See this article from the May 11, 2003, issue of the AARP Veteran Report.
MY HERO — Shot Down Twice, Airman Brought Parachute Home to Become His Bride’s Wedding Dress
American pilot volunteered to stay behind enemy lines and faced epic trek to freedom.
By
Charles E. Stanley Jr.,
May 11, 2023
As I grew up, my father — Charles E. Stanley Sr. — lived a quiet life working as an accountant for a utility company. I knew he had been a bomber pilot during World War II, but it didn’t seem to be a big deal. Nearly every kid’s father was a veteran of the war — mine seemed no different.
But he was.
My father had been shot down twice, first over Romania, then over Yugoslavia. When he returned from the war and married my mother, she wore a wedding gown made from the parachute he had used the second time he bailed out. He carried that parachute for about 130 miles as he trudged from what is now Bosnia into modern-day Croatia.
I didn’t begin to look into his story until 1999, when he was 77. It turned out that he, like many ordinary men from the greatest generation, had participated in some truly extraordinary events.
On Oct. 13, 1944, my father’s B-24 bomber was critically damaged over Blechhammer, a key German synthetic fuel plant. With two of his four engines knocked out, he realized he could not return to his base in Italy. The conventional move would have been to try to reach the nearby Russian lines in Poland.
My father knew, however, that drunken Russian pilots often attacked U.S. bombers that ventured into their airspace. He also knew an American delegation was stationed in Bucharest. Although Romania was three times farther than Poland, he opted to fly there over the strenuous objections of his copilot. In my extensive research, I have found no other pilot who did so.
His gamble paid off, but just barely. His remaining engines failed just after he passed the German lines, and he bailed out from an altitude so low the jump should have killed him.
That was a terrific story, but it was only when I researched my father’s second bailout — the one over Yugoslavia — that I realized he had participated in historic, yet previously unexplored, events. No one, I discovered, had written about the 2,000 Allied airmen sheltered by Marshal Tito’s Partisans during the war.
This untold story, I decided, had to be told.
When my father returned to combat after his first bailout, his plane again took flak hits over Blechhammer. This time, he flew toward a zone held by Partisans in modern-day Bosnia. He and his crew bailed out safely and linked up with the underground, but they became trapped behind enemy lines. Eventually, 84 downed airmen gathered in Sanski Most, the town that gave them shelter.
Bad weather and the nearby German army prevented an evacuation for more than a month. The war-torn area lacked the resources to support the stranded airmen. Relations with their Partisan hosts strained to the breaking point. Several efforts to retrieve them by air failed.
At last, British secret agents called in three C-47 transport planes for a rescue. The transports could only carry 66 of the airmen, so 18 had to remain behind. As was typical of my father, he volunteered to be one of those who stayed. The major in charge of the planes promised to return for them the next day, but never did.
As a result, my father and the others were forced to traverse the Dinaric Alps in January 1945, the most severe winter of the century. Blizzards dropped 6 feet of snow along their path. Two of their Partisan guides froze to death, but the airmen all survived their journey and reached the safety of Sinj, where they were able to board a train.
During my research, I discovered that my father’s copilot from the first bailout — the one who had objected to flying to Romania — had taken credit for the feat in my father’s absence and had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. My father did not care about the medal. The only thing that mattered to him was that his crew returned safely from both bailouts.
My book about his and the other airmen’s adventures was published last year. My father did not live to see his story told, though he knew it was in the works. He died in 2004, the day after he returned from witnessing the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington. It seemed he had been allowed to live just long enough to receive the thanks of his country.
I’m not really one for hero worship. Heroes have a way of falling off their pedestals. Yet the more I learned about my father, the more my respect for his capabilities and his strength of character grew. He and his fellow airmen are my heroes.
See my article, “Airmen Behind Enemy Lines,” in the Fall 2022 issue of the Pittsburgh Quarterly.
Also follow the link below to see my article in the 2022 Spring issue of WNY Heritage Magazine.
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Follow the link to my article in the Longmont, CO newspaper from February 26, 2022
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Follow this link to my article in the Ashland, KY Daily Independent from Feb. 23, 2022
Charles Stanley Jr. — Hometown Hero: John Mulvaney | Opinion | dailyindependent.com
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The article below appeared in Knox Pages on February 22, 2022.
