Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Friday, April 18, 2003
Skelton chronicles 80 years as cowboy, soldier
By SMOKEY BRIGGS
Staff Writer
PECOS, Fri., April 18, 2003 -- If you were born in San Saba County in 1921 and lived to see the dawn of the 21st Century, you might live through a few incidents worth writing down.
Merle "Tuffy" Skelton was and did, and now the Barstow resident has written down more than a few of his experiences in a book titled, "Cowmen, Cowboys, and Soldiers I've Known."
He came by the nickname Tuffy honestly.
When he was five a sickness took hold of most of his family. One younger sister died. At one point one of his older sisters picked him up and said, "Well, it looks like little Tuffy is going to survive."
He has answered to Tuffy ever since.
The depression hit the Panhandle and West Texas hard. Tuffy's mom died when he was nine and at the age of 13 he struck off on his own.
"I stayed with an uncle of mine for awhile and went to California in the fall of 1935 and stayed the winter," he said. "I was doing anything I could get to do - I sold newspapers, worked on a hay bailer and put up flyers for grocery stores."
He graduated into cowboying early on and that is what he was doing when he enlisted in the U. S. Army two months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Tuffy enlisted in Amarillo and went to basic training at Fort Sill, Okla., where he joined a lesser-known element of the Artillery - the mule-pack artillery.
"We used 75 mm mountain howitzers that were designed to be broken down and carried by mules," he said.
The mule-pack artillery belonged to the 1st Cavalry Division, which shipped for Australia and the Pacific Theater on July 3, 1943.
Tuffy and the division were part of three major campaigns in the Pacific: the Admiralty Islands campaign, the invasion of the Philippines, and finally Luzon in 1945.
Unfortunately for Tuffy and his fellow cavalrymen the unit's animals could not be shipped to Australia.
"They used the cavalry guys as dismounted infantry and we pulled the little 75's with jeeps until the jeeps got stuck and then we broke them down and carried them by hand," he said.
According to Tuffy it took 10-12 men to carry all the pieces for one of the 75mm howitzers and that did not include ammunition for the gun.
"We put them to good use through all three campaigns," he said.
Tuffy was discharged in December of 1945.
Two years later he was working for a Wild West Show back east.
"Actually I worked for three different shows - billed as rodeos," he said. "Cowboys were pretty scarce back in the part of the world. I rode rough stock with the show and we all worked setting up and moving to different towns."
That year he met his wife Ireta in West Virginia while working for one of the wild west shows.
They were married August 8, 1947 after knowing each other for all of 30 days. It was enough. They are still married after 56 years.
After getting married Tuffy moved his new bride back to Texas and went to work as a cowboy.
He worked as a cowboy until 1976 when he leased a place west of Toyah and operated it as a ranch until 2000 when he took up book writing.
"The book is primarily about my life - friends and people I worked with and soldiered with."
Tuffy was 22 months writing the book, which has been in print since the day before Thanksgiving this past November and is in its second printing.
"I never thought I did anything worth writing about but a nephew of mine got me started. He said we ought to have it in the family so I decided to write it down."
Eighty years of living, cowboying and soldiering lends itself to more than a few tidbits of history.
It was probably worth writing down and probably worth reading as well.
Copies of the book can be found for sale here in locally in Pecos or it can be ordered directly from Tuffy at Box 125, Barstow, Texas 79719.
