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Pearl Harbor A Call to Service Heard Loud and Clear by Moundsville Vet

Moundsville vet joined Navy at 17

Photo by Scott McCloskey World War II veteran Robert “Dale” Sigler of Moundsville displays the many medals he earned while serving in the military.

MOUNDSVILLE — Robert “Dale” Sigler was just a sophomore at Moundsville High School when hundreds of Japanese fighter planes attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, killing and wounding thousands of American service members.

It was less than two years later, at the age of 17, that Sigler decided to enlist in the U.S. Navy with the written permission of his parents — a duty and service to his country that would last more than two decades.

Sigler, who was awarded many medals and ribbons during his more than 20 years of military service following the attack on Pearl Harbor, said he recalls just a few things as a youth in the months following the tragic event, mostly involving his family.

Sigler, 91, said he remembers everybody posting “A, B or C” tags on the windshield of their cars as part of the gasoline rationing that began all around the country in the months following the onset of the war.

It was all part of the government implementing a rationing system of gasoline, food, clothing and other supplies throughout the country during that time.

The letter tags designated the priority for individuals purchasing gasoline.

Those in certain professions, such as doctors, police and clergymen, received a higher priority for buying a larger amount of gasoline during that time.

“I remember that everybody had to have a regular tag on the windshield of their car to get gas. If you didn’t have that A, B or C letter on the windshield you couldn’t get gas,” said Sigler, who still lives in Moundsville with his wife Shirley. “My dad, who was a chaplain at the penitentiary, he had one of those tags. … If you didn’t have that tag, you just couldn’t get gas — it was just impossible. But of course there weren’t that many cars then, either.”

Sigler said his father worked for 10 years as the chaplain at the penitentiary in Moundsville, prior to working at a munitions plant in McMechen.

Sigler said he remembers his family was directly affected by the onset of World War II, and that both his parents, Francis and Ruth Florence Sigler, worked at the old Marx Toy factory in McMechen for several years after the plant was converted into a munitions factory to make ammunition shells, detonators, bazookas and other related materials to support the war effort. He said they worked there until the war was over.

Sigler recalls many people in the Moundsville, Glen Dale and McMechen communities working at the Marx factory as part of the war effort during that time. In addition, his older sister, Florence Sigler, was a cadet nurse during the war and an older brother, James Sigler, joined the military two months before him.

Sigler said as a result of the war, he joined the Navy in summer of 1943 before finishing out his senior year of high school.

He said after going through recruit training he was assigned to a cargo ship that was sent to deliver munitions to ships located near the northern tip of Russia.

Sigler said he was eventually assigned to a new destroyer ship that took his unit through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific Ocean to engagements at Saipan, Tinian, Guam and eventually to Palau, the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

“I got out of the Navy in 1946 and finished high school at Wheeling High School and got my senior year in because I left when I was 17,” Sigler said. “I graduated from Wheeling High School and then I went right back into the military and this time I went into the Marine Corps (in 1948) and I retired out of the Marine Corps after 20 years.”

Sigler said he served in Korea twice during his time in the Marines.

“Altogether I was over in the Far East four times in 20 years,” he said.

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