The Stanhope native graduated from Blairsburg High School in 1945. During World War II, of the seven Martin siblings, four brothers and a sister served their country in the military. In 1945, his oldest brother, Thomas, was killed on Okinawa.

“I was close to my brother Thomas,” he said.

He needed to do something to get some measure of retribution on the forces that had killed his brother.

“I thought this over and wondered if there was some way to get revenge on the Japanese,” he said. “That’s kind of hard for an individual to do. So I went ahead and enlisted in the Air Force for three years.”

Harold Martin

He did his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas. He was among the trainees chosen to go to counter intelligence training school at Fort Holabird in Maryland.

As World War II was drawing to a close, troops were being restaffed and shuffled to new assignments.

“Having been recently married, they gave me a choice. I could have stayed where I was, I could have been discharged or I could have come back to the states,” he said.

Things weren’t very stable in 1946, tensions were high with Russia, so he decided to stay in the service.

A high school typing class he took led Martin to find good jobs in the Air Force. There were many openings in the organization. And because of this, Martin said he advanced through the ranks during his enlistment.

“I was able to go from corporal to master sergeant in less than three years,” he said.

Back stateside, he worked at Fort Holabird. He was based in an administrative office with a major. The operational segment of his office was located at the Pentagon, which he routinely visited.

“I made a trip to the Pentagon about once a week, taking equipment for recording and returning with equipment that needed repair,” he said.

When terrorists crashed a plane into the Pentagon in 2001, Martin said he was very familiar with the area.

“As I recall, I used to park my vehicle on that side of the Pentagon where the plane hit,” he said.

While working at Fort Holabird, Martin was given the opportunity to go to West Germany.

“The major who headed up our office had a chance to go to Germany and asked if I was interested in going, too,” he said.

They went to Stuttgart, West Germany, and Martin spent the next three years there.

While in West Germany, he was accepted into Officers Candidate School. That brought him back to the United States for training at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Upon completing OCS, he was stationed at Fort Meade, Maryland. He worked there for 18 months, reaching the rank of first lieutenant.

It was then that he and his wife discussed whether or not he should remain in the Air Force or return home with his family.

“We had three children by that time and the decision was that if I was going to get out, now was the time,” he said. “I stayed in the service all the way from February 1946 to September 1954.”

He returned home to attend Iowa State University in Ames and earned a degree in animal husbandry, then farmed near Gilbert for about four years.

He worked the bulk of his career at the Farmers Home Administration, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“I spent eight and a half years of active military duty and five years in the reserves, and then with the Farmers Home Administration work I ended up with 31 years of federal service when I retired in 1985,” he said.

Martin, 91, has been active with American Legion Post 191 in Webster City. He was instrumental in developing the Avenue of Flags Memorial Day display at Graceland Cemetery. In recent years, he’s passed those duties off to some younger Legionnaires, but he’s still proud of how the annual display has grown and expanded.

“People talked about this and we really promoted it,” he said. “Originally, we thought there might be around 80 to 90 flags. Once it started, it mushroomed.”

Now, Martin estimates, the Legion puts up between 600 and 700 flags for the display.

Martin said the American Legion provides important services to its members, one of the most important being, the support for one another.

“We have to support each other,” he said. “We have to stick together.”