WWII Timeline – Summer 1933
I’m continuing my WWII Timeline series with a look at July – September 1933 in this post.
A Timeline of WWII, Summer 1933
July 1933
The Nazis enacted a law to allow forced sterilization of those found by a Hereditary Health Court to have genetic defects.
July 14, 1933
The Nazi Party was declared Germany’s only political party, which effectively outlawed all other political parties.
The Nazis enacted a law to strip Jewish immigrants from Poland of their German citizenship.
September 22, 1933
The Nazis established the government agency Reich Chamber of Culture as a professional organization of all German creative artists with the purpose to gain control over all cultural life in Germany, creating and promoting Aryan art consistent with Nazi ideals. All artists had to apply for membership on presentation of an Aryan certificate without which resulted in an occupational ban.
September 28, 1933
The Nazis enacted a law to prohibit all non-Aryans and their spouses from government employment.
September 29, 1933
The Nazis enacted a law to ban Jews from all cultural and entertainment activities including literature, art, film and theater.
The Nazis prohibited Jews from owning land.
Sources:
This series of posts is based on a compilation of timelines from:
The History Place:
The National WWII Museum Interactive Timeline
Most recent post from the series:
© Cindy Farrar Bryan and The Arrowhead Club, 2018
Special Orders Number 86
Dad (George Edwin Farrar) spent his last training days in the States in Ardmore, Oklahoma. He did his combat crew training at the 222nd Combat Crew Training School (H) at the Ardmore Army Air Field.
Dad received his Combat Orders on June 8, 1944, followed by Special Orders on June 23, releasing him from assignment and duty at Ardmore and transferring him to AAB, Kearney, Nebraska.
Special Orders #86, Buslee crew (* indicates married)
Special Orders Number 86 sent fifty-five ten-man B-17 crews from Ardmore Army Air Field on the first leg of their journey into combat. These five hundred fifty airmen traveled to Kearney not by air, but by rail, arriving on June 24, 1944.
In Kearney, Nebraska the crews were assigned brand new B-17’s to ferry to England. The crews all likely considered that shiny new B-17 “theirs” as I know my dad did, but that new ship would not follow them to their base. Once it arrived in England, it would be assigned to whichever bomb group needed a replacement aircraft.
Of those fifty-five crews transferred on Special Orders Number 86, eleven, including my dad’s, were eventually headed to Grafton Underwood and the 384th Bomb Group. These eleven crews were headed by pilots:
- Edgar L. Bills
- James J. Brodie
- Bert O. Brown, Jr.
- John O. Buslee
- Walter W. Cline
- Donald B. Duesler
- Howard A. Jung
- William R. Kinnaird
- Noel E. Plowman
- John R. Proctor
- Rodney J. Wood
I have written previously about the information I have on Dad’s journey to the ETO from Kearney, Nebraska, which you can read here.
To be continued with more information about the next assignment to Grafton Underwood for these eleven crews…
© Cindy Farrar Bryan and The Arrowhead Club, 2018
WWII Timeline – Spring 1933
I’m continuing my WWII Timeline series with a look at April – June 1933 in this post.
A Timeline of WWII, Spring 1933
April 1, 1933
A week after Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany, he ordered a boycott of Jewish shops, banks, offices and department stores. It was mostly ignored and called off after three days, but it was followed by a series of laws which robbed Jews of many rights.
April 7, 1933
“The Law of the Restoration of the Civil Service” was introduced. ‘Aryanism’ was made a necessary requirement in order to hold a civil service position. All Jews holding such positions were dismissed or forced into retirement.
In Nazi doctrine, Aryan meant a non-Jewish Caucasian, especially of Nordic stock.
April 11, 1933
The Nazis specifically defined non-Aryans with an official decree as “anyone descended from non-Aryan, especially Jewish, parents or grandparents. One parent or grandparent classifies the descendant as non-Aryan…especially if one parent or grandparent was of the Jewish faith.”
April 22, 1933
The Nazis enacted a law in which Jews were prohibited from serving as patent lawyers and from serving as doctors in state-run insurance institutions.
April 25, 1933
The Nazis enacted a law against the overcrowding of German schools, which placed severe limits on the number of young Jews allowed to enroll in public schools.
April 26, 1933
Hermann Göring created the Gestapo, the secret state police, in the German state of Prussia. Göring was the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, Prime Minister of Prussia, Plenipotentiary (a person having full power to take independent action on behalf of his government) for the Implementation of the Four Year (economic) Plan, and designated successor to Hitler.
The Gestapo would later be taken over by Heinrich Himmler and terrorize the continent of Europe.
May 6, 1933
The Civil Service law of April 7 was amended to close loopholes in order to keep out Jewish honorary university professors, lecturers and notaries.
