WWII vet gets his Purple Heart, recognition 71 years later

It might have taken 71 years and a lifetime of joys and sorrows to realize, but one local World War II veteran finally got his due during a medal bestowment program Monday at Alma Schrader Elementary School in Cape Girardeau.

There, 90-year-old Sgt. Clifford Heinrich received five long-overdue medals of honor, including the Purple Heart. The decoration is issued in the name of the President of the United States -- in this case, Franklin D. Roosevelt -- when a service member is injured or killed in the line of duty.

"These medals were all for my crew," Heinrich said after the program ended, tapping the lapel of his suit jacket.

An Air Corps tail gunner during the war, 19-year-old Heinrich was the only survivor when his nine-member crew's B-17 flying fortress crashed over southwest England on its way back from a bombing mission Dec. 23, 1944. He suffered a fractured skull and severe injury to his foot and spent 14 months in the hospital before being honorably discharged. Because of his head injury, he has no memory of the crash.

Heinrich's medals never reached him after his convalescence, said Dave Hitt, a local veteran who arranged for the medal bestowment through U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt's office.

Sgt. Clifford Heinrich, left, poses for a photo with retired U.S. Navy Cmdr. Lawson Burgfeld on Monday after the living history event honoring the lost World War II crew of the Flying Fortress 812 and the medal presentation to Sgt. Clifford Heinrich at Alma Schrader Elementary.Laura Simon

Although the exact reason for the plane crash remains unknown, severe weather conditions are thought to have contributed, said James Bass, another World War II veteran who provided historical context during the program Monday.

Bass said the winters of 1944 and '45 in Great Britain were considered the worst in 50 years, with snow, fog and drizzling rain falling almost constantly. He described the days as being filled with a kind of twilight, mostly without sunshine and temperatures in the 20s and 30s.

"It was always just bone-chilling. You couldn't get warm," Bass said.

Days before Heinrich's mission, military action had slowed to a crawl. But right before Christmas, orders came to bomb the small town of Gemund, Germany, that the Nazis were using as a transportation and communications hub.

At the time, the German army under Adolf Hitler was planning to cut a 50-mile gap in the north and south lines of the Allied troops along the Rhine River, which couldn't be crossed easily because so many bridges has been blown up.

Floyd Smith salutes after presenting flowers in remembrance of one of the lost crew members of the Flying Fortress 812 during WWII on Monday at Alma Schrader Elementary in Cape Girardeau.Laura Simon

The anticipated maneuver, Bass said, was twofold: It could be used as leverage in peace negotiations or buy time for the embattled Nazis to finish developing the first long-range missile, along with the atomic bomb.

"It was a good plan; it just didn't work," Bass said.

That's because the Allied bombers were mobilized by the thousands.

"Clifford and his crew were one of 24 planes from the 457th Bomb Group who left that morning to make that strike," he said.

But when they were returning to their Royal Air Force base in England about 6 p.m., their 812 flying fortress crashed in the village of Great Rollright, Oxfordshire, in the middle of a dense fog.

A nurse named Lt. Megan Lewis, serving in the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service, saw and heard the plane go down as it whooshed over the roof of her building. She raised an alarm, and by the time she and other first responders found the wreckage, several crew members already were dead or dying, said her daughter, Diane Gomersall, who traveled from England to attend Heinrich's medal bestowment Monday.

Lewis was the one who pulled Heinrich from the plane and helped stabilize him at the hospital before he was sent to another facility, and to the rest of his life.

ljones@semissourian.com

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Pertinent address:

1360 Randol Ave., Cape Girardeau