The Bomber Boys (30 page)

Winston Churchill would not make any public mention of Germany’s new ballistic missile until November 10. By that time, the average British citizen was well aware of the silent and deadly V-2s. During the final months of the war, almost twelve hundred V-2 rockets would strike London.

In his postwar book,
Triumph and Tragedy,
Churchill would write: “The total casualties caused by the V-2 in England were 2,724 killed and 6,467 seriously injured. On the average each rocket caused about twice as many casualties as a flying bomb. Although the warheads were of much the same size, the strident
engine of the flying bomb warned people to take cover. The rocket approached in silence.”

The six gunners of
Torchy Tess
had escaped becoming part of Churchill’s cold statistics and not one of them could say why. Why, after surviving so many combat missions, had they almost been killed on a liberty in London? Why had a spur-of-the-moment decision about something so trivial as a photograph proved to be the difference between life and death?

George gave the question considerable thought. He had witnessed the randomness of death on many missions. Why was one bomber struck by flak and destroyed, while another, flying mere seconds behind it, was left untouched? Was it really random, or did fate or even the hand of God intervene? If it was fate, then the fate of each man on
Torchy Tess
seemed to be intertwined. They would all live or die as crewmates, George concluded.

On the day following their close call in London, Marvin Walker’s bomber crew was back dodging flak in the sky over Germany. They flew three missions on three straight days. During the second half of September and throughout October,
Torchy Tess
and the other B-17s of the 351st challenged the dangerous air defenses of Germany’s major cities—Frankfurt, Cologne, Cologne again, Hanover, Münster and then back to Frankfurt. On November 6, Walker brought his crew back from a raid on Hamburg. For George Ahern it was mission number thirty-four. He had one mission left to fly.

George and Marie had continued their exchange of letters. He wrote about what he saw in England, about the men of
Torchy Tess,
and of the little ways they found to relieve the boredom at Polebrook. One of his favorites was sharing fresh fruit and ice cream with the kids who hung around the air base gates. He never wrote to Marie about his missions. He did not want her to know how bad it really was, and military censorship would have prevented such disclosures anyway.

Now with a single mission remaining, George wanted to let Marie and his family know he would soon be coming home. Once again he enlisted the assistance of his pilot, Marvin Walker, who had been promoted to first lieutenant. As an officer and aircraft commander, Walker was not subjected to the same strict censorship as his crew. On November 8, 1944, Walker penned a thoughtful letter to George’s father: “Dear Mr. Ahern, Your son George, is the ball turret gunner on my crew. I told him I’d write you giving you a little information he can’t get past the censors, namely: his number of missions. To date, he has completed thirty-four missions and has one to go. We feel we’ll finish by the fifteenth of November.”

The pilot went on to explain that George might be assigned “further overseas duty not involving combat” for a month or so before he was sent back to the States. The third paragraph of Walker’s letter filled John Ahern’s heart with pride when he read the lieutenant’s words: “George is a fine boy and one we can both be proud of. It has been a pleasure having him on my crew. He has a good record and wears the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters to testify as to his usefulness.”

The day after Walker wrote the letter, the
Torchy Tess
crew got the call to fly again—George’s last mission. As the nineteen-year-old veteran ball turret gunner sat in the briefing room with his crewmates, he said a silent prayer that God would let them come home again from whatever German city they were being sent to. When the briefing officer removed the cover, George’s eyes followed the red line on the map. It did not extend into Germany. The line ended in France. “Ground support . . .” George vaguely heard. Someone slapped him on the back. He broke into a smile. For his final mission, George had drawn the much-sought-after but seldom seen “milk run.”

By Christmas, George was back in the United States and home on leave. After a brief reunion with his family, he surprised his mother when he said, “Mom, I’m sorry I have to run, but I gotta get to the New Haven green.” Before she could protest, he was out the door, still wearing his dress uniform. In their final overseas letters, George and Marie had made plans to meet.

“Why don’t we meet on the New Haven green?” Marie had suggested. “Look for a girl with a red rose.” As George walked across the green, its trees barren against a winter sky, his mood was springlike. Because of his uniform, Marie spotted George first.

Oh my God, this guy is so handsome,
she thought as she waved to him. George saw the girl with the rose waving to him.

Though each had been nervous about their first meeting, there was little awkwardness between them. They held hands and laughed when they both tried to speak at the same time. Within minutes the young couple was embraced in a kiss, oblivious to smiling passersby on the New Haven green. George and Marie knew from that moment, they were destined to be together.

The war in Europe and the Pacific was still unfinished business, and the Eighth Air Force needed veteran specialists to teach new recruits. George’s and Marie’s future would have to wait. He received orders to report to Gunnery Instructor’s School in Texas. His separation from military service did not happen until after the surrender of Japan in August 1945.

George returned home that fall and promptly asked Marie to marry him. She said, “Yes.” A year later, on October 19, 1946, the former wartime pen pals were wed.

George Ahern:
After their wedding, George and Marie settled in Branford, Connecticut. They bought a home there and raised three daughters, Kathleen, Sharon and Suzanne, and one son, John. Twelve grandchildren were born into the Ahern family.

George’s first civilian job was in the shipping and receiving warehouse of a wholesale distributor of major kitchen appliances. Soon he was offered a promotion as a sales representative, servicing the accounts of retail stores. He practiced this occupation successfully for twenty-five years. Finally, a desire to “get off the road” pushed him to go back to school. Completing college courses in municipal waste treatment technology enabled him to secure employment with the public works department of his hometown. In 1990, George retired after serving ten years as the superintendent of Branford’s waste treatment plant.

