11/11/2020
Happy Veteran’s Day Papa! We Love you!! ❤️
In 1944, 17 year old Papa Angelo, ("Uncle Sonny") DeVincenzi, sailed to England on the Oceanliner/converted troop transport ship, Queen Elizabeth, with the U.S. Navy. A fast ship for its day, it crossed the Atlantic Ocean without an es**rt! Uncle Arthur DeVincenzi was stationed in England with the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was a ball turret gunner on a B-24 Bombe
Just before D-Day, (June 6, 1944) Uncle Arthur learned from the Red Cross that Papa was in Southern England. Understand that this was 1944 and that a world war was going on. Communications were nothing like they are today-they still used telegraph/telegrams to send messages long distance, not telephones. Nobody knew where anyone was stationed during those years; (When you are in the military during wartime, you can't tell anyone where you are. The military uses "APO" addresses to disguise locations-Army Post Office, Fleet Post Office, etc.)
Papa DeVincenzi was kneeling on the floor of his barracks, shooting dice in a "crap game". All of a sudden someone was standing next to him in an Army Air Corps uniform, wearing officer's pants. He thought that he had been busted! He looked up to see Uncle Arthur standing there. They went out on the town and celebrated their incredible reunion. At the end of the night, Papa put Uncle Arthur on a train that was headed North towards London; He was feeling pretty good after partying all night and Papa wondered if he would get off at his stop.
Papa found out that when Uncle Arthur had asked his commanding officer for permission to go see his brother, he said no, and denied him a pass. Uncle Arthur then liberated an officer's uniform, went AWOL, and got on a train to go and visit Papa. (Officers need a pass to leave their base. Uncle Arthur was a sergeant).
They didn't see each other again until well after the war ended. Uncle Arthur's B-24, (Nicknamed "Struggle Baby") was hit by flak and badly damaged over Saarbrucken, Germany. It crash landed in Switzerland after D-Day. He was on his 25'th bombing mission over Germany. When his bomber didn't return to his base in England, his mother, Nonnie (Lucia) DeVincenzi got a telegram that said that he was Missing in Action, (M.I.A.). She later learned that he was alive, but was a Prisoner of War. Switzerland was supposedly a neutral country, but they sympathized with the Germans. The Swiss Air Force flew German Messerschmidt fighter planes and would often shoot down U.S. bombers in their airspace! Uncle Arthur became a Prisoner of War, (POW) in Switzerland, one of over 1,500 American Airmen that were interned there until the end of the war. Uncle Arthur said that the German Officers would go to Switzerland for R&R, (rest and relaxation) during the war. The American Airmen there were allowed to walk around town during the daytime, but were locked in at night, sleeping in unheated quarters; the food and drink that they were given was marginal and minimal. Uncle Arthur's name appears in the back of the book, "Shot from the Sky", by Cathryn J. Prince. This book tells about the Allied POW's who were captured and held by the Swiss during WW II.
Uncle Arthur didn't like the Swiss hospitality. He and another airman were able to procure civilian clothes and escaped from Switzerland. Uncle Arthur spoke enough Italian to pass themselves off as Italian laborers. They made it to France and the French Underground got them safely across France and back to England. If they had been captured wearing civilian clothes by the N***s, they would have been shot as spies and killed on the spot.
I visited Uncle Arthur at the Mass. General Hospital in Boston a few days before he passed away on Halloween, 2006; (He actually couldn't speak, but he scribbled a few pages as we "talked". See attached.) He knew that he was dying, but had a sense of humor and a smile to the end...
He wrote, "This is a monitor. I already had two heart attacks. If I feel another one coming, I have to push the button. I don't have to worry. God don't want me; neither does the devil. 25 bombing missions in a B-24 over Germany proves I'll live forever. We got shot down on our 25'th mission, over Saarbrucken, Germany. August 11, 1944. We crash-landed and I was interned. Saarbrucken, is way down in Southern Germany, almost on the Swiss border. We used to bomb their aircraft and munition factories. The RAF, (Royal Air Force) did the night bombing. We did daylight bombing. When they shot flak up, it scares the sh-t out of you, even if it is not a hit ! The concussion feels like a direct hit. We were a 4 engine bomber, but it did not have jet power. The Germans had jet power, ME 262's, a jet Messerschmidt. They definitely would have won. The reason they lost the war was that they could not make enough planes. I never thought I would come home. Most of the Swiss were pro-Nazi."
Uncle Arthur is in the lower right corner of the photo, next to his B-24 in England.
“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”
