Reporter-Times - Martinsville, IN, USA
By Lacey Nix Reporter-Times
March 29, 2009
Robert Gipson left the military more than 60 years ago, but the memories of WWII are always fresh in his mind. Gipson, a resident of Morgantown, served in the 5th Infantry Division and was the recipient of a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.
At 88 years old, Gipson never thought he would see the memorial in Washington, D.C., honoring him and the thousands of other WWII veterans. That was true, until he was told by members of the Hoosier Honor Flight he would be taking a one day, all-expenses-paid trip to see the memorial.
Gipson, along with 39 other veterans and 15 helpers, took the first of the Hoosier Honor Flights on Nov. 12, 2008. They were able to see the WWII, Vietnam and Korean conflict memorials. They also had the option of seeing the Lincoln Memorial, Tomb of the Unknowns and the Arlington National Cemetery.
Gipson, who was hit by a land mine and held as a prisoner of war for a month, has many feelings and memories of the war. However, standing in front of the WWII Memorial, all he felt was pride. He said, “I was really proud to go up with this group. It was a nice group and nice flight.”
Gipson was lucky to get a seat on the flight. He was originally listed as an alternate on the list of people going to Washington.
“Someone canceled at the last minute, so we got to go. I was tired when I got home, but it was definitely worth it,” he said.
Although the Hoosier Honor Flight is new to the area, the concept has been around the country for a while. The goal of HHF is to get as many WWII veterans to Washington to see the memorial before they pass away.
President of the Hoosier Honor Flight Inc., John Tilford, says achieving this goal has been an uphill battle. Tilford says that we are losing nearly 1,200 WWII veterans a day.
“We are down to 2 million left out of the 16 million who survived the war,” Tilford said.
Tilford hoped to get HHF started in 2007 but ran into some obstacles along the way. He now has a renewed sense of dedication to the trip and hopes to take many more.
“We lost some of the guys we wish we had taken before,” he said.
HHF has scheduled the next trip to Washington for April 22 and hopes to do another in September. Leigh Hayden and Robert Shouse of Martinsville were both listed as waiting to be on the April 22 Hoosier Honor Flight.
Tilford has seen the trip grow from 40 in November to more than 112 veterans scheduled in April. With an average veteran age of 85, Tilford stresses that time is of the essence when getting these veterans out to Washington.
Out of the 40 scheduled for November’s flight, six were unable to make it due to health reasons. HHF books veterans on flights based on the order they file their applications. Tilford has made exceptions for those with ailing health or terminal illnesses.
Serving in the military for more than 38 years, Tilford has a special place in his heart for veterans.
“There are some things you run across in life by chance; this is the right thing to do and the right time,” he said.
HHF does not charge veterans to go on the trip; they pay for everything. Tilford said, “The vets are absolutely free, that is the whole purpose of the program.”
HHF pays for this by collecting a fee from the “guardians” who travel with the vets and with donations.
The average fee for a guardian is around $400. However, Tilford says that the guardians feel honored to go to the memorial with the vets and are happy to pay. The remaining 2/3 of the trip is paid for with donations.
The November trip cost HHF around $21,000. This is a minimal expense, Tilford says, “It’s a life changing deal for the vets.”
Putting together these trips are a lot of hard work, but well worth the payoff when vets like Gipson see the memorial, says Tilford.
“There is an obvious connection, we understand each other,” Tilford said. “Some vets are literally in tears.”
Gipson had one of these moments when he got off the plane in Washington.
“Probably the most tearful was when the other passengers in Washington International cheered and started applauding the vets. It was great,” he said.
Gipson said, “It was the kind of moment that made the hair stand on your head. We got applause for about five minutes as we walked down and boarded the bus.”
This was not the only time the vets were honored in such a way. Tilford said, “Several times during the day people walked up and thanked them.”
Gipson said he will always remember the trip and has created a scrapbook with many photos to pass on to future generations. His favorite memory was at the Tomb of the Unknown. He said, “We got to see the graves of the unknown soldiers, and four people in our group put a wreath on the grave.”
HHF drew names to see which veterans would get to place a wreath on the tomb.
“The changing of the guard there was really something,” Gipson said.
To learn more about the Hoosier Honor Flight or to get an application, contact John Tilford at 812-336-5574. To learn more about the national effort to get WWII veterans to Washington, visit www.honorflight.org.
Showing posts with label WWII. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WWII. Show all posts
26 March 2009
Despite The Years, Death March Survivor's Memories Vivid
Las Cruces Sun-News - Las Cruces, NM, USA
By Steve Ramirez Sun-News reporter
Posted: 03/26/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT
LAS CRUCES — Menandro Perazo has bittersweet memories of his home, in Capas, Luzon.
The 91-year-old Perazo, who now lives in Plano, Texas, recalled the 48 acres his father owned in Capas before World War II. It was a wonderful place for a boy to grow up, a place where people cared and looked out for each other.
But Perazo's other memories are a stark contrast. He still remembers that his father's land was taken over as a U.S. military reservation, and he has vivid recollections of walking through his hometown as a prisoner of war during the Bataan Death March.
"I saw people that I knew since I was a boy," Perazo said. "But I wasn't allowed to speak to them, nor they to me. It was very dangerous, either they or I would have been shot by the Japanese if there had been any attempts to acknowledge each other."
Perazo was a Philippine scout with the U.S. Army's 26th Cavalry, the Army's last horse cavalry.
Las Cruces resident Gerald Schurtz, who father was also on the Bataan Death March, but later died aboard a Japanese "Hellship" that took prisoners of war to slave labor camps, said Perazo and other soldiers were able to survive the Battle of Bataan by sacrificing some of the horses used by the cavalry soldiers.
"They had fighting equipment that was obsolete. They survived on half rations until food got so scarce that they had to resort to eating the
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horses," Schurtz said. "It's a true shame what those men had to go through."
Perazo recalled how many of the soldiers who were surrendered were robbed of their valuables and other possessions by Japanese soldiers. Many of the prisoners were starving and sick when the march began, and conditions became even more dire once the march started.
"The people who lived in the villages we marched through tried to help, but the Japanese shot and killed many of them," Perazo said. "It was very hard on everyone, very deadly."
Perazo's survival came down to two things.
"Luck and of course, prayers," he said.
Menandro's daughter, Mary Perazo, of El Paso, said that unlike many Death March survivors, her father hasn't hesitated to share his experiences with family members, especially Perazo's grandchildren.
"Just as he did with us, he will sit down with the grandkids and tell all the stories," Mary Perazo said. "He still remembers everything, from day one, to dates, places, and people. At first, we'd be thinking "Oh no, don't get dad talking.' But now, I fully understand just how important this is."
The experiences of the Death March remind Perazo time and time again why he is willing to share those stories.
"I've learned that you never forget about your country," he said. "I've learned that freedom isn't free. I'm trying to live a long time to keep reminding people about that."
But the volume of the Death March survivors' message keeps getting softer and softer. Many of the survivors have passed away in recent years, and in Las Cruces, only three survivors are still alive. Julio Barela, Granville Smith and Ward Redshaw are Las Cruces' three remaining Death March survivors.
Steve Ramirez can be reached at sramirez@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5452
Memories of Bataan
• More than 75,000 soldiers, including 67,000 Filipinos, 11,796 Americans, and 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, were surrendered to the Japanese army at the end of the Battle of Bataan.
• The prisoners of war were forced marched for 90 miles to prison camps or ships that took some of the prisoners to Japan where they worked as slaves.
• More than 21,000 soldiers died during the march.
• 2,000 American soldiers were from New Mexico.
• Less than half of the New Mexico soldiers survived the march and came home.
By Steve Ramirez Sun-News reporter
Posted: 03/26/2009 12:00:00 AM MDT
LAS CRUCES — Menandro Perazo has bittersweet memories of his home, in Capas, Luzon.
The 91-year-old Perazo, who now lives in Plano, Texas, recalled the 48 acres his father owned in Capas before World War II. It was a wonderful place for a boy to grow up, a place where people cared and looked out for each other.
But Perazo's other memories are a stark contrast. He still remembers that his father's land was taken over as a U.S. military reservation, and he has vivid recollections of walking through his hometown as a prisoner of war during the Bataan Death March.
"I saw people that I knew since I was a boy," Perazo said. "But I wasn't allowed to speak to them, nor they to me. It was very dangerous, either they or I would have been shot by the Japanese if there had been any attempts to acknowledge each other."
Perazo was a Philippine scout with the U.S. Army's 26th Cavalry, the Army's last horse cavalry.
Las Cruces resident Gerald Schurtz, who father was also on the Bataan Death March, but later died aboard a Japanese "Hellship" that took prisoners of war to slave labor camps, said Perazo and other soldiers were able to survive the Battle of Bataan by sacrificing some of the horses used by the cavalry soldiers.
"They had fighting equipment that was obsolete. They survived on half rations until food got so scarce that they had to resort to eating the
Advertisement
horses," Schurtz said. "It's a true shame what those men had to go through."
Perazo recalled how many of the soldiers who were surrendered were robbed of their valuables and other possessions by Japanese soldiers. Many of the prisoners were starving and sick when the march began, and conditions became even more dire once the march started.
"The people who lived in the villages we marched through tried to help, but the Japanese shot and killed many of them," Perazo said. "It was very hard on everyone, very deadly."
Perazo's survival came down to two things.
"Luck and of course, prayers," he said.
Menandro's daughter, Mary Perazo, of El Paso, said that unlike many Death March survivors, her father hasn't hesitated to share his experiences with family members, especially Perazo's grandchildren.
"Just as he did with us, he will sit down with the grandkids and tell all the stories," Mary Perazo said. "He still remembers everything, from day one, to dates, places, and people. At first, we'd be thinking "Oh no, don't get dad talking.' But now, I fully understand just how important this is."
The experiences of the Death March remind Perazo time and time again why he is willing to share those stories.
"I've learned that you never forget about your country," he said. "I've learned that freedom isn't free. I'm trying to live a long time to keep reminding people about that."
But the volume of the Death March survivors' message keeps getting softer and softer. Many of the survivors have passed away in recent years, and in Las Cruces, only three survivors are still alive. Julio Barela, Granville Smith and Ward Redshaw are Las Cruces' three remaining Death March survivors.
Steve Ramirez can be reached at sramirez@lcsun-news.com; (575) 541-5452
Memories of Bataan
• More than 75,000 soldiers, including 67,000 Filipinos, 11,796 Americans, and 1,000 Chinese Filipinos, were surrendered to the Japanese army at the end of the Battle of Bataan.
• The prisoners of war were forced marched for 90 miles to prison camps or ships that took some of the prisoners to Japan where they worked as slaves.
• More than 21,000 soldiers died during the march.
• 2,000 American soldiers were from New Mexico.
• Less than half of the New Mexico soldiers survived the march and came home.
25 March 2009
Veteran POW On The 'Great Escape'
BBC News - UK
Some surviving inmates of the German prisoner of war camp, immortalised by Hollywood as Stalag Luft 3, have returned to the site at Zagan in Poland to commemorate the anniversary of the escape attempt.
Frank Stone helped dig the 348-foot tunnel right under the noses of the German soldiers but he did not make it into the final escape party.
Of the 76 allied airmen who made their break for freedom using the tunnel, known as Harry, 50 were subsequently shot after being recaptured and only three men managed to get away completely.
Mr Stone, who spent the war as a prisoner in the camp, told Robert Hall what it had been like on the night of the 'Great Escape'.
Some surviving inmates of the German prisoner of war camp, immortalised by Hollywood as Stalag Luft 3, have returned to the site at Zagan in Poland to commemorate the anniversary of the escape attempt.
Frank Stone helped dig the 348-foot tunnel right under the noses of the German soldiers but he did not make it into the final escape party.
Of the 76 allied airmen who made their break for freedom using the tunnel, known as Harry, 50 were subsequently shot after being recaptured and only three men managed to get away completely.
Mr Stone, who spent the war as a prisoner in the camp, told Robert Hall what it had been like on the night of the 'Great Escape'.
24 March 2009
Military Channel Presents 'RETURN TO TARAWA'
Trading Markets (press release) - Los Angeles, CA, USA
Military Channel Presents RETURN TO TARAWA, a Documentary Capturing World War II Veteran's Crusade to Preserve a Sacred Battlefield Turned Trash Dump
Tue. March 24, 2009; Posted: 01:06 PM
SILVER SPRING, Md., Mar 24, 2009 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- In Military Channel's world premiere of RETURN TO TARAWA, World War II combat veteran Leon Cooper embarks on what he considers his final mission -- to preserve the hallowed ground of one of World War II's deadliest battlefields at Red Beach on Tarawa Island. This battle was the U.S. Navy's first major amphibious assault and over 1,600 American servicemen fell at Tarawa Island, a fortified Japanese stronghold about 2,500 miles southwest of the Hawaiian islands and currently within the Republic of Kiribati. RETURN TO TARAWA documents Cooper's stirring trip back to confirm first-hand the reports of the desecration of Red Beach, which is littered with piles of garbage, rusting debris and possible lost gravesites of servicemen still listed as missing in action. While an emotionally charged experience for the eighty-nine-year-old Cooper, this journey further propels his mission to clean-up and restore this sacred battleground by making it a permanent war memorial for all those who fought and died there. Narrated by actor Ed Harris, RETURN TO TARAWA premieres Friday, April 24th, at 10 PM ET on the Military Channel.
Cooper's first combat experience came in November of 1943 as a U.S. Navy landing craft officer charged with leading a group of Higgins Landing Crafts in the first wave of the Battle of Tarawa. The battle became known as "Bloody Tarawa" because over 1,600 marines and sailors lost their lives and more than 2,000 were wounded over the course of the three-day conflict. Cooper cannot escape the painful memories of seeing hundreds of his fellow countrymen fall around him and now, he lives with the gut-wrenching knowledge that the site of their ultimate sacrifice has become a garbage dump. Therefore, Cooper has dedicated himself to securing the support of the U.S. and Republic of Kiribati in restoring Red Beach to its original pristine condition. RETURN TO TARAWA tracks Cooper's efforts to have his comprehensive restoration plan implemented including building a modern incineration facility, which would relieve the island's chronic issues of refuse disposal. Cooper is seeking the support of the U.S. government to fund this program and establish the beach as a permanent war memorial including moving the Memorial to the 2nd Division Marines from its current location in a parking lot.
During his journey, Cooper meets with non-profit organizations dedicated to searching for the hundreds of U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action from the Battle of Tarawa. Nearly 65 years later, these volunteers are using declassified documents, archive photographs and ground-penetrating radar to identify and locate what was suppose to be temporary gravesites that still may exist on the island. These organizations hope their efforts will assist the U.S. government in returning the remains of these MIA's to their families and provide these heroes a proper burial back home on U.S. soil.
RETURN TO TARAWA is kicking off Military Channel's History Fridays, which will premiere historical documentaries on Friday nights starting April 24. Weekly premieres after the world premiere of RETURN TO TARAWA include BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC, May 1 from 8-11 PM; TIMEWATCH: HIMMLER, HITLER & THE END OF THE THIRD REICH, May 8 at 10 PM; FATAL ATTRACTION OF ADOLF HITLER, May 15 from 9-11 PM; AMERICAN ARSENAL, May 29 at 10 PM; and FROM GENEVA TO BAGHDAD: RULES OF WAR, June 5 at 10 PM.
RETURN TO TARAWA, www.returntotarawa.com, is produced by Vanilla Fire Productions. For Vanilla Fire Productions, Steven C. Barber and Leon Cooper are executive producers and Tamara Henry is associate producer. For the Military Channel, Jane Latman is executive producer, Deborah Adler Myers is senior vice president of programming and Clark Bunting is president and general manager.
About Military Channel
The Military Channel brings viewers compelling, real-world stories of heroism, military strategy, and significant turning points in history. The network takes viewers "behind the lines" to hear the personal stories of servicemen and women and offers in-depth explorations of military training, aviation technology and cutting-edge weaponry. As the only cable network devoted to military subjects, it also provides unique access to this world, allowing viewers to experience and understand the full spectrum of human drama, courage, and patriotism intrinsic to the armed forces, as well as, the long-held traditions of the military. For more information, please visit military.discovery.com.
Military Channel Presents RETURN TO TARAWA, a Documentary Capturing World War II Veteran's Crusade to Preserve a Sacred Battlefield Turned Trash Dump
Tue. March 24, 2009; Posted: 01:06 PM
SILVER SPRING, Md., Mar 24, 2009 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- In Military Channel's world premiere of RETURN TO TARAWA, World War II combat veteran Leon Cooper embarks on what he considers his final mission -- to preserve the hallowed ground of one of World War II's deadliest battlefields at Red Beach on Tarawa Island. This battle was the U.S. Navy's first major amphibious assault and over 1,600 American servicemen fell at Tarawa Island, a fortified Japanese stronghold about 2,500 miles southwest of the Hawaiian islands and currently within the Republic of Kiribati. RETURN TO TARAWA documents Cooper's stirring trip back to confirm first-hand the reports of the desecration of Red Beach, which is littered with piles of garbage, rusting debris and possible lost gravesites of servicemen still listed as missing in action. While an emotionally charged experience for the eighty-nine-year-old Cooper, this journey further propels his mission to clean-up and restore this sacred battleground by making it a permanent war memorial for all those who fought and died there. Narrated by actor Ed Harris, RETURN TO TARAWA premieres Friday, April 24th, at 10 PM ET on the Military Channel.
