My father was born on November 6, 1922, in New Orleans. He was the first-born child of Mexican immigrants and had two younger sisters. His father, Francisco, was a veteran of the Mexican Revolution who had come to this country seeking a better life.

My father's dream was to become an aeronautical engineer. He was a sophomore at Tulane University when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He wanted he to immediately join the service but his parents pleaded with him to stay in school. He reluctantly agreed to postpone his enlistment, but only until the completion of the school year. He eventually enlisted in the USAAF on June 12, 1942.

He met my mother, Paula Andrade while stationed in San Antonio, Texas. He was assigned to Navigator School and she was serving as a volunteer hostess at the downtown USO. They fell in love and were married on Christmas Eve in the base chapel on Brook Army Air Force Base. She followed him throughout the West as he underwent flight training as a B-24 Liberator crew member. She still remembers the dust at Wendover, Utah, the mosquitoes at Mountain Home, Idaho, and the beauty around Casper, Wyoming. They last saw each other in Wichita, Kansas just before he flew off to England in the spring of 1944. Their aircraft was named "Back to the Sack" and featured a painting of Donald Duck in a nightshirt and nightcap, holding a candle and yawning.

Upon arrival in England, this crew was asked to volunteer for the elite 492nd Bombardment Group (Provisional), the now famous Carpetbaggers. This was a unit under the command of the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), not the USAAF. The OSS was the forerunner of today's CIA. All crews were volunteers, and were under strict orders to maintain secrecy about their missions, under penalty of death. Their mission was to fly into the occupied countries and drop spies and supplies to the resistance fighters. They would also, when possible, land behind enemy lines and extract downed Allied airmen. Most of their missions were flown at night, alone, and at low level to avoid German radar. Casualty rates, as expected, were very high. Some crews simply disappeared, probably crashing at sea. They were under strict orders to maintain radio silence, even when in trouble. If captured and identified, they were treated as spies and executed by the nazis.

Several excellent books have been written about the exploits of the Carpetbaggers. Among these are: "They Flew by Night, Memoirs of the Carpetbaggers" as told to Col. Robert W. Fish, "Carpetbaggers-America's Secret War in Europe," by Ben Parnell, and "The Bedford Triangle, US Undercover Operations in Europe in W.W.II", by Martin W. Bowman.

After the liberation of France in December, 1945, my father and his crew again volunteered to fly similar missions in Eastern Europe, this time out of Italy. On February 9, 1945, while on a mission to drop supplies to the partisans fighting the nazis in Yugoslavia, their aircraft exploded in midair as they crossed the Adriatic coast over present day Croatia. There were no survivors and the cause of the explosion was never determined. Their remains were initially interred in the American Cemetery in Belgrade, and eventually re-interred in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery near St. Louis, Missouri. The individual remains could not be identified and they were buried in a group as comrades-in-arms.

They are:

1st Lt. Robert W. Maxwell, pilot
2nd Lt. Frank E. Marcus, copilot
2nd Lt. Francis I. Cervantes, navigator
2nd Lt. Robert C. Jackson. bombardier
S/Sgt. Lionel A. Tetzloff
S/Sgt. William P. Kavanaugh
S/Sgt. Kyle B. Jones
Pvt. William W. Elliott

I was born three weeks before my father died, and he knew of my birth. Although I never felt his touch or heard his voice, a day seldom passes that I don't think of him in some way. Like many war orphans, I would often dream that he would someday walk back into our lives and tell us it had all been a mistake- that he had been lost, or taken prisoner, or on a secret assignment. I was about ten when I finally realized he really wasn't coming home. Once I dreamt I was standing by his grave, and I remember I awoke in tears. I don't think my mother ever got over losing him. She never remarried.

I am extremely proud of my father. He was and is my hero. He was loved, admired and respected by those who knew him. He was somewhat serious, hard working and quiet, but fun loving and gregarious at the right moments. He once went to pick my mom up for a date, but got too involved in a baseball game with her younger brothers and sisters in the street in front of her home and they never got to go out. He loved making things and was an award-winning model builder. I have a newspaper clipping of him receiving an award for a scale model of the Queen Mary that he built. That model is still in our family.

Dad, I've always loved you and missed you. I have tried very hard to live my life in a way that would have made you proud of me. You have a beautiful daughter-in-law and granddaughter who I both love deeply. Thank you for your sacrifice.