Paul, King, Mark, Ralph, and William, are the five Henderson brothers who served in World War II. William, Ralph, King, and Mark are shown in the photo below.
Paul, shown in the following photo, was the oldest and served as the driver for the commander of Mclellan AFB in Sacramento, CA. He remained there for the duration of the war.
King, my father, was second oldest and served as a B-17 bombardier in the 8th Air Force stationed in England. He flew a total of 37 missions over Europe.
The following photo shows Ralph and King in their flight gear.
Mark, shown on the left in the following photo, was an officer in the quartermaster corps and landed on Omaha Beach the day after D-day to catalogue and recover the bodies of our fallen troops.
Ralph, shown on the left in the following photo, was stationed with his older brother King and also flew on B-17’s for a short while, until an event occurred that caused him to ask for and be granted “ground duty.”
William, on the right in the preceding photo, was the youngest of the Henderson siblings. William, or “Billy” as he was called, almost escaped WWII because of his age, but like many of the youth of those times he was “Gung Ho” to get into the fighting, like his brothers. He was not yet seventeen when he got special permission to enlist in the paratroopers. It was late in the war and the military was desperate for troop replacements during the “Battle of the Bulge,” Billy was one of those troops.
He was home for Christmas in 1944, and had just turned seventeen on December 5th. Family and friends remember how exuberant he was and how excited he was to get into the action and take the battle to Hitler. He shipped out in early January of 1945, and was killed in action on February 2nd, 1945. He was in the European Theater of War for less than a month before he died, and is buried in the military cemetery in Épinal, Vosges, Lorraine, France. He was just seventeen years and two months of age.
EPINAL
No comments:
Post a Comment