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In memory of Richard Wiens
Dec. 28, 1920-Sept. 5, 2002
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Thursday, Sept. 9, 1999
Quote for the Day ...
"History's lessons
are no more enlightening than the wisdom of those who interpret
them."
- David
Schoenbrun, Peter's
Quotations: Ideas for Our Time.
The 10-man crew of the
Lady Patricia (from left in front): Armorers "Mac"
McLaughlin, and "Jeff" Jefferson, radio operator
Fred Shellenberg (holding "Sparks" one of two St.
Bernard mix puppies the crew found in a haystack and adopted),
engineers Charles Meade and Walter Kraczyk, radio operator
Richard Wiens, and (in back from left) the pilot, Capt. Daryl
Mason, co-pilot Stanley Burda who brought his accordion, and
navigators Hank Aarnwyne and William Germer, in Cerignola,
Italy, c. 1944-45. "Lady Patricia" was a B-24 (behind
the men) named for Mason's baby daughter. They flew as part
of the 745th Squadron, 456th Bombardment
Group, 15th Air Force.
The Crew of the Lady Patricia
This is a tribute to the crew of the
Lady Patricia. Most of them are gone. A few are still around.
One of them is my dad.
They represent a great generation of men and women who did
their duty under difficult circumstances. Many paid the ultimate
price and never returned. Many more brought home memories
that haunt them still, especially in their dreams when the
years melt away.
This is their story, my dad's, that of the crew of the Lady
Patricia, and the story of perhaps thousands like them. Compared
to them, the members of my generation -- Baby Boomers -- seem
spoiled, untested, weak. (I omit from our group the men and
women who served in Korea or Vietnam and never got the welcome
home they so richly deserved. I put them ahead of us, as compatriots
with the World War II veterans who came home in honor and
glory, because they shared demands of duty we cannot begin
to comprehend.) As self-absorbed Baby Boomers, we are also
much more inclined to talk about ourselves when we should
be listening. Especially now.
These men and women, Tom Brokaw calls them
The Greatest Generation, were put to the test, many just
as they were coming of age. Their experiences no doubt determined
the kind of people they became after the war. For many it
would not be the only kind of war they would endure.
Do you know someone Who Was There? When you get a chance,
talk to them. Find out what they did. Listen, ask questions
and listen some more. The world needs to hear what they can
remember. One day it will be too late, and they will not be
here to tell us. History books cannot begin to offer what
one man or woman Who Was There can.
"It isn't so hard to talk about it," my dad told
me recently on a visit to my home in Poplar Bluff on the occasion
of my daughter's 9th birthday. "But it is hard to think
about it, especially at night. Sometimes you get real depressed
about it. You can't help it."
But talk about it he did at my urging. We visited for hours
looking at photographs, a world atlas, old letters, medals,
mementos. I asked him if he had ever read Catch
22, Joseph Heller's World War II classic that recently
ranked No. 7 on a controversial list of the century's top
100 works of literature. He said that he had not. I read him
my favorite passage among those I had highlighted in yellow
("Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity,
and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them. With Major
Major it had been all three."). He liked it and began
reading it, and eventually took my book home with him to finish.
I took notes and showed him the detailed timeline I had constructed
based on his earlier accounts.
I had already written a little about my father's wartime
experiences and was wanting to do more. An essay I'd written
earlier, "A Random
Act of Kindness c. 1945", had caught the attention
of a book editor who expressed an interest in publishing the
story, and I wanted to double check all my facts during my
parents' visit. I told my mom on the phone to be sure Dad
brought with him his Eisenhower
jacket, his certificate
of valor, his photos and his writing diary, things we
last looked over together during an Easter visit at their
home in Kansas City.
That story occurred after his tour of duty in Europe, on
a night in New Orleans when an anonymous benefactor spotted
him in uniform walking along the street and treated him and
three other servicemen to a night of dinner and dancing and
a stay at the elegant Roosevelt Hotel. "There were a
lot of things like that. It was everybody's story," he
told me. "There were probably a thousand stories like
that one. I can't believe the way these Vietnam vets were
treated when they came home. It made me so mad. It seems like
it was an entirely different country."
