A generation worth remembering

[Gutkowski]

Took me about 2 hours to read them all ,

WWII VETS TELL ALL

[S.ChrisKelly]

This is a documentary worth watching.  

 

https://ladybrigade.com/blogs/blog/the-world-war-ii-documentary-about-ptsd-that-you-never-saw

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

https://wpde.com/amp/news/nation-world/i-love-this-country-wwii-veteran-celebrates-77-years-after-being-awarded-purple-heart-john-samuel-jennings-jr-army-battle-of-the-bulge-campbell-county-honorary-resolution

 

https://wset.com/amp/news/local/world-war-ii-hero-campbell-county-dies-just-short-of-100th-birthday-john-samuel-jennings-board-supervisors-resolution-purple-heart-veteran-march-2023

 

Images courtesy of WSET/Will Stafford:

 

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

Follow up to post#3:

 

His story:

 

This year, he reached his 99th year of life, doing — you guessed it — more work.

 

"We worked all the time, I mean not just part of the time," Jennings recalled.

 

Jennings was born April 4, 1923, and pretty much from the start, he's been working.

 

First, he worked on his father's farm.

 

"We'd take the team, colt it up. We get in there and dig up roots around them stumps, cut 'em off, clean it up, and plant a crop on it," Jennings remembers of his time growing up on the same land he calls home today.

 

Then, at 20 years old, Uncle Sam called. 

 

"They called me the 13th day of July, and when I went up to the examiner, I never came back home — went right on to the Army camp," Jennings said.

 

It was at that point that Jennings went to work for his country.

 

His first stop was basic training. He had an edge over some others.

 

 "To me, I was having a vacation! I'd been used to hard work on the farm," Jennings said with a smile.

 

Once basic training was over, he was sent overseas to fight in WWII.

 

It was there that Jennings and his platoon would be battle-tested. Jennings served in one of the war's most important and deadly battles: The Battle of the Bulge. 

 

There, he suffered a severe knee injury but could not be removed from the battlefield for many hours.

 

"They carried everybody away, and I was left in them woods from 4 in the evening until 10 at night before they picked me up. ... The worst thing I could think of is what if the enemy counterattacked — and I'd be caught there. I couldn't walk. I couldn't do anything" Jennings recalled.

 

Once removed from the battlefield, the road to recovery was long and daunting.

 

It was for this that Jennings earned the Purple Heart — but never got a ceremony for it.

 

"When the war was over, I was in the hospital — just another day in the hospital. A lot of people were celebrating, but not while we are in the hospital," Jennings said.

 

Jennings was one of only two of his platoon to make it back home.

 

After starting a family and working a few odd jobs for a year or so, Jennings found happiness back on the farm.

 

That was until he decided to work with U.S. Postal Service.

 

 "Off-hand, I said I may be interested in the job, and he wouldn't leave until I promised I'd come up there," Jennings laughed.

 

That started his 20-year career with the Postal Service.

 

John loved the work and loved the people.

 

After his second retirement, he came back to his beloved farm and continued working up until just a few years ago.

 

He'll still step on the tractor from time to time, but his favorite spot is on the swing on the front porch, looking at his beloved farm.

 

This Hero in the Heart of Virginia credits two things with his long life, the first being God.

 

"The Lord has taken good care of me. I don't have anything to do with that," Jennings said.

 

As for the second thing, Jennings laughed: "Working never hurt ya."

 

His obituary:

 

John Samuel Jennings, Sr.

 April 4, 1923 - March 26, 2023

(99 years old)

 Gladys, Virginia

 

John Samuel Jennings Sr. Obituary

We are sad to announce that on March 26, 2023 we had to say goodbye to John Samuel Jennings Sr. of Gladys, Virginia. Leave a sympathy message to the family in the guestbook on this memorial page of John Samuel Jennings Sr. to show support.

 

He was predeceased by : his parents, Sydney William Jennings and Maude Davidson Jennings; and his grandson John Samuel "Sam" Jennings III. He is survived by : his sons, John Samuel Jennings, Jr. (Brenda) of Chesapeake and Donnie Lee Jennings (Dawn Reneé) of Gladys; his daughter-in-law Kelly Jennings; his grandsons, Justin Bobbitt (Vanessa) of Timberlake and Jason Taylor Bobbitt of Lynchburg; and his great grandchildren, Blake William Jennings, Sean Burke Jennings, Devin Riley Holdren, Layla Elizabeth Bobbitt, Willow Jae Bobbitt, Vivian Arleen Holdren and Easton Wilder Bobbitt.