Mount Vernon’s World War II flying hero met his fate 77 years ago | History | knoxpages.com
Mount Vernon’s World War II flying hero met his fate 77 years ago
- By Charles E. Stanley Jr., author of Lost Airmen
MOUNT VERNON — On this day in history, Feb. 22, 1945, Lt. Frederick Coe, a native of Mount Vernon, was killed in action while on a bombing mission in the Brenner Pass between Italy and Austria.
Coe grew up on a farm, and he loved hunting on the property accompanied by his dogs.
A graduate of The Ohio State University, he hoped to settle into the quiet life of a farmer after the war. With the draft looming, he decided to volunteer for the Army Air Forces rather than slog through the war in the infantry.
He passed the AAF’s rigorous physical and mental tests, won his wings, and became the pilot of a B-24 heavy bomber commanding a 10-man crew.
His crew found the soft-spoken Coe to be demanding yet friendly and fair. They appreciated that he treated them respectfully, like adults, rather than subordinates.
They also had the utmost faith in his ability as a pilot. They figured that if anybody could get them through the war in one piece, it would be him.
On Dec. 18, 1944, Coe took off for his fifth mission, a visit to the Oświęcim oil refinery. The facility lay next to the Auschwitz III concentration camp, so the bombardiers were briefed to be especially careful to make sure that their bombs fell on target.
Coe’s formation ran into a cluster of thick, billowing, cumulus clouds on the way to the target. By the time the planes came out of the mire, the formation was a tangled mess.
They reorganized into two extemporaneous groups. Coe joined a pack led by Lt. Col. Harrison Christy, and resumed course. A second cluster followed behind.
Soon after Coe’s group crossed into Hungary, Christy’s lead plane took a corrective turn. His navigator had missed some landmarks. More time and gas were lost.
At last, they reached the target. Just as Christy’s men opened their bomb bays, the second echelon slanted across their path a thousand feet below. The navigational mistake had brought the two groups over the target simultaneously.
The pilots in the lower group looked up with horror. At any moment, hundreds of bombs would drop through their ranks. They veered sharply to the left as rivulets of 500 pounders slipped past. Disaster had been narrowly averted, but the evasive action disrupted the bombardiers’ aim in the lower group.
A later strike photo analysis indicated the raid had severely damaged the refinery. Other bombs, however, had destroyed some barracks inside Auschwitz III. No doubt, innocent lives had been lost in the confusion.
Vapor trails streamed from Coe’s engines soon after bombs away. As far as he could tell, the plane had not been hit; the issue was mechanical, but it was serious.
Coe could only get as far as Yugoslavia before he ordered the crew to bail out.
Coe and his co-pilot, Dale Hoffman, stayed with the plane until the rest of the crew jumped. They escaped just as the engines failed completely.
The pilots landed close to each other and quickly linked with a band of Partisans. Ten days later, they returned to their base in Italy.
The rest of the crew straggled in later. Some were flown out of Yugoslavia on Jan. 5. The rest, including Flight Engineer John Mulvaney, had to walk across the Dinaric Alps to safety. They did not arrive back in camp until late January.
Coe spent three weeks in the hospital before he resumed flying. The rest of the crew rejoined him after a brief rest. Coe and his men decided to fly as often as possible to finish their 35 mission tours.
On Feb. 22, they set off for their seventh mission in 10 days, a raid against a rail junction in Worgl, Austria. Weather again broke the formation up over the Adriatic.
Six planes, including Coe’s, headed through the Brenner Pass toward their alternate target, Merano, Italy.
Soon Coe’s navigator warned him that they were just five minutes from some flak emplacements. Surely the navigator in the lead plane had made a mistake. Couldn’t Coe divert around them?
“We can’t,” replied Coe.
He could not leave the formation unless the plane was crippled. Those were perhaps the last words Coe ever spoke.
The flak guns embedded on the mountainsides opened fire from virtually point blank range. A shell scored a direct hit near the cockpit. Coe, Hoffman and Mulvaney were killed instantly. The rest of the crew bailed out safely. Most became POWs.
