Tag Archives: WWII

Then and Now – Perspectives of War

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Erica began to tremble. I was seated next to her at our table on the restaurant patio. It was a beautiful spring Tucson day in 2018. We were having lunch at a popular restaurant with three other women volunteers from the hospital surgery center. I noticed a flash of unease cross her face.

“Erica, are you all right?”

“It’s nothing,” she replied.

“You were trembling just now. Are you cold?”

“No, it is an old body memory that I can’t stop.”

“Body memory of what?”

“The war,” she said. “I start shaking when I hear a plane overhead.” 

I hadn’t even noticed the sound but did hear it faintly as the plane flew away.

A native of Germany, Erica emigrated to the US with her husband in the 1950s. They established a business and home in the Midwest and raised their son as an American citizen.  Erica was a widow, now in her mid-eighties. I knew that much of her story. She volunteered one morning a week at the surgery center of our local hospital, as did I. We occasionally had lunch together. I liked hearing about the customs and recipes she brought from Germany. She made luscious baked goods to share with hospital staff. I enjoyed her wit and positive attitude – always available to help someone.

At lunch that day we talked more about her experiences growing up in a small village in central Germany. During WWII, Allied bombing raids passed over their farm on their way to targets unknown by those on the ground. Bombs were dropped on nearby towns. If she was outside she would run to shelter fearing death from the sky at any moment. The imprint of terror stayed with Erica from the time she was nine or ten throughout her long life in the United States. A teenage brother was killed in one of the bombings, wrong time, wrong place. Even with the lasting repercussions of war for her and her family, Erica had no animus against the men who “did their duty”, or the country that directed those bombers. She was taken in as an immigrant and her family thrived here. She had nothing but gratitude to the U.S.

Many times, I read my father’s journal of his twenty-eight bombing missions during WWII from December 1943 through July 1944. He was the waist gunner on the plane that led the entire Eighth Air Force in the invasion of Normandy on zero day – D-Day June 6, 1944. Unlike bombs dropped on Warsaw, Helsinki, Hamberg, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, London, and Stalingrad that killed thousands of citizens of those cities, none of the bombing raids by his crew were directed at civilian populations. Their targets were strategic military installations and industrial war factories. Of course, civilians were in those places as well, but residential areas were not the focus according to his journal entries.

Dad’s plane, The Red Ass

My dad never talked about his wartime experiences, and I didn’t find out about them until many years after he died at the age of fifty-two. I was proud of his part in securing victory over the Axis Powers in Europe. Never once did I consider the fear that must have sprouted and flourished in the psyche of those helpless folks on the ground who heard the giant purveyors of doom swooping in overhead. They experienced daily the trauma of the unknown – would it be their town or farm this time?

Talking with Erica gave me an entirely different perspective on what war was like for the nameless faceless people who had to endure the decisions made by the powerful. Even after more than seventy years, Erica still visibly trembled at the sound of an airplane overheard. Truly innocent human beings, who wanted to live with their families in peace, became victims of war. A war that had to be endured in the best way possible to survive. It became very personal and was made vivid to me because of her stories. My pride in my dad is tempered by the realization of the physical and psychological damage inflicted even without dropping a bomb. The weapon is terror.

I’m left with the unanswerable question. Why do human beings war with each other?  There has not been a time in recorded history that we have not had wars somewhere. Even oral traditions celebrate war and victories over enemies.  Our instinctive tribal nature divides us. The reach for power continues to exploit that instinct. When will we learn? As the song says, “There is no profit in peace.” 1  Until unelected oligarchs in our country and around the world, who wield the cudgel of dominance behind the scenes with endless supplies of money, cede power (not likely), or are ousted from power, war is inevitable. George Orwell described in his novel, 1984, how a small minority benefits from war and must keep the general populace dumbed down and compliant by force and fear. Is that the purpose of continuing to divide and segment us by our differences rather than uniting us in our common humanity? Hmmmm. That is the moral question.

  1. Profit in Peace by Ocean Colour Scene

Memorial Day

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Originally posted on A Way with Words blog

Can we ever say thanks enough for those brave souls who gave their lives for our country? Even in wars we may not believe were necessary, they showed patriotism in their defense of our ideals.

Dad is 3rd from rt, back row

My father was a veteran of WWII. He joined the Army Air Corps as it was then known in 1942 after Pearl Harbor and served as a tail gunner and waist gunner on B-24 bombers until after D-Day. Dad, a farm boy from Kansas, was part of the 446th Bombardment Group that was activated in Tucson in April 1943. The group transferred to Lowry AAF Base in Colorado for training and in October 1943 was equipped with B-24H Liberator planes and sent to Flixton Air Base in Bungay, England. He flew a total of thirty missions on several planes, among them was Plastered Bastard, Bomberang, Lady Luck, and the Red Ass.

