Being First Scout meant you were the first one in during an invasion.

That was Leo Unser's job.

For all the scouting, all the battles and for the three and half years he spent with the soldiers retaking the Philippines during World War II, Unser, of Napoleon, came out without a scratch. One of the few, he said.

In the jungles of those islands, Unser said he'd see trees fall down right beside him where the Japanese were shooting at him. Men right next to him in the foxholes were killed. Men directly ahead of him were killed.

Unser has told his children that it was prayer that kept him alive; if not for that, he would be numbered among the stars, each representing 100 servicemen killed, at the World War IIMemorial in Washington, D.C., 4,048 stars in all.

"Boy, am I lucky that I'm not on there," he said.

Growing up in Strasburg in a family of 14 during the Great Depression, Unser remembers dust storms hiding the sun, grasshoppers eating up everything.

"If you'd leave anything out, a coat, in just a day it was gone, eaten up by grasshoppers,"he said.

Drafted in 1942, Unser was sent to Texas for basic training, where he met the other soldiers he would bond with. After three years together, from Texas to Hawaii to Australia to the Philippines, they became just like brothers, he said.

Only when casualties left holes in their outfit and new recruits were brought in to fill them, did the stealing begin, he said.

It was a long, tough road, reclaiming the Pacific islands: New Guinea, Leyte - "that's where we lost a lot of our company, the 24th Division, 21st Infantry,"Unser said - Mindanao, Hollandia.

There was peril on the ocean and from the weather, as well. An attack on their ship by Japanese planes could have killed them all, he said:"It's lucky they ran out of shells for strafing, because we were all standing out on deck. They could have killed us all."

Dug into foxholes, Unser's company hunkered down during a three-day typhoon. The foxholes were filled with water, but to get out would mean freezing to death or being shot by the Japanese nearby.

Unser was First Scout, which meant the first to go in, to see what there was to see, to report back. The Japanese wouldn't surrender, so the Americans were sometimes forced to use flamethrowers to take out the deadly pillboxes, he said. "You shot until you had them,"he said.

"At the time we were young," he said. "I guess I was tough at the time and had God with me,"he said. "You knew you had to do it. Because it was tough, laying there in that water. It was tough."

After three and half years with no furlough, it was Unser's turn to go on rotation, to go home for a stretch.

"I said that was the happiest day of my life."

During his rotation, the war in Europe ended and he had enough points to get discharged.

"I was so glad. Otherwise, we would have to go back to the Philippines again, to be in the front lines, into battle."

"We took furlough and got out of there as fast as we could."

A guy doesn't feel like talking about it, he said.

"Even so many years ago now, some 60 years, you still don't feel like talking about it. It's too hard. You feel like crying.

"You think about it and dream about it. Because it's something you never forget."

(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@;bismarcktribune.com. To watch a video interview with Leo Unser, visit bismarcktribune.com.)