On D-Day, his war story was just starting

Sixty-six years ago today, Marvin Hendrickson was not landing on a beach at Normandy. On D-Day, his war was still ahead of him.

“I was 21,” the Arlington man said Thursday.

At 87, searching nearly seven decades of memories, Hendrickson put himself in the place he’d been when Allied forces by the tens of thousands landed in France by air and sea. Their blood and bravery that day, June 6, 1944, changed history in the war against Nazi Germany.

Hendrickson was already in the Army Air Corps, but far from those beaches — Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword — and the airborne landing sites of Normandy. Nearly 3,000 Americans died in one day, and the number of Allied forces killed, wounded, captured or missing totaled about 10,000.

“On D-Day I was still here in the U.S.,” said Hendrickson, a retired teacher and principal who worked at the old Arlington Elementary School. “D-Day happened while we were in Mountain Home, Idaho.”

With the Eighth Air Force, Hendrickson was at Mountain Home Army Air Field for training as part of a B-24 crew. Called the “Liberator,” the B-24 was a heavy bomber that carried a crew of 10 — a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, and six gunners.

“I was a ball turret gunner, I was underneath,” Hendrickson said.

In 1944, there was no 24-hour news cycle. “I know we listened on the radio,” said Hendrickson, who doesn’t clearly recall hearing or reading about D-Day in great detail.

That day, he was one of countless young Americans preparing to take up arms. In all, more than 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during World War II. Hendrickson already had been based at Buckley Field, Colo., and had gone to gunnery training at Laredo Army Air Field in Texas. Of his gun practice, he remembers firing from a plane into a target sleeve pulled by another plane.

It was all preparation for 26 missions flown over France and Germany — 27 if Hendrickson counts one terrifying flight that ended in a crash landing.

A Yakima native, Hendrickson was sent to England in October 1944, five months after D-Day, to an air field at Attlebridge, near Norwich. With the 787th Bomb Squadron of the 466th Bomb Group, he was part of Lt. Bob Gordon’s B-24 crew.

Those men — Bob Gordon, William Rieger, W.O. Seymour Schram, Otis Tichenor, George Perry, Leroy Zach, Lane Arrington, Doyle Campbell, Charles Ondes and Hendrickson — would stay together through all 27 missions, and beyond. “Our crew, we had two 18-year-olds, two 23-year-olds, and the rest of us in between,” Hendrickson recalled.

They all made it home, landing in Connecticut June 13, 1945.

Through the years, he made it to about six reunions. “One time, we were the only crew, of hundred of crews, with all of us still alive and still in contact,” he said. “Then our co-pilot died, and that took us out of that.

“I’ve got medals and my wings. And I’ve got pictures, but I don’t know where they are,” he said.

Their first mission was Nov. 26, 1944, when they targeted a bridge at Bielefeld, Germany, and picked up flak holes in the B-24 tail. A Christmas mission bombed supply lines and rail yards in the German town of Prum.

There’s one flight Hendrickson can’t forget. With one engine hit by flak and a broken oil line in another engine, the crew had to jettison the bombs. They crash-landed at a British fighter base in France, and were stuck there 10 days until a transport plane gave them a lift back to England.

“We didn’t get credit for that one,” he said.

Missions from England lasted six to 10 hours, he said. At an altitude of more than 20,000 feet, with no heat, “if you had any skin showing, you got frostbite right away,” Hendrickson said.

Several years ago, he had the chance to climb into his ball turret gunner position in a B-24 at Arlington Airport. The plane hadn’t changed, but his physique had.

“Back at the time, I had plenty of room, but in 65 years it had shrunk,” he quipped.

It was all a long time ago. Exact dates and places aren’t as vivid as they once were. Hendrickson holds fast to the memories of the men on that warplane.

“Our pilot was 20 years old,” he said. “I don’t know of any 20-year-old now that I’d put my life in their hands like I did him.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.

Learn more

An account of World War II missions flown by the B-24 on which Arlington’s Marvin Hendrickson served, with a photo of his crew, is at the Web site of the World War II Illinois Veterans Memorial: http://ww2il.com/?p=275

To read about D-Day and view U.S. military photos from June 6, 1944: www.army.mil/d-day

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