MY DEAR FRIENDS AND
FELLOW AMERICANS:

It is a joy to see so many of you here today, as it was on Friday afternoon to see hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers, many of them children, come out to help place flags on the graves of the veterans in this aptly named Liberty Memorial Cemetery. They placed 5,200 flags here in about 30 minutes!

It was a thrill, Friday, to watch parents and older siblings explain to the smaller children why they are honoring the people buried here, in this manner.

In many places in our nation, particularly some of the larger urban areas, if one were to judge solely by what one sees on television or in the newspapers, it would be easy to conclude that Americans regard Memorial Day mainly as a day for picnics, barbecues, ball games and shopping, as the beginning of summer vacation, as the day the pool opens, making it appear as though most Americans are quite indifferent about honoring those who have fought and died in defense of freedom and democracy, making it seem as though it is no longer fashionable to memorialize fallen heroes, and especially those of the last half century.

But Americans do remember, or at least many of us do. Before heading out to the lake or off on a shopping spree, millions of Americans take time on Memorial Day to attend a band concert, participate in a memorial service, as we are doing here today, or visit the local cemetery and leave flowers or flags on the graves of loved ones who risked and sometimes sacrificed their lives in the service of their country.

But Americans do remember, or at least many of us do. Before heading out to the lake or off on a shopping spree, millions of Americans take time on Memorial Day to attend a band concert, participate in a memorial service, as we are doing here today, or visit the local cemetery and leave flowers or flags on the graves of loved ones who risked and sometimes sacrificed their lives in the service of their country.

Others may spend the weekend with family, and yet still take time to talk among themselves about the reason we have a Memorial Day — take time to remember.

Judging from the attendance here today, and from your demeanor, and also from the heart-warming turnout of volunteers here on Friday, it is clear that in this town, the sacrifice of those who served their country in the armed forces and, in particular, of those who paid the ultimate price in defense of our freedom, is both remembered and deeply appreciated.

Similar scenes are being played out today in thousands of other towns across this great nation.

And yet, there are those who do not remember —and, unfortunately, there are a great many, particularly of the younger generations, who have never been taught.

It is important for the rest of us, who do appreciate the service and sacrifice of those we honor here today, that we make our appreciation visible so that the families of those who have served or are still serving, and most particularly our own families — our own children and grandchildren — will know how we feel.

The more we are seen to show honor and respect and to express an eternal debt of gratitude for those who have served their country in the armed forces, the more those feelings of honor and gratitude will spread to others.

George Washington said, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation.”

Former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill said, “A nation that does not honor its heroes will soon have no heroes to honor.”

We would all hope, of course — and pray — that our children and grandchildren will never have to serve in another war, would never have to become heroes on the field of battle. But I think both Washington and Churchill would agree, as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan both expressed so eloquently, that freedom is worth defending and that the risk of war is greatly reduced when our enemies do not perceive us as weak but know we are willing to fight for our freedom.

I was in Army basic training at Fort Ord in 1961 when my Commander-in-Chief, President Kennedy, said, on an occasion similar to this one here today:

“In an age that threatens the survival of freedom, we join together to honor those who made our freedom possible.”

Unfortunately, in the years that followed, many more Americans would be called upon to die in defense of freedom.

President Reagan said of them in a Memorial Day speech in 1986 that all of these men and women “were different, but they shared this in common: They loved America very much. There is nothing they wouldn't do for her.”

The numbers of courageous young Americans who have lost their lives in defense of liberty, from the time of the American Revolution to the present day, are almost beyond comprehension. The numbers of those lost, sometimes, in a single battle stagger the imagination. Many others were wounded, or suffered as prisoners of war, or endured great hardships — and all, as President Reagan said, because they loved America very much.”

Yet as every one of you here today know all too well, it is not the numbers that matter, but the individuals. Their lives. Their hopes. Their dreams. Their courage and valor. Their personal sacrifice. We remember, and we honor, and we grieve for each one individually. And each one has his own story.

I would like to share with you briefly one of those stories — the story of one individual who like most other American heroes was just an ordinary American with an extraordinary love for his country.*

THERE WERE FEW CLOUDS in the sky over Blechhammer, Germany the morning of October 13, 1944, as a formation of B-24 Liberator heavy bombers from the U.S. Army's 451st Bomb Group, based at Castelluccio Air Base in Italy, approached their target, an oil refinery that provided fuel for the Nazi war machine.

