Remembering Emery Finney

Posted by Pat Kinney on Friday, September 28, 2018

Emery Finney was known as a dependable auto mechanic and handyman.  Early in his life he was handy with a machine gun -- in Europe during World War II.

Finney, who fought from the D-Day invasion through the Battle of the Bulge, and served his country a second time as an Air Force aircraft mechanic during the Korean War, passed away Sept. 14 at Covenant Medical Center. He was 94 years old.

Raised in a Minnesota farm family, Finney’s education was interrupted by World War II, when he was drafted in 1943. But he received a lot of education in the military.

“I learned to be a gunner. I learned how to repair machine guns and firing them,” he said in a 2011 “Voices of Iowa” interview with the Grout Museum District.

His brother, Donald, joined the Marines in the Pacific and died on a ship home from injuries suffered in one of the Pacific island battles. His family found consolation in their Christian faith and it sustained Finney through his service.

An Army sergeant, Emory served as a machine gunner on an armored halftrack.

At D-Day, “A lot of the soldiers were on the boats in bad position. They got shot at, didn’t know how long they were going to be there,” Finney said. “I had one .50, my buddy (on Finney’s halftrack) had the other .50. We were shooting at the Germans, keeping then off of our troops.  We had to shoot them. We didn’t like it but we couldn’t help it, to keep them off our convoys … I was in there to do a job…I didn’t love it, but yet, it had to be done and I did it.”

He was with the troops across France toward Germany in nearly continuous combat. At the Bulge in the winter if 1944-45 he saw enemy soldiers literally frozen dead on their tracks.

After he had been home a year or two after the war, “I turned right around and went in the Air Force. I didn’t want to go back in the Army and I thought the Air Force would be a better deal.” He was stationed in Nevada near some of the initial underground atomic weapons tests, serving through the Korean War.

He settled in Waterloo after his military service and worked for the Waterloo Street Department, retiring in 1986. Long after retirement he continued working as mechanic on all kinds of vehicles, from automobiles to lawnmowers.

Finney was laid to rest at Garden of Memories Cemetery. He and his wife Helen were married 67 years and had five children and many grandchildren, great- and great-great grandchildren