Honor Flight taking group to war memorial

An Ottawa B-17 tail gunner will be in the air because of World War II but this time, his destination will be Washington, D.C.

Ray Talbott and four other World War II veterans from Pomona and Garnett will be among several men and women who will fly to the World War II Memorial in Washington for free this week as part of Honor Flight sponsored by Lyndon High School.

Lyndon students have raised some of the money and picked up grants for veterans’ tickets for the flights and will escort veterans to visit the memorial and other memorials for the one-day trip, he said.

And Talbott and his wife Marilyn are grateful.

“It’s a wonderful thing that the Lyndon students are doing,” she said.

Rare opportunity

“We’re all over 80,” he said.

The Talbotts, who were among the organizers of the Franklin County Veterans Memorial, frequently take part in the Ottawa Veterans Day parade but decided last fall to be spectators.

“We figured we would sit it out and see what the parade looked like,” Ray Talbott said.

He was surprised when Brian Spencer, superintendent of the Lyndon USD 421 school district, jumped out of a cart in the parade, dashed over and asked him if he was a World War II veteran and offered to fly him for free to the memorial in Washington.

“I didn’t know the guy from Adam and I don’t know why he picked me out, but I told him sure, I’d go,” Talbott said.

The bomb group

“You won’t find that on any map now,” Talbott said.

When he was drafted in 1944, he requested the Air Corps because his older brother was in the Air Corps.

His brother, Seth, a B-24 pilot, was killed at New Guinea when his bomber crashed on take-off. His name is on the Franklin County Veterans Memorial.

The younger Talbott trained for B-17 bombers at Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas, and then met and trained in Florida with the nine men would become his war — and lifetime — buddies — who would make up his bomber crew. They served from the fall of 1944 until the end of the European war in 1945.

They flew 26 missions ranging over the skies above Hitler’s Fortress Europe, from Normandy in France, to Berlin (an eight-hour flight) to the last mission over Pilsen, now in the Czech Republic.

The B-17 was one of two American four-engined heavy bombers that rained destruction on Nazi Europe in an attempt to bomb the Germans into submission.

The B-24 was bigger, faster and carried more bombs but caught fire and disintegrated from enemy fire more easily.

“I loved the B-17,” Talbott said. “It was a rugged airplane. It could take a beating.

“There were a lot of times we came back on three engines.

“One ship came back with the whole nose blown away.

“The bombardier had been killed and the pilot and co-pilot had been wounded but they flew it back.”

Talbott’s crew was never attacked by German fighters although there were hostile planes in the air.

Instead, Talbott’s planes were often hit by flak from German anti-aircraft guns.

“We came back one time with more than 200 different holes,” he said.

He shows visitors a heavy gray thumb-sized piece of German shell that smashed and lodged inches away from him in a belt of 50-caliber bullets feeding his machine guns.

“It would have hit me right here,” he said, pointing to a spot on his back at his left kidney.

Unlike earlier B-17 crews, who stayed in one plane sporting a name and sometimes-gaudy art painted on the nose, Talbott’s crew were assigned whatever plane was available the day of the mission.

“If it could fly and didn’t have too many holes in it, we flew it,” Talbott said.

Honoring their history

“This puts names and faces to the people and events that are described in their textbooks,” Spencer said. “It’s been an incredible project.”

One student brought in a batch of copied maps and documents from one veteran who enthusiastically responded to her request for information.

She was puzzled by the packet and she dropped them on Spencer’s desk.

“What are these, Mr. Spencer?” she asked.

He examined them and discovered the maps and documents showed the position of every American military unit and the complete plans for dealing with the Nazi thrusts during the Battle of the Bulge.

“These are cool; they’re way cool,” Spencer said he responded.

About 30 Lyndon High School students are involved in the flights, which began this fall and continue through this spring, he said.

Originally, the fall flight included Osage County vets or family members who served during the war but the flights have been so popular that they’re attracting veterans from all over the state and into Missouri, he said.

Veterans also will visit the Korean War Memorial, he said.

“Many of them fought in both wars,” Spencer said.

Originally, Spencer came up with the idea when he heard that Osage County World War II veterans had little hope of seeing the World War II Memorial and when he realized that an important part of history was disappearing as the World War II vets died.

He was galvanized into action when his uncle who was a veteran had a stroke at a family reunion.

“We as a country have been too late,” Spencer said.

“We were late in talking to our veterans. We were late in building the memorial.

“By the time it was built, most of our veterans couldn’t get there.”

Money for vets

On the day of a “make or break” meeting on whether to proceed with the plan, Spencer heard a radio news report about Earl Morse, the founder of Honor Flight, a national organization that flies veterans for free to Washington.

“After I heard it on the radio, I called,” Spencer said. “An hour later he called me back.”

Honor Flights, based in Springfield, Ohio, provided the expertise and grants to get the project off the ground, he said.

A nearby school district, South Coffey County at LeRoy, also did an Honor Flight after the board heard from Spencer.

“It’s something that every high school should do,” he said.

Lyndon picked up major grants from the Jones Trust, the national VFW and from Wal-Mart Distribution Center at Ottawa, but much of the money has come from the public, a few dollars at a time.

“The other day, a man walked into my office and told me what a good thing we were doing,” Spencer said. “Then he gave me $50, turned around and walked out.”

Students have staged a few fundraisers for the Honor Flights and they’ve drawn surprising amounts of money, he said.

“When you get a $100 bill, you know it’s not because the spaghetti was that good,” Spencer said.