The good visibility was a two-edged sword: It made it easier for the bomber crews to see their target on the ground, and it made it easier for the German anti-aircraft defenses on the ground to see their targets in the air.

As the target came into view, 1st Lt. Charles Ralph Campbell saw a veritable wall of flak bursts in the sky ahead of him. Undeterred, the young pilot held his course as did the other pilots in the formation, flying directly into and through this barrage of aerial explosions that had proven to be Hitler’s most effective defense against allied bombing missions.

Four months earlier, Allied forces had established a beach head at Normandy, suffering enormous casualties in the process. Now, the Allied troops were, for the first time in the war, making steady advances on the ground — but against stiff resistance and at horrible human cost.

Lt. Campbell and the other members of his crew understood that diminishing Germany’s ability to fuel its tank battalions and fighter squadrons would save American lives and hasten the end of the war.

They also knew the dangers facing them on every mission they flew.

Now, as their big bomber penetrated the flak wall defending the target at Blechhammer, Lt. Campbell and his crew saw the bursts of black smoke around them at close range, heard the explosions of the anti-aircraft shells over the roar of their own engines, and felt the concussion as flack fragments struck the number two engine and ripped through the tail section.

In the tail turret of the plane just ahead of them, an army photographer snapped a picture, freezing the moment in time. The photo shows smoke streaming from the number two engine of the plane, and behind it a sky filled with flak bursts, and plumes of dark smoke bellowing from the refinery below. They had hit their target.

For the second time in just over two weeks, Lt. Campbell flew a severely damaged airplane back to the base in Italy, with no injury to any of his crew. It would happen again, and yet again.

Once, the crew counted 88 holes from flack bursts in their ship.

On another occasion, the plane was too badly damaged to make it back to base and Lt. Campbell brought the crippled craft down on a narrow and much-too-short makeshift fighter airstrip. The big bird mired deep in the mud at the end of the runway, but the crew emerged, once again, unscathed.

BY LATE NOVEMBER, 1944, Lt. Campbell and his crew had completed 18 combat missions. Thirty-five were required to complete a tour of duty, so that left just 17 to go.

Already, bomber crews of the Fifteenth Air Force had sent more than two million tons of crude oil up in flames and had inflicted major damage to aircraft factories, airfields, bridges, marshalling yards and other targets.

Yet the job was far from over.

On November 20, Lt. Campbell wrote what was to be his last letter home.

He talked about how tiring the missions were, “pounding through an eight to nine hour flight,” with temperatures inside the plane getting as cold as 54 degrees below zero. But “there are hundreds of other guys doing the same thing,” he wrote. “All of us like to feel that we’re helping to finish this thing as fast as possible.”

And then he added these heart-wrenching words:

“Dad, I find the things that occupy my mind most are the plain, ordinary things of life. I want to come home just to live for the joy of living and doing.

“I want to get up in the morning, do a good hard day’s work, eat a good meal at a good family table, say ‘hello’ to the neighbors, shoot pheasants, walk out through a pretty field of spuds, drive to town through the snow, go to church with my Dad, wrestle with the boys and tease Mom and the girls, sing in the choir, have a family dinner together on Thanksgiving, go fishing, haul more beans with my truck than the next guy can with his, hug my Mom, marry the sweetest girl in the world, do as fine a job raising a family as my Dad did, build a house and help to make it a home.”

On the morning of December 11, 1944, 1st Lt. Charles Ralph Campbell, my uncle, climbed aboard his assigned aircraft, along with the other nine members of his crew, and prepared to depart for Vienna.

Ralph took the pilot’s seat in the cockpit alongside his co-pilot, 1st Lt. Jack Ward.

The navigator for the mission was Lt. Dave Davis. Lt. Kenneth Trimmer was bombardier. T/Sgt. Charles Clark was flight engineer. T/Sgt. Paul Butler was tail gunner. S/Sgt. Gilbert Fisher was nose gunner. S/Sgt. Andrew Kraynak was ball turret gunner. T/Sgt. William Devine and S/Sgt.Vincent Daniels were waist gunners.

Lt. Campbell had been designated deputy wing commander for this “vital and dangerous mission.”

One after another, the big 30-ton bombers cranked up their four powerful engines, pulled into line, lumbered down the runway, picked up speed, and lifted off into the early morning sky with 2,700 gallons of fuel and four tons of bombs aboard.