Twenty-eight of his missions were with the same crew piloted by Lt. C.W. Ryan of Nacogdoches, Tx from December 1943 to July 1944 mostly over Germany but some over German installations in Holland and France. His last recorded mission was July 18, 1944.

He made notes in a small 3 x 5 notepad. An example of his journal notes is “Cognac Air Field Dec. 31 ‘43. Plenty flak and accurate as hell, but no one shot down by it. Fighters galore attacking all stragglers – several planes observed going down. We saw one blow up and one shot down by five fighters using the new merry-go-round tactics fashioned from our own 47 type. ROUGH. An hour hanging around target – escort forced home – no gas. Two planes lost. S/Sgt Louis Phillips W.G. and Lt. Allen, K.I.A.

Another entry was “Berlin – April 29 ’44. Straight in and out – and flak all the way and brother what flak over target it was walkable and we got thru and past before I got hit by burst in tail (he was a tail gunner on this flight) and another one was ruined. Those guys are mad at me. Fighters beat the hell out of 448th and got a couple of our planes.”

As a tail gunner (the most important defensive position), Dad crouched in a cramped bubble under the tail of the plane with his machine gun to defend the rear. As a waist gunner (the most vulnerable position), he stood at an unshielded opening on the side of the plane to shoot enemy fighters that strafed their B-24 bomber. He was injured on several flights by bullets or shrapnel. He witnessed the deaths and injuries of crew mates.

His crew and plane, the Red Ass, led the entire Eighth Air Force on invasion day over the Normandy coast of France, June 6, 1944. He was the tail gunner. His journal states “Ah boy, this was the one. Twenty miles east of Le Havre. Lt. J.T. Goss C.F. volunteered for an extra mission to be in on it. Zero hour for the troops to land was 6:30 and we bombed at 6:00 – 400 yds ahead of ‘em. It was overcast but through the clouds we could see jillions of ships in the water just offshore waiting to attack. Could see ships firing into coastal defenses and returning fire. We led the Group, the Group led the Wing, the Wing led the Division, and the Division led the Eighth. Quite an Honor!” They carried twelve five-hundred-pound bombs and their target was coastal installations on the beach southeast of LeHavre. Colonel Brogger “the big boy” was on board as was Lt. McKenna along with their usual crew.

S/Sgt J.D. Davis

Dad never talked about his experiences in the war. Never, ever. My mother told me he had shock treatments after he came home due to depression and trauma suffered during the war but she never talked about his experiences either. I didn’t find out about his part in the D-Day invasion until many years after his death. He died at the age of 52. Mom claimed he never really recovered from the war. Damage done in war cannot be assessed only by battlefield injury. It is the violence to the soul that lingers. My brother talked with two of his crew mates decades after his and their service and they were surprised he had been hospitalized for depression. They said he was the guy who kept everyone’s spirits up during grim times with his humor and positive talk. Dad’s eyes would glisten tearily when he heard the Air Force Anthem or the song Oh Danny Boy. Those two songs refreshed memories of his war experiences. The only times I believe he was thinking of the friends he lost.

The dark side of Dad was evidenced by alcoholism. He was a functioning alcoholic. I never saw him drunk, but I rarely remember him without a drink in his hand. He drank Old Stagg from the time he got home from work until he fell asleep and, on weekends, it was morning til night. He never missed work and took pride in his job at Boeing as they ushered in new flight and space technology. He loved having people over for barbeque and always entertained them. I don’t think any of our friends suspected how much he drank. My mom, to her dying day, refused to acknowledge he was an alcoholic because she said he was never drunk. He was also a two-pack-a-day smoker, a Camel cigarette in hand at all times. All that contributed to his early death.

My memory of Dad is of a gentle man. He was extremely witty and could capture a room with his stories and jokes. A man who loved literature and history, he always had one, two, or three books and a dictionary on the table next to his favorite chair. I remember him talking to me about Shakespeare when I was six or seven, in reverential tones. He read everything from the classics to Rex Stout and Dashiell Hammett.

Mom was the hammer and Dad the velvet anvil. When she pronounced a penalty for my transgressions, he found ways to soften the blow. He’d cajole her to a lesser or no penalty. The story goes that once when I was two years old, too young to remember, I ran across the street to play with the little girl who lived there. I had been warned to never cross without Mom or Dad, but I didn’t heed the warning. Dad came marching across the street to retrieve me and at home took me over his knee to deliver a paddling. Mom said he cried much harder than I did and that was the last time he tried to enforce a penance.

Mom said he wrote the most incredible letters to her when he was overseas. He had an Irishman’s way with words. She kept the letters in a box in our basement. They were destroyed when our basement flooded during a storm in the 50s. I never saw those letters, but my aunts, uncle, and grandmother also talked about his eloquence. I don’t think he ever wrote a letter after he returned.

Thank you to all the veterans who served. Most of all, thank you Dad for being my Dad