The "Random Act of Kindness" was a pleasant story
to recall, and it paved the way for other, more difficult
memories.
"You try to remember the good things," he told
me, "but you know I had so many friends who didn't make
it, like little Victor Hays who lived across the backyard
from us. He was a year younger than me. We walked to school
together every morning ... He joined the Navy and was killed
at Pearl Harbor."
Richard Wiens was 21 when he enlisted in the Army in January
1942 following the attack on Pearl Harbor the month before.
He took three days of exams at Fort Reilly and was among those
chosen for aviation cadet school. "It was like getting
into West Point," he said, and was quite an honor for
a boy from Kansas who'd completed just two years of college.
Pre-flight school at Randolph Field in San Antonio, Texas,
was packed with college-level courses in physics and math.
"You went full steam from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. You didn't
walk to class. You ran to class," he said.
"I was there at Randolph Field the day they had the
great big parade. I saw Roosevelt that day. Roosevelt came
in and made a speech. They brought in guys from all the Army
and Air Corps bases around. It was a big, formal parade."
Many of his fellow underclassmen were West Pointers. He was
keeping up with them and doing well. But a year later he was
among a large group of fellow trainees, all with last names
from the end of the alphabet, who were transferred to other
areas. He was put in radio school but he already knew Morse
code from cadet school.
"I was what they called a forgotten airman," he
said. The air force had advertised cadet school and induced
many of them to enlist to become pilots. "They didn't
tell us they really wanted air crewmen, not just pilots. I
was classified as a pilot for almost two years. I had 27 solo
hours."
Many of them "washed out" as pilots to become mechanics,
engineers and radio operators on flight crews. To him the
decision had already been made as to who would be washed out.
The instructor who took him up for a check out had him immediately
set the plane back down, telling him almost as soon as it
began that the test was over. "I got alphabetized,"
he said. "All my buddies who also washed out were W's,
Y's, and Z's."
His disappointment faded with the reality of war. That he
did not become a pilot "might have saved my life,"
he reflected. "You never know." It helped that Daryl
Mason, the pilot of his crew, expected everyone to take turns
flying the plane. "He let everybody fly," he said.
"We all got a chance to pilot. Everybody flew so we could
switch off if necessary." One of his friend's brothers,
a flight engineer, did in fact have to fly a B-17 back all
by himself after his fellow crewmen all were killed in flight.
During his training, he was married on furlough and brought
my mother with him to California, where he was stationed at
March Field and assigned to a flight crew. The crew trained
for a year but the day they were called overseas my dad came
down with strep throat and was left behind. He shipped out
two weeks later with a new crew. He later learned that his
original crew, assigned to the Eighth Air Force in England,
was shot down over the English Channel and perished.
His new crew was stationed in Italy with the 456th Bombardment
Group of the 15th Air Force. He flew on 53 missions, the last
of them during the Battle of the Bulge. The crew would rise
at 4 a.m. each day to fly over the Alps toward their targets.
Many did not make it back. He was discharged in August 1945
after the Japanese surrendered.
"War is terrible," he told me. "It's inhumane.
You'd have breakfast in the morning with one guy and watch
him get blown up off your wing in the afternoon. No one should
have to go through that."
Before the war, the politics of the times weren't so different
then than they are now, he said. He remembers a day in 1940
when he was driving to visit my mother. He had the radio on
and "Roosevelt was saying 'Our boys will never fight
a war on foreign soil.' I never forgot that," he said.
Roosevelt was running for president with an antiwar theme
but secretly pushing for America to get involved. "All
the college kids were against the war, just like Vietnam.
All these peace programs like 'America First' were being promoted
in college.
"Then it all changed overnight at Pearl Harbor,"
he said. "The next day was entirely different. We declared
war on Japan, then Hitler declared war on us because of the
Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan."
He and I continue visiting. My children are nearby, listening.
