The Darby Men who Served

"Saluting Our Vets"  - written about the sons of Felix Darby, Arnaudville.
By Gladys L. DeVillier, Life/Style Editor, Teche News
November 8, 1994

Nothing else is as good as war for placing men and women in situations and parts of the world where they have the least desire to be.  It has always been so, but when the bugle is sounded, most answer the call.From time immemorial, war has been waged—sometimes over issues that few Americans could relate to—and yet thousands of souls have perished for those causes.American families have sent their sons and daughters off to battle, whether those battles were called revolutions, wars, conflicts, or eras. 

Some, as the Felix Darby family in Arnaudville, sent the majority of their sons to other countries, not knowing if they would return or not.  Warriors have fought on American soil and foreign ground, in the skies and on the oceans.  They fought a revolution to wrest power from England and to establish a new country.  Families turned against each other on American soil to decide whether men could enslave other people.  They fought in the bleak forests of the Argonne where men were not the only enemy.  Many died from influenza and pneumonia before they ever disembarked from ships on France’s shores.  They fought on the beaches of France, the hell holes of South Africa, Germany and Japan, the rice paddies of Cambodia and Vietnam.  They fought at the Bay of Pigs, in Cuba and other Latin American countries, and in the Persian Gulf and in Iran and Iraq’s hot desert sands.Wars have plucked boys of the farms and from factories, from offices and sanitation departments, from all professional fields, and cast them into a role for which they were ill prepared.  But they fought. 

Some died in fiery planes and some died in mine fields, or in tanks that often turned into hot ovens.  They knew the future of America might well rest on how well they held off the enemy.Many died, but many more returned home, battle weary, often shell shocked beyond repair, to ticker tape parades and to demonstrations by their own countrymen who believed war was wrong in Vietnam and took their anger and frustration on the closest targets—their own veterans.

We memorialize those who have died, but often we forget to honor those who have lived.  As Conte Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803) once said, “Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.”And so, this Veterans’ Day, we honor those who served and lived, among whom are:Mr. and Mrs. Felix Darby sent off five of their seven sons to the battlefields of WWII.  Luckily, they all returned. 

Johnny came marching home with his brothers, Edwin, Albert, Louis and Felix Jr.

Albert Darby joined the Navy on October 14, 1942.  He served as a Boatswain 2/C on the USS Fillmore.  He was an instructor (t)(LC) in San Diego and the Philippines.

His brother Edwin “Ti Neg” Darby, joined the Navy in January, 1944, and was discharged in April 1946.  He trained in San Diego, Calif., and then on the U.S.S. Tennessee in the Pacific Theater.  He was a Seaman First Class.

PFC Johnny Darby served in he Army from March 1944 to October 1945.  He and his brother Louis served in armored divisions in France and Germany.

Felix Darby, the youngest of the fighting family, also served in the Army, having joined in July 1944. He took basic training at Camp Barkley, and served as a medical lab technician with he 908th Evacuation Hospital unit in the Philippines, and then in a hospital in Tokyo.  He was discharged in San Antonio in 1946.

* * *PEARL HARBORDecember 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy… No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Special thanks to Suzanne Huval Stelly, daughter of Mayor Jim Huval and Mrs. Edith “Titit” Darby Huval, for her submission of the “Saluting Our Vets” article and other photographs of her family. We are grateful.