Several area residents are among 32 veterans of World War II who tell of their experiences during that historic conflict in a film series produced by Brookdale Community College, "Triumphant Spirit: America’s World War II Generation Speaks."

The stories of the veterans are being packaged in half-hour segments which will be aired over Brookdale’s cable channel as they become ready and will be made available at the college’s Center for World War II studies.

Three of the films have been edited and are now in the public sphere. The first, an interview with Gilmon Brooks of Tinton Falls who saw the Marines raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi in Iwo Jima, a scene immortalized by the camera of Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, was given a special showing at Brookdale followed by a champagne reception Jan. 29.

Two other segments also have been completed, one featuring Al Meserlin of Sea Girt who served as Gen. Dwight Eisenhower’s personal photographer throughout Europe, and another featuring Monmouth County Freeholder Theodore J. Narozanick of Freehold who participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France, and went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge.

All the interviews were conducted between January and August 2001.

Among those who will be featured in upcoming films in the series, which still must be edited, are these veterans:

Geraldine Brandow of Red Bank, who served in the Army Nursing Corps in England and then France. She was in France when the Battle of the Bulge took place and worked nonstop caring for the wounded servicemen. Even though she was never at the battlefield, she was awarded a battle star.

Milton Holmes of Tinton Falls, who was one of the Tuskegee Airmen, the corps of black pilots. He trained with the Tuskegee Airmen but never left the States because the war ended before he was due to ship out.

Ralph Jeffers of the Oakhurst section of Ocean Township, who was aboard the U.S.S. Curtiss, a sea plane tender, in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, when the Japanese attack occurred Dec. 7, 1941, bringing the United States into World War II. The Curtiss was heavily damaged after being hit first by an airplane flown by a Japanese pilot on a suicide mission, and then by a 500-pound bomb. After the ship was repaired, Jeffers went through six campaigns aboard it in the South Pacific. He later participated in the invasion of Guam.

John Miller of Sea Bright was a B-25 bomber pilot who served in the southwest Pacific theater of war. His unit aided Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s return to the Philippines. His plane was hit by enemy gunfire over the Philippines and although it was badly damaged, he managed to land the plane and save his crew. He was awarded the Silver Star.

Peter Rubino of West Long Branch crossed Omaha Beach in the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France. He was in the sixth wave. He served in campaigns in both France and Germany, and his story has been compared to that of the movie, Saving Private Ryan.

Peter Scoles of Tinton Falls served aboard destroyer escorts that plied the Atlantic Ocean and tried to keep it free of German U-boats.

James Serano of the Wanamassa section of Ocean Township served in North Africa and Sicily.

George Waple of Eatontown fought across northern France into southern Germany and led the unit that met up with the Russians at the Elbe River in 1945. He served as an orderly to Col. George S. Patton before the war and wound up at the end of the war as part of a security detachment for Gen. Omar Bradley, who at that time was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

— Sherry Conohan