The annual Remembering Our Veterans exhibit down at the Little White School Museum opened Saturday morning for an eight-day run. This year, we’re doing a bit more commemorating World War I, since this month marks the 100th anniversary of the armistice that ended the conflict.
As usual, my buddy, Bob Stekl, the museum’s assistant director, has done a great job mounting the exhibit—which completely fills the museum’s main room—with the help of a great group of volunteers (including Stephanie Just and Sarah Kimes) that operate like a fine-tuned watch, setting the exhibit up during a single day.
Also this year, like every year, we have a few new and upgraded exhibits featuring recent donations to the museum’s collections. This past year, my high school buddy Jim Yuvan and his brother Jerry donated some photos, battlefield souvenirs, and other materials that tell the World War II story of their dad, Louis Yuvan.
Pvt. Louis Yuvan, fresh from basic training as a cavalryman in December 1941, in a snapshot taken at his home in DePue, Ill. (Little White School Museum collection)
Louis J. Yuvan was born February 12, 1915 in DePue, Bureau County, Illinois. Like so many of his contemporaries, he was drafted and entered service with the U.S. Army five months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He arrived at Camp Grant, Rockford, on June 30, 1941 where he was officially inducted into the Army.
From Camp Grant, he was immediately sent to the U.S. Cavalry School at Fort Riley, Kansas, where he received his basic training. Although World War II is usually considered a mechanized war, at the beginning of the conflict, the U.S. Army still employed horse cavalry, and Pvt. Yuvan was trained to be a trooper in the U.S. Cavalry.
After graduating from basic training, he was assigned to the Machine Gun Troop of the 112th U.S. Cavalry Regiment, one of the last two horse cavalry regiments to serve with the U.S. Army.
The regiment was stationed at Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas and in February 1941 was sent to Fort Clark at Bracketville, to relieve the 5th United States Cavalry on patrol duty along the Mexican border and to receive further training.
Pvt. Louis Yuvan at Ft. Riley, Kansas in 1941 during basic cavalry training. (Little White School Museum collection)
The regiment shipped out for the South Pacific from California in August 1942. Originally equipped with Australian Waler horses, they were ordered to New Caledonia to serve as a horse mounted security force.
Walers were developed in the Australian state of New South Wales and were a very hardy breed that had proven their merit in the Boer Wars in South Africa as well as during World War I. Given their hardiness—they were sometimes nicknamed Water Horses—it was hoped the breed could cope with jungle conditions on New Guinea and New Britain. But it was found horses of any kind were not suited to the physical conditions of jungle warfare, and so the regiment’s horses were withdrawn and they served the rest of the war as light infantry.
Pvt. Yuvan at the trigger of his .30 cal. water-cooled machine gun while on Mexico border overwatch with the 112th U.S. Cavalry Regiment in 1942 as his sergeant supervises. (Little White School Museum collection)
In an interesting side note, after the regiment’s horses were withdrawn, the troopers of the 112th had no need for their sabers, either. At that same time, the Marines who were desperately fighting the Japanese in the jungles of Guadalcanal. The 1st Marine Division’s Gen. Alexander Vandegrift made an urgent request for machetes so his Marines could cut their way through the impenetrable jungle. The campaign’s overall commander, U.S. Army Gen. Alexander Patch, hearing of the sudden supply of cavalry sabers, ordered them cut them down for the Marines’ use as machetes and sent to Guadalcanal.
After extensive amphibious warfare training the 112th the former cavalrymen made their first landing as part of Operation Chronicle on June 30, 1943, establishing a defensible perimeter to protect Seabees building an airstrip on Woodlark Island. In their second amphibious operation, the regiment went ashore at Arawe, New Britain. After linking up with the 1st Marine Division, the Regiment was sent to Aitape, New Guinea, and attached to the 32nd Infantry Division, where it fought in heavy combat along the Driniumor River. The regiment suffered 61 percent casualties during the Battle of the Driniumor River, one of which was Corporal Louis Yuvan, who was seriously wounded on July 10, 1944, ending his career as a combat cavalryman.
Corporal Louis Yuvan hams it up just a little while recuperating at a base hospital after being wounded on Sept. 3, 1944. While he was done as a combat soldier, he served with the U.S. Army through the end of the war. (Little White School Museum collection)
After being hospitalization for three months he was transferred to the 127th Quartermaster Bakery Company, a mobile unit that followed the troops when they departed New Guinea for the invasion to liberate the Philippines from Japanese occupation.
Corporal Yuvan’s unit came ashore hard on the heels of the Allies’ invasion of the Philippines at Leyte Gulf, where they supported the invading troops. From there, it was on to the invasion of Luzon, where the 127th supported troops fighting Japanese occupiers. The war finally ended in the Philippines on Sept. 3, 1945—two weeks after Japan itself surrendered—when General Yamashita Tomoyuki and Admiral Denshichi Okochi formally surrendered all Japanese forces in the islands to allied forces.
During his World War II service Corporal Yuvan earned a number of decorations including the Good Conduct Medal, the Purple Heart Medal, the American Defense Ribbon, the American Theater Ribbon, the Asiatic-Pacific Theater Ribbon with five Bronze Battle Stars, the Philippine Liberation Ribbon, the Bronze Service Arrowhead and, ironically given his cavalry training, the Infantry Combat Badge.
Corporal Yuvan was discharged on Aug. 22, 1945 at Fort Sheridan. Illinois.
Louis Yuvan’s World War II decorations include, ironically for a cavalryman, the Infantry Combat Badge at top center. (Little White School Museum collection)
Returning to his hometown, DePue, Illinois, he started a family after marrying Dorothea Deihl. The couple and their two young sons, James and Jerry, moved to Boulder Hill, Illinois in 1961, where Dorothea taught elementary school, Louis worked as the head of the maintenance department for the Oswego School District and his sons went to school with me. Their oldest, Jim, graduated from Oswego High School with me in 1964. And that’s where I got to know Louis Yuvan, with his distinctive smile and trademark cigar. But I got to know him as my buddy Jim’s dad; I had no idea he had served in World War II, much less that he’d been a cavalryman who morphed into an amphibious warfare specialist.
Louis Yuvan died March 13, 1981 in Aurora, Illinois, after serving his country, his family, and his community far better than so many of his neighbors and friends ever realized.
So stop by the Little White School Museum this week and take in Remembering Our Veterans as we remember all the men and women who’ve served their country so well over more than two centuries. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. The exhibit closes Sunday, Nov. 11.
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