I awoke with a start about quarter to three this morning, today, July 29, 2019. I think in my subconsciousness I had been preparing for this a bit.
I’d like to tell you a story about how this photo above came into my possession. First, though, it was exactly 75 years ago, almost to the hour, that the boys in that photo were all killed in the skies over Nazi Germany. The boy on the far left, Clarence McGuire, was known to me; I’d been visiting his grave with my dad since I was a little boy; his body came home at some point and he is buried in our local cemetery.
All were killed―except one. That’s why I have the photo today.
I had never seen this photo before it was sent to me in the mail two summers ago. In fact, all of my life I thought that the man who sent it to me was dead, like everyone else in the picture. Even as I began my book discussing this tragic event, I had assumed everyone in my dad’s cousin’s B-17 was killed when their plane blew up 20,000 feet over Nazi Germany in the summer of 1944.
My dad’s cousin Clarence was a twenty-year-old waist gunner on the crew, clean cut, the one in the white T-shirt. Many times I accompanied my dad on walks to the quiet cemetery a few blocks from our house. The memorial reads:
SGT. CLARENCE B. McGUIRE
A COURAGEOUS AND GALLANT GUNNER
WHO GAVE ALL FOR GOD AND COUNTRY
JULY 29, 1944
MAY HIS SOUL, AND ALL THE SOULS
OF THE GALLANT MEN WHO DIED, REST IN PEACE
So naturally, for years I thought that all of his crew had died in 1944 when their B-17 was hit on a mission to bomb a German oil refinery. I think that is what my dad told me; I dug out their crew photo—the only photograph I had ever seen of Clarence, to be honest—from his desk after Dad passed. So imagine my surprise a two summers back when I found the exact same photo, labeled, on the internet, at the American Air Museum in Britain. Then I noticed that someone had sponsored the page, ‘in memoriam’, and it was the same name as one of the crew. A son, perhaps?
back row, third from left, Clarence; far right, John.
No. I tracked the tail gunner in Florida, and mailed him a letter to what I hoped was the right address, hoping that maybe he was still alive. Well, he called me shortly thereafter.
John at World War II Memorial, Washington, DC
‘‘This is John Swarts’, said the voice with the distinctive Southern twang. ‘Me and Clarence was pretty good friends.’ A pause. ‘You got it right, address and everything. I knew him well; I went with him to his home up there in New York. Me and him used to ride horse together; I got some pictures to send you. His mother used to write me letters afterwards.’
Letter from Clarence’s mom to John Swarts, 1946.
John hailed from Missouri, and later settled in St. Louis.
‘Things worked out right for me. Was married twice, got a boy and a girl. Spent 33 years on the railroad, and then had my own business. But it was just me and the co-pilot who survived that day. I was burned in the eye and didn’t go on the last mission.’
The plane went down on July 29th, 1944. That last weekend in July of 2017, the 73rd anniversary was upon us as we spoke.
‘The name of the plane was Pugnacious Ball. Flak got the plane. Blew up before it hit the ground. But I think they recovered a body bag to send home to his mother.’
‘I watched for the planes coming back; you always do when they are out on a mission. You count them. We waited and waited. They didn’t come back.’
‘It was the worst day of my life. Still is.’
John also sent me newspaper clippings. ‘Vet Feels Guilty Because Buddies Died’, declares one. ‘I feel so guilty. They were buried in Germany the same day they were shot down.’
And he sent me the picture I had never seen before, labeled in his hand, five friends for life smiling for the moment, smiling for eternity, though the kid in the back looks more reserved, almost as if he is already carrying the burden that will haunt him in some ways forever.
My book with the vets recounting the air war over Europe starts with the kid on the far left in the top photograph (Clarence), and ends with the one in the back, on the far right (John), 73 yrs later. So I went back to the cemetery where I had visited with my father many times in my boyhood, and left a simple note, and my book.
I found him, Clarence, or maybe John had rediscovered you, somehow, through me. But he did not forget you, and neither will anyone who reads John’s words:
‘I get a little emotional. I’m almost 95; I hope to see them all again in heaven.’
Teaching History Matters 