The Flying 8 Balls: Bomber Boys at Shipdham in WWII

With the groundwork laid about the Mighty Eighth Air Force and the 44th Bomb Group, I’m eager to look back to April and the days and moments in Germany and England that are lingering in my mind.

(If you missed the first two posts about the history of the Mighty Eighth and how I met Shipdham, home of the 44th Bomb Group, I’d recommend pausing here and skimming these two posts to get the Cliff Notes.)

Beginning in Berlin and ending in London, it was three and a half weeks of historical bliss. While my trip ended in England, it’s a fitting place to start because it marked the start and end of each of Wally’s 42 missions.

A motley crew of individuals have made it possible to piece together the operational history of my grandfather’s 10 months and 6 days at Shipdham and bring his service back to life, so it feels right to begin the story of our visit to Shipdham with the men who made our visit there possible. 

From City to Country

Finding my way to England from the continent (Paris, specifically) was replete with anticipation. I would be gaining a new travel companion on this leg of the trip with my dad making the long trip from Idaho to spend a week with me in his father’s wartime footsteps. Selfishly, I was also looking forward to speaking English after two weeks of communicating in broken French and German.

The pre-dawn EuroStar in Paris, a shlep on the Tube, and a struggle up stairs with a month of luggage gave way to Liverpool Station in London and the much awaited Greater Anglia train line. My eyes looked down from the train platform assignments flickering above, and an unmistakably familiar suitcase came into view. A familiar figure brought instant joy. Glen Truslow, my dad, was 50 feet away, engulfed in a sea of people. Serendipity was in the air, as we’d planned to meet in Norwich since neither of us were using our cell phones internationally. I was grateful for a slice of home as we boarded the train to Norwich.

Arriving in London brought me within 100 miles of Norwich and the heart of East Anglia, which would be our jumping off point for the week. Situated  northeast of London, Norwich has viking roots and a long history. The aphorism lovingly recited by locals, “a pub for every day and a church for every Sunday,” may not be reflective of modern Norwich, but it underscores the activities that have defined life in the pastoral East Anglian countryside for centuries.

Norwich would serve as our home base for the week. Situated on the River Wensum across the street from the Train Station that’s changed little since the war, the trees lining the river audibly swayed in the breeze, exuding the peace of the place. Meandering, cobbled roads constructed over many centuries connect a selection of the oldest pubs in England. We were welcomed to Norwich with glorious weather, namely the sun shining, which would prove to be the exception, not the norm for the remainder of the week.

Separated by 30 miles of winding one-lane roads, Norwich is the nearest town of any size to Shipdham Airfield. A sleepy village built on agriculture, Shipdham boasts but a handful of pubs and churches. The airmen lived for the evenings they could hitch a ride on the “Liberty Truck,” from Shipdham to Norwich so they might enjoy a night at the dance hall or pub.  Even though Norwich lacked the hustle and bustle of the cities back home, it provided a welcome respite from Shipdham. The airmen happily endured an hour-long drive in blackout conditions jammed in the back of an open-top 2.5 ton truck if it meant a night away from base.

Anticipation of Shipdham

 

 

As we sipped scotch after dinner, we relished feeling Wally’s presence at every turn catching ourselves saying, “I wonder if Wally ever came here,” as we walked through cobbled streets. In the morning we’d no longer wonder if Wally had been there. The remnants of the air base at Shipdham Airfield awaited in the morning. For almost a year, Shipdham was the epicenter of Wally’s life. 2,534 called Shipdham homebase during the 10 months from 1944-1945 when Wally flew combat missions. The airmen were the tip of the spear; many times more personnel were needed to keep the base operational in support of the one overarching goal: dropping bombs on strategic targets in enemy-occupied Europe. With thousands of men living on base, Shipdham was a village unto itself during the war. Today, little remains of the base beyond one runway, a concrete slab harboring an untold history.

My dad asked for a refresh on the cast of characters who’d show us to Shipdham. I kept it short and sweet: Barry, the Administrator of Shipdham Flying Club, the gatekeeper to the museum and history of the 44th. John, an ostensible historian of the 44th after decades of meeting and commiserating with the veterans. Mike, whom Barry arranged to pick us up from our hotel; the mystery man who we’d soon learn more about.

