Memorial Day will find me at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, there to decorate my husband’s grave as I have for the years since he died.

Passing the sea of small white headstones, hunting for the one that reads: “Earl E. Hall, Captain, U.S. Army, WWII,” I’ll think of our 14-year age difference and how it mattered not a whit to either of us.

I’m forever grateful that a book was written about Earl’s service with the 1303 Engineer General Service Regiment before he passed on. Patton’s Fighting Bridge Builders recounts the daily diary entries of Company B, a “non-combat” unit that often found itself under enemy fire while acting as the southern flank of Patton’s rapid advance across France in August 1944.

I recently met two other WWII combat veterans whose experiences with the 15th Air Force also have been preserved for posterity. Vince Parker, who’s 89, was a tail gunner on the B-17 bomber.

Bob Clemens, 90, navigated the same huge aircraft, The Flying Fortress, through battle after battle. Their stories are captured on film in a YouTube presentation titled, The Tail Gunner and the Navigator.

Vince, of Stillwater, flew 41 missions, and Bob, of White Bear Lake, flew 50, bombing oil refineries, railroad bridges and marshaling yards throughout Europe.

Both men, who enlisted at 17, tell of terrifying moments with engines being shot out, and persistent flak hitting the B-17 in “gray puffs” when they were over their targets.

They share some quirky incidents, as well. Vince’s plane once crash-landed in enemy territory in Yugoslavia. A kid on a bicycle came near the downed B-17, waving machine gun ammunition at the crew and yelling, “Cigarettes, Joe?”

“During the war, cigarettes were the coin of the realm,” said Vince.

On a mission that Bob was flying with Col. Frank Kurtz piloting the lead plane, Nazi propagandist Axis Sally came over the radio, taunting them, saying, “We’re gonna get you today, Frankie, along with that pink-faced navigator from Minnesota.” (Bob’s youthful Air Force portrait verifies Sally’s description. And, incidentally, Col. Kurtz was actress Swoozie Kurtz’s father.)

Thanks to the book and the video, the world can know the stories of the battles Earl and Vince and Bob survived – unlike those of my dad, who served in WWI.

When I was little girl, I remember Papa sitting with other men in our living room, playing Whist and occasionally making mention of the horrible trench warfare, and commenting on how grateful he was that his gas mask had saved him from mustard-gas poisoning.

More than once, he said sadly, “You never forget the boys who died.”

My dad’s army doughboy portrait – such a serious face – and his olive drab uniform and steel helmet in the attic are all I have of the ordeal he endured in the Battle of the Argonne Forest.

Nothing was ever written down.

On this Memorial Day, the day of remembrance for all fallen heroes, I’m thankful for the stories that got told. They are stories we all need to hear.

Carol Hall lives in Woodbury. She’s a longtime freelance writer, a University of Minnesota graduate and a former Northwest Airlines stewardess. Hall’s book, Stewardess, relives the golden age of airline travel in the 1960s when she was a stewardess for Northwest Airlines. It is available for sale on Amazon.com. This article first appeared in the May 2015 issue of Minnesota Good Age.

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