In 2002, George was elected commander of American Legion Post 83 in Branford. He is also a founding member of the Connecticut chapter of the Eighth Air Force Historical Society and served nine years as its secretary.

During the spring of 2000, George and Marie traveled to England to attend a 351st Bomb Group reunion. After being welcomed by the mayor of Peterborough, the former airmen and their wives (two hundred in all) were taken to the site of the old Polebrook air base. The base property is now under private control, but the 351st veterans group retains ownership of a small section of runway where a monument to its members has been erected.

The owner of the air base has also created a living monument to the brave men who died while serving with the 351st Bomb Group. In a field near the runway, the landowner has planted a small forest of trees—one tree for every 351st bomber that was lost during World War II.

As George and Marie stood with the others paying silent tribute to fallen comrades, they heard a familiar sound coming from far away. It was a sound most of the former bomber boys had not heard in more than five decades—the unmistakable sound of four mighty B-17 engines. The same man who had planted the tribute trees had also arranged for a restored Fortress to do a fly-over
.
The bomber made several passes over the former Polebrook runway. Finally, as George watched the B-17 disappear into distant clouds, Marie watched her husband, knowing his thoughts were taking him back to a time when he was a young ball turret gunner and she was his pen pal.

George and Marie had been happily married for fifty-nine years when she passed away on November 3, 2005. George still lives in his Branford home with his little friend Mitzy, a dog he rescued from the local animal shelter.

Marvin R. Walker
,
Maurice E. Joncas
,
Daniel L. Rader
,
Donald E. Knuepple
,
William R. Schneider
,
William W. Weaver
,
Charles “Buddy” S. Armstrong
,
Philip H. Duke
and
Paul A. Schrader
: These nine other members of the original
Torchy Tess
crew completed their tours of duty soon after George had completed his. All but two of the airmen received the Distinguished Flying Cross for having flown thirty-five combat missions. (Duke and Armstrong flew thirty-five combat missions like the others, but by the time they completed their tours of duty, Eighth Air Force rules had changed and the two waist gunners were denied this medal.) Although they had returned from some of their missions with their aircraft riddled with flak holes, all the members of Marvin Walker’s regular crew returned without serious injuries to their families in the United States.

Philip H. Duke and Buddy Armstrong were the last of the crew to finish their combat rotation as a result of flying alternating missions as waist gunner on Walker’s crew. Duke did not go on his thirty-fifth mission until January 3, 1945.

Despite his longer combat tour, Philip Duke returned to Wellsville, New York, and his wife, Virginia, in time for the couple’s first wedding anniversary on February 3. When he was transferred to an air base in Florida, Ginnie went with him. It was comforting to have her there, but the air combat veteran found the daily base routine boring. Over his wife’s objections, Duke volunteered for gunner duty on a B-29 bomber. He flew one practice mission aboard a Superfortress before the war in the Pacific ended.

Duke worked ten years in the family oil well-drilling business in Pennsylvania and twenty years back in New York with the Wellsville Lumber Company, most of them as manager. From 1971 until 1981, he was tax assessor and building inspector for the town of Wellsville, a position he left to become project manager for a federal housing program. Duke retired in 1986.

Philip and Virginia Duke raised a son, Philip Jr., who became a major in the U.S. Air Force, the third generation of Duke military aviators (Philip’s father had received his pilot’s wings near the end of WWI). The couple also had a daughter, Reita. The children grew up in the home Philip had built himself in 1960. Three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren followed. The Dukes celebrated their fifty-first wedding anniversary in February 1995. Virginia Duke passed away the following July.

Philip still lives in his Wellsville home. He has donated countless hours to delivering Meals on Wheels over the past two decades. He enjoys his weekly game of golf for both fun and exercise, although recently he has given up his lifelong practice of walking the course to the comfort of a golf cart.

Charles S. “Buddy” Armstrong
was finally assigned to duty as a flight engineer during his last few combat missions. He completed his thirty-fifth mission in February 1945, and returned to the United States three months later. By early May, he was on his way home to Blytheville, Arkansas, for a thirty-day leave and to
await reassignment. When his train stopped in St. Louis, the airman got off to buy a newspaper. The headline announced that Germany had surrendered. The war in Europe was over, and Armstrong was discharged in July.

It was easy for the former airman to fall back into the farm life he had grown up with, the life he loved. In 1946 he married Louise Brownlee, and the following year a son was born. The couple named him Charles, after his father. Two daughters completed the Armstrong family. Linda was born in 1949 and Diane in 1950.

The former aviator was good at farming. Starting with two hundred acres under cultivation just after the war, Charles expanded the operation every year, producing cotton, soybeans, cattle and hogs. By the time he retired at age seventy-five, Armstrong was managing a farm of over fifteen hundred acres.

Louise Armstrong passed away in 1988. Charles Jr. runs the family farm now, while his dad enjoys his retirement and his nine grandchildren.

Torchy Tess
:
The aircraft that George Ahern had named after a Dinah Shore song continued to fly combat missions during the winter of 1944-1945. By late February 1945,
Torchy Tess
had brought her various crews back to Polebrook fifty-seven times. On February 25, she headed to Munich with Lieutenant Charles R. Ablanalp as her pilot. It was only the second combat mission Ablanalp’s crew had flown.