When my dad asked how I found Mike, Barry, and John, I found it difficult to explain exactly, as it was the result of many months of internet sleuthing and getting in touch with a maze of contacts. Ultimately, it was Barry and John who agreed to show me Shipdham; their generosity evident before the visit began when Barry arranged transit for us to Shipdham in lieu of a taxi. Because of the sacrifices and ordinary heroism of Wally and his comrades, an innate, deep friendship remains between those who knew and loved the men of the 44th.

Barry gave me fair warning that almost nothing remained at Shipdham Airfield from the wartime years. The shell of the Control Tower and one-third of the runway are the last remnants of the men who fought tyranny to free a foreign people 75 years ago. Yet, it wasn’t the structures that drove my emphatic desire to visit Shipdham. Instead, it was to stand where Wally did, feeling the presence of my grandfather and his crew at the only home they knew during the war, and to share this experience this with my dad, Wally’s son, thereby bringing three generations back to Shipdham Air Base for just a moment. 

Nice to Meet You, Shipdham

Waiting in the lobby of our hotel the next morning, I scanned the lobby for a man I’d never met who would take us to Shipdham – Mike. Right on time, I spotted a man sporting a fleece with an emblem of the 44th Bomb Group, a Flying Eight Ball, and felt safe in assuming this was Mike.

Introductions aside, I asked his connection to Shipdham. Without any airs, he told us that he owned the Flying Club. I was taken aback that he would have any interest in chauffeuring us to Shipdham. One moment Mike was a stranger, the next a dear friend, as he and my dad talked all things aviation, and I chimed in about the history of the 44th on our drive from Norwich to Shipdham. 

The road to Shipdham was quintessentially English – so narrow only one car could fit on the two-lane road and constant curves despite the flat, pastoral countryside that flanked it. This was the only road to Shipdham during the war.

As we entered the gate that once marked the perimeter of Shipdham Air Base, the runway came into view. The runway bifurcates an operational farm. Industrial farm equipment raked the fields on either side as we drove down the runway towards the flying club. The stench of manure wafted with the wind, an unusual smell to associate with an active airfield. 75 years ago, I’d venture that this same smell was equally off-putting to the airmen arriving here. 

A low cloud ceiling hung towards the ground over Shipdham Airbase that welcomed us with a cold rain. While I’d been warned of the unpredictable precipitation in East Anglia, I hadn’t expected the accompanying frigid wind that knocked the air from my lungs like a sucker punch to the gut. It was late April and the temperature hovered in the low 40s. I wondered how Wally survived here in the winter after growing up in Southern California.

We made the quick jaunt from the car to the clubhouse and hangar situated just beyond the runway. The clubhouse is a moving tribute to the 44th Bomb Group. Privately owned, the club has no obligation to honor the Flying 8 Balls, and yet, they pay homage to the group at every turn. Inside the clubhouse, the eye was drawn to mural featuring  dozens of B-24s flying through fluffy, cumulus clouds. Group markings were meticulously painted on the fuselage and tail of each bomber that hangs in this landscape amongst the heavens. As the day revealed itself, so too did the many talents of Mike’s arsenal of talents, including painting this focal point of the clubhouse. 

Opposite the wall is the “Liberator Bar,”  which serves food and drink to those who fly in from neighboring war-era bases that still operate for pleasure flying. Here, Barry, the Administrator of the club who coordinated our visit, was awaiting our arrival. Just as soon, John arrived sporting his original airmen’s A-2 leather jacket with the 44th Bomb Group patch. Facebook friends, John and I spent many months messaging about the history of the 44th because of the unique knowledge built from decades building relationships with the airmen and their families who returned to England after the war.

 

Moments at Shipdham that Linger

Wally’s presence was palpable throughout the day in a series of moments that brought his service back to life. While visiting Shipdham was a portal to the past, the experience of being there cemented the future with new friendships across the pond forged because of the history made at Shipdham.

Five moments at Shipdham are the next stop: Finding Wally at Shipdham. The gift of flight. Throttling down a runway seeing the past and present blur. Generosity beyond reason and expectation because of a 75-year-old bond.  

These seconds and minutes at Shipdham underscore that the past is prologue and that Wally’s actions 75 years ago foster a generosity of spirit today that lingers large in my mind.