May 10, 1933
German students from universities formerly regarded as among the finest in the world, gathered in Berlin and other German cities to burn books with unGerman ideas. Books by Freud, Einstein, Thomas Mann, Jack London, H.G. Wells and many others went up in flames as students gave the Nazi salute.
At the Berlin book burning, which was accompanied by the singing of Nazi songs and anthems, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave a speech to the students, stating…
…The era of extreme Jewish intellectualism is now at an end. The breakthrough of the German revolution has again cleared the way on the German path…The future German man will not just be a man of books, but a man of character. It is to this end that we want to educate you. As a young person, to already have the courage to face the pitiless glare, to overcome the fear of death, and to regain respect for death – this is the task of this young generation. And thus you do well in this midnight hour to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past. This is a strong, great and symbolic deed – a deed which should document the following for the world to know – Here the intellectual foundation of the November (Democratic) Republic is sinking to the ground, but from this wreckage the phoenix of a new spirit will triumphantly rise…
Included in the book burning were works by German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. One-hundred ten years earlier in 1823 in his work, Almansor: A Tragedy, Heine had predicted,
Where books are burned, human beings are destined to be burned too.
June 2, 1933
The law of April 22 was amended to prohibit Jewish dentists and dental technicians from working with state-run insurance institutions.
Sources:
This series of posts is based on a compilation of timelines from:
The History Place:
The National WWII Museum Interactive Timeline
Most recent post from the series:
© Cindy Farrar Bryan and The Arrowhead Club, 2018
Frigham Young
A few weeks ago, in an article about the B-17 Lead Banana, I published a poem about that Flying Fortress by Lawrence Vallo, radio operator of the Paul Norton crew of the 384th Bomb Group. Vallo was a Native American airman and you can read much more about him in that previous post. I immediately recognized the Vallo name when I read the poem and that got me to thinking about some Norton crew photos I had in my collection.
There is a connection between the Paul Norton crew and the John Buslee crew of which my dad, George Edwin Farrar, was the waist gunner. The Buslee crew arrived at their air base in Grafton Underwood, England about seven weeks after the Norton crew. They were both part of the 544th Bomb Squadron and therefore lived in the same area of the airbase.
Map of Grafton Underwood airbase
Note the circled 544th SQDN in the bottom right corner of the map of the Grafton Underwood airbase. I speculate that the enlisted men of the Buslee crew may have even shared living quarters with the enlisted men of the Norton crew. Among my dad’s photos from Grafton Underwood are several of the enlisted men of the Norton crew, which I share below with further descriptions. I believe all of these casual photos may have been taken in the same time period as this one of my dad and some of his Buslee enlisted crewmates.
Buslee crewmates left to right: George Edwin Farrar (waist gunner), Lenard Leroy Bryant (top turret gunner), Erwin V. Foster (ball turret gunner), and Sebastiano Joseph Peluso (radio operator). In the background (left) are tents, and (right) a latrine.
The Buslee crew’s first mission with the 384th Bomb Group was on August 4, 1944. It was a training mission for crew pilot John Buslee. With Buslee in the co-pilot seat and Arthur Shwery showing him the ropes, that didn’t leave a spot in the cockpit for Buslee’s co-pilot David Albrecht. So Albrecht got in some training himself flying as co-pilot with the Paul Norton crew.
L to R: (I believe) David Albrecht and Carl Guinn
Courtesy of George Edwin Farrar’s WWII photo collection
I think the photo (above) is of the Buslee crew’s David Albrecht on the left and the Norton crew’s Carl Guinn on the right. Carl was the Norton crew’s engineer/top turret gunner and his position in the aircraft was directly behind the pilot’s compartment. The engineer interacted with and assisted the pilot and co-pilot and was in charge of interpreting the instrument readings during flight. A good engineer knew what the combination of instrument readings meant as far as condition of the engines, etc.
I believe the photo, and most of the others included here, were taken after the completion of the August 4, 1944 mission. The next photo will explain why.
Standing, L to R: John Bregant, Carl Guinn, and Lester Noble
Kneeling with jacket: Clarence Bigley
Courtesy of George Edwin Farrar’s WWII photo collection
Notice the flight jacket in the above photo. The man holding it was Norton crew waist gunner turned togglier Clarence Bigley. Bigley decorated the back of his jacket with the crew’s nickname Frigham Young and twenty bombs. I don’t believe it was coincidence that the August 4, 1944 mission was Bigley’s twentieth. As for the name Frigham Young, it was a play on words on the name of Mormon leader Brigham Young as the crew’s commander, pilot Paul Norton, was reportedly a Mormon.
Also appearing in the above photo are Norton crew tail gunner John Bregant, engineer/top turret gunner Carl Guinn, and ball turret gunner Lester Noble. In the crew photo of the entire Norton crew, I can identify Bregant as of November 2021. Bregant’s granddaughter, Kathryn Bregant Smith has positively identified him in photos for me.
