Local resident Kelly Reid has quite a story to tell from his time in World War II.

Kelly Reid grew up in Wichita County, north of Wichita Falls and just nine miles from the Red River.  In the fall of 1944 he was 17 years old and due to turn 18 in November, at which time he expected to be drafted into the Army.  He did not want to go into the Army, he preferred to be in the Navy.  So he talked his parents into signing the permission form allowing him to join the Navy at age seventeen.

He was sent to basic training at the Navy’s Great Lakes Training Center in Illinois.  It was wintertime and very cold.  Much of their training was done in snow and sleet conditions.  A lot of men were eliminated there, but not Reid.  “It didn’t bother me.  I was 17 0r 18 years old.  I was born and raised on a dairy farm, I had gone through a lot of cold winters.”

At the conclusion of basic training, a new opportunity presented itself.  “They made an announcement, anybody who wanted to, could go into another organization, which turned out to be the OSS (Office of Strategic Services).   At that time they did not tell us where we were going or what we were going to do.”  Looking for adventure, Reid volunteered.

Reid and the other volunteers were sent to Florida for advanced training.  The rigorous training consisted of lots of work in the ocean at night.  More men were eliminated, but Reid successfully completed the training there.  He was then sent to Washington D.C., to the headquarters of the OSS, and was assigned to the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps).  While there he met high OSS officers in the Pentagon several times, and even met President Truman several times.  Then back to Florida for two or three months of more underwater training.

After that training he was sent to California, from where he flew to Hawaii.  He spent “about 30 minutes” in Hawaii, and then travelled by submarine, surface ship, and airplane to several other Pacific islands.  At one of those his group went through another week of advanced underwater demolition training.  Again, some men were eliminated, but Reid did well and stayed in the group.

Reid was granted a 30-day leave, and went back home to visit his parents in Wichita County, but he could not say much about his Navy activities.  “The OSS was a very highly secret organization.  Even my parents didn’t know what I was doing, and I could not tell them.  But both my mom and my dad understood why I could not tell them anything.  They did not question me about anything.”

Then it was back to California and back to the war zone in the Pacific Ocean.  This was not long before the end of the war (which occurred in August 1945), and his group was given a mission to blow up and sink a Japanese ship.  “The Japanese had a ship stationed at an island.  We were dropped off and swam about fifteen miles to the island where the ship was, and blew it up at night while they were partying.  We had about 20-lb. of dynamite strapped to us.  We couldn’t swim normally.  We had to swim underwater and come up every few minutes to breathe, and then go back underwater.”  They strapped the explosives to the hull of the ship underwater, set the timer, then swam about ten or twelve miles back out to sea, where they were picked up by a boat.

After that mission Reid was sent back to the States.  “We were in California when we got the word that the war had ended.”  He was discharged out of the OSS into the Navy, and then discharged from the Navy back into civilian life.

After World War II the OSS evolved into the CIA, and the special underwater operations group that Reid had belonged to became the Navy Seals.

Kelly Reid is 96 years old now, in good health and sharp as a tack.  The victory in World War II required incredible effort, courage, and sacrifice from thousands of heroes.  Kelly Reid is one of those American heroes.