 

Visitation was held on Wednesday, March 29th 2023 at 1:00 PM at the Ebenezer Baptist Church (267 Ebenezer Rd, Gladys, VA 24554). A funeral service was held on Wednesday, March 29th 2023 at 2:00 PM at the same location.

 

Memorial contributions may be made to Wounded Warrior Project, Tunnel to Towers Foundation, or The Gideons International.

 

Funeral arrangement under the care of Henderson Funeral Home

 

Wed. Mar. 29, 2023

 

Visitation

Ebenezer Baptist Church

267 Ebenezer Rd, Gladys, VA 24554

 

Wed. Mar 29, 2023.

 

Funeral service

Ebenezer Baptist Church

267 Ebenezer Rd, Gladys, VA 24554

 

Sources:

https://wset.com/amp/features/heroes-in-the-heart-of-virginia/local-veterans-99-year-history-of-hard-work-determination-gladys-virginia-john-jennings-may-31-memorial-day-2022

 

https://www.echovita.com/us/obituaries/va/gladys/john-samuel-jennings-sr-16171941

 

 

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

This man's story is an incredible must read.

Images:

1) The book.

2, 3, & 4) The author, Rabbi Jack Romberg.

5 & 6) The subject, Rabbi Romberg's Uncle, Richard Stern, a Jewish German soldier in World War One, decorated with the Iron Cross Class II 1914, decorated again with the Silver Star as an American Army Sergeant during World War Two by General Mark Clark during the Italian Campaign.

7) An image from the book, a handbill written, printed and distributed by Richard Stern in 1933, one of the very first acts of active resistance in Germany against the Third Reich.

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

Few more images related to Richard Stern, from "A Doorway To Heroism" by Rabbi Jack Romberg:

 

[S.ChrisKelly]

From The Wasington Post, 8 March 2022:

 

John Billings, who flew Allied spies behind Nazi lines, dies at 98

 

As a pilot with the Army Air Forces, John Billings flew 39 missions for the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime precursor to the CIA. (U.S. Army/AP)

Once there, the agents could infiltrate nearby towns and acquire crucial intelligence on the movement of Nazi troops and supplies through the Brenner Pass, along the border between Italy and Austria. Two of the spies were Jewish, increasing the risks they faced if the mission ended in capture. By some accounts, the flight itself was so dangerous that Britain’s Royal Air Force refused to go.

 

“Naturally, I signed up for the job,” Mr. Billings wrote in a 2021 autobiography, “Special Duties Pilot.” “If they’re crazy enough to jump there,” he recalled saying, “I’ll be crazy enough to take them.”

 

The mission, known as Operation Greenup, was considered one of the most successful OSS operations of the war; its operatives are sometimes described as “the real ‘inglourious basterds,’” after director Quentin Tarantino’s movie of the same name. Greenup was one of 39 OSS missions flown by Mr. Billings, who later worked as a commercial pilot and volunteered with the organization Mercy Medical Angels, flying patients who couldn’t afford to travel long distances for health care.

 

“John Billings is the prototype of an American aviator,” retired Air Force Gen. Norton A. Schwartz said last year, just before the publication of Mr. Billings’s autobiography. He was 98 when he died March 4 at his home in Woodstock, Va., four weeks after flying his single-engine Cessna Cutlass for the last time with help from a co-pilot. The cause was congestive heart failure and renal failure, said his wife, Barbara Billings.

 

“Everyone has some sort of addiction, and flying’s mine,” Mr. Billings told the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 2015 at age 91, in the midst of a 13-day flight around the contiguous United States with his longtime co-pilot, Nevin Showman. “But I have an excuse. I was born with a genetic defect. My feet hurt if I stand on the ground too long.”

 

Mr. Billings deployed to Italy in August 1944, tasked with flying the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, a heavy bomber that he jokingly referred to as “the pregnant pig.” He completed 14 combat missions before being assigned to the 885th Heavy Special Bombardment Squadron, which he later discovered was a front for the OSS. “We weren’t even supposed to mention that we were with OSS. The less people that know, the safer it is for all of us,” he told CNN in 2016. “I was a good boy. I didn’t talk about it to anybody.”