Hope to see you here again soon.

Shipdham has occupied a prominent place in my mind over the last year and change. Some days it has consumed me in the wee hours of the morning after I finished my day job at Deloitte, but no day has passed without me at least thinking of the place, the 5,000 airmen who took off from its runways, and the thousands of ground crew and support staff who worked tirelessly to get the bombers and men airborne.

In fact, Shipdham has occupied so much air space in my life that I can’t remember the 27 years when Shipdham wasn’t in my vocabulary.

When I begin to describe the intensity with which I’ve chased this history, I’m most often met with the question: What sparked your interest now? It’s a question I often reflect on when I look back at the pace of the last 365+ days. But mostly, I ask myself with some semblance of regret and guilt, why didn’t I care before?

The history of WWII isn’t a new interest. I studied 20th century American history in college. I focused on the Second World War and the Cold War. In fact, an oral history report I wrote for the WWII course I took as a freshman featured both my maternal grandfather’s service in the Pacific, as well as my paternal grandfather Wally’s role in the European Theater (featuring the little we knew about his service). Looking at this paper 10 years later, I’m dumbfounded that the most basic facts of Wally’s war did little to shake me. The paper highlighted that Wally flew 40+ missions, extended his tour, was hit over Cologne by a machine gun nest, was Awarded the Purple Heart, and saw bombers shot from the sky. Yet, it was lost on my 19-year-old self. At the time, I lacked basic knowledge of the air war, be it flak, fighters, or the -50 degree, unpressurized bombers. Instead, I’d assumed the skies about Europe were a relatively safe battlefield. I’d assumed that since my family knew so little of Wally’s war, no research I did would close those gaps. Assumptions and apathy left no space for the questions, big or small, that have driven my research about Wally a decade later.

Noticeably absent from this paper was any mention of Shipdham, where Wally’s missions began and ended. As the first B-24 base in East Anglia, Shipdham saw 29 months of continuous combat thanks to the 44th Bomb Group that called it home base. Hastily constructed in 1942, Shipdham was the product of the American Army Air Force’s efforts to operationalize the Eighth Air Force as quickly as possible in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Seventy-seven years after the the 44th Bomb Group flew their first mission on the freshly poured runways, I became acquainted with Shipdham.

First Mention of Shipdham

With a renewed interest in WWII a decade later in 2018 (thanks to a litany of narrative non-fiction about WWII), I was increasingly eager to study the war in person. In early 2018, I nervously asked my dad to accompany me on a WWII historical tour in Europe that summer focused on the famed “Band of Brothers” story.

Shortly after I broached the idea, I received a text from my dad: “Thrilled you’d like me to accompany you on a historical tour through Europe. I think it would be unbelievable. Maybe a side trip to Shipdham where Wally spent his years, either way a historical adventure.”

I was thrilled my Dad wanted to accompany me on the trip, but I was equally curious about the foreign place linked to Wally’s service he’d mentioned. That evening, I did a cursory search of Shipdham, first learning of its location in the pastoral East Anglian countryside, then of its role in the war serving as home base to the 5,000 men who served in the 44th Bomb Group over three operational years. Three years stuck out to me – the 44th flew missions into Fortress Europe nearly three times as long as troops were on the ground fighting the same war. The time from D-Day, when the ground troops finally invaded the continent, to V-E Day,  was just shy of a year. What were the heavy bombers doing in combat in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) two years before ground forces stormed Normandy?

The Mystery of Wally’s Service at Shipdham

The further I dug into Shipdham, the more I was met with the foreign vernacular of the air war. In an effort to decode the highly technical nature of a B-24 mission into Fortress Europe, I continued down the rabbit hole of research. As I became aware of the air war’s physical and mental toll, curiosity about the specifics of Wally’s service plagued me. Phone calls to my dad and grandmother revealed just how little Wally ever shared of the war; nearly everything he said in the six decades after the war was captured in the college paper I wrote a decade ago.

I had a nagging feeling that whatever Wally saw on his missions was so disturbing that it was both an impossible and insufferable task to relive it. Even without specific information about his missions, digging deeper into the history of Shipdham and the 44th Bomb Group alone painted a new picture of Wally as a young man in the fight of his life.