Cooper's first combat experience came in November of 1943 as a U.S. Navy landing craft officer charged with leading a group of Higgins Landing Crafts in the first wave of the Battle of Tarawa. The battle became known as "Bloody Tarawa" because over 1,600 marines and sailors lost their lives and more than 2,000 were wounded over the course of the three-day conflict. Cooper cannot escape the painful memories of seeing hundreds of his fellow countrymen fall around him and now, he lives with the gut-wrenching knowledge that the site of their ultimate sacrifice has become a garbage dump. Therefore, Cooper has dedicated himself to securing the support of the U.S. and Republic of Kiribati in restoring Red Beach to its original pristine condition. RETURN TO TARAWA tracks Cooper's efforts to have his comprehensive restoration plan implemented including building a modern incineration facility, which would relieve the island's chronic issues of refuse disposal. Cooper is seeking the support of the U.S. government to fund this program and establish the beach as a permanent war memorial including moving the Memorial to the 2nd Division Marines from its current location in a parking lot.
During his journey, Cooper meets with non-profit organizations dedicated to searching for the hundreds of U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action from the Battle of Tarawa. Nearly 65 years later, these volunteers are using declassified documents, archive photographs and ground-penetrating radar to identify and locate what was suppose to be temporary gravesites that still may exist on the island. These organizations hope their efforts will assist the U.S. government in returning the remains of these MIA's to their families and provide these heroes a proper burial back home on U.S. soil.
RETURN TO TARAWA is kicking off Military Channel's History Fridays, which will premiere historical documentaries on Friday nights starting April 24. Weekly premieres after the world premiere of RETURN TO TARAWA include BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC, May 1 from 8-11 PM; TIMEWATCH: HIMMLER, HITLER & THE END OF THE THIRD REICH, May 8 at 10 PM; FATAL ATTRACTION OF ADOLF HITLER, May 15 from 9-11 PM; AMERICAN ARSENAL, May 29 at 10 PM; and FROM GENEVA TO BAGHDAD: RULES OF WAR, June 5 at 10 PM.
RETURN TO TARAWA, www.returntotarawa.com, is produced by Vanilla Fire Productions. For Vanilla Fire Productions, Steven C. Barber and Leon Cooper are executive producers and Tamara Henry is associate producer. For the Military Channel, Jane Latman is executive producer, Deborah Adler Myers is senior vice president of programming and Clark Bunting is president and general manager.
About Military Channel
The Military Channel brings viewers compelling, real-world stories of heroism, military strategy, and significant turning points in history. The network takes viewers "behind the lines" to hear the personal stories of servicemen and women and offers in-depth explorations of military training, aviation technology and cutting-edge weaponry. As the only cable network devoted to military subjects, it also provides unique access to this world, allowing viewers to experience and understand the full spectrum of human drama, courage, and patriotism intrinsic to the armed forces, as well as, the long-held traditions of the military. For more information, please visit military.discovery.com.
22 March 2009
Word Of 'Hump' Crash Site Kindles Images Of Father Son Knew Only From War Stories
Las Vegas Review Journal - Las Vegas, NV, USA
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Two weeks before John Lenox was born, his father went missing in action. Sixty-five years later, Lenox had almost lost hope he would ever know exactly what happened.
As a youngster growing up in Hartford, Conn., he was told only that his dad died in a plane crash in World War II.
"When you're young and you don't have something, you don't necessarily miss it," he said Wednesday. "My mom never spoke too much about my father. She just said, 'OK. This is your father. He was killed in the war.' We never got a lot of details."
Later in life, he learned a few things. The plane crashed while flying a supply route over the "Hump," the name pilots gave to the treacherous eastern Himalayan Mountains.
But the retired financial manager for Fortune 500 companies, his 92-year-old mother, Frances, and his older brother, Bill, knew one thing for sure: Staff Sgt. Alvin Jack Lenox was never found.
Frances Lenox said after the War Department had declared her husband dead in a letter on Sept. 10, 1945, she tried to stay focused on life with her sons.
"I just went on and had to live every day and take care of things," she said. "My brother used to say, 'Now you've got those boys. You've got to raise them. You go on with that.'"
She took the $4,000 from his military life insurance and bought a summer cottage on Long Island Sound. Going there was therapy for her, John Lenox said, and provided fun-filled memories for him and his brother.
There also were keepsakes from his dad, like the black-and-white photographs in the family album that Alvin Lenox took on his first stint in the Army. That's when he was stationed in Hawaii in the mid-1930s and got to meet such celebrities as slugger Babe Ruth, comedian Jimmy Durante and pilot Amelia Earhart.
"You can't help but think, 'Gee. Wouldn't it have been great to know him.' And then, that's not going to happen," John Lenox said, sitting with his mom at the dining room table in his North Las Vegas home.
"We would love to be able to find the remains and bring them back for closure. But what are the probabilities of that after 65 or 66 years?" Lenox said. "They can't even find them. They don't have any idea where it went down specifically. And so you say, 'OK.' That's just what you have to accept. That's the way it's going to be, but there's always hope."
Hope finally came through last month in a phone call. A Lenox family relative in Connecticut was contacted by a relative of another of the five crew members in that C-87 cargo plane on its fateful flight from Yantai, China to Joraht, India, on Aug. 9, 1943.
Word had circulated that an adventurer from Prescott, Ariz., named Clayton Kuhles had traveled to the Himalayas in October and found pieces of the wreckage containing the plane's construction number on a bamboo-covered slope about 8,000 feet up.
"When we got the call kind of out of the blue, I wasn't quite sure how to react," John Lenox said, describing how the weight of the moment began to sink in.
"Then when I went to the Web site and saw the listing of the plane and the identification of the men on board, it was really emotional. I didn't think it would be, but it hit me pretty hard.
"I talked to my brother and I said, 'How do you feel?' He says, 'You know I'm torn. I don't know exactly how to feel, because obviously we didn't know the man; but he was our father and this is an important issue now to try to get his remains back,'" John Lenox said.
Kuhles, whose hobby is to find World War II planes that went down flying the Hump, had posted a report about the find on his Web site, including paperwork he filed with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
After tracing records of the plane to its mission, he listed the dead Army Air Corps airmen as Staff Sgt. Alvin J. Lenox, radio operator; Cpl. Donald A. Johnson, crew chief; 2nd Lt. John W. Funk, navigator; 1st Lt. John T. Tennison, co-pilot; and Capt. Tom Perry, pilot.
"This site was almost a five-day trek. It was definitely one of the more interesting because of the river crossings and the jungle," the 55-year-old Kuhles said by telephone Thursday.
With the help of a guide and two interpreters, Kuhles interviewed an elderly Mishmi tribesman, Ayema Keche, who was in his late teens or early 20s when the plane went down.
"He was out hunting and he witnessed the plane crashing and saw the fire," Kuhles said. "When he got there, the wreckage was still smoldering three or four days after the crash. ... He told me he buried the remains and salvaged bits and pieces of the plane that he could use at the village."
According to John Lenox, his father's plane was returning from airlifting military supplies, equipment and personnel to the Chinese government and allied forces after the main land route through Burma was seized by the Japanese.
"The best information we have is that the plane was shot down. Japanese gunfire hit the plane," he said.
Although much of the information can't be verified, Lenox believes his father's last radio transmission were words to the effect, "'We've been hit. We're going down.' And that was it. Communication was cut off at that point."
Kuhles, who has documented 15 crash sites since 2000, said most planes that crashed flying in that part of the Hump didn't go down as a result of enemy fire, however.
"I'm not aware of any Japanese attacks in that area," he said. "In the vast majority of cases, crashes were usually from navigational error or weather. Either way, the mountain and the plane collided."
Strong winds often blew planes off course, or icy conditions added weight to the aircraft, causing them to lose altitude. Matters were complicated by trying to navigate at times in zero visibility.
"It was Russian roulette," Kuhles said.
After reading books about flights in 1940s-vintage aircraft over the Hump and knowing what his father had told his mother, John Lenox said it's "a miracle that any of these planes made it."
"These guys were flying planes that were kind of wired together," he said.
"My mom would tell me that my father would write letters saying, 'These things are flying coffins.' Every time a new plane comes in, they don't fly the new plane. They strip it and keep the others going.
"One plane could keep a half a dozen other planes flying. The experience must have been just unbelievable," he said.
Regardless of what happened to that transport plane on Aug. 9, 1943, John Lenox said his family and those of the other crew members are trying to launch a congressional effort to have a recovery team sent to the crash site to search for remains.
He realizes, it could take years "before they will even undertake the task. It's just so remote."
"I would like to be able to bring him back and bury him in Connecticut," he said.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
By KEITH ROGERS
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL
Two weeks before John Lenox was born, his father went missing in action. Sixty-five years later, Lenox had almost lost hope he would ever know exactly what happened.
As a youngster growing up in Hartford, Conn., he was told only that his dad died in a plane crash in World War II.
"When you're young and you don't have something, you don't necessarily miss it," he said Wednesday. "My mom never spoke too much about my father. She just said, 'OK. This is your father. He was killed in the war.' We never got a lot of details."
Later in life, he learned a few things. The plane crashed while flying a supply route over the "Hump," the name pilots gave to the treacherous eastern Himalayan Mountains.
But the retired financial manager for Fortune 500 companies, his 92-year-old mother, Frances, and his older brother, Bill, knew one thing for sure: Staff Sgt. Alvin Jack Lenox was never found.
Frances Lenox said after the War Department had declared her husband dead in a letter on Sept. 10, 1945, she tried to stay focused on life with her sons.
"I just went on and had to live every day and take care of things," she said. "My brother used to say, 'Now you've got those boys. You've got to raise them. You go on with that.'"
She took the $4,000 from his military life insurance and bought a summer cottage on Long Island Sound. Going there was therapy for her, John Lenox said, and provided fun-filled memories for him and his brother.
There also were keepsakes from his dad, like the black-and-white photographs in the family album that Alvin Lenox took on his first stint in the Army. That's when he was stationed in Hawaii in the mid-1930s and got to meet such celebrities as slugger Babe Ruth, comedian Jimmy Durante and pilot Amelia Earhart.
"You can't help but think, 'Gee. Wouldn't it have been great to know him.' And then, that's not going to happen," John Lenox said, sitting with his mom at the dining room table in his North Las Vegas home.
"We would love to be able to find the remains and bring them back for closure. But what are the probabilities of that after 65 or 66 years?" Lenox said. "They can't even find them. They don't have any idea where it went down specifically. And so you say, 'OK.' That's just what you have to accept. That's the way it's going to be, but there's always hope."
Hope finally came through last month in a phone call. A Lenox family relative in Connecticut was contacted by a relative of another of the five crew members in that C-87 cargo plane on its fateful flight from Yantai, China to Joraht, India, on Aug. 9, 1943.
Word had circulated that an adventurer from Prescott, Ariz., named Clayton Kuhles had traveled to the Himalayas in October and found pieces of the wreckage containing the plane's construction number on a bamboo-covered slope about 8,000 feet up.
"When we got the call kind of out of the blue, I wasn't quite sure how to react," John Lenox said, describing how the weight of the moment began to sink in.
"Then when I went to the Web site and saw the listing of the plane and the identification of the men on board, it was really emotional. I didn't think it would be, but it hit me pretty hard.
"I talked to my brother and I said, 'How do you feel?' He says, 'You know I'm torn. I don't know exactly how to feel, because obviously we didn't know the man; but he was our father and this is an important issue now to try to get his remains back,'" John Lenox said.
Kuhles, whose hobby is to find World War II planes that went down flying the Hump, had posted a report about the find on his Web site, including paperwork he filed with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command.
After tracing records of the plane to its mission, he listed the dead Army Air Corps airmen as Staff Sgt. Alvin J. Lenox, radio operator; Cpl. Donald A. Johnson, crew chief; 2nd Lt. John W. Funk, navigator; 1st Lt. John T. Tennison, co-pilot; and Capt. Tom Perry, pilot.
"This site was almost a five-day trek. It was definitely one of the more interesting because of the river crossings and the jungle," the 55-year-old Kuhles said by telephone Thursday.
With the help of a guide and two interpreters, Kuhles interviewed an elderly Mishmi tribesman, Ayema Keche, who was in his late teens or early 20s when the plane went down.
"He was out hunting and he witnessed the plane crashing and saw the fire," Kuhles said. "When he got there, the wreckage was still smoldering three or four days after the crash. ... He told me he buried the remains and salvaged bits and pieces of the plane that he could use at the village."
According to John Lenox, his father's plane was returning from airlifting military supplies, equipment and personnel to the Chinese government and allied forces after the main land route through Burma was seized by the Japanese.
"The best information we have is that the plane was shot down. Japanese gunfire hit the plane," he said.
Although much of the information can't be verified, Lenox believes his father's last radio transmission were words to the effect, "'We've been hit. We're going down.' And that was it. Communication was cut off at that point."
Kuhles, who has documented 15 crash sites since 2000, said most planes that crashed flying in that part of the Hump didn't go down as a result of enemy fire, however.
"I'm not aware of any Japanese attacks in that area," he said. "In the vast majority of cases, crashes were usually from navigational error or weather. Either way, the mountain and the plane collided."
Strong winds often blew planes off course, or icy conditions added weight to the aircraft, causing them to lose altitude. Matters were complicated by trying to navigate at times in zero visibility.
"It was Russian roulette," Kuhles said.
After reading books about flights in 1940s-vintage aircraft over the Hump and knowing what his father had told his mother, John Lenox said it's "a miracle that any of these planes made it."
"These guys were flying planes that were kind of wired together," he said.
"My mom would tell me that my father would write letters saying, 'These things are flying coffins.' Every time a new plane comes in, they don't fly the new plane. They strip it and keep the others going.
"One plane could keep a half a dozen other planes flying. The experience must have been just unbelievable," he said.
Regardless of what happened to that transport plane on Aug. 9, 1943, John Lenox said his family and those of the other crew members are trying to launch a congressional effort to have a recovery team sent to the crash site to search for remains.
He realizes, it could take years "before they will even undertake the task. It's just so remote."
"I would like to be able to bring him back and bury him in Connecticut," he said.
Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.
21 March 2009
Kilroy Takes Up Search For Missing London Flyer
London Madison Press - OH, USA
Saturday, March 21, 2009
By JANE BEATHARD
Press Contributor
The fate of a Madison County airman lost during World War II has drawn the attention of U.S. Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy. Kilroy represents Madison County as part of Ohio’s 15th Congressional District.
Kilroy’s office contacted London resident Jean Boyd last week after a story appeared in The Madison Press about U.S. Army Lt. John W. Funk. Boyd is a distant cousin of Funk who disappeared in August 1943 while flying a dangerous mission over the Himalayas.
Remnants of the flier’s long-missing C-87 cargo plane were located last fall by a private, Arizona-based organization that works to resolve the fate of aircraft lost in World War II. Nearby, searchers found five graves — presumed to be those of Funk and four other Army airmen who crewed the plane.
Paul Tencher, Kilroy’s director of communication, said the congresswoman “got interested right away” and intends to press the U.S. Department of Defense and the White House to recover the bodies from the northeast India crash site and return them to the United States for reburial.
In a statement to the Press, Congresswoman Kilroy had this to say: “Lt. John Funk has earned the full military honors befitting of an American hero. My job will be to ensure his memory is preserved and his family is allowed to participate in laying this soldier to rest. The discovery of Lt. Funk’s remains reminds us of the tens of thousands of men and women that served our country in its moments of need, but whom were never recovered. We will work with the Department of Defense and the White House to ensure an expedient return.”
Arizona businessman Clayton Kuhles led the expedition that found Funk’s plane. Kuhles turned information and photos from the crash site over to the U.S. Defense Department’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii. It’s now up to JPAC to attempt a recovery. Unfortunately, most of JPAC’s efforts are directed toward recovering those lost in the Vietnam War, with only about 10 percent of the agency’s budget allocated for World War II soldiers, sailors and airmen, Kuhles said.
Tencher said JPAC repatriates about 10 bodies a year from each military service branch. Kilroy wants the Funk’s C-87 moved up the priority list.
Lt. Funk grew up south of London in a family of seven. His siblings included the late George Funk, as well as Frances Pinnegar and Dorothy Hull — all London residents.
Tencher encourages anyone interested in promoting the recovery of Lt. Funk’s body to work through Kilroy’s office and the normal repatriation procedure.
