It’s a special claim that few can boast about: getting chewed out by General George Patton. Retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Graham Kent is one of those special few.
It was World War II and Kent and his men were exhausted. Some hadn’t slept for two or more days. Patton was scheduled to inspect his men at 0600. 
“It was cold,” Kent said. “It was an exhausting job. I hadn’t slept in almost three days. I did a patrol, came back, and fell asleep standing up for two hours. My men had been working all night and were laying in a pile covered in snow. Patton shows up and chewed me out. ‘God damn this place looks like a whorehouse.’ ”
Kent felt secure, however, because he had successfully completed his mission.
Despite the tongue lashing, Kent recalled, “He was a great general. I would have served with him anywhere.” 
Kent has a diverse history with the Armed Forces:  he served 31 years in the Army and spent time in Germany, India, Pakistan, Taiwan, Vietnam and Panama. He served in three wars:  World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam.
Even now, at the age of 89, Kent has the air of structure and discipline surrounding him. His hair is cut high and tight and he wears a pressed white short-sleeved dress shirt tucked and belted neatly into his trousers. 
He was an 18-year-old teenager when he began his career in the Army. The adventure began at Fort Lewis in 1943. He was sent to Pine Camp, New York for three weeks and then on to Europe where he was sent to Remagen, Germany. 
Remagen is well-known in World War II history as a formerly obscure German town that changed the afternoon of March 7, 1945, when a company of U.S. 9th Armored Division soldiers emerged from the woods west of town.
Before them stood the Ludendorff Bridge and the Rhine River. The bridge was a rarity at the time because the German Army, under Adolf Hitler’s orders, was destroying bridges spanning the Rhine to slow the Allies’ advance.
Kent is reluctant to speak about his achievements in the Army during his lengthy career. Rather, he repeated the phrase, “When I think back I remember the people.”
The folks he’s met include General Patton, Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, whom he described as, “the most opinionated woman I ever met. She micromanaged her poor daughter and made it very clear that Teddy hated Franklin.”
One of the people he vividly recalled was one of his Battalion Commanders.
“He was small, 5’2”. . . and a strict disciplinarian. If he didn’t like someone, God help them. He liked me, though. I did what he told me to do.”
Another memory is from his time in Heidelberg.
“I just loved Heidelberg,” he said. “It was a glorious occasion.”
While in Heidelberg, Kent would indulge in his love of music and saw many of the great musicians of the day. One, Walter Gieseking, was a renowned and controversial pianist. 
During World War II, Gieseking continued to reside in Germany, while continuing to concertize in Europe. Because he performed in Nazi-occupied countries such as France, he was later accused of having collaborated with the Nazi party.
Kent remembered Gieseking as a tall and large man. He was at one performance where the grand piano was set up so that the audience could watch Gieseking play from the side.
Kent said he walked up to the giant grand piano and moved it so that instead of sitting with the audience to his side, he was sitting with his back to the audience. 
“He played two hours, got up and left,” Kent said.
His memories also include his time spent in Peshawar, Pakistan, as part of the 6937 Communications Group while stationed at Peshawar Air Station.  
PAS was established in 1958 as an isolated detachment of the United States Air Force Security Service located in a remote area south of the city of Peshawar. It was during his service there that Kent was transitioned temporarily from the Army to the Air Force in a non-active theater. 
“I was all dolled up in an Air Force uniform,” he said. “It was 130 degrees at the hottest part of the day. It was a dry heat but 130 degrees nonetheless.”
Kent would take his group of men on hikes around Peshawar. He recalled the stark poverty surrounding them in contrast to a magnificent castle with impeccably manicured grounds where the Wali, or as Kent said, “the King Honcho,” lived. 
Kent and his buddy “Hoop” would play bridge with the Wali on occasion.
His favorite bar in Peshawar sold mixed drinks for 25 cents and a bottle of Crown Royal would cost $1.25.
“If you had alcoholic tendencies, then that was the place to go,” he said with a laugh. 
Kent has a life membership with the American Legion and the VFW Post 239 in Bremerton. He’s well known around the place, greeted upon his arrival with shouts of, “Graham, how you doin’?” and, simply, “Graham!”
Kent’s M1 rifle is displayed on the wall of the VFW Post 239. 
Kent and his wife, Dorothy, moved to Kitsap County in 1976. His wife, Dorothy, retired as a Navy Lieutenant Commander from the Bremerton Naval Hospital. When asked if he minded the fact that technically his wife outranked him, he replied, laughing, “the wife always outranks the husband!”
He joined the Central Kitsap Fire Department (then known as Kitsap Fire District No. 1) after retiring from the Army, joining as a volunteer and then became a commissioner. 
Those days are behind him now, but Kent is still active with his hobbies, which includes amateur radio operations. He and Dorothy have one son, who resides in Walla Walla and has a doctorate degree in history and teaches at Whitman College. 
Quietly summing up his fascinating career, he humbly said, “I just liked the people.”