6 June 2024
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — The Maine Military Museum in a former VFW hall just off Broadway holds a massive collection of artifacts related to soldiers, sailors and marines from the Pine Tree State.
The museum’s display cases are stuffed with myriad medals, model battleships and overseas souvenirs from countless American deployments. Dozens of life-sized mannequins with authentic military helmets and uniforms populate every exhibit. Vintage framed newspapers scream wartime headlines of victory and defeat. The walls bristle with swords and firearms.
But James Mardin is the institution’s most prized exhibit.
Known with affection as the museum’s “living artifact,” the 102-year-old Army veteran holds court there almost every Saturday afternoon, educating visitors with tales of his World War II service in Maine and Europe. Though he goes to pains pointing out he didn’t get to the beaches of Normandy until six days after the first wave, Mardin is one of Maine’s last remaining links to the liberation of France.
“When I was 9 years old, I met one of the last living veterans of the Civil War,” said museum founder and curator Lee Humiston. “Now, I tell kids, ‘You’ll remember meeting one of the last living veterans of Normandy.’ Plus, he’s a lot of fun to have around.”
Unlike some former service members, Mardin doesn’t mind talking about his war. Upbeat and smiling, the often wisecracking but never bragging centenarian recalls eight-decades-old events with astonishing clarity and the vigor of a man much younger than himself.
“It’s good for me. It gets me out,” said Mardin, who only quit driving a couple years ago, “and they all want to see a living veteran. So, here I am.”
On Saturday, sitting at a high-topped table in the museum, his cane in hand, Mardin settled in and told his story again with no hint of fatigue.
He was born in South Portland in 1922 and raised by a single mother in Gorham and Portland. Mardin graduated from Deering High School in 1940. While still in school, he joined the Maine National Guard. By the time the United States joined the war in December 1941, his unit had already been called up into the regular Army.
Then U.S. Army Tech. Sgt. James Mardin leans against a wall in a photo taken in Europe during WWII displayed at the Maine Military Museum in South Portland. Mardin is now 102 years old and still telling stories about his wartime experiences. Credit: Courtesy of the Maine Military Museum
Stationed at Fort Williams in Cape Elizabeth and tasked with protecting Portland Harbor, Mardin feared he’d never see action overseas. So he gave up his rank of sergeant to enroll in a military engineering program at Norwich University in Vermont, hoping it would be his ticket to the war.
“But I flunked out,” Mardin said, still sheepish about it.
As luck would have it, the Army didn’t send him back to Maine. Instead, he was attached to a mobile anti-aircraft unit headed for Europe. Mardin arrived in England on New Year’s Day 1944.
“We didn’t know anything about the invasion yet,” he said, “but all this equipment was streaming in and being stored there.”
On June 12, six days after D-Day, Mardin went ashore at Omaha Beach in France. Though Allied troops were already pushing inland, he remembers the British and American battleships were still firing salvos over his head toward the German lines about eight miles away.
Rising to the rank of technical sergeant, Mardin’s unit then spent the next year hauling anti-aircraft guns around Europe, protecting troops and tanks from German fighter planes. Enemy aircraft often aimed directly for his big guns and Mardin would be forced to take cover under trucks and Jeeps.
“The fighters would strafe us,” Mardin said. “I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”
At one point during the winter, he developed what soldiers called “trench foot,” a painful condition brought on by wet feet and cold temperatures. That got Mardin pulled off the front lines and sent to the rear to recover.
As he recuperated, the famous Battle of the Bulge began when Germans surged through the Allies’ thin front line. Instead of falling back with the rest of the wounded, Mardin chose to go AWOL — or “absent without leave” — hitchhiking his way back to his unit at the front.
But he never got in trouble.
“The military police didn’t care,” Mardin said. “As long as you’re going toward the front, everybody tries to help you.”
From there, his outfit’s anti-aircraft guns went wherever they were needed, pushing through Belgium and Germany. By the end of the war, they were near the Russian lines in Czechoslovakia.
“I never did see a Russian,” Mardin said, with a lingering air of disappointment.
When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Mardin was discharged and sent home. The journey took a month. His ship landed in New York that summer and he then made his way back to Portland via Fort Devens in Massachusetts.
After the war, Mardin went to college and married a pretty girl he met there named Bettie Bowen. They were married for 60 years and raised two children together. Mardin worked for Portland freight company Merrill Transport for decades, eventually becoming a vice president.
Also a qualified pilot, Mardin volunteered for the U.S. Air Force civilian air defenses in the 1950s, and helped fight the 1947 wildfires that devastated much of Maine. Though now retired for decades, Mardin has never sat still for long. Both he and his wife volunteered several days a week, for many years at Maine Medical Center. Mardin began volunteering at the Maine Military Museum, archiving, organizing and telling stories, about 15 years ago.
Though it was only a short part of his long, rich life, Mardin said he doesn’t mind the constant questions about his harrowing wartime experiences so long ago.
“I never even fired my carbine rifle,” Mardin said, with characteristic humility. “I had 60 rounds of ammunition on my belt when I started and 60 rounds when I was through.”
When pressed a bit, he admits some things he saw still haunt him.
Mardin remembers dead horses, gunned down by American planes as the animals hauled fuel-starved German trucks. He also recalls scores of dead soldiers, both enemy and American.
“I’ve seen more dead bodies than you’ll ever see in your lifetime. We’d come up on an action that would have happened the day before,” Mardin said. “The boys wouldn’t have been picked up yet. They were all dead.”
Sometimes, he said, his unit would just come upon piles of scattered billfolds taken from lifeless soldiers’ pockets, either in official searches for identification or from looters looking for money.
“I usually don’t go too deep anymore,” Mardin said. “I keep some things to myself.”
Though he spends a lot of time talking about the past, Mardin is still looking to the future and has no plans to stop volunteering at the museum.
Peter Kane, a Vietnam War veteran and guide at the museum is happy to hear that.
“He’s so valuable. The kids love him,” Kane said. “Last week, he had six kids lined up just to meet him. I met a WWI vet when I was a kid and never forgot it.”
To this, Mardin just shrugged and laughed.
“You know, I don’t take any daily medications,” he said, beaming. “I think I can do this till I’m 108.”
The Maine Military Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. James Mardin is usually there Saturdays, after lunch.