The congresswoman can be reached at 1299 Olentangy River Road, Suite 200, Columbus, OH 43212.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
By JANE BEATHARD
Press Contributor
The fate of a Madison County airman lost during World War II has drawn the attention of U.S. Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy. Kilroy represents Madison County as part of Ohio’s 15th Congressional District.
Kilroy’s office contacted London resident Jean Boyd last week after a story appeared in The Madison Press about U.S. Army Lt. John W. Funk. Boyd is a distant cousin of Funk who disappeared in August 1943 while flying a dangerous mission over the Himalayas.
Remnants of the flier’s long-missing C-87 cargo plane were located last fall by a private, Arizona-based organization that works to resolve the fate of aircraft lost in World War II. Nearby, searchers found five graves — presumed to be those of Funk and four other Army airmen who crewed the plane.
Paul Tencher, Kilroy’s director of communication, said the congresswoman “got interested right away” and intends to press the U.S. Department of Defense and the White House to recover the bodies from the northeast India crash site and return them to the United States for reburial.
In a statement to the Press, Congresswoman Kilroy had this to say: “Lt. John Funk has earned the full military honors befitting of an American hero. My job will be to ensure his memory is preserved and his family is allowed to participate in laying this soldier to rest. The discovery of Lt. Funk’s remains reminds us of the tens of thousands of men and women that served our country in its moments of need, but whom were never recovered. We will work with the Department of Defense and the White House to ensure an expedient return.”
Arizona businessman Clayton Kuhles led the expedition that found Funk’s plane. Kuhles turned information and photos from the crash site over to the U.S. Defense Department’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii. It’s now up to JPAC to attempt a recovery. Unfortunately, most of JPAC’s efforts are directed toward recovering those lost in the Vietnam War, with only about 10 percent of the agency’s budget allocated for World War II soldiers, sailors and airmen, Kuhles said.
Tencher said JPAC repatriates about 10 bodies a year from each military service branch. Kilroy wants the Funk’s C-87 moved up the priority list.
Lt. Funk grew up south of London in a family of seven. His siblings included the late George Funk, as well as Frances Pinnegar and Dorothy Hull — all London residents.
Tencher encourages anyone interested in promoting the recovery of Lt. Funk’s body to work through Kilroy’s office and the normal repatriation procedure.
The congresswoman can be reached at 1299 Olentangy River Road, Suite 200, Columbus, OH 43212.
18 March 2009
Seantor Rhoads Honors Fallen WWII Fireman Third Class Welborn Lee Ashby
iSurfHopkinsCo - Madisonville, KY, USA
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
FRANKFORT - The Kentucky State Senate Friday adopted Senator Jerry P. Rhoads' resolution adjourning the Senate in honor of Fireman Third Class Welborn Lee Ashby, who was killed during World War II.
Ashby, who enlisted in the United States Navy in 1940, was assigned to the Battleship USS West Virginia as a fireman. He was killed in action December 7, 1941 during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His remains were recovered for proper identification in 2007 by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickman Air Force Base in Hawaii, an organization that works to identify Americans who were killed in action. It took two years of DNA testing and confirmation to verify his remains for burial.
Ashby, who grew up in Centertown, drowned, following the sudden island attack by the Japanese that claimed 2,402 American lives, devastated the Pacific fleet, and spawned the United States' involvement in World War II.
His sister, Martha Christian, remembers him as being a jolly guy and a good student. She also says he "was patriotic toward his county."
"Ashby was the first World War II casualty from Ohio County, serving his country with courage and distinction," Senator Rhoads said. "The American Legion Post in Centertown was named in his honor. Ashby is a true hero to the people of Ohio County, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the United States of America."
Ashby was to be buried at his family's plot next to his parents (Otie and Mary Ashby) in Ohio County with full military honors.
Senator Rhoads (D) of Madisonville, said the Commonwealth of Kentucky has the highest respect for Ashby and is deeply grateful for the sacrifice he made for the freedom of all Americans. The discovery and interment of his remains provides a bittersweet sense of closure for his family.
The Kentucky State Senate adjourned on Friday, March 13, the 28th legislative day of the 2009 session, in memory and honor of Fireman Third Class Welborn Ashby.
Senator Rhoads represents the 6th district, which includes Hopkins, Muhlenberg and Ohio counties.
Wednesday, 18 March 2009
FRANKFORT - The Kentucky State Senate Friday adopted Senator Jerry P. Rhoads' resolution adjourning the Senate in honor of Fireman Third Class Welborn Lee Ashby, who was killed during World War II.
Ashby, who enlisted in the United States Navy in 1940, was assigned to the Battleship USS West Virginia as a fireman. He was killed in action December 7, 1941 during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His remains were recovered for proper identification in 2007 by the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command at Hickman Air Force Base in Hawaii, an organization that works to identify Americans who were killed in action. It took two years of DNA testing and confirmation to verify his remains for burial.
Ashby, who grew up in Centertown, drowned, following the sudden island attack by the Japanese that claimed 2,402 American lives, devastated the Pacific fleet, and spawned the United States' involvement in World War II.
His sister, Martha Christian, remembers him as being a jolly guy and a good student. She also says he "was patriotic toward his county."
"Ashby was the first World War II casualty from Ohio County, serving his country with courage and distinction," Senator Rhoads said. "The American Legion Post in Centertown was named in his honor. Ashby is a true hero to the people of Ohio County, the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and the United States of America."
Ashby was to be buried at his family's plot next to his parents (Otie and Mary Ashby) in Ohio County with full military honors.
Senator Rhoads (D) of Madisonville, said the Commonwealth of Kentucky has the highest respect for Ashby and is deeply grateful for the sacrifice he made for the freedom of all Americans. The discovery and interment of his remains provides a bittersweet sense of closure for his family.
The Kentucky State Senate adjourned on Friday, March 13, the 28th legislative day of the 2009 session, in memory and honor of Fireman Third Class Welborn Ashby.
Senator Rhoads represents the 6th district, which includes Hopkins, Muhlenberg and Ohio counties.
13 March 2009
Roy Carter: A Hero's Long Journey Home
Scugog Standard Newspaper - Port Perry, Ontario, Canada
By Rik Davie/The Scugog Standard
Roy Carter, a young man from Blackstock, Ontario, was no different from any other young man who answered the call by King and country in May of 1942.
Roy was raised with his brothers on what is now the Asselstine County Yamaha dealership off Regional Rd. 57 in the old Cartwright Township.
He attended Blackstock Continuation School, belonged to the local Boy Scouts and won awards for his scholastic skills that saw him accepted to Toronto Normal School. He taught school himself for a short time in Manchester and then, like thousands before him, heard the call to fight in the Second World War and joined the RCAF.
He trained in London, Ontario, and was awarded his Navigator’s Wing in August of 1943.
He was sent overseas and assigned to 431 Iroquois Squadron flying Halifax bombers on combat operations over German-occupied Europe.
In July of 1944, Roy’s little brother Fred trudged through the hot fields of the Carter farm to find his father with the telegram that every family in Canada feared might arrive.
Roy was lost. Missing in action after his Halifax was shot down on operations over Holland, even as the war was in its final months. The affable young man, with a best girl back home and plans to study medicine, had disappeared into the mist and fog that was occupied Europe.
While his parents and family waited with hope, Roy Carter began a journey that would make him a hero to a country he spent only days in - a journey through time and history - and he never saw Blackstock again.
Flash forward to 2008 and a letter to Scugog Council asking that a non-descript park in Blackstock be named after Flight Officer Roy Carter.
The naming of buildings and parks after people, living or dead, has always been contentious at best. Naming certain places after those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in defence of their country is no less so. The cenotaphs of Scugog list the names of all who gave their lives in the service of a country at war.
Why, some have asked, would one deserve special attention over another?
How is one sacrifice more worthy?
The answer, of course, is that no one sacrifice takes precedence over any other. None is more worthy ... only different in circumstance.
When a small group of citizens in Scugog became aware of Roy’s story it became clear to them that it deserved some measure of concrete recognition so that it might become known to all.
Roy Carter’s story is one of bravery and commitment to service over and above what is required by the soldier’s oath. A commitment to the freedom of others that cost a young Blackstock school teacher his life and made him immortal in the eyes of those he sought to free.
It went something like this....
Flight Officer Roy Carter was posted to 431 Iroquois Squadron (now the Squadron of The Snowbirds) in Croft Yorkshire, UK, on May 22, 1944.
After completing six Ops (sorties), including one on D-Day to St. Lo, he and his crew were shot down on 16/17 June, 1944, in Halifax NA514, coded ‘SE-B.’
All of the crew, except the pilot, F/O Blachford (who died in the crash), were able to bail out. Two died in the fall( F/O Lough and Sgt. Gould), two were captured almost immediately (Sgt. Hattey and Sgt. Kennedy). Sgt. Tom Masdin and Roy managed to evade the Germans. Tom was later caught and taken as a POW.
Apparently, they had trouble opening the escape hatch in the cockpit, but eventually Roy was able to jump out of the burning aircraft. He landed safely in a field near Boekel, North Holland, a fair distance from where the plane had actually crashed. He had a chance, since the Germans would only search the immediate area of the crash. Roy buried his chute (as recorded by Roy and left at a safe house in Erp) and contacted a local farmer, who gave him refuge. Thus began Roy’s quest for freedom. He would make use of many hiding places under the guidance of local resistance groups.
On Sunday, July 9, 1944, the Nazi S.D. (security police) obtained the whereabouts of the resistance assisting Roy and others and arrived at the door of the safe house in Tilburg. where Roy was hiding with two other escaped airmen.
According to reports after the war, the S.D. men were dressed in their black trenchcoats and carrying machine guns. The three airmen were having breakfast in preparation for their escape to Belgium and then to one of the 'freedom lines' that would return them to England to fight again.
Against all principles of the Geneva Convention concerning POWs, the Gestapo burst into the room and herded the three officers into the backyard, lined them up against a brick wall and shot them numerous times, despite the fact that they were unarmed.
Roy Carter, badly wounded, was able to get back into the house. He was killed in the doorway leading to the kitchen. (That doorway was pointed out to Roy’s mother in 1964 when she travelled, accompanied by her daughter Isabel and other Silver Cross Mothers, to Holland on a pilgrimage.)
The S.D. now ordered 60-year-old Jacoba Pulskens, owner of the home, to fetch a sheet to cover the still-warm bodies. In an act of defiance, Coba went upstairs and brought down a large, new Dutch flag, which she had been keeping for the day when the Netherlands would be liberated. Radios and Dutch flags where forbidden in occupied Holland. It should be noted that Coba lived on a busy street corner and all of this action was being witnessed by neighbours.
Coba herself was arrested. She spent seven months in solitary confinement before being carted off to the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp where she died in the gas chamber in the spring of 1945 at age 61.
Coba is remembered as a heroine in Holland. According to survivors in the death camp, she voluntarily stepped forward to take the place of a young mother with children, in the hope of saving their lives. She apparently had said earlier, “If someone has to give his life, I hope to do it. I can better be missed than others.”
The bodies of the three airmen were first taken to a nearby hospital (where an alert doctor photographed them) and then removed to the concentration camp at Vught, near Herzogenbusch. There, they where cremated, presumably to remove any evidence of the crime that had taken place in Tilburg.
Because the remains of the three airmen were never found, they are listed officially as missing in action.
A plaque in memory of the three airmen and Jacoba Pulskens was erected at her house in Tilburg in 1947. It can still be seen there at 49 Diepenstraat.
On Oct. 27, 1994, a large granite monument was unveiled on Coba Pulskenslaan in Tilburg to honour the three airmen, heroes to the Dutch in their terrible years of occupancy by the hated Nazis. The dedication was part of the events marking the 50th anniversary of liberation.
Relatives of the three airmen - from Canada, Australia and England - attended the unveiling ceremony in Tilburg. Roy’s brothers Robert and Fred represented the Carter family.
Roy and his fellow evaders had the opportunity to turn themselves in at any time and become POWs. They chose not to do so and to the Dutch people, who where eventually liberated by Canadians in many towns and cities, these airmen were heroes who are still remembered today. School children from a nearby elementary school look after the granite monument and a service of remembrance is held every year.
On evidence of former Dutch resistance workers and Coba’s family - and the photos of the bodies taken by Dr. Borman of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Tilburg (the Dutch police had taken photographs also and had the identity disc belonging to F/O Carter J28855) - four of the 10 Nazi policemen were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging.
The Dutch flag that was used by Jacoba Pulskens to cover the bodies of the dead airmen was later brought to England. The flag was dedicated in the Airman’s Chapel in the Church of St. Michael, Coningsby, on May 8, 1983.
There are plaques on the wall with the names of the three airmen and Coba Pulskens, along with words of dedication.
The airmen are also commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial (Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey, England) in separate panels along with the thousands of veterans without known graves.
There is a small piece of green grass surrounded by trees and a tiny creek where, in the warm weather, children come to play and to simply be children. It lies in the middle of Blackstock near the local schools and just a stone’s throw from the farm where Flight Officer Roy Carter grew into the hero he became.
A small committee is now hopeful that the Township of Scugog will approve the naming of the park in Roy’s memory - not as an individual but for the heroic beliefs and acts that made him a hero of the people of Holland. With the support of Legion Branch 419, Roy Carter’s actions may yet be known.
School children in Tilburg tend to Roy’s memory each year and are taught about the sacrifice made by this young man. This young man, who put country before self, has no known grave and no place to rest. Perhaps that small green space in the middle of his hometown can be that place. Persons in Scugog Township can voive their support through e-mails to editorial-stanmdard@powergate.ca, which will be forwarded to Scugog Council.
Perhaps, together, we can bring Roy Carter home to Scugog.
By Rik Davie/The Scugog Standard
Roy Carter, a young man from Blackstock, Ontario, was no different from any other young man who answered the call by King and country in May of 1942.
Roy was raised with his brothers on what is now the Asselstine County Yamaha dealership off Regional Rd. 57 in the old Cartwright Township.
He attended Blackstock Continuation School, belonged to the local Boy Scouts and won awards for his scholastic skills that saw him accepted to Toronto Normal School. He taught school himself for a short time in Manchester and then, like thousands before him, heard the call to fight in the Second World War and joined the RCAF.
He trained in London, Ontario, and was awarded his Navigator’s Wing in August of 1943.
He was sent overseas and assigned to 431 Iroquois Squadron flying Halifax bombers on combat operations over German-occupied Europe.
In July of 1944, Roy’s little brother Fred trudged through the hot fields of the Carter farm to find his father with the telegram that every family in Canada feared might arrive.
Roy was lost. Missing in action after his Halifax was shot down on operations over Holland, even as the war was in its final months. The affable young man, with a best girl back home and plans to study medicine, had disappeared into the mist and fog that was occupied Europe.
While his parents and family waited with hope, Roy Carter began a journey that would make him a hero to a country he spent only days in - a journey through time and history - and he never saw Blackstock again.
Flash forward to 2008 and a letter to Scugog Council asking that a non-descript park in Blackstock be named after Flight Officer Roy Carter.
The naming of buildings and parks after people, living or dead, has always been contentious at best. Naming certain places after those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in defence of their country is no less so. The cenotaphs of Scugog list the names of all who gave their lives in the service of a country at war.
Why, some have asked, would one deserve special attention over another?
How is one sacrifice more worthy?
The answer, of course, is that no one sacrifice takes precedence over any other. None is more worthy ... only different in circumstance.
When a small group of citizens in Scugog became aware of Roy’s story it became clear to them that it deserved some measure of concrete recognition so that it might become known to all.
Roy Carter’s story is one of bravery and commitment to service over and above what is required by the soldier’s oath. A commitment to the freedom of others that cost a young Blackstock school teacher his life and made him immortal in the eyes of those he sought to free.
It went something like this....
Flight Officer Roy Carter was posted to 431 Iroquois Squadron (now the Squadron of The Snowbirds) in Croft Yorkshire, UK, on May 22, 1944.
After completing six Ops (sorties), including one on D-Day to St. Lo, he and his crew were shot down on 16/17 June, 1944, in Halifax NA514, coded ‘SE-B.’
All of the crew, except the pilot, F/O Blachford (who died in the crash), were able to bail out. Two died in the fall( F/O Lough and Sgt. Gould), two were captured almost immediately (Sgt. Hattey and Sgt. Kennedy). Sgt. Tom Masdin and Roy managed to evade the Germans. Tom was later caught and taken as a POW.
Apparently, they had trouble opening the escape hatch in the cockpit, but eventually Roy was able to jump out of the burning aircraft. He landed safely in a field near Boekel, North Holland, a fair distance from where the plane had actually crashed. He had a chance, since the Germans would only search the immediate area of the crash. Roy buried his chute (as recorded by Roy and left at a safe house in Erp) and contacted a local farmer, who gave him refuge. Thus began Roy’s quest for freedom. He would make use of many hiding places under the guidance of local resistance groups.