The formation of bombers flew up the coast of Italy, then across the Adriatic toward an Initial Point over Austria where it was joined by several other heavy bomber squadrons and an escort of P-38 fighter planes.

In all, 435 heavy bombers from the Fifteenth Air Force, with fighter escorts, attacked targets in and around Vienna that day. Some 100 B-24 Liberators, including the one flown by Lt. Campbell, assembled in formation and headed toward their assigned target, the Moosbierbaum oil refinery on the outskirts of Vienna.

Flying straight and level at 21,000 feet, Lt. Campbell penetrated the flack field as he had done on previous missions. Several bursts of flack struck the aircraft, disabling its communication systems, but at this point, none of the crew had been hurt.

Continuing over the target, the tight formation of Liberators released their bombs and then followed the wing commander on a sharp turn to the right. That path took them directly over a battery of 105 mm. Howitzers mounted on flat-bed rail cars. “The fire was painfully accurate,” Sgt. Butler later recalled.

The wing commander’s plane was hit, went out of control, and began a rapid descent.

At about the same time, Lt. Campbell's co-pilot, Lt. Ward, saw another flak shell explode just above the number three engine to his right, rocking the aircraft. Flak fragments blasted into the side of the plane, instantly killing the pilot and ripping through the left hand, left calf and right foot of the co-pilot, who lost consciousness.

By the time his crew mates were able to revive Lt. Ward, the plane had lost 10,000 feet of altitude. One engine was out, one was sputtering, and the instruments were not operating.

Bleeding heavily, and with three of his four limbs incapacitated, the left-handed copilot grabbed and muscled the yoke with his remaining good right hand and managed to pull the heavy ship out of its steep dive and regain control, thus saving the lives of the crew. Lt. Ward tried get the aircraft over allied territory but was unable to do so before it became necessary for the crew to bail out. All of them landed in enemy territory and were taken prisoners of war. Eventually, all of them came home, with the exception of their pilot who, as one crew member later wrote, “gave his all for the defeat of our enemy.”

It was not in vain. Five days after Lt. Charles Ralph Campbell, died in action over Vienna, the Germans launched their Ardennes Offensive in eastern Belgium — the famed Battle of the Bulge. The fighting went on for six weeks, resulting in 81,000 American casualties, including 19,000 killed. It was the largest land battle of the war, and the Germans threw everything they had into the offensive in one last all-out effort to push the Allied forces back into the sea. But they failed — largely because their tanks literally ran out of gas. Although the fighting would continue for several months more before Germany surrendered, an Allied victory was now assured. The courage, faith and sacrifice of Lt. Ralph Campbell and his crew, and tens of thousands of other airmen who risked and so often sacrificed their lives in the strategic bombing campaign to turn off the oil spigot of the German war machine, paid dividends. That effort and that sacrifice, along with those of so many others, did, in fact, hasten the end of the war, save American lives, and help crush the brutal Nazi regime.

 
The St.-Avold American Military Cemetery in France where
Lt. Charles Ralph Campbell is lies interned along with thousands of other
brave young men and women who gave their lives in the cause of freedom.
Let us never forget. 

Abraham Lincoln, in his famous Gettysburg address, which at one time nearly every school child in the country could recite, said: “It is for us the living … to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — tha t from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

Two hundred and forty years ago, Samuel Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence, wrote these words that are as appropriate today as they were then:

“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards: And it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair Inheritance from our worthy Ancestors: They purchased them for us with toil and danger and [expense] of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men….

“Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity,” Sam Adams continued. “And [let us] resolve to maintain the rights bequeath'd to us from the former, for the sake of the latter.”

My friends, I submit to you here today that it is by such resolve that we can best honor the lives and sacrifice of those for whom we have come here in remembrance on this special day.

I urge you to join with me in that resolve, that we may say to those who risked and sacrificed their lives for our freedom — WE WILL NEVER FORGET!

Source: www.PerspicacityPress.com. Copyright © 2011 Rand Green Communications.
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*Amore extensive account of Lt. Ralph Campbell and his crew was originally published in the January 2003 issue of Perspicacity Press and posted on PerspicacityPress.com on Jan. 26, 2003, under the title, "The Last Letter Home." It was subsequently reproduced in the June 2006 issue of Perspicacity Press. It can be read in its entirety at the following link:
http://www.perspicacitypress.com/Articles/2003/01/Lastletterhome30126.htm

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