On the 70th anniversary of the Kassel Mission

On the 70th Anniversary of the Kassel Mission

Aaron Elson

President, Kassel Mission Historical Society

Sept. 27, 2014

Hard as it is to believe, today is the 70th anniversary of the Kassel Mission. Paul Swofford, one of a handful of pilots who brought his badly damaged B-24 back to England that day in 1944, left a message on my answering machine the other day. I could tell from the wavering in his voice how shaken he was by the memories, and yet he stressed how thankful he was that he had the opportunity to tell his story so that it would not be forgotten.

Every veteran of the Kassel Mission, every widow or sibling of a flier killed in the battle, has his or her own personal thoughts as the 70th anniversary of the battle approaches. Some family members of Kassel Mission veterans are in Germany where the annual wreath laying ceremony carries extra significance because of the 70th anniversary.

Thanks to the efforts of people like George Collar and Bill Dewey and Frank Bertram and Walter Hassenpflug, and the energy of the members of the Kassel Mission Historical Society, including Kassel survivors John Ray Lemons and Ira Weinstein, the sacrifice of the men lost on the Kassel Mission will be honored not only by the "next generation," but by the generation after that, as exemplified by social media wiz J.P. Bertram, and generations yet to come.

As for me, I don't have a familial connection to the mission. It was while visiting the village of Heimboldshausen where a buddy of my father's was killed in World War II, that I met Walter and became fascinated by the history of the mission, some of which I've helped to preserve through a series of informal oral history interviews.

So today I'm going to watch at least the beginning, and maybe a few scenes, of "12 O'Clock High," which to the survivors of the Kassel Mission is like "Patton" was to the veterans of my father's tank battalion, and I'll get all choked up when Dean Jagger sees that silly figure in the store window, and I'll listen for the drone of the returning B-24s. And I'll read the poem "High Flight," by John Gillespie Magee, a young Spitfire pilot who died in a training crash in 1941 at age 19, and and I'll remember George Collar telling me how disappointed he was as a youth because that was the War to End All Wars, and he feared he would never get the chance to be like his boyhood heroes.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless falls of air...
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, nor e'er eagle flew –
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

For more information on the Kassel Mission, visit kasselmission.com

On the Passing of Frank Bertram

The sinking of the Estonia, Sept. 28, 1994 (illustration from redicecreations.com)