Even before I’d uncovered the specifics of Wally’s service, I struggled to reconcile how the Wally I knew – a man who disliked leaving the four walls of his home, a man who struggled to communicate with the world after multiple strokes – was also an airman in the elite 44th Bomb Group who saw untold horrors in the skies above Europe and willingly flew more missions than required because he didn’t have a wife and children at home. I asked myself this question the day this research began, and it’s remains the central driver of this work. Chasing answers to this most complex question is a deeply motivating endeavor because it brings me closer to the grandfather I barely knew in this life.

Finding any mention of Wally’s service was a needle in a haystack. The more dead ends I encountered as I scoured the web for traces of Wally, the more my will to find anything intensified. As the days passed and hope ran short, my focus shifted to locating his personnel record in the National Archives to serve as a jumping off point to dig deeper. As I prepared to push “submit” on the FOIA request for his “Official Military Personnel File,” I was met with a note from the National Archives indicating that 80% of WWII records were burned in a catastrophic fire in the 1970s.

Excuse me, what?

I was devastated to confirm this true. The fire was an incomparable loss to preserving the collective history of the individuals who gave everything in the fight for freedom that was WWII.

I was back to square one in the search for Wally’s service record.

Uncovering Wally’s Missions

Some days later, I stumbled back to the only dedicated website about the 44th Bomb Group. It was an act of desperation to see if it was possible I overlooked some goldmine of information that would lead me back to Wally. Built in the early years of the World Wide Web, I soon realized on this second visit that there was a treasure trove of information buried deep in the 44th Bomb Group site. Lo and behold, after much clicking, a “Military Records” page revealed itself. Selecting this tile opened a search box to enter a veteran’s name.

There’s no way I’ll find anything, I thought to myself, as I hesitated entering Wally’s name.

I clicked search. 28 mission records for Wallace B. Truslow appeared. The records included the date of the mission, a list of the 10-man crew and their positions, the serial number of the B-24 flown, the city and target for the mission, and an unofficial mission summary narrative – essentially an operational summary of the mission.

I was dumbfounded. It had been under my nose all along.

This was the first of many intensely satisfying moments when a compulsive search related to Wally’s service that lasted days or weeks finally yielded new information. As I excitedly called both my dad and grandmother to share the news, each emphasized this mission count could not be correct, as one of the few facts Wally ever mentioned about his service was flying 40+ missions. The discrepancy bothered me tremendously, and ignited a second furious search for the missing missions.

In short, it required digging into the dredges of the interwebs, where I located a 700-page typewritten history of the 506 Squadron that was not searchable by any modern digital tools. The appendix included a list of all 506 Squadron personnel, and I was pleased to find Wally’s name. I then began the onerous task of reading the 700 page operational history looking for any mention of Wally or his crew. I’ll spare you the details.

I’d managed my way through half of the 506 Squadron tome when I first saw the name “Burns,” which I instantly recognized as the name of Wally’s Captain and Pilot of the crew. Burns’ name was mentioned in relation to missions taking place in December 1944, which fell in the three month period from December 1944 to February 1945 when Wally’s record had no missions listed. I’d hit the goldmine.

I continued reading the 506 Squadron history and attempted to document the additional missions I believed Wally flew based on mentions of the Burns crew. At some juncture, it dawned on me that I should search for “Burns” in the database where I initially found Wally’s 28 mission records. If the list of missions Burns flew was different than Wally’s missions, I could review the crew lists for any additional missions listed for Burns to see if Wally was in fact listed, or if someone else had replaced him.

Back I went to the database, eagerly searching “Burns.”

46 missions appeared.

Anxiously clicking through the crew lists, the answer was right in front of me: “Wallace B Trullow.” The mystery of the mission count was a result of a simple clerical error. The spelling of “Truslow” was incorrect for 14 of Wally’s missions.

Armed with the complete list of Wally’s 42 missions, I began studying the mission summaries. Time and again, I was horrified by these objective operational histories that still managed to paint a vivid picture of horrific, continuous violence and loss.

The mission summaries also revealed the monumental historical significance of Wally’s missions: he flew tactical missions during Operation Market Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, and Operation Varsity. I knew enough about WWII to know that his participation in all three campaigns was of untold importance.