On Sunday, July 9, 1944, the Nazi S.D. (security police) obtained the whereabouts of the resistance assisting Roy and others and arrived at the door of the safe house in Tilburg. where Roy was hiding with two other escaped airmen.
According to reports after the war, the S.D. men were dressed in their black trenchcoats and carrying machine guns. The three airmen were having breakfast in preparation for their escape to Belgium and then to one of the 'freedom lines' that would return them to England to fight again.
Against all principles of the Geneva Convention concerning POWs, the Gestapo burst into the room and herded the three officers into the backyard, lined them up against a brick wall and shot them numerous times, despite the fact that they were unarmed.
Roy Carter, badly wounded, was able to get back into the house. He was killed in the doorway leading to the kitchen. (That doorway was pointed out to Roy’s mother in 1964 when she travelled, accompanied by her daughter Isabel and other Silver Cross Mothers, to Holland on a pilgrimage.)
The S.D. now ordered 60-year-old Jacoba Pulskens, owner of the home, to fetch a sheet to cover the still-warm bodies. In an act of defiance, Coba went upstairs and brought down a large, new Dutch flag, which she had been keeping for the day when the Netherlands would be liberated. Radios and Dutch flags where forbidden in occupied Holland. It should be noted that Coba lived on a busy street corner and all of this action was being witnessed by neighbours.
Coba herself was arrested. She spent seven months in solitary confinement before being carted off to the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp where she died in the gas chamber in the spring of 1945 at age 61.
Coba is remembered as a heroine in Holland. According to survivors in the death camp, she voluntarily stepped forward to take the place of a young mother with children, in the hope of saving their lives. She apparently had said earlier, “If someone has to give his life, I hope to do it. I can better be missed than others.”
The bodies of the three airmen were first taken to a nearby hospital (where an alert doctor photographed them) and then removed to the concentration camp at Vught, near Herzogenbusch. There, they where cremated, presumably to remove any evidence of the crime that had taken place in Tilburg.
Because the remains of the three airmen were never found, they are listed officially as missing in action.
A plaque in memory of the three airmen and Jacoba Pulskens was erected at her house in Tilburg in 1947. It can still be seen there at 49 Diepenstraat.
On Oct. 27, 1994, a large granite monument was unveiled on Coba Pulskenslaan in Tilburg to honour the three airmen, heroes to the Dutch in their terrible years of occupancy by the hated Nazis. The dedication was part of the events marking the 50th anniversary of liberation.
Relatives of the three airmen - from Canada, Australia and England - attended the unveiling ceremony in Tilburg. Roy’s brothers Robert and Fred represented the Carter family.
Roy and his fellow evaders had the opportunity to turn themselves in at any time and become POWs. They chose not to do so and to the Dutch people, who where eventually liberated by Canadians in many towns and cities, these airmen were heroes who are still remembered today. School children from a nearby elementary school look after the granite monument and a service of remembrance is held every year.
On evidence of former Dutch resistance workers and Coba’s family - and the photos of the bodies taken by Dr. Borman of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Tilburg (the Dutch police had taken photographs also and had the identity disc belonging to F/O Carter J28855) - four of the 10 Nazi policemen were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging.
The Dutch flag that was used by Jacoba Pulskens to cover the bodies of the dead airmen was later brought to England. The flag was dedicated in the Airman’s Chapel in the Church of St. Michael, Coningsby, on May 8, 1983.
There are plaques on the wall with the names of the three airmen and Coba Pulskens, along with words of dedication.
The airmen are also commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial (Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey, England) in separate panels along with the thousands of veterans without known graves.
There is a small piece of green grass surrounded by trees and a tiny creek where, in the warm weather, children come to play and to simply be children. It lies in the middle of Blackstock near the local schools and just a stone’s throw from the farm where Flight Officer Roy Carter grew into the hero he became.
A small committee is now hopeful that the Township of Scugog will approve the naming of the park in Roy’s memory - not as an individual but for the heroic beliefs and acts that made him a hero of the people of Holland. With the support of Legion Branch 419, Roy Carter’s actions may yet be known.
School children in Tilburg tend to Roy’s memory each year and are taught about the sacrifice made by this young man. This young man, who put country before self, has no known grave and no place to rest. Perhaps that small green space in the middle of his hometown can be that place. Persons in Scugog Township can voive their support through e-mails to editorial-stanmdard@powergate.ca, which will be forwarded to Scugog Council.
Perhaps, together, we can bring Roy Carter home to Scugog.
07 March 2009
Plane of WWII Flyer From London Found IN Himalayas
London Madison Press - OH, USA
Saturday, March 7, 2009
By Jane Beathard
Contributing Writer
Sixty-five years after his plane went missing over northern India, the mystery of what happened to a Madison County airman from World War II is likely solved.
In recent days, surviving relatives of U.S. Army 2nd Lt. John W. Funk Jr. learned that a nonprofit organization founded by Arizona businessman Clayton Kuhles located the wreckage of Funk’s long-missing C-87 transport last fall on a jungle-covered mountain in India’s Arunachal Province.
Kuhles is the founder of MIA Recoveries and conducts annual expeditions to Burma, India, Bangladesh and China in search of aircraft lost while flying “the Hump,” an infamous air route over the Himalayas that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Allied airmen during World War II.
On Oct. 3, Kuhles’ party discovered remnants of a C-87 cargo plane believed to be Funk’s. They were led to the wreckage by area villagers who remembered walking to the crash site and burying the plane’s five crew members more than a half century ago.
According to the MIA Recoveries Web site, the plane disappeared on a flight from Yangkai, China to Jorhat, India in August 1943. Aside from Funk, who was the plane’s navigator, crew members included Captain Tom Perry, the pilot; Lt. John T. Tennison, the co-pilot; Staff Sargent Alvin J. Lenox, the radioman; and Corporal Donald A. Johnson, the crew chief.
As was military protocol at the time, Funk’s family received nothing more than a letter of notification about the disappearance. Funk’s name appears on the Madison County Veterans’ War Memorial at the courthouse and in the records of Ohio’s Memorial Forest Shrine in Ashland County.
A report filed with the federal government’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii in recent months said Kuhles interviewed elderly residents of Donli village. Those residents said they witnessed the crash and spent five days walking to the scene, which is more than 8,000 feet above sea level. They buried the dead airmen and scavenged the plane’s metal fuselage to make pots, pans and trays.
Pictures of the crash site and household articles crafted by the villagers are available online at miarecoveries.org, along with Kuhles’ completed archaeological site report form.
Kuhles said it is now up to JPAC to bring the remains of the fallen airmen home. His organization, which is funded through private donations, has worked since 2001 to locate plane wrecks in “the Hump.” Thus far, he has documented 15 crash sites and the remains of more than 100 men. The information he obtained was turned over to surviving families and JPAC for further action.
“All five families (of the C-87) have now been contacted,” Kuhles said. “They have put together a form letter that friends and family members can send to their Congressional representatives, encouraging the government to recover the remains.”
He noted that JPAC spends about 90 percent of its resources on recovering U.S. soldiers lost in Vietnam, with only about 10 percent focused on those from World War II. He said it generally takes intense media and family pressure to influence government action on recoveries from that earlier war.
Kuhles said he’s always been interested in the history of Southeast Asia. A few years ago, he learned about the dangerous missions that were flown by Allied planes over “the Hump” to resupply General Chiang Kai-Shek’s army during World War II. Records of those missions, now largely lost to personal recollection, can be found in “The Aluminum Trail” by Chick Marrs Quinn. The book lists more than 700 U.S. aircraft lost in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. Since most planes had multiple crew members and carried passengers, the number of personnel killed was much higher.
The U.S. Department of Defense said in 2004 that more than 500 U.S. aircraft and 1,200 crew members were still missing in the China-Burma-India Theater from World War II.
Kuhles said it is an area and subject long neglected by the U.S. government because it generally involves remote crash sites and sparse native populations. However, he’s had little trouble finding many of these sites through research and a network of local contacts.
Saturday, March 7, 2009
By Jane Beathard
Contributing Writer
Sixty-five years after his plane went missing over northern India, the mystery of what happened to a Madison County airman from World War II is likely solved.
In recent days, surviving relatives of U.S. Army 2nd Lt. John W. Funk Jr. learned that a nonprofit organization founded by Arizona businessman Clayton Kuhles located the wreckage of Funk’s long-missing C-87 transport last fall on a jungle-covered mountain in India’s Arunachal Province.
Kuhles is the founder of MIA Recoveries and conducts annual expeditions to Burma, India, Bangladesh and China in search of aircraft lost while flying “the Hump,” an infamous air route over the Himalayas that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Allied airmen during World War II.
On Oct. 3, Kuhles’ party discovered remnants of a C-87 cargo plane believed to be Funk’s. They were led to the wreckage by area villagers who remembered walking to the crash site and burying the plane’s five crew members more than a half century ago.
According to the MIA Recoveries Web site, the plane disappeared on a flight from Yangkai, China to Jorhat, India in August 1943. Aside from Funk, who was the plane’s navigator, crew members included Captain Tom Perry, the pilot; Lt. John T. Tennison, the co-pilot; Staff Sargent Alvin J. Lenox, the radioman; and Corporal Donald A. Johnson, the crew chief.
As was military protocol at the time, Funk’s family received nothing more than a letter of notification about the disappearance. Funk’s name appears on the Madison County Veterans’ War Memorial at the courthouse and in the records of Ohio’s Memorial Forest Shrine in Ashland County.
A report filed with the federal government’s Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) in Hawaii in recent months said Kuhles interviewed elderly residents of Donli village. Those residents said they witnessed the crash and spent five days walking to the scene, which is more than 8,000 feet above sea level. They buried the dead airmen and scavenged the plane’s metal fuselage to make pots, pans and trays.
Pictures of the crash site and household articles crafted by the villagers are available online at miarecoveries.org, along with Kuhles’ completed archaeological site report form.
Kuhles said it is now up to JPAC to bring the remains of the fallen airmen home. His organization, which is funded through private donations, has worked since 2001 to locate plane wrecks in “the Hump.” Thus far, he has documented 15 crash sites and the remains of more than 100 men. The information he obtained was turned over to surviving families and JPAC for further action.
“All five families (of the C-87) have now been contacted,” Kuhles said. “They have put together a form letter that friends and family members can send to their Congressional representatives, encouraging the government to recover the remains.”
He noted that JPAC spends about 90 percent of its resources on recovering U.S. soldiers lost in Vietnam, with only about 10 percent focused on those from World War II. He said it generally takes intense media and family pressure to influence government action on recoveries from that earlier war.
Kuhles said he’s always been interested in the history of Southeast Asia. A few years ago, he learned about the dangerous missions that were flown by Allied planes over “the Hump” to resupply General Chiang Kai-Shek’s army during World War II. Records of those missions, now largely lost to personal recollection, can be found in “The Aluminum Trail” by Chick Marrs Quinn. The book lists more than 700 U.S. aircraft lost in the China-Burma-India Theater during World War II. Since most planes had multiple crew members and carried passengers, the number of personnel killed was much higher.
The U.S. Department of Defense said in 2004 that more than 500 U.S. aircraft and 1,200 crew members were still missing in the China-Burma-India Theater from World War II.
Kuhles said it is an area and subject long neglected by the U.S. government because it generally involves remote crash sites and sparse native populations. However, he’s had little trouble finding many of these sites through research and a network of local contacts.
Veteran Honored 65 Years Later With Purple Heart
KDKA - Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Mar 7, 2009 11:20 pm US/Eastern
KDKA - It will be 65 years to the day on Sunday since a local veteran was shot down over Germany, and today he received a much overdue honor.
David Rohm, 86, of Ross Township, thought this day would never come. He had given up on getting a Purple Heart for what happened 65 years ago.
Rohm was in World War II and on March 8th, 1944, under enemy fire, he bailed out of a damaged B-17, broke his pelvis and was immediately captured.
"To bail out into a strange country where you don't understand the language, they can't understand you, you don't know if they're gonna shoot you, take you prisoner or what they're gonna do," said Rohm.
He was a prisoner of war for the next 14 months and never received medical treatment for his broken pelvis. And because there were no medical records, he was never given a Purple Heart.
But two years ago, he petitioned the Air Force Review Board, at the urging of his family.
"He's our hero everyday regardless, but everything he's endured and gone through for this country, and to finally be recognized - it's just a tremendous honor," said Rohm's son, Steve.
But Rohm says he says he's no hero.
"We knew when we enlisted there was a job to do and we did it," he said.
But he does have a message for young people today.
"I would like them to always remember and appreciate their freedom and that's what we were fighting for," Rohm added.
One of Rohm's sons, Cpl. Robi Rohm, is stationed in Afghanistan, and was able to watch the ceremony through a video hookup.
Mar 7, 2009 11:20 pm US/Eastern
KDKA - It will be 65 years to the day on Sunday since a local veteran was shot down over Germany, and today he received a much overdue honor.
David Rohm, 86, of Ross Township, thought this day would never come. He had given up on getting a Purple Heart for what happened 65 years ago.
Rohm was in World War II and on March 8th, 1944, under enemy fire, he bailed out of a damaged B-17, broke his pelvis and was immediately captured.
"To bail out into a strange country where you don't understand the language, they can't understand you, you don't know if they're gonna shoot you, take you prisoner or what they're gonna do," said Rohm.
He was a prisoner of war for the next 14 months and never received medical treatment for his broken pelvis. And because there were no medical records, he was never given a Purple Heart.
But two years ago, he petitioned the Air Force Review Board, at the urging of his family.
"He's our hero everyday regardless, but everything he's endured and gone through for this country, and to finally be recognized - it's just a tremendous honor," said Rohm's son, Steve.
But Rohm says he says he's no hero.
"We knew when we enlisted there was a job to do and we did it," he said.
But he does have a message for young people today.
"I would like them to always remember and appreciate their freedom and that's what we were fighting for," Rohm added.
One of Rohm's sons, Cpl. Robi Rohm, is stationed in Afghanistan, and was able to watch the ceremony through a video hookup.
06 March 2009
It's About More Than A Medal
Evening News and Tribune - Jeffersonville, IN, USA
Published: March 05, 2009 07:05 pm
By ANDREW ALBATYS
Local Columnist
Sixty three years after Lt. Jack Scanlan’s ill-fated flight, a diverse group of family, friends and history students met in Louisville to honor his memory.
In June 1945, Scanlan’s P-51 Mustang was shot down in a dogfight over Japan. He bailed out of his burning plane, was captured by Japanese soldiers and then turned over to a civilian mob. The mob, many of them woman, killed the wounded flier. He was 24 years old.
On Feb. 27, Jack’s friends and family gathered at St. Xavier High School to see retired Maj. Bill Scanlan, Jack’s only surviving brother, accept the U.S. Prisoner of War Medal that Jack had earned so many years ago. The school was a fitting choice for the ceremony, as all three of the Scanlan brothers were proud graduates of St. Xavier. Chuck Willenbrink. the school’s director of advancement, was a gracious host to the event.
The Prisoner of War Medal was authorized in 1985. It is awarded to any soldier that was held prisoner by an enemy of the United States during an armed conflict. Soldiers from World War I to the present may receive the medal. The award of the medal is recognition of their honorable service while a prisoner.
Seeing Lt. Jack Scanlan awarded the Prisoner of War Medal marked the completion of a decades-long odyssey for the Scanlan family. The process was begun in 1993 by Jack’s brother, the late Col. Joseph Scanlan, and seen to completion by Joe’s daughter, Anne.
The ceremony began with an invocation by Brother George Willenbrink. Willenbrink, an Xavierian brother and a member of the St. X class of 1944, offered a prayer for Jack and his family. In his soft spoken words, he captured the thought of many of those present with the hope that Jack was in some way aware of the gathering in his honor.
I’m sure that all the young men that Willenbrink had seen go off to war in his many years as a teacher were included in his thoughts and prayers that day.
In 2007, the History Channel aired an excellent documentary about the long-range flights of the P-51 Mustangs in the Pacific. A segment of the documentary was shown during the ceremony. It focused on the mission that Jack Scanlan and his close friend and fellow P-51 pilot, Bob Scamara, were on the day Jack was killed.
The segment included an interview with Scamara and a computer-created simulation of the actual dogfight. That day, Scamara shot down three Japanese planes and damaged several more. It was a bittersweet day for Scamara, who tells the interviewer that he would “gladly trade those three victories to have Jack back.”
For me, the most touching moment was seeing Bill Scanlan, himself a seasoned veteran of 60 combat missions in Vietnam, watching — with tears streaming down his face — the film of his brother’s last flight. It’s an image that few of us are likely to forget.
Jack’s niece, Anne, spoke eloquently of her uncle and her family. She recounted a time when her father, in a pensive mood, reflected on the wonderful life he had enjoyed. A life blessed with a loving family and a successful military career. He questioned, as many survivors do, why he had been so fortunate while his brother had died so young.
