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Nunez is Veteran of the Month
By Sharon Roosevelt
Pioneer Staff Writer
When Manuel Nunez and his buddy, Antonio Benevides, went to Big Spring in 1940 to enlist, their aim was to go into the field artillery together, serve their 20 years and retire. Field artillery was still horse-drawn in those days, and Nunez visualized days caring for horses and riding.
The young recruits were sent to Fort Bliss in El Paso, and Benevides was in a group that was sworn in the first day, but Nunez had to wait until the following day. He came to the attention of a Lt. Colonel, "a short, chubby guy" he recalls. The officer suggested to Nunez that if he was a truck-driver, he might like it in the quartermaster corps. Nunez replied that he intended to go into field artillery.
Persistently, the Lt. Colonel gave Nunez 100 math questions to do. "They were easy, fractions and multiplication, and I finished them all," recalls Nunez. "Then he gave me 50 more, which were a little harder, and I finished them in about 30 minutes." Nunez continues, "You belong in the quartermaster corps, he told me."
"I am going into field artillery, or I am not going in," Nunez said.
The following day, after Nunez was sworn in and officially in the army, he was approached by the same Lt. Colonel. Nunez saluted, and the officer returned his salute, and then shook his hand. "Son, you're going to be good in the artillery."
Nunez spent the next year at Fort Bliss, where he organized a baseball team, a track team and he boxed. "In fact, I use to go into El Paso and box at the boxing clubs there," he said. "If you won, you got two dollars, and if you lost, you got one dollar." Nunez recalls getting a lot of two dollars.
In 1942, just after war was declared, Nunez was sent to Indio, California for training, and then on to Bedford, Oregon to Camp White. The 62nd Motorized Artillery had been formed as part of the 3rd Army under George S. Patton.
Now a Staff Sergeant, there were no more horses for Nunez. Instead, he found himself training "selectees" as the draftees were called. "We had to teach them to march, to use their rifles, and everything," he said.
Nunez continued with his love of sports, and had organized a baseball team in Oregon. During a game, he broke his right leg in three places. He was sent to the hospital in Longview, where he waited for treatment. After surgery and recuperation, he was sent back to Fort Bliss, where he was discharged in 1944.
After working in Pyote for a while, Nunez went to San Antonio Vocational and Technical School to study to be an electrician.
He and his wife, Maria, have been married since 1944. They have one daughter, Joann Nunez Thomas, San Antonio, and one grandchild.
In 1948, Nunez recalls hearing Walter Winchell call for all veterans to go to church on the anniversary of Pearl Harbor to remember those who had fallen. "I called some men I knew, and told them what I had heard." He remembered, "We met at the Community Action hall and marched to the church to remember them," Nunez said.
Through his work with the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American G.I. Forum, Nunez has been remembering his fellow veterans ever since. On Monday, June 4, the Daughters of the American Revolution honored him with a plaque thanking him for his service to his country.
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