Memories of a WW II Vet

SARATOGA SPRINGS - Two and a half years had passed since World War I ended.
Rudolph Valentino was the desert warrior in "The Sheik" and Zez Confrey's
"Kitten on the Keys" was riding high on the nation's musical hit parade.

Those were the headlines when James Marchione was born on the first day of June 1921.

He grew up in Troy when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was governor of New York, and the first television broadcast was produced from a lab in nearby Schenectady. Then down came the stock market, in came the Great Depression and up went the Empire State Building, which opened its doors two weeks before Marchione's 10th birthday.

On the eve of his 82nd birthday, the World War II veteran sat in his third-floor room in the Saratoga Hospital Nursing Home and reminisced about his time in the war and about his family.

"I've got a beautiful wife," Marchione says, his eyes beaming and his face wearing a smile that threatens to light up the entire room. "And four great kids - three boys and a girl," he says. "And they all turned out pretty good."

Marchione holds open a case and displays a bronze cross that hangs from a red, white and blue-striped ribbon. The medal is the Distinguished Flying Cross, awarded for heroism during combat or extraordinary achievement in aerial flight. Marchione earned it in World War II. He shares the distinction with Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart, who were among the
award's early recipients.

"I didn't get to go in with my friends from my block," Marchione recalls about the time
when he was called into service.
"The reason is I overslept," he laughs. "But really, I'm also glad. They went to the Pacific. I ended up instead going to the E.T.O. - the European Theater of Operations," he says, barely disguising his pridle.

He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross after flying his 25th mission in the war, but it was the 26th, and his last, that leaves the biggest impression.
"The last mission was a doozy. My outfit was the 8th Air Force. We were stationed in Norwich, England and flying a B-24 aircraft - The Liberator - over Berlin.
"It wasn't as famous as the B-17 - the Flying Fortress - they got all the publicity," he says
of the aircraft that captured the public's fancy and carried Jimmy Stewart on some of their flights.
"Although Clark Gable came on five missions on the B-24," Marchione points out.

The B-24s also flew higher, faster and farther than the B-17, as well as carrying a larger bomb-load, dropping more than 600,000 tons of bombs during the war, according to Marchione.

Losses were especially heavy during the early bombing campaign of Germany in 1943. One of the problems was that Allied fighter escorts|didn't have the range to travel the entire distance with the B-24s - the bombers basically flew unescorted into Germany, leaving them vulnerable to attack.

"This was all pretty fresh at the time. The only escort we got at first was from the (British) Spitfires. They would only go as far as France then they would have to turn back. It wasn't until later that we got the P-51s," Marchione says. Shortly after the P-51 Mustang Fighters were
put into battle, the Allies gained air superiority over Germany.

The "Mighty 8th" flew their four-engine bombers during daylight bombing operations and faced dense flak.

"On the B-24, I was sitting where one of the .50 caliber machine guns was strapped in - which you got to through a hatch," Marchione says.

The plane's cruising speed was 215 mph. At maximum, it could go around 290 mph and carried a crew of 10. During high-altitude missions, it was capable of climbing in excess of 25,000 feet. The crew wore oxygen masks and braved temperatures that fell to 30 degrees below zero.

He remembers being called on that day over Berlin, and moving from his normal position where he was sitting.

"There was a fighter at 2 o'clock. When I got up and came back, there was a gaping hole right where I was sitting. The flak must have gone right through. It was only this thin aluminum and I moved just in time," he says. "You had to be lucky and hope that you didn't get shot down. When we dropped a bomb on Berlin, the flak field was pretty big. You knew the longer you stayed, the more dangerous it was."

Missions would take him from Norwich, England, where he was stationed, over France and Germany.
"We used to bomb submarine pens and places like that," he says.

When he returned to civilian life in Troy, and later moved to Round Lake, he worked
for 13 years in the cleaning business. He then worked for the next 30 years in a factory for a company that ultimately ended up selling to foreign buyers.

"They went and sold it to a French Company," shaking his head, laughing, "How do you like that?"

War, it seems, binds men in lifelong friendships. Marchione remains in contact with those he served with on missions 60 years ago. "Today, there are three of us that are left - me, the navigator, and Fox the radio man."

Then he looks out the third floor window of the nursing home out at the surrounding landscape and talks about how things have changed.

by Thomas Dimopoulos
published in The Saratogian, May 25, 2003.