Issue 41.12
Some years ago, I wrote for the benefit of my posterity about an incident that happened during my World War Two assignment as a lower ball turret gunner on Robert Parnell’s B-17 crew flying bombing missions into Germany. It was our 35th and final mission and if we got back from this one, we could go home. Our target for that day was a railroad marshalling yard in Southern
Germany. Over the target, one plane in our squadron of twelve bombers was hit by flak (antiaircraft artillery from the ground). The hit bomber lost two engines, and had casualties. The crew couldn’t keep up with the squadron for protection but they thought they could make it the relatively short distance to neutral Switzerland for safety.
There is a narrow finger lake on the Swiss and German border and just on the Swiss side is an emergency landing strip. We recently had a briefing that said that the Germans had actually built a similar shaped lake with a similar landing strip further inside of Germany for the purpose of capturing unsuspecting crews. We hoped that the distressed plane’s crew knew about this. If they could only make it that far, the surviving crew members would have medical attention and be interned in that neutral country for the war’s duration. As soon as that B-17 left the squadron, that crew’s radio operator got on the command frequency and told us of being attacked by several F.W. 190 enemy fighters.
These “bandits” were always on the lookout for crippled stragglers and they found one. The cripple’s radio operator screamed out a blow by blow description of the aerial machine gun and cannon fight. Parnell’s (our) radio operator almost never put “Command” radio business on our planes inter-com but on that day, he did just that. We crew members all heard the fight and then all went silent. We figured that crew had been shot down before reaching the safety of
Switzerland.
That day our crew got home to our base safely. Of course there were some new holes in our ship but no injuries. We cut the grass and then landed. “Cutting the grass” was traditionally reserved only for crews finishing their last mission that allowed them to buzz the field low enough to cut the grass with their propellers. Well almost. The top brass frowned but tolerated the practice.
The year about 2001.
My wife and I have a daughter who lives in the city of Mapleton, Utah.
We visit her often and sometimes go to church with her family. One of her neighbors and church members, Harold Gividend and his wife were introduced to us. Harold and I found out that we were both in the Eighth Air Force during the war but nothing more. I think it was the year 2008 that Harold was taken to the hospital and his wife accompanied him. While the doctors worked on Harold, his wife sat in the waiting room. Harold didn’t make it so the doctors walked out to tell her the bad news. She did not receive the news because she was sitting in the chair, dead.
The year 2010.
I do not currently have access to the internet. My son-in-law, Tim Gillett,
Clicked on 5th. Air Force, then clicked on 351st. Bomb Group, then on 508th. Squadron and then
wrote my name in. He got a list of my missions and also who else were on the same mission.
Harold Gividend’s name came up and his war record came on the screen. It was then that I discovered that the co-pilot of that ill-fated bomber that we all thought was shot down over
Germany was my deceased friend, Harold Gividend.
For the first time I learned that they did reach Switzerland and that some including the pilot were killed and some were wounded. I also learned that their ill-fated mission was their first mission as it was our 35th and final one.