My initial plans to print the mission summaries and bring them on the WWII trip my dad and I would take that summer did not materialize. I wasn’t satisfied with what I’d found, so I set out to dig up more, which turned into the book summarizing Wally’s service that I finished for my family in September called “Wings of Steel.” I felt it imperative that our family have a record of Wally’s service, particularly because of his silence on the matter; his legacy merited preservation.

When I finished “Wings of Steel,” I had an overwhelming feeling that I wasn’t done with the research, and a series of stranger than fiction encounters solidified that feeling. Shipdham led me to Wally, then to his crew, and finally to all 5,000 men in the group. That part of the story is coming soon.

The Hell that Began and Ended at Shipdham

Shipdham, where every mission began and ended, was the impetus for all the research I’ve done to date about the 44th Bomb Group. When I came to know Shipdham, my focus shifted to piecing together Wally’s missions that took place in the skies between Shipdham and the heart of Nazi Germany – the space where life and death hung in the balance. Reviewing Wally’s missions in excruciating detail painted a clearer picture of the hell that he experienced forty-two times over.

Historian Martin Bloch posited that, “Intelligence is stimulated far less by the will to know than the will to understand.” I obsess over the most granular details of Wally’s missions and days between that he spent at Shipdham because the more I know about the long seconds and minutes of combat, the more I can understand Wally’s inner life during the war.

In trying to reconcile the Wally I knew as an old man after many strokes with the 20-year-old Wally who extended his tour and flew 42 hellacious missions into Nazi Germany, I had to understand the war through his eyes. The records of Wally’s 42 missions were replete with unpredictable death, enemy fighter attacks, accidents on take off, foes in the form of weather, and horrific flak wounds. It’s hard to imagine any human not experiencing PTSD after the frequency and severity of violence and death Wally lived through on his missions. 

Becoming acquainted with Shipdham and Wally’s 10 months and 6 days there led me to often wonder who I would have been in the war, and how the traumatic memories would have shaped my life thereafter. A decade ago, I was a freshman in college writing a paper about my grandfather’s service during the Second World War. At the close of Wally’s freshman year at Los Angeles Community College, he enlisted in the Army Air Force. Seeing myself at 19, I’m reminded of just how little life Wally had lived before the war. In uncovering Wally’s war, I began to form a post-humous relationship with the grandfather I didn’t know well in this life.

The Long Legacy of Shipdham Air Base

My dad and I didn’t make it to Shipdham last summer. But we did last month. While the physical presence of the 44th has disappeared, truncated versions of the runway remain, as do the walls of the once great control tower that orchestrated the movements of the 44th. But the memory of Wally and the men he served alongside is as vibrant as ever. Standing on the remains of the concrete runway at Shipdham, Wally’s presence looms large in the heavens above, which brought three generations of the Truslow family back together for a fleeting moment.

My gratitude for the sacrifices Wally and the extraordinary men of the 44th made during the war grows exponentially with each day that passes.

 

Monday marks the beginning of a 4-month sabbatical from my job in the Survey Research and Analytics Center at Deloitte to chase a story that began 75 years ago.

Before I dig deeply into how I pieced together the story of my grandfather’s fight against the Third Reich in the skies of Europe and the research I’m chasing during sabbatical, I want to lay the foundation of the strategic daylight bombing offensive in Europe and formally introduce you to the protagonist of this research.  

The Mighty Eighth Air Force Bomber Command

During WWII, the bomber boys of the Mighty 8th Air Force were the pioneers of the air war. Flying primitive technology into Fortress Europe, they struck enemy occupied Europe and Germany two years before troops landed in Normandy on D-Day. Daylight strategic bombing carried out by the 8th Air Force proved to be among the deadliest battlefields; 26,000 airmen from the 8th Air Force were killed, more than the Marines lost in every theater of the war.

The groundbreaking B-17 Flying Fortress and B-24 Liberator were the bread and butter of the 8th Air Force Bomber Command. Crews of 10 men, including a Pilot, Co-Pilot, Bombardier, Engineer, Radio Operator, and six gunners flew at 20,000 feet carrying 8,000 pounds of bombs they dropped on myriad strategic targets. The bomb bay racks gave the B-24 its notoriously bulky shape and nickname as the “flying boxcar.” The sleek shape of the B-17 “Flying Fortress” alluded to its efficacy: the B-24 could carry a payload two times the weight of a B-17 (3,000 pounds). The revelatory Norden Bombsight technology purportedly made dropping a dime in a pickle jar at 20,000 feet a possibility; the technology was top secret and airmen to protect it with their lives. Mounted above the plexiglass nose of a B-24, the Norden enabled the Bombardier to drop the payload squarely on a pre-identified target. There was one catch: it only worked on a clear day.

