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<< Previous   of   Next >> (click to enlarge) Daryl Gemmer served during World War II with the 161st Infantry Regiment in the Solomon Islands, where this photo was taken.   ADVERTISEMENT   CONTACT THE HERALD Robert Frank, City Editor frank@heraldnet.com   Published: Sunday, May 25, 2008 Machias soldier's dog tag found By Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist As a kid, Daryl Gemmer was funny. One daughter grew up hearing what a jokester he'd been. That's not the father she knew. Gemmer's lightheartedness was a casualty of World War II. "Everybody says he came back completely changed," said Lynnea Flarry, who lives near Bellingham. "I'd see glimpses of my dad being jolly. For the most part, that was left behind in the Solomons." Raised in Machias, Daryl Gemmer returned from duty in the Pacific islands to live a long, purposeful life. He worked in logging, and for the Scott Paper Co. He had six children. When he died on Jan. 19, 2006, he was 83. Gemmer's carefree nature may not be all he left behind in the Solomon Islands, northeast of Australia. A military dog tag with Gemmer's name and a Snohomish address apparently was found by an Australian man several years back. Flarry and her brother Myron Gemmer, of the Smokey Point area, received e-mail in early May from Brett Pattie, a detective with the Victoria Police in Melbourne. Pattie said he spent a year in the islands in 2004 and 2005 while on duty bolstering the Royal Solomon Islands Police. Gemmer's military tag, Pattie's e-mail said, was sold to him by an islander along with the tag of another American. He said he bought them in hopes of returning them to the men's families. The Gemmer family doesn't yet have the metal tag, but Flarry said they've communicated with the 33-year-old Pattie about the best way to ship it. While being contacted by a stranger after so many decades might raise a red flag, both Flarry and her brother believe Pattie's story is true. They believe he has no motive but to return the tag. "I've offered money, but he didn't want it," Flarry said. Pattie didn't find Myron Gemmer and his sister, there's a middleman in this story. Shane Elliott, a 42-year-old Marine veteran who lives in Skagit County, has an interest in military history, particularly in the Pacific islands. Now a merchant mariner, Elliott said his avocation began with a sailing trip his family took to Australia when he was a teen. Exploring Web sites devoted to Pacific shipwrecks, Elliott said he came across listings of found dog tags; two were from men in the Northwest. He reached Pattie through an e-mail address listed on the site. The Australian, Elliott said, has tags for Gemmer and a soldier from Portland, Ore. Pattie told the Gemmer family his efforts to get information about lost dog tags from U.S. government agencies were fruitless. "Personally, I think they don't have the time," said Elliott, adding that there were more than 70,000 Americans missing in action at the end of World War II. Once he began searching for relatives of Daryl Gemmer, it didn't take long for Elliott to locate Myron Gemmer just one county away. Elliott said he hopes the family gets the dog tag before he leaves for a job in Hawaii next month. "He's not shipping it to me, probably to Lynnea," Elliott said. Whether or not they ever see that dog tag, Myron Gemmer, his sister and Daryl Gemmer's 83-year-old brother, Quenton Gemmer, hold fast to all they do know about their loved one's military service. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration shows that Daryl Gemmer enlisted in the National Guard in Everett on Sept. 16, 1940. "He joined the National Guard for spending money. And he lied about his age," Flarry said. Quenton Gemmer, who also lives in the Smokey Point area, said his brother served in the 161st Infantry Regiment. After the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, Daryl Gemmer served in the Hawaiian Islands and the Solomon Islands, including at Guadalcanal. Stricken with malaria and other illnesses related to jungle duty, he was sent to a hospital ship. In 1943, Quenton Gemmer said, he was shipped back to the United States, where he spent months at a military hospital in San Francisco. The Gemmers had all heard stories of Daryl, whose rank was a private, being decorated for killing and capturing a number of Japanese soldiers. Myron Gemmer doesn't know the details. "With every tale, if it's told 12 times, you hear 12 different things," said Gemmer, who cared for his father at home in the last years of his life. Lynnea Flarry recalls her father bringing home strangers who needed a helping hand. "My dad would not talk about his war experience, it was way too painful," she said. Daryl Gemmer is buried at the Machias Cemetery. Together, his children wrote the poem that appears on his gravestone. It says, in part: "A WW II hero who hated war. A frugal man who helped the poor. Of all he had done and all he had been He was proudest by far of his six children." Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlstein@heraldnet.com.

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