 

Stationed in the southern city of Brindisi, about 70 miles from the spy agency’s headquarters in Bari, Mr. Billings flew a camouflaged B-24, painted gloss black to avoid being seen at night. He and his fellow aviators dropped supplies for partisans and undercover operatives, including 500-pound containers full of gold coins used to bribe Germans. They also dropped spies, notably in Operation Greenup.

 

Launched in February 1945, the mission was aborted twice because of bad weather. Mr. Billings recalled that the third attempt went forward after he was told that the wind speed atop the Alps would exceed 200 miles per hour that night — an ominous warning that bore out when the plane encountered a powerful downdraft that caused it to drop 6,000 feet in 18 seconds, according to the flight navigator.

 

In his autobiography, Mr. Billings wrote that he used emergency power to give the plane’s four engines more horsepower than they were designed to withstand, helping to slow the descent and stop the fall. The three spies soon parachuted successfully to the ground, landing in waist-high snow, and sledded downhill, heading toward Innsbruck.

 

The operatives included Frederick Mayer, a German-born Jew who posed as a Nazi service member separated from the rest of his unit; Hans Wynberg, a Dutch-born Jew whose parents and younger brother perished in the Holocaust; and Franz Weber, an Austrian officer who had defected from the German army.

 

Mayer “gathered vital intelligence that hastened the war’s end,” Charles Pinck, president of the OSS Society, a group that honors the wartime agency, said in an email. Even after he was captured and tortured by the Germans, Mayer persuaded the regional Nazi authority to surrender Innsbruck to approaching Allied forces, “saving untold thousands of lives,” Pinck added. “He was the only member of the OSS who was nominated for the Medal of Honor.”

 

Mr. Billings became good friends with Mayer, who died in 2016, two years before lawmakers awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the OSS as a whole after a years-long campaign for recognition for the spy agency. “I’m happy that the OSS got recognized,” Mr. Billings told The Washington Post after an award ceremony he attended with about 20 other OSS veterans. But, he added, “So many people, deserving people, are not here anymore. It would have been nice to have them know about it as well.”

 

The oldest of three children, John Malcolm Billings was born in Winchester, Mass., on Aug. 7, 1923, and grew up in Scituate, a coastal town south of Boston. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a millwright who took Mr. Billings for his first flight as a third birthday present.

 

The ride was “probably 10 to 15 minutes, but it seemed like the whole afternoon,” Mr. Billings told the Virginian-Pilot in 2018. “That really buried itself under my skin, and it’s still there.” He took his first flying lesson at 15 and entered aviation training after enlisting in the Army in 1942.

 

Mr. Billings retired from active duty as a captain in 1946, having received honors including the Distinguished Flying Cross.

 

His first wife, Nancy Gardiner Billings, died in 1995. In addition to his wife of 24 years, the former Barbara Staley, survivors include three children from his first marriage, Susan Billings of Dumfries, Va., Leslie Billings of Alexandria, Va., and Lee Billings of Stafford, Va.; two stepdaughters, Lisa Oleskie and Lori Staley, both of Woodstock; a brother; six grandchildren; and 13 great-grandchildren.

 

Mr. Billings spent nearly all of his commercial aviation career at Eastern Airlines, where he worked as a pilot before going into mandatory retirement at age 60 in 1983. He continued flying for nearly four more decades, upgrading his Cessna to fly 462 “Angel Flights” as a volunteer pilot with Mercy Medical Angels.

 

As Mr. Billings told it, his passengers — including sick or disabled children — paid for the trips in “big smiles and big hugs,” with aviation costs covered by him and his co-pilot, Showman, who developed lasting relationships with some of the patients.

 

“One time, an adorable little girl asked me, ‘If I’m going on an Angel Flight, does that mean I’m an angel?’ Naturally, I confirmed it,” Mr. Billings told the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Mass., in November, when he retired from the volunteer flight program because of a recent heart attack. “By the end of the flight,” he continued, “both of us were absolutely convinced.”

 

[Note:  Captain Billings flew with my father many times during his career with Captain Eddie's Great Silver Fleet...  My father, Captain Gerald M. Kelly (1937 - 2003), Eastern Air Lines, 1965 - 1989, employee number 46772.  They were great friends, and I met Captain Billings several times decades ago.]