The Hell of Flying a B-24 Bomber

Flying in a B-24 was hell: open waist gun windows let in a continuous stream of outside air as the B-24 chugged along at 200 MPH. At altitude (typically 18,000-20,000 feet), it was -50 degrees inside the bomber, necessitating the faulty heated suits and sheepskin coveralls every airman wore. Touching one of the six .50 cal guns with a bare hand would immediately cause skin to freeze to the metal. Oxygen masks were essential on the 6-10 hour missions. Sweat and bile would cause an oxygen mask to freeze; an airman had two to three minutes to clear his mask before he died.

Weather, flak, and fighters were the preeminent enemies of a B-24 crew. Flying in formation just feet behind, above, below, and in front of other B-24s of a bomb group was no small task; propwash, or turbulence from the preceding bomber, could send a B-24 spiraling out of control. German fighters picked off B-24s with ease, sending a spiraling inferno descending to earth. Germans fighter techniques to pick off bombers devolved as the Luftwaffe’s (German Air Force) strength diminished: targeting a bomber’s fuel tanks (located in the wings) full of high-octane gas to instantly engulf a bomber in flames, dropping rockets on top of the bombers causing a massive explosion at 20,000, and eventually launching suicide missions by ramming the bombers head on.

The greatest fiend late in the war was flak, or anti-aircraft fire. When I began this research, I had not yet been acquainted with flak. At first read, I learned flak was an .88 mil shell shot from a large, narrow gun on the ground that could be programmed to hit the specific high-altitude of a bomber formation. Moreover, German flak guns could target one specific bomber in a formation using sophisticated sighting devices to get a reading on the B-24’s altitude and speed. Furthermore, the Germans were acutely aware that once a bomber began its bomb run on the target, it was no longer permitted to take any evasive action; as a result, German flak guns were strategically located around key strategic targets to create “flak fields” at 20,000-30,000 feet spanning hundreds of feet deep and wide in the direct path of a B-24 formation on a target run. Flak shells materialized as puffs of black smoke filling the sky around a bomber formation. If a flak burst came within a few feet of a bomber, crews described their plane shaking and jolting.

A direct hit would rip into the thin aluminum of a bomber, sending shrapnel flying and ricocheting through the flesh of airmen. Flak wounds were invariably of the most gruesome nature.   

If a crew dropped their 8,000 pound payload and successfully navigated the weather, fighters, flak, and treacherous flying conditions to make a safe return to their base in the East Anglian (SE England) countryside, he steeled himself to do it again.

Slim Odds of Survival

By mid-1944, an airman had to fly 35 missions to complete a tour. The odds of survival were slim, by some estimations less than 50%.

My paternal grandfather, Wallace B Truslow was one of these airmen in the Mighty 8th Air Force. He flew 42 missions with the 44th Bomb Group from Shipdham Air Base in East Anglia. Serving on a replacement crew, he filled the gaps left by heavy casualties in the spring and summer of 1944.

The Protagonist of this Story: Wallace B. Truslow

Wally flew pivotal strategic and tactical missions, including a low-level resupply to the 101st Airborne during Operation Market Garden, 7 tactical support missions during the Battle of the Bulge, and a low-level resupply during Operation Varsity, the largest airborne operation of the war.

By the spring of 1945, Wally’s crew had been named a Lead Crew for the 506th Squadron of the 44th Bomb Group after five of his crew (him included), chose to extend their tours and continue flying missions. Wally felt that because he didn’t have a wife or children back home, coupled with his invaluable experience from the preceding 35 missions, it was his duty to continue flying until the war ended. His willingness to sacrifice his own life, even after he flew a tour of 35 missions, is a testament to his moral fiber.

