I have three Uncles who were veterans. One, Uncle "Carl" was a waist gunner on B-17's based in North Africa. He flew 50 missions (before the mission gauntlet was lowered to 25 in the European Theatre) and is still alive today. Another Uncle "Heinrich", aka Henry as I knew him by, was a B-17 bombardier based in England.
Many of you have probably noticed that Heinrich sounds an aweful lot like a German name. Correct you are. He was born in Germany and moved to the United States at age 12 with his older sister (my Grandmother). He became a citizen and joined the U.S. Army Air Corps at age 19, and eventually became a crewmember on B-17's. He survived the war after being shot down on the way back from Bastogne, and died of cancer about 10 years ago. What is so ironic about my Uncle Henry's tour of duty is that he flew missions over the town in which he was born and raised and looked through the bombsight at the streets and buildings he knew as a child and physically dropped the bombs. When I talked to him about it, he said he never really thought about it too much as it was happening. He just knew he was doing what was necessary to stop a "crazy man" as he put it.
My Uncle Carl (the waist gunner in North Africa) had a younger brother Johnny who was in the Army's 7th Division who were occupying Japan after the war had ended. He later fought in the Korean War and was killed on the 28th of November, 1950 at the Chosin Reservior. My family received a telegram telling them that he was Missing in Action with no further details, and never knew what had happened to him. Two years ago, I decided to try to find out what happened, and got about the luckiest break a man could have.
I researched his division, company, all the way down to the platoon he was in. I found out that nearly his entire company of 143 men were wiped out during an ambush by the Chinese who poured across the border that night by the thousands. All were killed except for three. Within an hour of doing my research, I found the name of one of the survivors who lived in Lubbock, Texas at the time of the Korean War according to his army records. On a long shot, I looked up the white pages for Lubbock on the internet and found a fellow there with the same name "Cecil" as one of the survivors. I called him and mentioned my Uncle's name and asked if he knew him. After a quite a long silence, he told me that Johnny was his best buddy and asked me who I was. I told him that I was his nephew and was trying to find out what happened to him, and if he knew any details. He said "I know the details alright, I carried his body down from the hill where he was killed".
What are the odds of that????? To make a long story short, I called my Uncle Carl and told him of the events that had transpired and we both met my Uncle Johnny's buddy Cecil at a Korean War Chosin Reservoir Survivor's Reunion in South Dakota. There was a Colonel there from the Air Force who's job it was to try to pinpoint locations of soldiers killed and try to find their remains. Cecil showed this Air Force Colonel where my Uncle was killed on a map that the Colonel had hanging on the wall at the Hotel. A couple of weeks ago, I got a call from Cecil telling me that this Colonel had contacted him and told him that they found my Uncle's dog tags in a mass grave at the location where he was killed. All that is left to accomplish is the DNA identification of the remains, and my Uncle is coming home after 56 years!
Unbelievable... I'm still beside myself and tear up a little bit about it all. It's pretty amazing stuff...