   At first it seemed like a bizarre coincidence that Frank Bertram, one of the "Core 4" of the Kassel Mission Historical Society -- George Collar, Bill Dewey and Walter Hassenpflug being the others -- should pass away, shortly after his 94th birthday, on the second or third day of the South Korean ferry disaster.
   I say coincidence because when I visited Walter Hassenpflug in 1999, he gave me a photocopy of an article that appeared in Stars & Stripes. I no longer have the photocopy, I may have loaned it to a researcher, but it was dated either Sept. 29 or 30 of 1994, and it had a big article about the ceremony at the Kassel Mission Memorial marking the 50th anniversary of that Sept. 27, 1944 battle.
   There were, if I remember the article correctly, 600 people at the memorial, American survivors of the battle and their families, former German fighter pilots who took part in the battle, civilians who were children at the time. The article told how three of the people in attendance -- one American, Jima Schaen Sparks, and two Germans -- were born after their fathers died in the skies overhead.
   The article would have made the front page of the Stars & Stripes that day were it not for another ferry disaster, the sinking of the Estonia in the Baltic Sea with a loss of, according to Wikipedia, 852 lives, making if the worst peacetime maritime disaster since the sinking of the Titanic.
   For a while, questions swirled about the Kassel Mission -- was it due to a navigational error that the 35 Liberators of the 445th Bomb Group flew off course? Was there a secret target in the city of Goettingen? Were the other factors at play? Thanks to the exhaustive research of Linda Dewey, Bill's daughter, most of those questions have been answered, with the navigational error remaining the most plausible explanation. But who knew that a brief Internet search for information about the then-fresh ferry disaster that shared the issue of Stars & Stripes with the 50th anniversary of the Kassel Mission in 1994 would spawn conspiracy theories that make the grassy knoll look like an anthill. There was a big NATO exercise going on at the time; a day before the disaster a terror drill involving two bombs took place aboard the Estonia; Swedish phone lines were jammed at the time the first distress calls went out; 150 smuggled Iraqi Kurds may have been hidden in a truck, which would have increased the death toll to 1,000; contraband advanced Soviet weapons were on the Estonia; and as recently as last year the NSA and CIA were stonewalling the author of a 1996 book, "The Hole," questioning the official findings of the Swedish inquiry into the disaster.
   So I asked myself, Coincidence? I don't think so.
   Linda Dewey has noted that without Frank, there wouldn't be a Kassel Mission Memorial, and there might not even be a KMHS. It wasn't until Walter Hassenpflug -- who as a 12 year old boy captured an injured Bertram after the 19-year-old navigator bailed out of his crippled B-24 -- located him in the 1980s and the two got together, that the idea of a memorial to the fallen on both sides began to take shape.
   I never interviewed Frank, and only met him once, at a reunion of the 8th Air Force Historical Society in Savannah, but after I called him in 1999 he sat in his car, at least I think it was his car, with, I think he said two tape recorders, and just spoke into them. He sent me the two tapes he made, one 90 minutes and the other either 100 or 120 minutes. He just talked and talked. I transcribed the two tapes and used a narrative drawn from the transcript in my book "9 Lives." Initially I wanted to write a book solely about the Kassel Mission, but I realized I was just getting started, so I included three accounts of the mission, those of George Collar, Frank, and Kay Brainard Hutchins, whose brother Newell survived bailing out of his plane but was murdered on the ground by civilians.
   Last night I messaged Jima Schaen Sparks with a question about the Stars & Stripes article because I knew she was mentioned in it, and she replied with an anecdote about Frank, and how they met at the Frankfurt airport on their way to the ceremony marking the dedication of the monument.
   "It's really sad to hear of Frank Bertram," she wrote. "I recall so clearly when we met ... 1990 in the Frankfurt airport. While wandering around looking for the group meeting the bus to Bad Hersfeld, I saw another confused wanderer, obviously American, wearing a yellow sweater and khakis, a tall, handsome man with a military bearing.
   "We made eye contact, and after a short conversation learned we were both looking for the Kassel Mission group. He then inquired about my connection, saying I was a bit young to be the wife of one of the 'ol' guys.' I introduced myself, telling him that my father, Jim Schaen, was one of those killed on the mission.
   "He appeared speechless for a time, and just stared at me with eyes brimming with tears. Then he told me that he was with Jim at mail call when he received the letter from Mother telling him she was pregnant, just a few weeks before the mission, I believe.
   "He was the first person I'd ever met, other than family, who had known Jim."

For more information and accounts of the Kassel Mission, please visit Kasselmission.com

No Way to Treat a Widow Lady

Late in June, Sarah Schaen Naugher, the widow of Lt. Jim Schaen, traveled from her home in Pontatoc, Mississippi, to visit the grave of her husband. Sarah is 87 years old. Lt. Schaen was killed on the ill-fated Kassel Mission bombing raid of Sept. 27, 1944, and is buried at Arlington Cemetery.

Despite trying for two days, Sarah was unable to reach her husband's grave. Upon returning to Pontatoc, she described her experiences in a letter that she sent to President Obama. If you are as outraged as I am by this, I hope you will forward her letter to anyone you think would be interested in reading it. This is what she wrote to the president:

To Anyone Who Cares:

"For quite a number of years, I have been saving in anticipation of making one last trip to Arlington National Cemetery to visit my dear husband's grave for one last time. As I will soon be 88 years old, I must face that reality. A nearby Travel Service announced that they would be going to Washington, D.C., for six days on June 20, 2010. I immediately saw my chance to get back to visit Jim's grave for my last time.