I especially want them to know about their grandfather's role
in World War II. His is one man's story yet perhaps in many
ways it is every man's. I see my father rise up in the eyes
of my 12-year-old son who does not know him well. Afterward
he is glad to join his grandfather in a game of checkers.
The next morning it was clear my father had not slept well.
He said he had flown all night long in his dreams, in a modern
stealth bomber instead of a B-24. My mother says that the
first night he was home he leaped out of bed in terror in
the middle of the night.
In the weeks that followed my father's visit, my son has
consumed one World War II video after another, movies including
"Patton," "The Battle of the Midway" and
various Time-Life videos, and he has dug out and looked through
several related large books in our library. History has come
to life for my son with the words of his grandfather.
These are some more of the things
he shared ...
 This
boy is Pasquali. He's standing at the door to his home in
Italy. Dad's crew used to take him some of their rations.
Pasquali's mother made the soliders eggs and chips. The men
made Pasquali a go-cart.
This is one of a group of photos made with the B-24's turret
camera. The men would unmount the camera from the plane and
use it to take photos on their trips to town. Charles Meade
took most of the photos and brought several undeveloped rolls
to my father many years afterward. They remained in his desk
until 1979, when I developed them for him and made prints.
 
This is a church in Naples that had
been bombed. The other photo shows crewman McLaughlin in the
bell tower.
• On every flight each crewman
was supplied with a stash of gold seal dollars -- money they
could use to help buy their way out of trouble if needed.
The men were told to acquire native clothing, blend in and
find their way to Athens. They were told in training to take
the street car in Athens to the end of the line, where they
would make contact with a partisan in touch with U.S. forces.
 
Bob Pilcher from Wichita had to do just that. His crew was
shot down over Poland and made their way to Russia, where
they met up with a spy who helped them acquire a German plane.
They flew it to Athens and were taken back to their base to
continue their missions. This photo shows Pilcher, on the
right in civilian clothes, with a spy they befriended. The
caption on the back identifies the man in the middle as "Paul,"
a Yugoslavian working under cover among Germans. Before enlisting,
Dad and Pilcher had worked together on the night shift in
a wood shop at Stearman Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas, crafting
wings for the PT-13 biplane. They literally bumped into each
other in Foggia, Italy, one day while both were on leave (but
in different groups). They enjoyed a horse and buggy tour
together though the city.
• During training the flight crews were taught
to eat European style so they could blend in. They were told
to be sure to hold their knife in their right hand at all
times. They were also shown how to hold their cigarettes and
smoke European style so they would not be spotted as Americans.
•  The
crew of 10 lived in two tents at their base within an olive
grove near Cerignola. They popped popcorn on a stove fashioned
from an old gas can. This photo shows one of the crewmen shaving
outside the tent.
• Below is a train the crew briefly stole for a joyride
in Foggia. The city was mostly deserted and the crew came
upon the train, its engine steamed up and running but no one
aboard.  "We
just jumped in there and drove it down the track. I don't
remember how far we went." Often the crew looked for
comic relief. "We were under incredible tension because
you knew you had to fly in the morning," he said.
The U.S. had just invaded Italy and its government was in
shambles. U.S.soldiers, MPs, helped restore order and run
things. "Once I directed traffic in Foggia. Someone would
just hand you an armband and say, 'You're an MP.' "
• These Italian women are carrying wares on their heads.
 They
were angry at having their picture taken.
• This is a photo of the crew enjoying some time off
on the isle of Capri, a vacation they were treated to after
25 missions.  "The
air force took over the isle of Capri and made a service club
out of Count Ciano's villa. Ciano was a famous Italian airman,
the head of the Italian air force and Mussolini's son-in-law.
(The villa) was all black marble inside, if that tells you
anything about that guy. He had this big, huge bathroom and
everything in it, all the fixtures, the ceiling, the floor,
everything was black marble. The villa was built into a cliff
looking straight down into the Mediterranean." At Capri
my father was once again a victim of the alphabet. "They
assigned us beds and rooms and by the time they got to the
W's they were all out of beds, so I just got a cot."
