By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

LINCOLN — When he was a boy growing up in Manville, Robert Leclerc would hear stories about Capt. James E. Vose Jr., a local resident who went on to be a lauded Navy pilot during World War II.

Vose earned the Navy Cross for his bombing of a Japanese aircraft carrier during the Battle of Santa Cruz Island in the Solomon Island chain on Oct. 26, 1942.
And he later headed a squadron of the Navy’s new Hellcat dive bomber and took it on the first attack mission to Simpson Harbor in Rabaul on Nov. 11, 1943.
Vose was always cool under fire; a person that didn’t allow anything to faze him, according to those who knew him in the war.
Leclerc never forgot the stories of Vose’s heroism, even as he grew older and entered the military himself for a tour of duty in Vietnam’s Central Highlands in 1968.
After returning home and beginning a career with the U.S. Postal Service, Leclerc, who had wanted to be a military historian in his youth, started to research Vose and his role in World War II to learn more about him.
As a member of Manville’s American Legion Post 9, Leclerc’s research on Vose soon filled a binder with details of the soldier’s military exploits and assignments.
It was the beginning of what would become a major research effort on Leclerc’s part into the stories of many of the town’s veterans.
Today, the result of that work can be found on the walls of Post 9 in the form of informational plaques and photographs, Leclerc, now the post historian, has put together on the 16 town residents who gave their lives for the nation in the time of war.
The project includes the stories of three town men who died during World I  — Army Corp. Russell K. Bourne, Army Bugler Lucien LaRiviere, and Army Prv. Alphonse Yelle, killed on Nov. 10, 1918, just as the war was about to end. He, like LaRiviere and Bourne, was buried at the Meuse-Argonne American Cemetery in Romagne, France, Leclerc found.
The town lost 11 men to World War II, Rosario S. Gauthier, a member of the Merchant Marine, Marine Gunnery Sgt. Theodore Suptelny, Army Prvt. Marcel E. Duhamel, Army Prv. Dollard H. Brissette, Army Tech. 5th. Class Jean B. LeBoeuf, Tech. Sgt. Leo J. Lambert, Army Prvt. Roland Poisson, Army Pvt. Eugene J. Lafond, Army Air Forces Sgt. Gerald J. Bousquet, Army Sgt. Eugene E. Tessier, and Pvt. Joseph A. Cournoyer.
Two of the town’s sons were killed in Korea – Army Corporal Gerard Gaston Millette, and
See SOLDIERS, Page 10
Army Corporal Donald Castonguay – but none in Vietnam, according to Leclerc’s research.
While his work on the project found the causes of the soldiers’ deaths, Leclerc said he also found many details about their service before their lives were lost. Some, like Gauthier, had close calls with that fate while taking heroic action and were killed later in other battles.
Gauthier stayed at his radio post when his ship, the S.S. Beaconlight was torpedoed by a U-Boat off Trinidad, and was rescued with all but one of his shipmates as result. He died with crew members of another ship when it was sunk by a German submarine on Dec. 12, 1942, on a secret voyage starting from New York.
Le Boeuf, a member of the 508th parachute infantry regiment, survived a D-Day drop into St. Marie Eglise, Normandy, and even his jumping to a foxhole occupied by a German. He died on Dec. 31, 1944, in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge.
Brissette participated in the Battle for St. Lo with his 120th Infantry Regiment, and helped beat back a German counterattack in which his unit destroyed five enemy tanks and four armored scout cars. He was killed in action a few days later at the high ground west of St. Lo.
Castonguay was wounded while fighting with the 21st Infantry Regiment in North Korea on May 29, 1951, and returned to duty in June of 1951. He was killed while again fighting in North Korea on July 13, 1951.
As part of his work on the project, Leclerc also created a three-dimensional model showing each of the service members’ roles in the war that could one day be used to help interest local young people in that history.
Post 9 also has living history available to town with veterans like Ray Noury, of Woonsocket, who are still members.
Like Bousquet, Noury was a waist gunner in a B-24 bomber shot down in the air war over Europe. Noury was the only member of his plane’s crew of 11 to survive the downing over Pradlo, Czechoslovakia.
He has been back to the village where he was taken prisoner by the Germans and honored its citizenry as a hero during several public appearances there.
Noury hopes Leclerc’s work will keep the stories of sacrifice and dedication to their country alive with future generations and even inspire some to make a commitment to protecting freedom themselves.
Like Paul Comire, the post adjutant and a Vietnam era veteran, Noury also hopes Leclerc’s project will draw new members to Post 9.
“This post is a tremendous resource to anyone who walks in here,” he said. “It has a history that is unbelievable.”
Leclerc is still working on his history project and is still compiling information on the local veterans like Vose. He too survived the war and lived to the age of 77 before his death in 1990. His service is now recorded in a number of history books on the war. Vose, a 1934 graduate of Annapolis, stayed with the Navy after the war continuing to fly its planes into the jet age, Leclerc said.
His story is also on the walls of Post 9 thanks to Leclerc’s history project.
“I want to keep their memories alive,” the veteran said of all the topics of his research.
“People who have not experienced combat cannot understand what these people went through,” he said.