Mike Giovenazzi, had spent the Saturday before the attack together on leave at a college football game, and later dining at the Honolulu home of his friend's brother.

But rather than stay there, his friend returned with Weltzer to the base, eerily telling Lou that "something is going to happen." Weltzer says he dismissed his friend's worries, but recalls that the last words he ever heard from him as his friend turned to head to the USS Arizona were emphatic: "Something's going to happen."

Welzter, who later married a young Marine, Lyna, left the service after 6 years, eventually settling in Arvada and working in Civil Service for the U.S. Postal Service. His past didn't drift away. Lou says he had nightmares about the war when he returned. Now spends time giving talks to students and community groups. Next month, he plans on heading back to Pearl Harbor this year for the Pearl Harbor anniversary with Steffan Tubbs of KOA radio and the foundation.

"It's a great thing," he says simply. And so, too, was the service rendered by Lou and his peers.