Anne talked about closure and the healing that comes only with time. She read a poem given to her by noted World War II historian Henry Sakaida. The poem — originally given to Sakaida by a Japanese officer — tells us that wisdom, understanding and faith in God come with age. Anne closed her remarks by telling those assembled that Jack’s great nephew recently had a son. They named him Jack.
The ceremony was also attended by a group of St. Xavier advanced history students. Watching the film and seeing Bill Scanlan was a poignant visual reminder that the wars they read about in their history books were fought by real people. People who lived, loved and laughed. People that had families and friends that cared about them. Learning about the Scanlan brothers and their service to their country is a reminder that the bar is set high for the young people of the United States.
The ceremony concluded with the presentation of the medal. It was presented to Bill Scanlan by Brig. Gen. Michael Dornbush. It seemed particularly appropriate that the medal be presented by an Air Force general, as all three of the Scanlan brothers had served in that branch of the service.
The general — whose own father had been a prisoner of war during World War II — seemed to possess a genuine appreciation of the Scanlans’ sacrifice. In presenting the medal, he recognized not only Jack’s service, but Bill’s as well. Listening to Dornbush as he talked to Bill Scanlan, it was evident that the Air Force of today has a great deal of respect for the airmen of yesterday.
For me, seeing Bill Scanlan surrounded by his family, holding his brother’s long overdue medal made the long wait worthwhile.
In the end, it was about more than a medal. More than flags and uniforms. It was about love and respect for those who came before us and made our lives better. It was about love of country, faith in God, and as importantly, family.
Andrew J. Albatys is a Henryville resident and business owner. He can be reached via e-mail at douglassloop@aol.com
Published: March 05, 2009 07:05 pm
By ANDREW ALBATYS
Local Columnist
Sixty three years after Lt. Jack Scanlan’s ill-fated flight, a diverse group of family, friends and history students met in Louisville to honor his memory.
In June 1945, Scanlan’s P-51 Mustang was shot down in a dogfight over Japan. He bailed out of his burning plane, was captured by Japanese soldiers and then turned over to a civilian mob. The mob, many of them woman, killed the wounded flier. He was 24 years old.
On Feb. 27, Jack’s friends and family gathered at St. Xavier High School to see retired Maj. Bill Scanlan, Jack’s only surviving brother, accept the U.S. Prisoner of War Medal that Jack had earned so many years ago. The school was a fitting choice for the ceremony, as all three of the Scanlan brothers were proud graduates of St. Xavier. Chuck Willenbrink. the school’s director of advancement, was a gracious host to the event.
The Prisoner of War Medal was authorized in 1985. It is awarded to any soldier that was held prisoner by an enemy of the United States during an armed conflict. Soldiers from World War I to the present may receive the medal. The award of the medal is recognition of their honorable service while a prisoner.
Seeing Lt. Jack Scanlan awarded the Prisoner of War Medal marked the completion of a decades-long odyssey for the Scanlan family. The process was begun in 1993 by Jack’s brother, the late Col. Joseph Scanlan, and seen to completion by Joe’s daughter, Anne.
The ceremony began with an invocation by Brother George Willenbrink. Willenbrink, an Xavierian brother and a member of the St. X class of 1944, offered a prayer for Jack and his family. In his soft spoken words, he captured the thought of many of those present with the hope that Jack was in some way aware of the gathering in his honor.
I’m sure that all the young men that Willenbrink had seen go off to war in his many years as a teacher were included in his thoughts and prayers that day.
In 2007, the History Channel aired an excellent documentary about the long-range flights of the P-51 Mustangs in the Pacific. A segment of the documentary was shown during the ceremony. It focused on the mission that Jack Scanlan and his close friend and fellow P-51 pilot, Bob Scamara, were on the day Jack was killed.
The segment included an interview with Scamara and a computer-created simulation of the actual dogfight. That day, Scamara shot down three Japanese planes and damaged several more. It was a bittersweet day for Scamara, who tells the interviewer that he would “gladly trade those three victories to have Jack back.”
For me, the most touching moment was seeing Bill Scanlan, himself a seasoned veteran of 60 combat missions in Vietnam, watching — with tears streaming down his face — the film of his brother’s last flight. It’s an image that few of us are likely to forget.
Jack’s niece, Anne, spoke eloquently of her uncle and her family. She recounted a time when her father, in a pensive mood, reflected on the wonderful life he had enjoyed. A life blessed with a loving family and a successful military career. He questioned, as many survivors do, why he had been so fortunate while his brother had died so young.
Anne talked about closure and the healing that comes only with time. She read a poem given to her by noted World War II historian Henry Sakaida. The poem — originally given to Sakaida by a Japanese officer — tells us that wisdom, understanding and faith in God come with age. Anne closed her remarks by telling those assembled that Jack’s great nephew recently had a son. They named him Jack.
The ceremony was also attended by a group of St. Xavier advanced history students. Watching the film and seeing Bill Scanlan was a poignant visual reminder that the wars they read about in their history books were fought by real people. People who lived, loved and laughed. People that had families and friends that cared about them. Learning about the Scanlan brothers and their service to their country is a reminder that the bar is set high for the young people of the United States.
The ceremony concluded with the presentation of the medal. It was presented to Bill Scanlan by Brig. Gen. Michael Dornbush. It seemed particularly appropriate that the medal be presented by an Air Force general, as all three of the Scanlan brothers had served in that branch of the service.
The general — whose own father had been a prisoner of war during World War II — seemed to possess a genuine appreciation of the Scanlans’ sacrifice. In presenting the medal, he recognized not only Jack’s service, but Bill’s as well. Listening to Dornbush as he talked to Bill Scanlan, it was evident that the Air Force of today has a great deal of respect for the airmen of yesterday.
For me, seeing Bill Scanlan surrounded by his family, holding his brother’s long overdue medal made the long wait worthwhile.
In the end, it was about more than a medal. More than flags and uniforms. It was about love and respect for those who came before us and made our lives better. It was about love of country, faith in God, and as importantly, family.
Andrew J. Albatys is a Henryville resident and business owner. He can be reached via e-mail at douglassloop@aol.com
28 February 2009
WWII Pilot Awarded Medal 63 Years After Death
MSNBC - USA
Lt. Jack Scanlan Honored In Louisville
By Andy Alcock/WLKY
WLKY.com
updated 12:18 a.m. ET, Sat., Feb. 28, 2009
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - More than 60 years after his death, a Louisville native and World War II fighter pilot was honored with the Prisoner of War Medal.
His family's struggle to have Lt. John V. "Jack" Scanlan honored began more than 15 years ago and reached its long-awaited conclusion Friday at Scanlan's alma mater, St. Xavier High School.
Niece Catherine Anne Wiggins comforted Jack's brother, her 86-year-old uncle, Bill Scanlan, who was overcome by emotion.
Jack Scanlan was a P-51 fighter pilot. On June 23, 1945, he flew wing along Lt. Bob Scamara in a deadly battle over Japan.
Through multiple twists, turns and moves to avoid gunfire, Scamara shot down three planes and damaged four others.
"That's when I noticed Scanlan was still on my wing," Scamara said in a History Channel documentary shown at the ceremony.
On their way back to Iwo Jima, a Japanese Zero shot down Scanlan's plane.
Scanlan jumped out with a parachute. A Japanese captain found him, treated his injuries and took him to the hospital, but at that hospital, angry civilians demanded and were granted Scanlan's release to them.
Then they killed him.
"I'd have gladly given back those three victories to save John, but didn't happen that way," Scamara said in the documentary.
In 1993, the late Joe Scanlan started an application to have his brother Jack honored with the Prisoner of War Medal, but there was a problem: Jack's records had been destroyed in a fire at a St. Louis warehouse.
Three years ago, when Wiggins was moving her father, Joe, to a nursing home, she found the application.
She said with the help of Sen. Mitch McConnell's office and months and months of work, Gen. Michael Dornbush of the Kentucky Air National Guard awarded the medal to Jack's other brother, Bill.
"It's overwhelming, it's rewarding," Wiggins said. "It was really important to get it done."
"There isn't a proper word to apply to it," said Bill Scanlan.
In addition to Friday's medal ceremony more than 60 years after his death, Jack Scanlan was given another honor in December when his great-nephew and his wife had their first child, a boy they named "Jack."
Lt. Jack Scanlan Honored In Louisville
By Andy Alcock/WLKY
WLKY.com
updated 12:18 a.m. ET, Sat., Feb. 28, 2009
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - More than 60 years after his death, a Louisville native and World War II fighter pilot was honored with the Prisoner of War Medal.
His family's struggle to have Lt. John V. "Jack" Scanlan honored began more than 15 years ago and reached its long-awaited conclusion Friday at Scanlan's alma mater, St. Xavier High School.
Niece Catherine Anne Wiggins comforted Jack's brother, her 86-year-old uncle, Bill Scanlan, who was overcome by emotion.
Jack Scanlan was a P-51 fighter pilot. On June 23, 1945, he flew wing along Lt. Bob Scamara in a deadly battle over Japan.
Through multiple twists, turns and moves to avoid gunfire, Scamara shot down three planes and damaged four others.
"That's when I noticed Scanlan was still on my wing," Scamara said in a History Channel documentary shown at the ceremony.
On their way back to Iwo Jima, a Japanese Zero shot down Scanlan's plane.
Scanlan jumped out with a parachute. A Japanese captain found him, treated his injuries and took him to the hospital, but at that hospital, angry civilians demanded and were granted Scanlan's release to them.
Then they killed him.
"I'd have gladly given back those three victories to save John, but didn't happen that way," Scamara said in the documentary.
In 1993, the late Joe Scanlan started an application to have his brother Jack honored with the Prisoner of War Medal, but there was a problem: Jack's records had been destroyed in a fire at a St. Louis warehouse.
Three years ago, when Wiggins was moving her father, Joe, to a nursing home, she found the application.
She said with the help of Sen. Mitch McConnell's office and months and months of work, Gen. Michael Dornbush of the Kentucky Air National Guard awarded the medal to Jack's other brother, Bill.
"It's overwhelming, it's rewarding," Wiggins said. "It was really important to get it done."
"There isn't a proper word to apply to it," said Bill Scanlan.
In addition to Friday's medal ceremony more than 60 years after his death, Jack Scanlan was given another honor in December when his great-nephew and his wife had their first child, a boy they named "Jack."
21 February 2009
Honor Flights: The Boys Are Not Forgotten
Bismarck Tribune - Bismarck, ND, USA
Feb 21, 2009 - 16:48:05 CST
By KAREN HERZOG
Bismarck Tribune
Many World War II veterans would never be able, physically or financially, to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., on their own. To see the wreathed columns honoring "the greatest generation" who fought for freedom across the world. The Honor Flight Network was established in 2004 to take the aging survivors of that war to see their place of honor.
When James Carlascio applied to work for the railroad at Jamestown after World War II, his father had to sign for him, because he was only 20.
Carlascio, the son of an Italian immigrant father and a mother who was a "tough Irishman," he said with a laugh, had returned from the war; it was time to go to work, his dad told him.
Six decades lie between the teenage Army corporal Carlascio was and the 83-year-old veteran he is now. But both the old photos and nattily suited gentleman of today show the same lanky frame, generous head of hair and animated expressiveness.
By the time his dad signed up his still-underage son for his railroad job, James Carlascio already had been drafted; he'd fought in Africa and Italy as an infantryman, one of the "ground pounders" as they were called, with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division. He'd been wounded and captured. And he'd spent 18 months as a prisoner of war in Germany's Stalag 2B.
Carlascio and his fellow soldiers were at the 1944 assault on Cisterno in Italy, assigned to capture the town's out-skirts while the Army Rangers were to take the town itself.
Only, when the Rangers went in, there were machine guns at every door and window, Carlascio said. Of the 767 Rangers who went in, only six returned to the Allied lines.
The infantry was running out of ammunition and medical supplies; their lieutenant surrendered.
Carlascio said that, at 18, he was the youngest POW there, confined in a compound with the rest of his captured unit, along with Frenchmen, Poles and Yugoslavians, soldiers of all nationalities. He remembers all the German shep-herds on chains the guards had.
At the POW camp, Carlascio was put on "horse detail," feeding and curry combing horses, working in the veterinary and blacksmith shops.
As the end of the war neared, the POWs knew the Allies were getting close - "we could hear them," he said. Though Hitler had given orders that POWs were to be killed, that never happened. This Carlascio credits to the German people. Instead, the POWs were taken on a forced march, marching basically in a circle for 86 days.
At night, they slept in barns. One morning, they woke up and the guards were gone. They knew this meant the war was over for them.
"Oh, God, we were so happy," he said.
In 1945, the former prisoners returned home aboard a luxury liner. When they pulled into harbor at New York, Carlascio remembers with emotion how he felt: "We saw that Statue of Liberty. What a beautiful sight."
Like so many other World War II veterans, Carlascio didn't talk about his experiences for many years - "I didn't want to." But finally, a history teacher persuaded him to talk to students, to answer their questions.
This year, Carlascio received the Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year award for 2008 for, among other things, sharing his story with students, for the time he spends at nursing homes, and for his 20-year determination to get a veterans' Memorial Wall established at Fort Seward in Jamestown.
There, a brick walk honors the names of soldiers all the way back to the Spanish-American War, those killed in action, prisoners of war, and Medal of Honor winners.
In May 2007, Carlascio and his wife, Dorothy, went to Washington, D.C., as part of the WDAY Honor Flight, 189 veterans departing from Fargo to visit the new World War II Memorial in Washington.
The three days they spent there were the trip of a lifetime, a sentimental journey, Carlascio said.
Carlascio was moved by the honor of standing on sacred ground to show respect to "the boys not forgotten." The memorial is a place every veteran should visit, he said.
"Everyone should go there."
Carlascio's sunny expression wavers as he talks about a couple of that multitude who are "not forgotten:" His brother, Tony, wounded in Italy. His brother, Joey, the baby of the family, killed in the Pacific. He was 18.
(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@bismarcktribune.com.)
Feb 21, 2009 - 16:48:05 CST
By KAREN HERZOG
Bismarck Tribune
Many World War II veterans would never be able, physically or financially, to visit the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., on their own. To see the wreathed columns honoring "the greatest generation" who fought for freedom across the world. The Honor Flight Network was established in 2004 to take the aging survivors of that war to see their place of honor.
When James Carlascio applied to work for the railroad at Jamestown after World War II, his father had to sign for him, because he was only 20.
Carlascio, the son of an Italian immigrant father and a mother who was a "tough Irishman," he said with a laugh, had returned from the war; it was time to go to work, his dad told him.
Six decades lie between the teenage Army corporal Carlascio was and the 83-year-old veteran he is now. But both the old photos and nattily suited gentleman of today show the same lanky frame, generous head of hair and animated expressiveness.
By the time his dad signed up his still-underage son for his railroad job, James Carlascio already had been drafted; he'd fought in Africa and Italy as an infantryman, one of the "ground pounders" as they were called, with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division. He'd been wounded and captured. And he'd spent 18 months as a prisoner of war in Germany's Stalag 2B.
Carlascio and his fellow soldiers were at the 1944 assault on Cisterno in Italy, assigned to capture the town's out-skirts while the Army Rangers were to take the town itself.
Only, when the Rangers went in, there were machine guns at every door and window, Carlascio said. Of the 767 Rangers who went in, only six returned to the Allied lines.
The infantry was running out of ammunition and medical supplies; their lieutenant surrendered.
Carlascio said that, at 18, he was the youngest POW there, confined in a compound with the rest of his captured unit, along with Frenchmen, Poles and Yugoslavians, soldiers of all nationalities. He remembers all the German shep-herds on chains the guards had.
At the POW camp, Carlascio was put on "horse detail," feeding and curry combing horses, working in the veterinary and blacksmith shops.
As the end of the war neared, the POWs knew the Allies were getting close - "we could hear them," he said. Though Hitler had given orders that POWs were to be killed, that never happened. This Carlascio credits to the German people. Instead, the POWs were taken on a forced march, marching basically in a circle for 86 days.
At night, they slept in barns. One morning, they woke up and the guards were gone. They knew this meant the war was over for them.
"Oh, God, we were so happy," he said.
In 1945, the former prisoners returned home aboard a luxury liner. When they pulled into harbor at New York, Carlascio remembers with emotion how he felt: "We saw that Statue of Liberty. What a beautiful sight."
Like so many other World War II veterans, Carlascio didn't talk about his experiences for many years - "I didn't want to." But finally, a history teacher persuaded him to talk to students, to answer their questions.
This year, Carlascio received the Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year award for 2008 for, among other things, sharing his story with students, for the time he spends at nursing homes, and for his 20-year determination to get a veterans' Memorial Wall established at Fort Seward in Jamestown.
There, a brick walk honors the names of soldiers all the way back to the Spanish-American War, those killed in action, prisoners of war, and Medal of Honor winners.
