Posts from — June 2010

England is in full bloom.

You may or may not be aware that the Happy Warriors project is now split into two parts. Part I is the documentary film and Part II is a collection of wartime biographies or ‘tributes’.

The plan is to put thirty of these tributes together for inclusion on a DVD release as extra material to read through in your own time. I have about ten people taking part or that have shown interest. Thirty seemed like a nice round number and I didn’t want to give myself too much to do. Also, at one time thirty missions was the length of a tour in the ETO so there’s a nice symmetry there.

The idea is to provide the film’s (future) audience with a way to contribute to the project. It should also give the DVD a unique selling point. So, if you’re reading this and you’d like to contribute or know somebody that might then please, get in touch. I will also be contributing a few tributes of my own so If you have an idea for a tribute but not the inclination then send me some details by all means.

The guidelines for submissions are:

200 words (approx) and a photograph on any man or woman who served in the United States Army Air Forces in any theatre of the war.

My first contribution will be about Leland Walzel. I’ve had some correspondence with his brother Vic. Below is the first email Vic sent me. I had asked a question about fate and chance during wartime on a WWII forum and Vic made contact:

My brother was KIA on his 25th mission on 6 March 1944 over Berlin. According to the navigator, who survived along with the two waist gunners, my brother was not hurt when they took a direct hit from flak. The hit on the inboard engine on the pilot’s side caused the prop to spin back through the cockpit and evidently killed the pilot. The co-pilot said “I’ve got it” and must have given the bail-out call. The navigator, up in the nose with my brother and a nose gunner, bailed out and said when he left the ship, my brother was trying to help the gunner out of the turret.

The fate part now comes into the picture. There had never been a nose gunner on any of my brother’s previous 24 missions. He manned the guns there himself when necessary. This was an 11th man on the crew that day. The loading list for the mission doesn’t include this man nor do any of the other crews on the list show to have 11 men. He was not even included on the MACR until later. In all likelihood, they had never known each other prior to the day of the mission. I have 17 of the loading lists for my brother’s missions and never saw this man’s name on any of the crews. My brother was flying that day with a crew that he had flown one mission with a couple of days earlier. This was a very experienced crew with 5 or 6 of them on their 25th mission and the rest with more than 20. My brother had missed several missions due to being hospitalized with tonsilitis or he would have already finished his required 25 with his regular crew so he shouldn’t have even been involved that day. The navigator’s testimony, on the MACR, to my sister-in-law in a letter and to me personally on the telephone, was that, in his opinion, my brother would have been able to get out had he not chosen to attempt to save this gunner by helping him out of the turret.

I have always wondered why the man was even on the plane. Eleven man crews were highly unusual unless it was for photographic purposes or some other specific reason, but not as a nose gunner. You can call it fate, circumstances or bad luck, the result was that my brother died that day doing something that makes me very proud, trying to save another man’s life at the cost of his own. Many things could have happened had he been able to get out of the plane and any of them could have ended in his death, but it has always nagged at me that this man was in a place he normally would not have been and it put my brother in the position of making a choice to help him or save his own life. All of these men are heroes in my eyes and I thank God that they did what they did to preserve our freedom. I can only think that it would have turned out differently if that one extra man had not been in the nose that day.

My tribute site is lelandwalzel.150m.com. If you visit it, please sign the guestbook.

Regards,

Vic Walzel