Waco Tribune-Herald September 16, 2007
Founder of plumbing dynasty also a former Navy Scout
By Terri Jo Ryan
Gerald Staas, 81, of Robinson, is a modest man. Known more in Waco for the plumbing dynasty he founded in 1954 than his World War II exploits, he would not have discussed his military service without the urging of his wife, Ann.
For example, he only briefly mentioned that he served with the Navy Scouts.
What he didn’t say was that the Scouts were the forerunners of today’s Navy SEALs — sent on near-suicidal missions to survey enemy territory in small boarding craft and relay intelligence back to command.
“Well, you have some kind of survivor’s guilt if you come through the war without a scratch,” he admitted when asked about the little-publicized, particularly hazardous duty he and comrades performed in the Pacific.
A 1943 Waco High graduate, Staas is the son of Herman Martin and Lena Henrietta Staas. He joined the U.S. Navy in January 1944, at age 18.
After basic training in San Diego, he was offered the option of going into the submarine corps or being assigned to an amphibious unit. He chose the 7th Amphibious Force, and shortly thereafter was recruited into the Navy Scouts.
These units were used for a variety of reconnaissance duties: For example, they would don dark clothing from head-to-toe and blacken their hands and faces to better survey enemy beachheads for their suitability for landing craft.
Staas said sometimes Navy Scouts had to go ashore to gather sand and soil samples to determine if Marine amphibious vehicles would work at a proposed landing site. They also ascertained if jungle clearings could be used by the Army Air Corps for landing strips.
After several missions in New Guinea, Staas said, his Scout unit was supposed to head to Australia for a break but was instead sent back to the 7th Amphibious Fleet, “which was almost as good.”
“We got three great meals a day, and a clean bunk to sleep in,” he said.
So even if they were being sent into the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 — also known as the “Second Battle of the Philippine Sea,” the largest naval battle in modern history — they considered themselves more fortunate than most, he said.
His duty station for most of 1945, a communications ship known as the USS Henry T. Allen, was being repaired in dry dock in the Philippines when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Staas recalled that even then, it was uncertain whether that single bomb would end the war.
“I was hoping it would. I would have been headed to China next,” he said, with the Sino-American Cooperation Organization.
Most single men, such as himself, weren’t mustered out of the service until the spring of 1946, because the military made it a priority to get husbands and fathers home first.
But he made it back to U.S. soil by December 1945. He had a monthlong furlough in January 1946 in Texas before he served his last four months in San Pedro, Calif.
Because of his advanced training in warfare electronics, he added, the Navy tried to woo him to stay in the service. But he was ready to get back to civilian joys.
Staas met his future wife, Ann, at a ball game in Chilton, just a few weeks after his return to Texas in May 1946.
“In a few days, he came knocking at our door,” recalled Ann.
She was born Ann Leyton McWilliams in Graham, Texas, in November 1927.
In the depths of the Great Depression, her father, World War I vet James Verner McWilliams, went to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps, while her mother baked and sold bread to pay the bills.
Her father finally got on with the State Highway Department, as an engineer and worked in Valley Mills and McGregor. The family was able buy a farm in Rosenthal, about 10 miles southeast of Waco, with the World War I bonus funds her father received in 1936.
When her father died in 1942, her mother — Mary Gladys McWilliams — had to get a job in the Bluebonnet Ordnance Plant in McGregor.
“It was shift work, at night,” Ann recalled, “so it was frightening for us to be home alone.”
To help make ends meet, her mother also sold eggs and milk to grocery stories in Waco.
Gerald Staas’ service to his country didn’t end in 1946. He served in the inactive reserves as an electronics technician and was recalled to the service after the Korean conflict erupted in 1950.
From 1951 to 1952, he was assigned as an electronics instructor in Fort Worth’s Naval Reserve Training Center.
He started his plumbing business in 1954 and retired in 2000. His son Larry runs the Waco office now, and his son Kenneth operates the Temple branch.
Sources: NavyFrogmen.com, GlobalSecurity.org, History.Navy.mil, The Frogmen of World War II: An Oral History of the U.S. Navy’s Elite Underwater Units, by Chet Cunningham (2005); Scouts and Raiders: The Navy’s First Special Warfare Commandos, by John B. Dwyer (1993)
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