|
WWII Airman Is Gone
(May 27, 2010) |
 |
| | I have known my Uncle Willard was an Army veteran since I was old enough to look
at family photos with him in uniform. I still remember my mother telling the
story about when my uncle was home on leave during the war. He had taken his
uniform off to wash my grandfather's car and my mom took a picture of him. He
was upset because after Pearl Harbor all military members were ordered into
uniform at all times. Having photo proof of my uncle out of uniform was not
something he wanted floating around. I heard that story when I was in grade
school and never forgot it.
Whenever my dad, the Navy Master Chief, got leave we went home to Iowa. My uncle
lived right next door to my grandparents so Willard was the uncle I got to see
the most of. As a kid he never talked about his military service with me. It
wasn't until I was in uniform that we ever spoke about his time in the Army Air
Force. He had started out in the infantry.
You see my uncle did not finish high school and this bothered him as long as I
knew the man. While in the infantry he was offered the chance to test to go into
the Army Air Force. He was sitting in a room of high school graduates while
testing and convinced he was not going to make the grade. He passed the test and
also noticed that some of supposedly more educated soldiers failed, I believe
that was high point for him. He left the Army one day and was sworn into the
Army Air Force the next.
He went to school to be an armorer. This meant he was trained to load the bombs
on B-25 bombers. Repair and load the .50 caliber machineguns and down loaded hot
ordnance if a plane came back having not dropped all of its bombs. This was a
nerve racking job to say the least. He was assigned to the 405th Bomb Squadron,
in the 38th Bomb Group. The 38th BG was sent to Australia and Willard's squadron
was one of the two original squadrons. They spent 43 months in nonstop combat.
His squadron was called the Green Dragons and because it was in combat from 1942
until the surrender of Japan they had the highest casualty rate in the Bomb
Group. 175 airmen did not come home.
My uncle would up-load a B-25 bomber, meet with the aircraft crew that he had
eaten breakfast with prior to the combat mission and then they would fly away
and be killed. The next day he would be assigned a different aircraft to up-load
and just hope they would get back from their combat mission. He told me the guys
he started out with were friends, but he did not what to make friends with the
new troops, not when your squadron has the highest rate of airmen killed under
fire. Then there were the crews who brought an aircraft back all shot up and
crash landed it on the airfield. He was happy the crew got back, but he also
knew he had to go inside the broken-up wreck and make safe any ordnance that was
still onboard.
The most famous B-25 Mitchell bomber in the Army Air Force was the “Tokyo
Sleeper” and it was assigned to the Green Dragons. In the early days of the war
it looked like all the rest of the bombers but it was eventually painted to look
like a Green Dragon. This of course made it a moving target for the Japanese
flyers. My uncle loaded that aircraft for many a mission and then down-loaded it
when it came back all shot to hell. He finished the war on Okinawa with his unit
flying against mainland Japan.
Uncle Willard came home to his wife and got on with his civilian life. He was a
master carpenter and there are literally hundreds of homes in south east Iowa
that he either built or refurbished over the course of his career. If you wanted
a quality product done on your home you hired Willard Brown of Kingston, Iowa to
do the work. I got to go out on the job site with him to watch and even as a kid
I understood the exceptional skills of my uncle.
My Uncle Willard Brown died this past week. A good man, a good friend to all and
a WW II combat veteran. We buried another veteran today – it seems all my life
it happens this way. |
 By
Van E. Harl
Copyright
2008About Author:
Major Van E. Harl, USAF Ret., was a career police officer in the U.S. Air
Force. He was the Deputy Chief of police at two Air Force Bases and the
Commander of Law Enforcement Operations at another. Major Harl is a graduate of
the U.S. Army Infantry School, the Air Force Squadron Officer School and the Air
Command and Staff College. After retiring from the Air Force he was a state
police officer in Nevada. |
| |
Comment on this article |
|