Coe’s parents received word that he was missing in action again in early March. Since he had gone missing and returned once before, they believed he could do so again.
It was not to be.
The posthumous Distinguished Flying Cross awarded to their son was small consolation. When his belongings were sent home, they found a poem written in his notebook:
A little flower, a pleasant smile,
And kind words said to me
Mean more than long-drawn eulogies
When life has ceased to be!
One has to wonder whether Coe had a premonition of his impending doom. He is buried in the Mound View Cemetery in Mount Vernon.
This story was abridged from the author’s upcoming book Lost Airmen: The Epic Rescue of WWII US Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines, available from Regnery Press.
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The article below appeared on FoxNews.com on Valentine’s Day, 2022
Valentine’s Day memory – my mother wore a WW2 parachute wedding dress | Fox News
Valentine’s Day memory – my mother wore a WW2 parachute wedding dress
By Charles E. Stanley Jr.
On the evening of March 26, 1943, my dad was a lonely Army private who attended a church service in an unadorned chapel in Buffalo, New York. It was a Friday night, and most of his fellow aviation students were out on the town blowing off steam. He had opted to attend this religious retreat instead.
Charles and Mary Alice Stanley, their newlyweds’ first dance on their wedding day, Oct. 27, 1945.
A trio of girls, students from the local teachers’ college, sat above in the choir loft surveying the male contingent below. Per custom, the soldiers had removed their Army caps. One head of wavy black hair stood out. Lorraine, a pretty blond, pointed at him. “Did you see the cute one?”
“I don’t like cute boys!” snapped Mary Alice Schmitz.
She had indeed noticed the handsome private at the registration table, but boys with his kind of looks never seemed interested in bespectacled, serious girls like her. Besides, she volunteered regularly at the local USO and knew how visiting soldiers could be.
When the weekend retreat continued the next day, the program’s moderator asked Mary Alice to take a count for the Sunday communion breakfast. Approaching a lone soldier, she realized that he was the “cute one” from the evening before. The soldier told her his name, Charles Stanley, and that he would attend.
“What a pretty girl,” my dad thought. Her glasses didn’t bother him a bit.
Charles and Mary Alice Stanley, kissing outside the church after their wedding ceremony.
When the weekend retreat continued the next day, the program’s moderator asked Mary Alice to take a count for the Sunday communion breakfast. Approaching a lone soldier, she realized that he was the “cute one” from the evening before. The soldier told her his name, Charles Stanley, and that he would attend.
“What a pretty girl,” my dad thought. Her glasses didn’t bother him a bit.
It happened that the fellow student who was giving him a ride back to his barracks across town was a neighbor of Mary Alice’s. When it was time to leave, they all climbed into the same car. Soon dad was seeing Mary Alice at every chance.
Two months later, he moved on to another training site and became a bomber pilot, but he and Mary Alice continued their romance via an extraordinary correspondence that lasted until the end of the war.
The bride and groom, Oct. 27, 1945. Charles carried his parachute across Yugoslavia so Mary Alice could use it as material for her wedding dress.
Their letters were interrupted twice. The first time, dad and his crew bailed out over Romania but returned in just over a week. The second time, they bailed out over Yugoslavia. He was picked up by the Partisan underground but remained missing for two months. His adventures in Yugoslavia would become the basis of my upcoming book, “Lost Airmen.”
Dad carried his parachute all the way across Yugoslavia so that Mary Alice, my mother, could use it as material for her wedding dress. He later claimed that she was disappointed he didn’t bring the parachute back the first time he was shot down, so he had to bail out again a second time to get another one.
They married on Oct. 27, 1945. The story of the parachute wedding dress was picked up by news wire services and was published in newspapers all over the Northeast. My parents were married for 30 years, and had five children, 13 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren.
Charles E. Stanley Jr. writes of his parents’ romance and his father’s harrowing escape from the Nazis in “Lost Airmen: The Epic Rescue of WWII U.S. Bomber Crews Stranded Behind Enemy Lines“ (Regnery History; March 15, 2022).
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My article, “Books Before Bombers: Buffalo’s Aviation Students During World War II,” ran in the Spring 2016 issue of Western New York Heritage magazine! http://WNYHeritagePress.org
