When the Nazis invaded Poland, our dad, Joe Borawski, along with many others in the Port Richmond community, began sending care packages of clothing to the occupied areas. Dad said that they tried to smuggle money to them by sewing it into the clothes. He said they later received a note from Poland asking them to stop sewing money into the clothes, because the Nazis were ripping it out, leaving them only with rags.
When the Japanese bombed Pear Harbor in 1941, our dad was a 19-year-old welder at the Navy Yard. He could have probably stayed at the Navy Yard for the duration of the War: Welding at the Navy Yard was about as vital a wartime activity as it gets.
But in a decision that probably involved a few “choice words,” he decided to enlist in the Army Air Corps in late 1942. He wanted to be a pilot.
Dad’s time in the Air Corps lasted a little less than a year. He told stories of survival training in the desert where he had to eat rattlesnake (to no one’s surprise he reported that it tasted like chicken).
He remembered that the British were training with his unit at Lowery Field and would get airsick inside the B-17s and would leave the planes a mess. Apparently, in the RAF, they had servants to deal with such things.
He also remembered telling the wrong person that he didn’t want to do an assigned task and was assigned to fly in a B-25 target plane. This was a plane that was towed behind another and was used for target practice: a clay pigeon with wings, dad in the driver's seat.
Dad was assigned to a B-17 crew as a flight engineer. He remembered the pilot's name as Staber, co-pilot Martinelli, and radio operator was Tacarski. Another crew member was Red Frazier.
Dad remembered his unit as the 498th Bomb Group, 603rd Bomber Squadron. My brother thinks he was mistaken. Because dad also remembered an “eight with wings” patch on his uniform, my brother believes his military unit was the 398th Bomb Group, not the 498th.
It is also appropriate: on the unit patch for the 398th/603rd Squadron was a dog – a black bull dog chewing on the tail fin of a bomb. Dad was a dog person through and through.
The 398th would drop almost 16,000 tons of bombs onto the Nazis. But they would do it without dad.
One day in October 1943, dad's B-17 was flying over Kansas when one or both of the wings blew up. Apparently, the pilot attempted to make an emergency landing in what looked like an empty field. It was not empty. There was some kind of stone structure, a fence or barn, in the field and the B-17 crashed into it, 50 miles outside of Salina, Kansas.
There were three survivors of the crash: dad, Red Frazier and a third person who dad couldn’t remember and soon thereafter died.
Dad said that as he remembered it, one minute he was in the plane, the next, on the ground in a stretcher. He was taken to Schick General Hospital in Clinton, Iowa.
In a scene straight out of Catch-22, he remembered being interrogated in the hospital about the crash.
My brother has not been able to find any record of the crash of dad’s plane. It probably has remained classified information.
Think about what you were (or are) doing as a 22-year-old, the fun you were having and all the hopes and dreams of the future looking bright.
Then think about spending your 22nd year in a body cast in a Veterans Hospital. Think about having to turn in more than 80 percent of your pay to the hospital.
Dad spent his 22nd to 27th years recovering from this accident.
At 32 years old he met and married our mom. They had five kids between 1955 and 1961. Next Christmas Eve will mark the 10th year of my dad’s death. Thanks to all the dedicated servicemen and women who keep our country ours.
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