Meet Military Veteran Robert G. Solterbeck

Robert G. Solterbeck spent most of his 40-year career in the service of his country. He joined the Naval Construction Battalion in February 1942 and was soon deployed to Dutch Harbor, Unalaska. Together with the Army and his fellow Seabees, he fought to eject the Japanese from the islands of Attu and Kiska. After 13 months in the Aleutian Peninsula, Mr. Solterbeck embarked on a tour of the Pacific islands. In August 1945, he was staging to go into Japan from Okinawa when President Truman dropped the bomb and the war ended. A survivor of no less than six amphibious landings, Mr. Solterbeck knows he was lucky to have emerged from WWII unscathed.

Mr. Solterbeck then decided to continue working with the United States Department of Defense as an advisor on engineer supply and maintenance to the Korean Army from 1967 to 1968. He was transferred to Okinawa in 1968, where he spent the rest of the Vietnam War.

Upon his return to the U.S., Mr. Solterbeck served as equipment manager of the Sharpe Army Depot in California and later became chief of the Depot Shops Division of the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana, TX. In both bases, he served as the U.S. government’s chief labor contract negotiator. Mr. Solterbeck concluded his DOD career here, after three decades of service. He then worked in the private sector for 10 years.