In May 2007, Carlascio and his wife, Dorothy, went to Washington, D.C., as part of the WDAY Honor Flight, 189 veterans departing from Fargo to visit the new World War II Memorial in Washington.
The three days they spent there were the trip of a lifetime, a sentimental journey, Carlascio said.
Carlascio was moved by the honor of standing on sacred ground to show respect to "the boys not forgotten." The memorial is a place every veteran should visit, he said.
"Everyone should go there."
Carlascio's sunny expression wavers as he talks about a couple of that multitude who are "not forgotten:" His brother, Tony, wounded in Italy. His brother, Joey, the baby of the family, killed in the Pacific. He was 18.
(Reach reporter Karen Herzog at 250-8267 or karen.herzog@bismarcktribune.com.)
18 February 2009
US Investigators Reach "Hot As Hell" Crash Area In India
AFP
NEW DELHI (AFP) — US investigators scouring India for remains of missing American World War II airforce personnel have stepped up the search in a remote region bordering China, defence ministry officials said Wednesday.
Experts from the US defence department's Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) were in Arunachal Pradesh state's Damroh region to look for the remains of the crew of downed American B-24 bomber, named "Hot as Hell."
"Ten JPAC officials who were flown in from Assam (state) last month by the Indian airforce are now in Damroh where the wreckage was first sighted in 2006," a senior ministry official told AFP.
The details of the search by the JPAC team in the insurgency-riven northeastern state have been withheld for security reasons, he said, but added that the experts will camp in the area for at least a week.
The B-24 bomber crashed in the Damroh forests in Siang district in 1944. The wreckage was tracked down three years ago by a US-based private investigator Clayton Kuhles with the help of local guides, Indian war records show.
JPAC, which scours WWII sites worldwide, sent a two-member reconnaissance team to India last March following requests from relatives of the bomber's pilot, First Lieutenant Irwin Zaeta.
The actual search in an area that pilots called "The Hump" -- or the "Aluminium Trail" because of the number of crashes there -- began in September 2008.
"Besides the particular B-24, the Americans are also looking for other missing personnel in the Hump region," an official told AFP.
Arunachal Pradesh state, which borders China, was along the flight path used by US aircraft ferrying supplies from hundreds of Indian airfields to besieged allied troops in China.
They were forced to fly the perilous route in April 1942 when the Japanese army cut off the main road between Burma and China, and the operations continued until near the end of the war in 1945.
In all, Allied pilots ferried 650,000 tonnes of fuel, munitions and equipment over the mountains to supply the Chinese government and other anti-Japanese forces.
Several wreckages have been reportedly sighted by local inhabitants in Arunachal Pradesh in the past several years. The Americans believe more than 400 US servicemen and women were lost on the Indian side of the border.
China had recovered some remains of US servicemen on their side of what is a disputed stretch of the Sino-Indian border.
NEW DELHI (AFP) — US investigators scouring India for remains of missing American World War II airforce personnel have stepped up the search in a remote region bordering China, defence ministry officials said Wednesday.
Experts from the US defence department's Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC) were in Arunachal Pradesh state's Damroh region to look for the remains of the crew of downed American B-24 bomber, named "Hot as Hell."
"Ten JPAC officials who were flown in from Assam (state) last month by the Indian airforce are now in Damroh where the wreckage was first sighted in 2006," a senior ministry official told AFP.
The details of the search by the JPAC team in the insurgency-riven northeastern state have been withheld for security reasons, he said, but added that the experts will camp in the area for at least a week.
The B-24 bomber crashed in the Damroh forests in Siang district in 1944. The wreckage was tracked down three years ago by a US-based private investigator Clayton Kuhles with the help of local guides, Indian war records show.
JPAC, which scours WWII sites worldwide, sent a two-member reconnaissance team to India last March following requests from relatives of the bomber's pilot, First Lieutenant Irwin Zaeta.
The actual search in an area that pilots called "The Hump" -- or the "Aluminium Trail" because of the number of crashes there -- began in September 2008.
"Besides the particular B-24, the Americans are also looking for other missing personnel in the Hump region," an official told AFP.
Arunachal Pradesh state, which borders China, was along the flight path used by US aircraft ferrying supplies from hundreds of Indian airfields to besieged allied troops in China.
They were forced to fly the perilous route in April 1942 when the Japanese army cut off the main road between Burma and China, and the operations continued until near the end of the war in 1945.
In all, Allied pilots ferried 650,000 tonnes of fuel, munitions and equipment over the mountains to supply the Chinese government and other anti-Japanese forces.
Several wreckages have been reportedly sighted by local inhabitants in Arunachal Pradesh in the past several years. The Americans believe more than 400 US servicemen and women were lost on the Indian side of the border.
China had recovered some remains of US servicemen on their side of what is a disputed stretch of the Sino-Indian border.
17 February 2009
Search On At WWII Crash Site
BurlingtonFreePress.com - Burlington, VT, USA
By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer • February 17, 2009
Gary Zaetz (third from left) and Oken Tayeng (far right) stand in front of the wing of Hot as Hell in remote north´ern India. The other men belong to Tayeng’s family. (Courtesy Photo)
A team of Defense Department investigators has reached the crash site of a World War II-era B-24 bomber in remote northeast India and has begun a search for the human remains of its long-lost crew, including two Vermonters.
“I got word this morning that they’re now at the site,” Larry Zaetz, the brother of one of the lost airmen, 1st Lt. Irwin “Zipper” Zaetz of Burlington, said Monday. “We don’t know what the excavators will be able to find, but we’re very hopeful.”
Larry Zaetz lives in Florida but was a longtime resident of Burlington. He was the younger brother of Irwin Zaetz. The two boys and another brother and sister lived with their Russian immigrant parents on Loomis Street.
The bomber, nicknamed “Hot as Hell,” was on a military supply run between airstrips in India and China when it went missing in stormy weather over the Himalayan mountains Jan. 25, 1944 and was never heard from again.
American climber Clayton Kuhles, using information gleaned from a hunter guide in the region, found the crash site in 2006 in the mountains near the village of Damrah, population 200. Relatives of the plane’s eight-man crew have been pushing for a formal search of the site by American investigators ever since.
In November, a small advance team connected with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, visited the site and confirmed it was where the Hot as Hell bomber crashed.
Excavating the location for human remains — bone fragments, teeth and fingernails — was put off until a full JPAC team made its trek to the site this past weekend.
“This is the first recovery operation that JPAC has conducted in India in 30 years,” said Gary Zaetz, son of Larry Zaetz and the leader of the group of relatives of the Hot as Hell crew.
Gary Zaetz, who lives in North Carolina, credited Vermont’s congressional delegation for helping to persuade JPAC to investigate the Hot as Hell case in advance of five recently discovered World War II-era aircraft crash sites in India.
“They went above and beyond the call of duty to get the Defense Department to move on this issue,” Gary Zaetz said of Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch. No one at JPAC’s command center in Hawaii could be reached for comment Monday.
Gary Zaetz said he was first informed that the JPAC team had reached the site by Oken Tayeng, a local guide he met when he traveled to the site himself in November. Tayeng was the same guide who led Kuhles to the site in 2006.
“It didn’t look like it had been disturbed very much,” he said of the crash site. “I saw an entire wing section and a lot of aluminum debris.” He said the crash site, 9,400 feet above sea level, was just below the mountain’s tree line.
Gary Zaetz said the region’s harsh wind and weather could complicate finding human remains. He said he understood that JPAC had sent 15 or 16 people to the site and that the team is expected to stay in India for a month.
Whatever human remains are found will be transported to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii to see if the DNA contained in them matches those of any of the crew’s relatives. Larry Zaetz said he had provided a DNA sample of his saliva to JPAC.
The other Vermonter aboard the Hot as Hell flight was Capt. William A. Swanson of Proctor, who has very few surviving relatives. A grandniece of Swanson said he was promoted to captain just before the fateful flight.
Irwin Zaetz was a last-minute addition to the crew. He replaced the regular navigator, who was ill. Zaetz and Swanson did not know each other.
Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com.
By Sam Hemingway, Free Press Staff Writer • February 17, 2009
Gary Zaetz (third from left) and Oken Tayeng (far right) stand in front of the wing of Hot as Hell in remote north´ern India. The other men belong to Tayeng’s family. (Courtesy Photo)
A team of Defense Department investigators has reached the crash site of a World War II-era B-24 bomber in remote northeast India and has begun a search for the human remains of its long-lost crew, including two Vermonters.
“I got word this morning that they’re now at the site,” Larry Zaetz, the brother of one of the lost airmen, 1st Lt. Irwin “Zipper” Zaetz of Burlington, said Monday. “We don’t know what the excavators will be able to find, but we’re very hopeful.”
Larry Zaetz lives in Florida but was a longtime resident of Burlington. He was the younger brother of Irwin Zaetz. The two boys and another brother and sister lived with their Russian immigrant parents on Loomis Street.
The bomber, nicknamed “Hot as Hell,” was on a military supply run between airstrips in India and China when it went missing in stormy weather over the Himalayan mountains Jan. 25, 1944 and was never heard from again.
American climber Clayton Kuhles, using information gleaned from a hunter guide in the region, found the crash site in 2006 in the mountains near the village of Damrah, population 200. Relatives of the plane’s eight-man crew have been pushing for a formal search of the site by American investigators ever since.
In November, a small advance team connected with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, or JPAC, visited the site and confirmed it was where the Hot as Hell bomber crashed.
Excavating the location for human remains — bone fragments, teeth and fingernails — was put off until a full JPAC team made its trek to the site this past weekend.
“This is the first recovery operation that JPAC has conducted in India in 30 years,” said Gary Zaetz, son of Larry Zaetz and the leader of the group of relatives of the Hot as Hell crew.
Gary Zaetz, who lives in North Carolina, credited Vermont’s congressional delegation for helping to persuade JPAC to investigate the Hot as Hell case in advance of five recently discovered World War II-era aircraft crash sites in India.
“They went above and beyond the call of duty to get the Defense Department to move on this issue,” Gary Zaetz said of Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter Welch. No one at JPAC’s command center in Hawaii could be reached for comment Monday.
Gary Zaetz said he was first informed that the JPAC team had reached the site by Oken Tayeng, a local guide he met when he traveled to the site himself in November. Tayeng was the same guide who led Kuhles to the site in 2006.
“It didn’t look like it had been disturbed very much,” he said of the crash site. “I saw an entire wing section and a lot of aluminum debris.” He said the crash site, 9,400 feet above sea level, was just below the mountain’s tree line.
Gary Zaetz said the region’s harsh wind and weather could complicate finding human remains. He said he understood that JPAC had sent 15 or 16 people to the site and that the team is expected to stay in India for a month.
Whatever human remains are found will be transported to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii to see if the DNA contained in them matches those of any of the crew’s relatives. Larry Zaetz said he had provided a DNA sample of his saliva to JPAC.
The other Vermonter aboard the Hot as Hell flight was Capt. William A. Swanson of Proctor, who has very few surviving relatives. A grandniece of Swanson said he was promoted to captain just before the fateful flight.
Irwin Zaetz was a last-minute addition to the crew. He replaced the regular navigator, who was ill. Zaetz and Swanson did not know each other.
Contact Sam Hemingway at 660-1850 or e-mail at shemingway@bfp.burlingtonfreepress.com.
16 February 2009
Quest For Lost WWII Hero
Wilkes Barre Times-Leader - Wilkes Barre, PA, USA
Northeastern Pennsylvania man is fighting for the recovery from Iwo Jima of the remains of Sgt. Bill Genaust, who filmed raising of U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi
February 16
BILL O’BOYLE boboyle@timesleader.com
DUNMORE – Some 64 years after he filmed what many consider the most patriotic event in U.S. history, Sgt. Bill Genaust is still on the island of Iwo Jima.
Bob Bolus holds a map of Iwo Jima and a picture of Sgt. William Genaust, who filmed the flag-raising at the summit of Mount Suribachi during World War II. Bolus is seeking permission to mount a search for Genaust’s remains, which are still on the island.
S. JOHN WILKIN/the times leader
Entombed in a cave with other U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers, Genaust is one of hundreds of men left behind after World War II.
Genaust, a native of Minnesota, has a friend in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Bob Bolus read about Genaust in a 2005 Parade magazine story and has been battling ever since to convince the government to find Genaust’s remains and return them to the country he fought for and to inter his bones at Arlington National Cemetery.
“I’m not going away,” Bolus said recently in his trucking company office in Dunmore. “I want the mission completed. I will hold our government accountable to bring these guys home. If the government won’t do it, let me do it.”
Bolus is serious. He already has expended considerable personal funds to travel to Iwo Jima and has lobbied generals, politicians and ambassadors on Genaust’s behalf.
Every time he sees footage of the Feb. 23, 1945, flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, Bolus is reminded that Bill Genaust is holding the camera. Genaust stood at the summit with his friend, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who took the iconic still photo of the event. Genaust kept cranking his Bell & Howell camera as the flag was heaved into the wind and the flagpole jammed into the ground.
A combat photographer with the 28th Marine Regiment, Genaust died nine days later when he was hit by machine gun fire as he was helping fellow Marines secure a cave, according to a 2007 Associated Press report on the search for Genaust. Iwo Jima, now known as Iwoto, was officially taken on March 26, 1945, after a 35-day battle that pitted about100,000 U.S. troops against 21,200 Japanese, the AP reported. All told, 6,821 Americans were killed and nearly 22,000 injured – the highest percentage of casualties in any Pacific battle, AP reported in recounting the battle. Only 1,033 Japanese survived, according to military archives.
Bolus, 65, said he can assemble a team that will find Genaust. One member would be Gareth William “Bill” Rosson of Canton, Ill. Rosson, now 81, was on the island in 1947 and 1948. He claims to know exactly where on Hill 362-A Genaust’s remains are buried. Rosson said he has seen the mass graves where Marines’ bodies were placed, their dog tags around their necks. He remembers the caves where soldiers from both sides lay. He can still smell the stench from the heat of the caves and the rotting bodies.
Rosson said he took a picture of a sign placed by a friend of Genaust’s that read: “Sgt. Bill Genaust – this is where I was shot. Your best friend. Good luck.”
“They dug on the wrong side of the hill,” Rosson said. “They dug on the southwest side; that sign was on the northeast side. I don’t care what the island looks like now, I can find that spot. I know where he is and I’ll go there and show them where to dig. All we need are some good flashlights and a metal detector. There are still land mines there.”
Chris McDermott, a civilian anthropologist for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, said there have been three missions to Iwo Jima since 2005 – when Bolus began his quest – to try to find Genaust and others. JPAC sent an investigative team to gather data on where an excavation should take place. McDermott said a JPAC team excavated the southwest side of Hill 362-A and found no human remains. That was in July and August. McDermott said no future missions are planned.
“I have spoken to Mr. Rosson and his information is interesting,” McDermott said. “But it is difficult for us to give credence to a northeast side excavation based on all of the historical data we have. … We will review new information to see if we can identify cases or sites that would justify sending out a team to excavate. But as of right now, we have nothing to justify it.”
McDermott said JPAC wouldn’t oppose a private team going over as long as it was with the express permission of the Japanese government, which has been cooperative with U.S. recovery efforts.
Bolus wants the U.S. to give him the go-ahead to search the island and excavate. He said he will work with the Japanese government to assure the mission is done properly.
“All I need is the permission of the U.S. government,” Bolus said. “We asked to go with JPAC on the excavation, but we were denied.”
JPAC’s position does not deter Bolus at all; in fact, he seems to be even more determined.
“I believe Genaust is there and we can find him,” Bolus said.“Just because JPAC didn’t find anybody where they looked doesn’t mean they aren’t there.” Genaust, who would have been 102 this year, was 38 when he died. He and his late wife, Adelaide, had no children. A few months after his death, she received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts on his behalf.
Billy G. Genaust, the sergeant’s cousin, said there is a memorial to the fallen Marine at the American Legion Post in Effingham, Ill. Genaust, 77, has handed out about 3,500 souvenir pens depicting the flag-raising scene his cousin filmed.
The cousins never met; in fact, Billy Genaust was unaware he was related to Sgt. Genaust until 20 years ago. He is grateful to Bolus for his efforts to recover the war hero he never knew.
“I think it would be the greatest thing to happen,” Genaust said. “We want the government to award him the Navy Cross, too. He deserves it.”
The Friends of the Forgotten NEPA Wing, located in Scranton, is supporting Bolus’ mission. They have asked U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski to help make it a reality. “I have reached out to Mr. Bolus and I am working with Sen. (Bob) Casey and Congressman (Chris) Carney to help him in any way that I can,” Kanjorski said. “I will do what I can to help a fallen American soldier return to his native soil.”
Carney and Casey said through spokespersons that they support Bolus’ efforts on behalf of Sgt. Genaust and have asked the Marine Corps to review his file and posthumously award the Navy Cross.