On March 24, 1945, Wally’s crew led the 506th squadron on the low-level mission to drop supplies for the 17th Airborne division on the east side of the Rhine as the Allies finally invaded Germany. They flew at 150 feet dropping 2,500 pounds of supplies for the troops below. Small arms fire abounded. Two bombers from Wally’s 9-plane squadron were shot down. Simultaneously, Wally was hit by small arms fire that ricocheted through the bottom of his bomber and ripped into his right thigh. After witnessing the death of 19 of his comrades, he faced the hellacious two hour flight back to Shipdham in excruciating pain. He was later awarded the Purple Heart, in addition to the Air Medal with 5 Oak Leaf Clusters.

Wally and the four men who he stayed with to continue the fight against Germany flew more missions than 99.5% of the 5,000 men in the 44th Bomb Group.

Some combination of luck, skill, timing, and teamwork kept Wally alive and flying through the end of the war, which could not be said for nearly 30% of the 5,000 men who served in the group and were either killed in action or in a POW camp.

Scars from the War

Yet, Wally was not unscathed by the war. In the wake of WWII, PTSD remained a diagnosis of moral weakness. Wally’s PTSD intensified as the years passed. He mentioned the war only a handful of times over the subsequent 50 years. Guilt over the women and children killed who were collateral damage of the strategic bombing offensive plagued him. Wally bled shrapnel from him right leg his entire life, a result of the wounds he sustained over Wesel, Germany. After suffering several strokes, his nightmares about the war intensified. He once tried to throw his medals in the trash; when my grandmother confronted him, he simply said, “I can’t escape the war.” He passed away when I was eight years old.

The information my family was privy to about Wally’s service during the war could be counted on two hands. He never talked about it; they never asked. Silence on the matter was an all too common theme of the Greatest Generation who saw truly unspeakable combat. A common refrain I’ve heard over the last year is that the men who were truly heroic, who fought on the front lines, are the very men who are least likely to discuss them. After unearthing Wally’s service, it’s all too clear why: what man must do to be heroic often requires more than a human body or mind can handle. If great events leave great scars, 42 missions leaves cavernous wounds.

My relationship with Wally lasted eight years in this life. By the time I was born, he’d suffered numerous strokes and lost the ability to speak clearly. I have one distinct memory of him sitting on the couch in my parents’ Idaho home sporting slacks, a long-sleeve button down, and a sweater vest, his standard uniform that always included long sleeves. A slender man not more than five foot six, he sat stoically on that couch as the day passed, notably distant from his grandkids. I sensed something different about Wally in my earliest years that made me hesitant around him. In retrospect, it was likely a result of his PTSD, which my grandmother described as an impenetrable shield he put up that became thicker as the years passed.

Wally died almost 20 years ago. WWII ended almost almost three-quarters of a century ago. Over the last year, I’ve begun piecing together a story that did not want to be told: the 42 missions Wally flew during his 10 months and 6 days at Shipdham. The 10 months and 6 days Wally spent at Shipdham flying 42 combat missions charted the course for the remainder of his life. Yet, Wally first buried his memory of the war in himself, then he took it to the grave.

Meeting the Grandfather I Never Knew

When I began this research, Wally was in many ways a stranger to me. I’d never heard of the esteemed Eighth Air Force. Naively, I assumed flying in a bomber was comfortable, relatively safe, and kept him out of the action below. With each revelation about the nature of the air war and Wally’s role in it, the sheer horror of the war he fought kept me furiously digging for more information.

Over the last year, I wrote a book about Wally’s service for my family. On sabbatical, I’m undertaking a new writing project about the 44th more broadly, as well as building a data dashboard to include over 100,000 mission records for all 5,000 men in the group.

This journey began serendipitously, which I’ll discuss more in my next blog. The last year of obsessive research has not been unlike the dog leg’s course a bomber formation would fly on the way to a target. With the critical voice of the veteran missing, telling this story requires finding a need in a haystack 100 times over. The men I’ve come to know over the last year are what makes me relentless in this chase. Seeing the war Wally fought has formed a posthumous connection with him that I never had in this life, and it also introduced me to the remarkable men he served alongside on his crew, as well as the other 5,000 men who served in his group.

More to come about what exactly I’ll be working on during my 4-month sabbatical!

This website captures most of what I’ve been working on over the last year and a half. You can see the book I put together for my family about my grandfather’s service here!