The daily monitor leader. [volume] (Mount Clemens, Mich.) 1942-19??, 1945-05-01
Modest Hero Home After
Three Years in Combot

After five years of army life
and more than three years of
continuous combat, 25-year-
old officer who won his COM
mission in the field was a pub
Lefty shy visitor to Mount Glenn
ems last week.
The former Selfridge enlisted
man. who calls Mount Clemens
his home, is LIST 1t c. Ray Cope
land, formerly of Lyhchburg,
Tenn, brother of Ernest Cope
land. Mount Clemens war fac
tory owner.
Efforts 10 arrange an inter-
view with Ii. Copeland were
unsuccessful. He shrugged them
off with the assertion that he
didn't want to be made into a
hero, because the real heros are
the fellows we left over there
He was referring TO the hectic
touch and go days of March
1912, before the Philippines fall,
when a gallant Selfridge Field
group with other meagre Amer
lean forces faced the powerful
japanese pincers closing in on
Australia - and held the line.
DODGED PUBLICITY
But any references he made,
and any stories he told, were not
told TO a newspaper reporter.
This necessarily sketchy article
on 1t. Copeland was composed
without his knowledge, after he
had left the city, and certainly
without his blessing.
Copeland had been associated
with his brother, Ernest, in the
Ernest Copeland automobile firm
here, and had attended Ypsilanti
State Normal College and Wayne
University before he enlisted at
Selfridge in 1910, the day efore
his 2lst birthday anniversary.
For year he was engaged in
training and maneuvers, until
the war clouds darkened the Pa
cific, and without fanfare unit
after unit - everyone who could
be spared - slipped away from
Selfridge Field
PERILOUS TRIP
Running the gantlet of Jap
submarines and warships on the
lookout for such expected rein
forcements, the Selfridge con-
tingent had a long, roundabout
and perilous voyage to New
Guinea, and found that Japan
already had the Pacific world
by the tail and was swinging it
for throw"
One of the thrilling events of
the trip across was japanese
bombing attack. The ship close
by Copeland's was badly hit and
sank.
In the New Guinea area, where
the temperature range was l2O
in the shade and $50 in the sun,
Copeland knew no hours ON
his assignment as supply and
maintenance chief for fighter
and later troop transport unit.
He told his family in matter-of-
fact style, devoid of heroics, of
the "early days" when the Japs
had aerial superiority and
ground crews worked to patch
wrecked planes with "baling
wire" while Nipponese fighters
sprayed the improvised Yank
field with incendiary bullets and
dive bombers made deadly runs.
SUPPLIES SMASHED
He explained that the major
problem in those days was that
of supplies; of all kinds. The
Japanese knew this, and enemy
attackers would deliberately ig-
more grounded planes and other
targets to concentrate their
bombs on small warehouses or
buildings housing food, tools,
ammunition and fuel.
After one such devastating at
tack, Copeland revealed, Jap
fighter pilots, know ing the
were helpless and out
of ammunition, flew low several
times over the field, dipping
their wings in derision.
Copeland was commissioned
on the field in New Guinea
early in 1914. He explains away
I he promotion by indicating
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