Reflections from a 100-Year-Old WWII Vet

Herb Neff is doing pretty well for a man who just celebrated their 100th birthday on September 14 at Tuscan Villa of Naples Assisted Living facility.

Besides being sharp as a tack, Neff is pretty nimble, often eschewing his cane when walking short distances. He politely declines help getting up from his chair. Aside from a couple of aches and pains, he appears to be in remarkable health.

The staff at Tuscany Villa made a big deal of Neff’s 100th birthday. The guest of honor cut the first piece of a beautifully decorated cake. Sales and marketing director, Colleen Long, presented Neff with an envelope full of 200 letters written to him by students at Manatee Elementary.

Neff is a WWII veteran, enlisting in the Army in 1943. While he is quick to say that he didn’t see any action in his three years in WWII, he did cross paths with two of the biggest players in the war: J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Douglas MacArthur.

Neff was born in Germany in 1921 and moved to the United States as a child. In his early teens, his father sent him back to Germany for technical training. He brought him back home when he was concerned about his safety with WWII looming.

With the apprenticeship Neff completed while in Germany, and presumably high-test scores, the Army immediately sent him to Ohio State University for a year of training. From there, he was shipped out to Los Alamos.

Los Alamos had just been opened, with the sole purpose of designing and building an atomic bomb. While at Los Alamos, Neff was exposed to Oppenheimer, who was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is among those credited with being the "father of the atomic bomb" for their role in the Manhattan Project – the World War II undertaking that developed the first nuclear weapons. 

"I was at Los Alamos for a short time,” Neff said, “but I was shipped overseas. I don’t even know why. I think it was because I wasn’t a citizen at the time. I had been in Germany before that as an apprentice. I went out there to learn a trade and came back before the war. Maybe that made them uneasy, I don’t know. They never told me.”

While at Los Alamos, he observed Oppenheimer in action, and heard him speak.

"Oppenheimer was there,” Neff said. "He talked to us. He was lecturing. New guys came in, 40-50 people, and he came around. Other people were there, too.”

Neff said security was very tight at Los Alamos.

"The mail was censored,” he said. "We couldn’t talk to anybody on the phone. Anything you wrote had a postmark from overseas - not New Mexico.”

He said he found out right away that they were working on the atomic bomb.

"I found out what was happening,” Neff said.  "I did my work and kept quiet.”

After being shipped out, Neff was sent to such far flung locations as New Caledonia and Fiji. But it was in the Philippines that Neff was part of another historic moment in WWII history.

 "MacArthur came,” Neff said. "We had to get off the roads. It was raining. And our company was not set up yet. We were in the area. There was a big circle that was like a race track that MacArthur drove around. We had to go into our tents. We had to be off the circle. He promised he’d return. He returned. We didn’t go out and celebrate or salute him or anything because it was raining. He made his trip and that was it. That was the first time he came back to the Philippines.”

It was during this trip that MacArthur made his famous speech.

“People of the Philippines: I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil - soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come dedicated and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over your daily lives, and of restoring upon a foundation of indestructible strength, the liberties of your people.”