Paul E. Norton crew
Co-pilot Robert C. Barnes standing on left, Togglier Clarence Bigley kneeling 2nd from left, Engineer Carl Guinn kneeling 3rd from left, Tail gunner John Bregant kneeling 4th from left, Ball turret gunner Lester Noble kneeling 2nd from right, Radio operator Lawrence Vallo kneeling far right
Photo courtesy of Tracie Guinn Coons, Carl Guinn’s daughter
The man standing on the right in the above flight jacket photo has Les painted on the front of his flight jacket. He must be Norton crew ball turret gunner Lester Noble.
It took me years to identify Carl Guinn in the photo, but with the help of his relatives on Facebook, we made a positive ID about a year ago. I could never make out the name on the front of his flight jacket, but Carl’s daughter Tracie was able to clear up that mystery. The name painted on the front of her dad’s flight jacket is Jelly. Carl was a southern boy, born in Mississippi and was living in Louisiana when he enlisted in June of 1942. At the Grafton Underwood enlisted mess breakfasts, the other men would tease Carl about his southern accent when he asked “would y’all pass the jelly.”
All four of these men of the Paul Norton crew were on the August 4, 1944 initiation flight of Buslee co-pilot David Albrecht aboard the B-17 Little Kenny. The poet of the crew, Lawrence Vallo, was aboard, too, and so was Thomas Everitt, the Norton crew’s waist gunner.
Thomas Everitt and Carl Guinn…
L to R: Thomas B. Everitt and Carl Guinn
From a lead crew photo courtesy of Mark Léautaud of The Netherlands
and Native American airman Lawrence Vallo…
Lawrence Jonathan Vallo
who later wrote a book, Tales of a Pueblo Boy, about his life growing up in an Indian Pueblo, which can still be found on used book sites and Amazon.com.
Remember the tents in the background of the photo of my dad and three of his crewmates at the beginning of this article? The tents in that photo look to be the same tents that Carl Guinn and John Bregant are standing in front of in this photo.
L to R: Carl Guinn and John Bregant
Courtesy of George Edwin Farrar’s WWII photo collection
Also, in both photos, Carl Guinn and Lenard Bryant are both wearing the same type of coveralls. Carl was the top turret gunner for the Norton crew, and after the Buslee crew’s top turret gunner, Clarence Seeley, was injured on the August 5, 1944 mission, Lenard, previously trained as a waist gunner, took over that position. I believe it was Carl who gave Lenard some pointers as to what tasks a B-17 engineer/top turret gunner performed.
Lenard attended radio school for a while during his training in the states, and was familiar with reading switches and settings, so probably was a quick study for the requirements of adapting to the position of engineer/top turret gunner for the Buslee crew. From his first mission on August 4 as a waist gunner, Lenard had only five days to figure out his new job as top turret gunner on the August 9 mission, not much time for any kind of formal training.
L to R: Lenard Bryant and Carl Guinn
Courtesy of George Edwin Farrar’s WWII photo collection
All members of the Frigham Young crew, including pilot Paul Norton, navigator John Lezenby, and original bombardier Hugh Green completed their tours with the 384th Bomb Group with the exception of one. Co-pilot Robert C. Barnes was killed while flying with a different crew on November 16, 1944.
Paul Norton crew co-pilot Robert C. Barnes
I must conclude, considering that my dad had these photos of the enlisted men of the Norton crew in his collection, that though most men didn’t make a lot of friends outside of their own crew, the enlisted men of the Buslee crew and Norton crew must have been friends and may have even shared living quarters in the 544th Bomb Squadron enlisted housing.
I’d even like to go a bit further in thinking that my dad, from Georgia, and Lenard, from Texas, took a liking to Carl because he was a fellow Southerner. Living so far from their families in America, hearing “y’all” from a fellow airman in England probably helped them feel at home.
Wouldn’t our dads be amazed to know that their children had “met” through a Facebook group because of some long-forgotten photos saved from their time in WWII? Long after my dad, George Edwin Farrar, and Tracie and Debbie’s dad, Carl Guinn, served in that great war, we were able to find each other and make a new connection in the 384th Bomb Group NexGen family.
Update, November 2021: Another connection this month with family of Norton crew tail gunner John Bregant adds to my 384th Bomb Group NexGen family. Thank you to John’s granddaughter, Kathryn Bregant Smith, for connecting with the group and providing positive IDs of John in wartime photos.
I have made many such connections over the years of researching my dad’s time in the war and I know I will make many more as my journey to learn more about the 384th Bomb Group and Grafton Underwood continues…
© Cindy Farrar Bryan and The Arrowhead Club, 2018
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