"Our tour group planned to go to Arlington, as a group, on Wednesday, June 23rd, where we were told that we would take a Tourmobile and could get off at any point and catch a later one when it stopped. Wonderful. I could get off near Jim's grave and stay with him as long as I desired.

"It didn't happen. The Tourmobile driver said that they didn't go to the Section 8 part of the cemetery. After taking two tours, I got off and returned to the Visitors Center. I went to the information booth and talked with the person in charge. She told me that I would have to call a taxi and by using my Pass to Arlington, I could give the driver the section number and the grave site and he would take me to it. She told me the telephone number to call. As it was too late to call on Wednesday, I revised my schedule and decided to come back to Arlington on Thursday.

"On Thursday, my bus driver brought me back to the main entrance to Arlington and put me in a taxi to take me to the Visitors Center. As this driver didn't know anything about Arlington, I had him to let me out at the Visitors Center Information Booth where I had been the day before. I had them check the telephone number and they assured me that it was correct and that this was what I must do to go to my husband's grave.

"I told the telephone operator who answered that I needed someone who spoke English; someone who was familiar with Arlington Cemetery; and someone who could take me to the Comfort Inn in Fairfax, Va., when I was ready to go. She told me that she was sending an Arlington yellow cab and that it would be there in 15 or 20 minutes. As I was told to do, I waited at the main entrance for 35 minutes. No taxi. I went to the person who was directing traffic and told her what I was waiting on and that at my advanced age, I couldn't stand in the heat and wait longer. She said she would check with the taxis that were in line, which she did. None spoke English and were not waiting for me. Soon a red-top taxi drove up and she asked him and he said he was to pick up Naugher and I knew that it was for me. I gave him my Pass and told him to put it in front of him on the dash, which he did.

"He could barely speak English but I could understand him. As he knew nothing about Arlington Cemetery, I directed him to turn left on Eisenhower, and then a right on Patton Drive, which he did. As there was no Section 8 sign (I had given him a map of the cemetery and showed him Section 8), I told him to stop. As many new tombstones had been added since my last visit, I couldn't climb up the steep hill to look for Jim's grave, and the taxi driver was no help at all.

"After looking as much as I was able, I told him the address of the Comfort Inn in Fairfax, Va., and told him to take me there. I had spent two days at the cemetery and four days on the trip and had not yet visited my husband's grave.

"James Schaen of Des Moines, Iowa, was drafted in the first draft in the Spring of 1941. He did not volunteer but went willingly when called. He became an Air Force pilot on a B-24. He left me in Topeka, KS, on June 6, 1944, to fly across the Atlantic Ocean with his crew. He was stationed in Tibenham in England and was on his 15th mission when he was shot down by German fighters who attacked the 445th Bomb Group and shot down 25 B-24s within five minutes in the deadliest mission of the Eighth Air Force of WWII. I got the message that he was missing on October 14, 1944, but was not told that he had been killed when he was shot down until Jan. 25, 1945. During the winter of 1945 I was pregnant with our daughter, and did not know whether I was a wife3 or a widow. Our daughter, Jima Carter Schaen, was born in February, 1945.

"As his plane was shot down in East Germany near Gerstungen, Jim's remains and those of six other airmen were buried by the German citizens in the city cemetery. They were not exhumed until 1950 and Jim was buried in Arlington National Cemetery on January 31, 1951.

"I have been able to return to his gravesite five times over the years but failed on this last attempt. I called the Arlington National Cemetery telephone and asked if there was anything that I could have done that I didn't do and was told that I did everything right. I have grieved for my precious husband for 66 years and yet I couldn't get to his grave to tell him goodbye. He gave his life for America -- he never saw his daughter who just had her 65th birthday; nor has he seen his three grandchildren; nor has he seen his six great grandchildren.

"Is this the way a loving widow is to be treated? One who is trying to visit her husband's grave in the National Cemetery. Is this the appreciation America shows to those who have given their life for their country?

"With all my heart, Sarah Carter Schaen Naughter."