Bill O’Boyle, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7218.
Northeastern Pennsylvania man is fighting for the recovery from Iwo Jima of the remains of Sgt. Bill Genaust, who filmed raising of U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi
February 16
BILL O’BOYLE boboyle@timesleader.com
DUNMORE – Some 64 years after he filmed what many consider the most patriotic event in U.S. history, Sgt. Bill Genaust is still on the island of Iwo Jima.
Bob Bolus holds a map of Iwo Jima and a picture of Sgt. William Genaust, who filmed the flag-raising at the summit of Mount Suribachi during World War II. Bolus is seeking permission to mount a search for Genaust’s remains, which are still on the island.
S. JOHN WILKIN/the times leader
Entombed in a cave with other U.S. Marines and Japanese soldiers, Genaust is one of hundreds of men left behind after World War II.
Genaust, a native of Minnesota, has a friend in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Bob Bolus read about Genaust in a 2005 Parade magazine story and has been battling ever since to convince the government to find Genaust’s remains and return them to the country he fought for and to inter his bones at Arlington National Cemetery.
“I’m not going away,” Bolus said recently in his trucking company office in Dunmore. “I want the mission completed. I will hold our government accountable to bring these guys home. If the government won’t do it, let me do it.”
Bolus is serious. He already has expended considerable personal funds to travel to Iwo Jima and has lobbied generals, politicians and ambassadors on Genaust’s behalf.
Every time he sees footage of the Feb. 23, 1945, flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, Bolus is reminded that Bill Genaust is holding the camera. Genaust stood at the summit with his friend, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who took the iconic still photo of the event. Genaust kept cranking his Bell & Howell camera as the flag was heaved into the wind and the flagpole jammed into the ground.
A combat photographer with the 28th Marine Regiment, Genaust died nine days later when he was hit by machine gun fire as he was helping fellow Marines secure a cave, according to a 2007 Associated Press report on the search for Genaust. Iwo Jima, now known as Iwoto, was officially taken on March 26, 1945, after a 35-day battle that pitted about100,000 U.S. troops against 21,200 Japanese, the AP reported. All told, 6,821 Americans were killed and nearly 22,000 injured – the highest percentage of casualties in any Pacific battle, AP reported in recounting the battle. Only 1,033 Japanese survived, according to military archives.
Bolus, 65, said he can assemble a team that will find Genaust. One member would be Gareth William “Bill” Rosson of Canton, Ill. Rosson, now 81, was on the island in 1947 and 1948. He claims to know exactly where on Hill 362-A Genaust’s remains are buried. Rosson said he has seen the mass graves where Marines’ bodies were placed, their dog tags around their necks. He remembers the caves where soldiers from both sides lay. He can still smell the stench from the heat of the caves and the rotting bodies.
Rosson said he took a picture of a sign placed by a friend of Genaust’s that read: “Sgt. Bill Genaust – this is where I was shot. Your best friend. Good luck.”
“They dug on the wrong side of the hill,” Rosson said. “They dug on the southwest side; that sign was on the northeast side. I don’t care what the island looks like now, I can find that spot. I know where he is and I’ll go there and show them where to dig. All we need are some good flashlights and a metal detector. There are still land mines there.”
Chris McDermott, a civilian anthropologist for the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command in Hawaii, said there have been three missions to Iwo Jima since 2005 – when Bolus began his quest – to try to find Genaust and others. JPAC sent an investigative team to gather data on where an excavation should take place. McDermott said a JPAC team excavated the southwest side of Hill 362-A and found no human remains. That was in July and August. McDermott said no future missions are planned.
“I have spoken to Mr. Rosson and his information is interesting,” McDermott said. “But it is difficult for us to give credence to a northeast side excavation based on all of the historical data we have. … We will review new information to see if we can identify cases or sites that would justify sending out a team to excavate. But as of right now, we have nothing to justify it.”
McDermott said JPAC wouldn’t oppose a private team going over as long as it was with the express permission of the Japanese government, which has been cooperative with U.S. recovery efforts.
Bolus wants the U.S. to give him the go-ahead to search the island and excavate. He said he will work with the Japanese government to assure the mission is done properly.
“All I need is the permission of the U.S. government,” Bolus said. “We asked to go with JPAC on the excavation, but we were denied.”
JPAC’s position does not deter Bolus at all; in fact, he seems to be even more determined.
“I believe Genaust is there and we can find him,” Bolus said.“Just because JPAC didn’t find anybody where they looked doesn’t mean they aren’t there.” Genaust, who would have been 102 this year, was 38 when he died. He and his late wife, Adelaide, had no children. A few months after his death, she received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts on his behalf.
Billy G. Genaust, the sergeant’s cousin, said there is a memorial to the fallen Marine at the American Legion Post in Effingham, Ill. Genaust, 77, has handed out about 3,500 souvenir pens depicting the flag-raising scene his cousin filmed.
The cousins never met; in fact, Billy Genaust was unaware he was related to Sgt. Genaust until 20 years ago. He is grateful to Bolus for his efforts to recover the war hero he never knew.
“I think it would be the greatest thing to happen,” Genaust said. “We want the government to award him the Navy Cross, too. He deserves it.”
The Friends of the Forgotten NEPA Wing, located in Scranton, is supporting Bolus’ mission. They have asked U.S. Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski to help make it a reality. “I have reached out to Mr. Bolus and I am working with Sen. (Bob) Casey and Congressman (Chris) Carney to help him in any way that I can,” Kanjorski said. “I will do what I can to help a fallen American soldier return to his native soil.”
Carney and Casey said through spokespersons that they support Bolus’ efforts on behalf of Sgt. Genaust and have asked the Marine Corps to review his file and posthumously award the Navy Cross.
Bill O’Boyle, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7218.
Foot Locker Reveals Father's Story
Barre Montpelier Times Argus - Barre, VT, USA
By BRUCE EDWARDS Rutland Herald Staff - Published: February 16, 2009
POULTNEY — When Peggy Dooley unlatched the drab olive foot locker, it opened up a chapter in her father's life that had been largely hidden.
Crammed into the trunk was a collection of Bernard Dooley's wartime memorabilia as a B-17 bombardier and prisoner of war. There was a cigar box with photos and letters, goggles, leather head gear and German records documenting his time as a prisoner of war.
"He wouldn't answer any questions. Didn't like to talk about it," Peggy Dooley, his daughter, recalled during an interview at the Beaman Street home where she grew up.
But after his bypass surgery in 1983, she said the floodgates opened and her father started to share his wartime memories as a POW, moving from camp to camp.
"He would say they'd go to certain areas and the smell would be just horrible and everybody on the train would be getting sick and nobody knew what the smell was," said Dooley, who works as special education teacher in Maryland. "He learned much later it was the concentration camps."
Dooley left his job at the Poultney post office and entered the service shortly after Pearl Harbor. Enlisting in the Army Air Corps, Dooley trained as a bombardier and was commissioned a second lieutenant. He was assigned to "Hell's Angels," the 303rd Bomb Group, 358 Squadron.
On June 21, 1944, Dooley's B-17 — nicknamed "Mersey Dotes" — took off from its airbase in Molesworth, England. Target: Berlin.
It was Dooley's 12th and last mission.
During his time as a POW, Dooley kept a diary that his daughter discovered years later in his Army foot locker.
In his entry of June 21, 1944, Dooley recalled the day his plane was shot down as it returned from its bombing run over Berlin.
"There is ahead of us — Big B — easily identified by the smoke and flames caused by the other wings going in ahead of us. I noticed a few unfortunate bombers go spinning down right over blazing Berlin. A few chutes blossomed out but not many.
"Bombs away! Bombay doors closed. Let's get the h out of here. Engines pulling us as fast as they could. We followed the group leader in evasive action and for the next few minutes we really 'sweat out' that flak which seemed to have our planes name on every shell.
"Number one engine was on fire now and as we neared the edge of the circle of intense flak, number two was given a direct hit by a shell which went clear through center of the engine."
With the plane losing power and altitude, the crew was ordered to bail out.
"I had been off oxygen for almost a minute — we were now at 18,000 feet and (I) was beginning to lose consciousness but I remember Tom shaking my head trying to clear my vision which was getting dim. Things cleared for a second and out I went, with Tom right after me."
Dooley landed in a meadow in the center of Lubeck, northwest of Berlin. It didn't take long for Dooley to become a POW — within minutes he was surrounded by several Germans with "Lugers drawn."
After processing and interrogation, Dooley was shipped to the first of several POW camps. The following are entries Dooley recorded in his diary:
"Dec. 5, 1944 — Aroused at 7:30 a.m. by goons so they could search the block for tunnels, weapons and trading material.
"Dec. 25, 1944 — Big Bash Day with mashed spuds, turkey, candied carrots, sandwiches, fruit cake, a super fruit cake, coffee pie, chocolate pie, banana-butterscotch pie. What a grand feeling to be filled up for once."
With the Russians closing in January 1945, Dooley wrote that he and his fellow POWs were ordered to evacuate the camp.
"Jan. 27 — R's (Russians) rumored as breaking through two sides of Breslau and driving on. Refugees moving with us and along roads in wagons and trailers etc. Snowing and windy.
"Feb. 1 — Stop over today. No one seems to know where we're going. Popeye and Schultz (German guards) with us plus a Hauptman (captain). Bread, barley and margarine issued. Most of snow gone. Warm. No marching orders yet.
"Feb. 4 and 5 — Late in the afternoon left for town and box cars to head for Nuremburg. Stop and go all day and nite. Ate some goon blood sausage and at nite didn't feel so hot."
Dooley arrived at his next camp, Stalag VIIA, on Feb. 8.
"Feb. 12 — No Red Cross parcels. Mass in barracks 38.
"March 16 — Food: No. 1 in all our thoughts these days. Everyone is concocting menus to bash when we get home. War: Allies are through the Siegfried line and across the Rhine river near Bonn. Fuel: No coal or wood from goons.
"April 13 — Received news of President Roosevelt's death. Everyone shocked and saddened. Wonder how the nation will fare in post-war plans etc. OKW (German command) places Allies on Elbe River north and south of Magdeburg. A huge advance. Sprinkled a bit.
"April 18 — 8th Air Force hit area again. Large column of smoke seen over Munich.
"April 23 — Cold and rainy. Warned to be prepared to evacuate in 48 hours, probably toward Innsbruck.
"April 29 — At about 1200 (hours) the firing stopped after several bursts. At 1245 U.S. Flag goes up over Moosburg. Everyone terribly happy etc. Lots of genuine cheering and yelling. Kriegies (POWs) by the thousands line streets, cheer and shake hands of tank crew. Artillery fire and explosions continue through afternoon and nite."
Dooley spent 11 months as a POW. He returned home to Poultney and his pre-war job at the Post Office. In July 1945, he married Helen Rockwood. Dooley was active in POW affairs, managed the town band, was an avid gardener and later in life took an interest in air shows.
He died in 1995 at age 79.
Contact Bruce Edwards at bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com
By BRUCE EDWARDS Rutland Herald Staff - Published: February 16, 2009
POULTNEY — When Peggy Dooley unlatched the drab olive foot locker, it opened up a chapter in her father's life that had been largely hidden.
Crammed into the trunk was a collection of Bernard Dooley's wartime memorabilia as a B-17 bombardier and prisoner of war. There was a cigar box with photos and letters, goggles, leather head gear and German records documenting his time as a prisoner of war.
"He wouldn't answer any questions. Didn't like to talk about it," Peggy Dooley, his daughter, recalled during an interview at the Beaman Street home where she grew up.
But after his bypass surgery in 1983, she said the floodgates opened and her father started to share his wartime memories as a POW, moving from camp to camp.
"He would say they'd go to certain areas and the smell would be just horrible and everybody on the train would be getting sick and nobody knew what the smell was," said Dooley, who works as special education teacher in Maryland. "He learned much later it was the concentration camps."
Dooley left his job at the Poultney post office and entered the service shortly after Pearl Harbor. Enlisting in the Army Air Corps, Dooley trained as a bombardier and was commissioned a second lieutenant. He was assigned to "Hell's Angels," the 303rd Bomb Group, 358 Squadron.
On June 21, 1944, Dooley's B-17 — nicknamed "Mersey Dotes" — took off from its airbase in Molesworth, England. Target: Berlin.
It was Dooley's 12th and last mission.
During his time as a POW, Dooley kept a diary that his daughter discovered years later in his Army foot locker.
In his entry of June 21, 1944, Dooley recalled the day his plane was shot down as it returned from its bombing run over Berlin.
"There is ahead of us — Big B — easily identified by the smoke and flames caused by the other wings going in ahead of us. I noticed a few unfortunate bombers go spinning down right over blazing Berlin. A few chutes blossomed out but not many.
"Bombs away! Bombay doors closed. Let's get the h out of here. Engines pulling us as fast as they could. We followed the group leader in evasive action and for the next few minutes we really 'sweat out' that flak which seemed to have our planes name on every shell.
"Number one engine was on fire now and as we neared the edge of the circle of intense flak, number two was given a direct hit by a shell which went clear through center of the engine."
With the plane losing power and altitude, the crew was ordered to bail out.
"I had been off oxygen for almost a minute — we were now at 18,000 feet and (I) was beginning to lose consciousness but I remember Tom shaking my head trying to clear my vision which was getting dim. Things cleared for a second and out I went, with Tom right after me."
Dooley landed in a meadow in the center of Lubeck, northwest of Berlin. It didn't take long for Dooley to become a POW — within minutes he was surrounded by several Germans with "Lugers drawn."
After processing and interrogation, Dooley was shipped to the first of several POW camps. The following are entries Dooley recorded in his diary:
"Dec. 5, 1944 — Aroused at 7:30 a.m. by goons so they could search the block for tunnels, weapons and trading material.
"Dec. 25, 1944 — Big Bash Day with mashed spuds, turkey, candied carrots, sandwiches, fruit cake, a super fruit cake, coffee pie, chocolate pie, banana-butterscotch pie. What a grand feeling to be filled up for once."
With the Russians closing in January 1945, Dooley wrote that he and his fellow POWs were ordered to evacuate the camp.
"Jan. 27 — R's (Russians) rumored as breaking through two sides of Breslau and driving on. Refugees moving with us and along roads in wagons and trailers etc. Snowing and windy.
"Feb. 1 — Stop over today. No one seems to know where we're going. Popeye and Schultz (German guards) with us plus a Hauptman (captain). Bread, barley and margarine issued. Most of snow gone. Warm. No marching orders yet.
"Feb. 4 and 5 — Late in the afternoon left for town and box cars to head for Nuremburg. Stop and go all day and nite. Ate some goon blood sausage and at nite didn't feel so hot."
Dooley arrived at his next camp, Stalag VIIA, on Feb. 8.
"Feb. 12 — No Red Cross parcels. Mass in barracks 38.
"March 16 — Food: No. 1 in all our thoughts these days. Everyone is concocting menus to bash when we get home. War: Allies are through the Siegfried line and across the Rhine river near Bonn. Fuel: No coal or wood from goons.
"April 13 — Received news of President Roosevelt's death. Everyone shocked and saddened. Wonder how the nation will fare in post-war plans etc. OKW (German command) places Allies on Elbe River north and south of Magdeburg. A huge advance. Sprinkled a bit.
"April 18 — 8th Air Force hit area again. Large column of smoke seen over Munich.
"April 23 — Cold and rainy. Warned to be prepared to evacuate in 48 hours, probably toward Innsbruck.
"April 29 — At about 1200 (hours) the firing stopped after several bursts. At 1245 U.S. Flag goes up over Moosburg. Everyone terribly happy etc. Lots of genuine cheering and yelling. Kriegies (POWs) by the thousands line streets, cheer and shake hands of tank crew. Artillery fire and explosions continue through afternoon and nite."
Dooley spent 11 months as a POW. He returned home to Poultney and his pre-war job at the Post Office. In July 1945, he married Helen Rockwood. Dooley was active in POW affairs, managed the town band, was an avid gardener and later in life took an interest in air shows.
He died in 1995 at age 79.
Contact Bruce Edwards at bruce.edwards@rutlandherald.com
07 February 2009
T-6 Texan Flights' Mission: Help Find MIA Troops
Orlando Sentinel - Orlando, FL, USA
Rachael Jackson | Sentinel Staff Writer
February 7, 2009
SANFORD - About 3,500 feet up, in an airplane more than 50 years old and with incredible pressure bearing down on me, I held on tightly and held my breath.
Then the horizon turned upside down.
A clear blue sky was below, a dark blue lake above. Had this been half a century ago, the pilot and I might have been jostled by bullets spewing from our machine guns or fleeing enemy fire.
Instead, I grinned like an idiot.
Pilot John Makinson righted the plane, ending a topsy-turvy loop over the DeLand area and continuing our journey aboard a T-6 Texan, a two-seater used mostly for training during World War II and combat in the Korean War.
