Author: Ronald Guenther
Written: March 13, 2014

I keep getting requests to get to Uncle Dick, so here is the part that took place in WWII.  Uncle Dick and Aunt Edie married about 1937.  Aunt Edie is still alive as I write this.  We all loved her.  She was wonderful, beautiful, glamorous and just plain nice.  She and Uncle Dick were the godparents of Brother Bob when he was born in 1939.  While mom was in the hospital at that time, the Germans invaded Poland and England and France entered the war.  Initially, the Soviet Union and Germany were allies and together they divided up Poland.  It was clear that bigger things were brewing but the allies were really unprepared for war at that time.  Still, the war was on.  Uncle Dick had not been sure whether he wanted to be a farmer or not.  One thing was for sure, he wanted to be together with Aunt Edie and there was no room on the farm for him at that time.  He tried various jobs down town including welding, he and Aunt Edie had a small apartment in Coos Bay. Then grandpa died in 1940 and Uncle Dick had to help run the farm, grandma was not up to it.  When Louise was born in 1941, Bob and I stayed with them while mom was in the hospital for ten days.  Actually, Bob had stayed with Aunt Edie and Uncle Dick when we (= mom, pop and I) went to Portland for a week to be with grandpa.  Bob stayed in contact with Aunt Edie all his life and she was there at his wedding and visited him in Hawaii.  When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the US found itself in the war and Uncle Dick thought this was the chance for him to fly.  The air force at the time was small and part of the army,it was the army air corps,  but it was immediately expanded and pilots were needed, so Uncle Dick signed up.  Pilot training was rigorous.

He started out, as I recall, in Fort Lewis.  The year now was 1942.  There he got his basic training and then started pilot school.  I do not know where all he went, but I do know one of the places was Roswell, New Mexico, a place that was to become famous for possible spacemen coming to earth in their flying saucers immediately after the war.  There was a theoretical part to the training as well as a practical part.  He did not score high enough on the theoretical part to become a pilot, but high enough to become a bombardier.  At any rate, he got his wings.  The plane that was available was the B-24, the so-called Liberator.  It was a death trap if there ever was one.  It was a beautiful plane.  McGovern few 35 missions in it at a time when the average life span of a man in one of those things was 15 minutes, or at least so the story goes.  Somehow, he survived it.  But Uncle Dick had a great opportunity.  He got to go with the B-17, the flying fortress.  It had a pilot, a co-pilot, a navigator, a gunner on the top, a gunner on the belly, a tail gunner and a bombardier.  That was a seven man crew.  During training, he was injured and almost lost his job, but he worked very hard.  While he was recovering, he trained with another fellow who was from Reedsport and they became close friends, but Uncle Dick wanted to get back to his original crew and he made it.  Uncle Dick looked stunning in his uniform.  In fact, he and Aunt Edie were so good looking, it is a wonder that they were not chosen to be models to lure in other volunteers.  In early 1943, the United States finished the conquest of North Africa and Uncle Dick got his orders to go there.  His mail never caught up to him.  I still have a couple of his letters.  So, Uncle Dick went to North Africa.  It was a difficult time.  Three quarters of the planes that went out on bombing missions were shot down. 

The Reedsport boy later told us that morale was rock bottom at the time.  Uncle Dick complained that no one ever wrote to him.  In 1944, a big packet of all the letters that had been written came back to us.  Grandma may have given them to Aunt Edie, but I doubt it, I think she probably destroyed them.  At any rate, he flew a couple of missions over France.  The way that it worked, the plane flew to the target, then just as you approached the target, the bombardier took over and told the plane how to maneuver to where it could drop the bombs, the bombs were dropped and the pilot then took over.  It was always my understand that his plane, it had a name, I believe it was the Mudhen, came to grief.  They had flown a successful mission over Toulon, France and were just leaving France and going out over the Mediterranean when the plane was hit.  It was not long before it was apparent that they were not going to make it back to their base and that the plane was going down.  The Reedsport boy was flying in another plane alongside of them and watched the men bail out.  At least six of them bailed out and with them their life raft.  They were lucky that they all landed close by.  The other plane circled and circled and watched while the men got the life raft blown up and all of them got into the raft.  They waved at the plane circling over head.  The plane dipped its wings and headed back to get help.  As it turned out, there was a big storm at sea and the waves were over fifteen feet high.  The Americans were famous for trying to retrieve their people who were shot down or trapped or something.  Immediately a rescue squadron went out to find them, but no trace was ever found.  This happened on the 24th of November, 1943, my birthday, I was in the first grade.  The Reedsport boy was shot down himself the next mission and was captured by the Germans.  His arm had been so mangled that it had to be amputated, but he survived the war and immediately thereafter looked us up and told us what I have just relayed to you.

As it turned out, grandma Wilda had been living with us, and a couple days before that came to mom and said she had dreamt of muddy water, she just knew that Uncle Dick was going to die.  Mom pooh-poohed that, she never did buy into that muddy water business, but grandma was not to be consoled.  Shortly thereafter, though, we got a telegram from the war department saying that he was missing in action.  I can still see grandma sitting at the kitchen table with that telegram in her hand and sobbing and sobbing and sobbing.  It was terrible.  In front of the post office in Coos Bay, they used to have a big board up of all the boys serving in the armed forces and those killed had a gold star in front of their names.  There were a number of gold stars and I did not know what they meant, but I did think it would be neat if Uncle Dick had a gold star.  Then he got his gold star and I knew what it meant and it was terrible.  He was not coming home.

Grandma did not give up hope that he was alive and always felt that maybe they had made it to one of the numerous islands out there in the Western Mediterranean.  After the war, the American military scoured every island out there for missing personnel, but there was no sign of him or his buddies.  They were lost. Grandma could never discuss him, mom missed him all her life.  It was a terrible loss to all of us.

The End.