• Once the crew was listed as missing in action for
about two hours. "We were badly damaged at Rosenheim
and couldn't keep up with our squadron." That day Fred
Shellenberg became the only one of their crew to be wounded.
He was hit in the face with flak. Altitude and the thin air
made him bleed heavily, so the men thought he was badly hurt.
"We opened the first aid kit and poured sulphur powder
all over him and wrapped compresses around his head."
On approach the crew fired flares from their beri pistol,
a signal they had a wounded man on board. An ambulance was
ready and waiting for Schellenberg when they landed. "They
took him to the hospital. He didn't want to go. Three or four
days later, he came back with a Band-Aid on his cheek. He
didn't need any stitches but he got the Purple Heart."
• Another time the crew was shot down over the island
of Vis. All 10 safely parachuted out into a British mission.
Parachuting was not something they had ever practiced. Dad
was amazed his nylon parachute did its job. He saved it. My
grandmother sewed it into a bed jacket for my mother when
she was expecting their first child, my sister Barbara.
• "Did I ever tell you about the time I dropped
a fish?" This leads to a story about the crew's flight
across the Atlantic, a stopover at the Azores where they slept
in a cave, refilled the gas tanks and flew on to North Africa
for a landing in Marrakech.
"I was on the radio and dropped the fish, which is
a weight on the end of a long wire used as an antenna. We
were on code, tapping Morse code to the tower -- I was pretty
good at Morse code; it just came naturally to me. I called
for QLA, landing instructions, but I was so excited about
landing in Africa that I forgot to reel in the fish. So we
lost the fish. I got blamed for it. We had to layover a day
in Marrakech while they replaced the fish. Then we flew to
Tunis carrying extra gas tanks. We had a gas leak so we had
to layover in Tunis for a week while they repaired our gas
tanks.
"General Rommel had just been kicked out of Tunis, and
Rommel's officers had taken over a hotel in downtown Tunis.
That hotel was empty. We stayed there, and I remember we used
to go up on the hotel's roof garden and take our binoculars
to look out on the beach."
"When we first got to Marrakech it was the middle of
the war," he said. The Germans and Italians were gone
from North Africa but still occupying half of Italy. "When
we landed in Marrakech, the first thing we saw was this great
big fenced-in enclosure, and there were about 10,000 imprisoned
Italians in there. Mussolini's whole Italian division had
surrendered. Patton had surrounded them and cut them off.
He was a genius, that guy Patton. He was crazy but a genius."
Seeing all those Italian soldiers "scared me to death
because there were thousands of them and only a few hundred
Americans at this air base. You'd walk by and each guy would
rattle his tin cup at you and say, 'Hey Joe, give me a cigarette.'
Every American was Joe." But he hadn't needed to worry
about an insurrection among the prisoners. "That's all
Sahara Desert country. They didn't want to escape. Where would
they go? What would they eat?"
---
I am grateful for our conservation for it reveals the man
my father is, a man who once rose to the occasion and did
more than he ever thought possible. It is a time of which
he is intensely proud. I think this has sustained him during
some of the difficult times later in his life.
Next year our country will dedicate a new veteran's memorial
in Washington. "My name will be in there. I sent the
form back to Bob Dole," he said. "You know I can
go to the VA or the old soldier's home in Leavenworth any
time. I can walk into Leavenworth any Saturday afternoon and
have a beer..."
And there was a time when nearly anyone nearby would have
gladly treated him to one.
Related Links:
In our town, a veteran's memorial wall is being planned
at the new Black River Coliseum, our city's 5,000-seat community
center/performance arena. Some people are upset because they
are charging for each name to be included. Seems to me we
ought to be able to raise enough money to pay for them all.
It's the least we can do.
Webcurrents Catch of the Day: Visit a virtual play
community at www.deepfun.com,
where you can find a wonderful inner playground hosted by
Bernie DeKoven, a game designer, the developer of the training
program for the New Games Foundation, the author of a curriculum
in children's games and The Well-Played Game. a book that
helped to revolutionize how people play together.
Thank you for visiting. Please drop by often...
Julie Wolpers
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