Today, the plane's mission is still steeped in patriotism: Money raised from flights helps locate the remains of U.S. troops missing in action. In November, using ground-penetrating radar, the nonprofit History Flight detected what they think are remains of 139 U.S Marines on Tarawa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The group is offering flights out of Orlando Sanford International Airport this weekend and next as it tours airports from Florida to Vermont.
My flight experience began when I climbed on the wing, eased myself into the front seat and threaded my arms and legs into the parachute straps. Should a problem arise, Makinson told me, I'd need to throw myself headfirst into the wing. I balked, but he assured me I wouldn't hit the wing and reminded me that this craft had never had a problem.
With that, he pointed to the airsick bag and climbed in the seat behind me.
Marathon resident Mark Noah started History Flight about five years ago. A UPS pilot and World War II buff, he saw a need.
"This old history is kind of forgotten," he said. His group combs archives for rosters of the missing and documents to find potential sites of MIAs.
Evidence of lost servicemen is buried below the mundane: a pigsty. A runway. Someone's home.
Noah and his team try to locate the missing but never dig. That job falls to the U.S. government, which is waiting for more information before it goes to Tarawa Atoll.
Makinson said flying gives him a connection to the soldiers.
He let me steer the dual-controlled plane, and I cautiously tipped the wings. The right one was set up for a machine gun, the left one for a bomb. Tucked into the control stick was a trigger. This was a training plane because of its bulky shape.
Landing, Makinson said, was "like driving your car backward at 90 mph."
He made it look easy. My adventure ended when we briskly glided onto the runway. But for Makinson, flying the T-6 Texan is about more than nailing the landing.
"It's kind of my internal way of saying 'Thank you,' " he said.
Fly the T-6 Texan
Flights will be offered out of Orlando Sanford International Airport today, Sunday and Feb. 14 and 15. Packages start at $245 for a 15-minute introductory flight lesson. Options include aerial combat maneuvers, aerobatics and a video of the flight. Call 888-743-3311 for reservations.
Rachael Jackson can be reached at 386-851-7923 or rjackson@orlandosentinel.com.
Rachael Jackson | Sentinel Staff Writer
February 7, 2009
SANFORD - About 3,500 feet up, in an airplane more than 50 years old and with incredible pressure bearing down on me, I held on tightly and held my breath.
Then the horizon turned upside down.
A clear blue sky was below, a dark blue lake above. Had this been half a century ago, the pilot and I might have been jostled by bullets spewing from our machine guns or fleeing enemy fire.
Instead, I grinned like an idiot.
Pilot John Makinson righted the plane, ending a topsy-turvy loop over the DeLand area and continuing our journey aboard a T-6 Texan, a two-seater used mostly for training during World War II and combat in the Korean War.
Today, the plane's mission is still steeped in patriotism: Money raised from flights helps locate the remains of U.S. troops missing in action. In November, using ground-penetrating radar, the nonprofit History Flight detected what they think are remains of 139 U.S Marines on Tarawa Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The group is offering flights out of Orlando Sanford International Airport this weekend and next as it tours airports from Florida to Vermont.
My flight experience began when I climbed on the wing, eased myself into the front seat and threaded my arms and legs into the parachute straps. Should a problem arise, Makinson told me, I'd need to throw myself headfirst into the wing. I balked, but he assured me I wouldn't hit the wing and reminded me that this craft had never had a problem.
With that, he pointed to the airsick bag and climbed in the seat behind me.
Marathon resident Mark Noah started History Flight about five years ago. A UPS pilot and World War II buff, he saw a need.
"This old history is kind of forgotten," he said. His group combs archives for rosters of the missing and documents to find potential sites of MIAs.
Evidence of lost servicemen is buried below the mundane: a pigsty. A runway. Someone's home.
Noah and his team try to locate the missing but never dig. That job falls to the U.S. government, which is waiting for more information before it goes to Tarawa Atoll.
Makinson said flying gives him a connection to the soldiers.
He let me steer the dual-controlled plane, and I cautiously tipped the wings. The right one was set up for a machine gun, the left one for a bomb. Tucked into the control stick was a trigger. This was a training plane because of its bulky shape.
Landing, Makinson said, was "like driving your car backward at 90 mph."
He made it look easy. My adventure ended when we briskly glided onto the runway. But for Makinson, flying the T-6 Texan is about more than nailing the landing.
"It's kind of my internal way of saying 'Thank you,' " he said.
Fly the T-6 Texan
Flights will be offered out of Orlando Sanford International Airport today, Sunday and Feb. 14 and 15. Packages start at $245 for a 15-minute introductory flight lesson. Options include aerial combat maneuvers, aerobatics and a video of the flight. Call 888-743-3311 for reservations.
Rachael Jackson can be reached at 386-851-7923 or rjackson@orlandosentinel.com.
28 January 2009
Medvedev Orders Precise Soviet WWII Death Toll
The Associated Press
By IRINA TITOVA
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday ordered officials to determine the precise Soviet death toll in World War II as the nation marked the 65th anniversary of the battle that broke the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
Russia, which suffered hugely in the conflict it calls the Great Patriotic War, places substantial importance on commemorating its sacrifices. An estimated 27 million Soviet civilians and soldiers died in the war. Much of the western part of the country was ravaged during four years of epic battles.
"Data about our losses haven't been revealed yet," Medvedev said at a meeting with officials and veterans in the Konstantin Palace near St. Petersburg. "We must determine the historical truth."
Medvedev said that a special panel involving officials from various government agencies will be created for the purpose.
He said that more than 2.4 million people are still officially considered missing in action. Of the 9.5 million buried in mass graves, 6 million are unidentified, he said. Remains are still being found across western Russia and other ex-Soviet republics.
The meeting marked the anniversary of the battle that broke the siege of Leningrad on Jan. 27, 1944. The siege killed an estimated 1.5 million people.
Roza Ivanova, a 78-year old survivor who was in Medvedev's audience at a separate meeting with veterans later in the day, said she survived the siege thanks to animal skins her father brought from the tannery where he worked.
"We cooked a sort of stew out of those skins. The stew made of pork skin was especially good," Ivanova, who was 10 years old when Nazi troops closed in on the city, told The Associated Press.
Desperate for heat but without fuel, her family stoked their small cast-iron wood stove with shards of furniture and books.
"I remember how we wanted to eat and live then!" she said. "God save anyone from such experience."
Yulia Likhova, 72, who was 5 when the siege began, said she remembers a seaman sharing a loaf of bread with her and her four siblings. "It was such unbelievable happiness," she said.
To avoid starvation, Likhova said, she and her family boiled leather belts and drank a kind of broth made by boiling earth they gathered near a defunct food-storage warehouse where sugar had melted during the fire that destroyed it.
She and her siblings survived, but her mother and grandparents starved to death.
Medvedev used the occasion to condemn what he described as efforts to rehabilitate Nazis in some neighboring nations. Russia has harshly criticized authorities in the ex-Soviet Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia for allowing gatherings of local veterans of Nazi SS units.
"We must toughen our stance on the issue," Medvedev said. "There is no room here for delicate diplomatic wording. Our stance must be more combative."
He also urged the government to provide free apartments to some 50,000 war veterans before Russia marks the 65th anniversary of the end of the fighting in Europe next year.
By IRINA TITOVA
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday ordered officials to determine the precise Soviet death toll in World War II as the nation marked the 65th anniversary of the battle that broke the Nazi siege of Leningrad.
Russia, which suffered hugely in the conflict it calls the Great Patriotic War, places substantial importance on commemorating its sacrifices. An estimated 27 million Soviet civilians and soldiers died in the war. Much of the western part of the country was ravaged during four years of epic battles.
"Data about our losses haven't been revealed yet," Medvedev said at a meeting with officials and veterans in the Konstantin Palace near St. Petersburg. "We must determine the historical truth."
Medvedev said that a special panel involving officials from various government agencies will be created for the purpose.
He said that more than 2.4 million people are still officially considered missing in action. Of the 9.5 million buried in mass graves, 6 million are unidentified, he said. Remains are still being found across western Russia and other ex-Soviet republics.
The meeting marked the anniversary of the battle that broke the siege of Leningrad on Jan. 27, 1944. The siege killed an estimated 1.5 million people.
Roza Ivanova, a 78-year old survivor who was in Medvedev's audience at a separate meeting with veterans later in the day, said she survived the siege thanks to animal skins her father brought from the tannery where he worked.
"We cooked a sort of stew out of those skins. The stew made of pork skin was especially good," Ivanova, who was 10 years old when Nazi troops closed in on the city, told The Associated Press.
Desperate for heat but without fuel, her family stoked their small cast-iron wood stove with shards of furniture and books.
"I remember how we wanted to eat and live then!" she said. "God save anyone from such experience."
Yulia Likhova, 72, who was 5 when the siege began, said she remembers a seaman sharing a loaf of bread with her and her four siblings. "It was such unbelievable happiness," she said.
To avoid starvation, Likhova said, she and her family boiled leather belts and drank a kind of broth made by boiling earth they gathered near a defunct food-storage warehouse where sugar had melted during the fire that destroyed it.
She and her siblings survived, but her mother and grandparents starved to death.
Medvedev used the occasion to condemn what he described as efforts to rehabilitate Nazis in some neighboring nations. Russia has harshly criticized authorities in the ex-Soviet Baltic nations of Estonia and Latvia for allowing gatherings of local veterans of Nazi SS units.
"We must toughen our stance on the issue," Medvedev said. "There is no room here for delicate diplomatic wording. Our stance must be more combative."
He also urged the government to provide free apartments to some 50,000 war veterans before Russia marks the 65th anniversary of the end of the fighting in Europe next year.
24 January 2009
Miami-Dade Seminar Updates Family Members Of Missing Soldiers
MiamiHerald.com - Miami, FL, USA
About 100 family members of missing U.S. soldiers attended a Defense Department seminar to learn what the government is doing to find their loved ones.
BY DAVID SMILEY
dsmiley@MiamiHerald.com
It has haunted the family of Martin Stern -- for 65 years and counting.
Stern's B-24 bomber exploded Jan. 16, 1944, shortly after taking off from Atkinson Field in then British Guiana. His body was never found. His grave in New York merely a marker -- a headstone atop an empty plot of land. The only remnant of his 21-year-old short life: a torn identification card. A forgotten soldier.
Harriette Kunis, Stern's wife, isn't bitter but is still angry. ''I never heard anything from anybody,'' said Kunis, now 88 and remarried. ``That fury is still in me.''
On Saturday, Kunis hoped to reconcile her rage with knowledge, as she and about 100 others whose family members went missing during World War II, the Korean War, the conflict in Vietnam and the Cold War came to Miami-Dade to learn what the government is doing to find their loved ones. In all, some 88,000 soldiers are listed as missing.
The seminar, held at the Hilton Miami Airport Hotel, allowed government and military experts to explain the long, difficult process of bringing home missing soldiers and of finding and identifying the remains of those who died abroad.
More than $100 million is spent each year to try and find the soldiers.
Researchers scour millions of U.S. and foreign military files to pinpoint when and where soldiers went missing.
Government teams fly around the world to examine plane crashes on mountain peaks or to excavate unmarked burial grounds. Often they fight time, as acidic soil, shallow graves or bone-eating ants can destroy all evidence.
Sometimes international relations get in the way of research (North Korea and Russia's archives are off-limits) or recovery missions (helicopters are not allowed in China.)
When remains are found, scientists check dental records or compare family members' DNA with bones to find matches and potentially scratch one name off an enormous list.
On Saturday, Richard Laier, 57, had his cheek swabbed to give investigators DNA evidence that could lead to the identification of his father.
''I'm still hopeful they will bring his remains home,'' said Laier, who was born three days after Capt. Robert Laier was shot down by a Russian fighter pilot.
He believes his dad died in the crash but would like to bring closure to his family.
Laier first began seeking information on his father in 1993, around the time that Congress, pressured by the families of missing soldiers, urged the Department of Defense to open up lines of communication.
That led to the formation of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, an umbrella organization created to unify the search and identification efforts.
Larry Greer, a Defense Department spokesman, acknowledged that communication hasn't always been free flowing.
''Historically, the government had not done a very good job of keeping families informed about what was being done to find the missing,'' Greer said Saturday. ``The effort was always there, but as late as the Vietnam War it was scattered.''
Today, Greer said more than 14,000 family members have attended seminars to learn what is being done.
''My hat is off to these people for what they're doing today,'' said Robert Hadnot, whose younger brother went missing on Oct. 20, 1950.
PFC Charles Hadnot, then 19, was taken as a prisoner of war during the Korean War and is believed to have been shot dead with a number of other prisoners in the Kujang Tunnel in North Korea. Hadnot, however, has seen his brother's name on lists of soldiers believed to be missing in action.
Until Saturday, Hadnot, 78, had mostly resorted to finding information about his brother through old newspaper articles and websites. His sister once saw a psychic who said Charles Hadnot was living and in the Czech Republic.
Arthur Kunis, who flew in from Oregon, said he learned that an anthropologist plans to visit his father's crash site in Guyana soon. Kunis, 65, said knowing that there are others who share his hurt and that the government is in fact trying to find his father was good enough.
''It was incredible,'' he said. ``There is actually a lot of hope.''
To learn more about the Defense Department's efforts to find missing soldiers, visit www.dtic.mil/dpmo/ online.
About 100 family members of missing U.S. soldiers attended a Defense Department seminar to learn what the government is doing to find their loved ones.
BY DAVID SMILEY
dsmiley@MiamiHerald.com
It has haunted the family of Martin Stern -- for 65 years and counting.
Stern's B-24 bomber exploded Jan. 16, 1944, shortly after taking off from Atkinson Field in then British Guiana. His body was never found. His grave in New York merely a marker -- a headstone atop an empty plot of land. The only remnant of his 21-year-old short life: a torn identification card. A forgotten soldier.
Harriette Kunis, Stern's wife, isn't bitter but is still angry. ''I never heard anything from anybody,'' said Kunis, now 88 and remarried. ``That fury is still in me.''
On Saturday, Kunis hoped to reconcile her rage with knowledge, as she and about 100 others whose family members went missing during World War II, the Korean War, the conflict in Vietnam and the Cold War came to Miami-Dade to learn what the government is doing to find their loved ones. In all, some 88,000 soldiers are listed as missing.
The seminar, held at the Hilton Miami Airport Hotel, allowed government and military experts to explain the long, difficult process of bringing home missing soldiers and of finding and identifying the remains of those who died abroad.
More than $100 million is spent each year to try and find the soldiers.
Researchers scour millions of U.S. and foreign military files to pinpoint when and where soldiers went missing.
Government teams fly around the world to examine plane crashes on mountain peaks or to excavate unmarked burial grounds. Often they fight time, as acidic soil, shallow graves or bone-eating ants can destroy all evidence.
Sometimes international relations get in the way of research (North Korea and Russia's archives are off-limits) or recovery missions (helicopters are not allowed in China.)
When remains are found, scientists check dental records or compare family members' DNA with bones to find matches and potentially scratch one name off an enormous list.
On Saturday, Richard Laier, 57, had his cheek swabbed to give investigators DNA evidence that could lead to the identification of his father.
''I'm still hopeful they will bring his remains home,'' said Laier, who was born three days after Capt. Robert Laier was shot down by a Russian fighter pilot.
He believes his dad died in the crash but would like to bring closure to his family.
Laier first began seeking information on his father in 1993, around the time that Congress, pressured by the families of missing soldiers, urged the Department of Defense to open up lines of communication.
That led to the formation of the Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office, an umbrella organization created to unify the search and identification efforts.
Larry Greer, a Defense Department spokesman, acknowledged that communication hasn't always been free flowing.
''Historically, the government had not done a very good job of keeping families informed about what was being done to find the missing,'' Greer said Saturday. ``The effort was always there, but as late as the Vietnam War it was scattered.''
Today, Greer said more than 14,000 family members have attended seminars to learn what is being done.
''My hat is off to these people for what they're doing today,'' said Robert Hadnot, whose younger brother went missing on Oct. 20, 1950.
PFC Charles Hadnot, then 19, was taken as a prisoner of war during the Korean War and is believed to have been shot dead with a number of other prisoners in the Kujang Tunnel in North Korea. Hadnot, however, has seen his brother's name on lists of soldiers believed to be missing in action.
Until Saturday, Hadnot, 78, had mostly resorted to finding information about his brother through old newspaper articles and websites. His sister once saw a psychic who said Charles Hadnot was living and in the Czech Republic.
Arthur Kunis, who flew in from Oregon, said he learned that an anthropologist plans to visit his father's crash site in Guyana soon. Kunis, 65, said knowing that there are others who share his hurt and that the government is in fact trying to find his father was good enough.
''It was incredible,'' he said. ``There is actually a lot of hope.''
To learn more about the Defense Department's efforts to find missing soldiers, visit www.dtic.mil/dpmo/ online.
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