Veteran recalls ‘divine appointments’ in waning days of WWII

Moody Barker’s transfer from stateside duty to the Pacific in the final days of World War II led to two encounters he considers “divine appointments.” One reunited him with his brother. The other reintroduced him to a boyhood friend who helped usher him into the family of God.

After Barker, who lives at the Christian Care Center retirement facility in Mesquite, told members of his Sunday school class at First Baptist Church in Garland how he saw God at work when he was serving in the military more than 63 years ago, they persuaded him to write about his experience.

As Barker relates the story, he was drafted into the U.S. Army four months before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the war. After he completed basic training in Virginia, he was stationed at Norton’s Point in Seagate, N.Y., at the north end of the Coney Island Boardwalk.

Moody Barker (center and right) was reunited with his brother, Bill (left), in the Pacific during the final days of World War II—one of two key encounters he considers “divine appointments.”

Although he was trained as a gun commander on a 90-millimeter emplaced to defend against aircraft or marine enemy, he discovered his primary duty was to check incoming and departing vessels passing through the New York Harbor submarine net.

“We were known as Coney Island Commandos. Our greatest danger was fighting the crowds on the subways to Times Square,” he recalled.

In contrast, his younger brother, Bill, received his basic training at Camp Beale in California and combat training in Hawaii, and then he participated in an island-hopping series of missions across the Pacific. He finally was sent to Leyte in the Philippines, where he was part of a multinational 12-million-man force that was being trained for an anticipated invasion of Japan.

Moody Barker married Jewett Watts during a Christmas furlough in 1944. When he returned to base, he received his orders to ship out for the Pacific. After stops in Pennsylvania and California, he boarded the Brigadier General Howze—“a faster ship than most, so we went unescorted across the Pacific.”

Not long after Barker arrived in the Philippines, he confirmed that his brother also was stationed somewhere in that area, but as he noted, “There were about 12 million men in the area at the time preparing for the invasion of Japan, so I figured finding Bill might be kind of hard.”

While he was in the process of trying to find out where his brother was serving, Barker saw a banner on a bulletin board at a service club near Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s headquarters. It said, “Bomb equal to 20,000 tons of TNT dropped on Japan.”

When a companion asked Barker what he thought about that, “I told him it had to be more propaganda.”

But that night, Barker’s squad leader woke everyone in earshot at 3 a.m., firing twin Thompson submachine guns and shouting, “The war is over, and we are all going home!”

Moody Barker (3rd from left, standing) spent most of World War II stationed in Seagate, N.Y., checking incoming and departing vessels that passed through New York Harbor with a group who called themselves the “Coney Island Commandos.” Near the end of the war, he was transferred to the Pacific, where he experienced what he considers two “divine appointments.” (Photos/Courtesy of Moody Barker family)

“The next day, I was called to the office and told that I was the first of all the replacements to be assigned to a new unit, and my orders were to fly to Tacloban, Leyte,” Barker said. He was told to report to the 945th Anti-aircraft Automatic Weapons Battalion—on the same island where his brother was stationed. Barker began searching for his brother’s unit, the 155th Combat Engineers. Eventually, he found a phone operator who connected him to the unit.

“I asked if they had a Barker on their roster, and the operator said they sure did, and he was there getting a haircut,” he recalled. The operator summoned Bill Barker, and before long he was on the phone, eager to find out his brother’s location.

“I told him, and he said he would be there in 10 minutes. Sure enough, he showed up in 10 minutes, with half his hair cut—one side neatly trimmed and the other side very bushy, but he sure looked good to me,” Barker recalled.

Later, Bill Barker’s commanding officer asked Moody Barker if he would like to be transferred to the engineers. Barker told the captain he knew nothing about engineering, but the commanding officer asked him if he could drive a nail in a board without bending it. Barker assured him he could.

As Barker remembers it, the captain responded: “You’re a first class engineer. Now go back to your company and write a letter requesting a transfer to 155th Combat Engineers, and I guarantee that if it reaches our headquarters, you will soon be an engineer.”

Five days later he received his transfer orders—not only to the 155th Combat Engineers, but also to Company C, where he ended up sharing a tent with his brother.

Soon after the brothers’ reunion, their unit was relocated to Amori, Japan—the northernmost city on the island of Honshu—where Barker kept his “second divine appointment.”

Walking down the street in a city of 130,000, he heard a familiar voice call his name. He saw Rayford Clinkscales, a boyhood friend from New Gulf, an unincorporated community in Wharton County. He discovered Clinkscales was serving as a chaplain’s assistant.

“We had a nice visit, and during our conversation, he told me about five Protestant chaplains who were having meetings every night and invited me to come,” Barker recalled. “I explained how busy I was with my squad building Quonset huts to help us move out of tents and into warmer quarters.”

But Clinkscales proved persistent, visiting him again the next day and inviting him to another meeting that evening.

“I went and was so touched that I went again the next night. I experienced the love of the Holy Spirit, prayed the sinner’s prayer and asked Jesus to come into my life and be my Lord and Savior,” Barker said. “I had always believed in God and Jesus but never had a personal relationship with him. Everything changed for me that night.”

Barker has no doubts God brought together a series of events within just a few months—his marriage to “a wonderful Christian lady,” a reunion with a brother than demonstrated God’s wonder-working power and his visit with childhood friend who invited him to a place where he could hear the gospel.

“I’ll always thank God for Rayford and his part in my salvation,” Barker said.

“Rayford wrote to Jewett right after that and assured her that I was on the right road. He was right, because my trip down that road has been filled with so many blessings and—after each bump—the road always smoothed out.”

Based on a first-person report by Moody Barker, with additional reporting by Ken Camp