WWII keepsakes to be auctioned

Tex and Nick Gaynos, seen here at their home in Post Falls, were married in 1943 in California. Kathy Plonka, photo.

The images came back this week; haunting, vivid, details slowed to an instant inside Nick Gaynos’s mind like never before, and then it was all real again, every moment in a series of chaotic moments, like the relentless sound of splintering wood and the smell of it searing as the bullets pierced the ceiling of the boarded barracks.

And the image of the Japanese pilot waving to Gaynos from the cockpit of the bomber is as still as a picture in a picture frame.

He can see every crack around the pilot’s smile.

He was 23 then, on the ground at Hickam Field at Pearl Harbor, and the bomb the pilot had dropped exploded near the young Army radio chief when the low-flying attacker, surveying his targets on the antenna field, locked eyes with Gaynos, raised his gloved hand and grinned.

“I missed you this time,” the grin said to Gaynos. “But I’ll come back.”

Seventy years have passed, and some of those memories had been buried, but they started stirring again this wee. Full story here. Tom Hasslinger, CdA Press

Four of Gaynos’s keepsakes will be auctioned at the Advending Auctions auction scheduled for noon Saturday, Sept. 22 at Templin’s Red Lion hotel in Post Falls.

I met Gaynos and his lovely wife, Tex, when I interviewed them for this story.

Would you be interested in buying pieces of history?