Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Harold Terrens. He's a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War II. He initially served with the three hundred and fiftieth Fighter Squadron in the Mighty eighth Air Force, based in England. He was later moved to several other locations to facilitate Allied shuttle bombing, including
the Middle East and Russia. As you can tell within a few seconds of hearing his voice, Harold Terrens is a New Yorker through and through.
I was born in the Bronx, New York, and I was raised in the Bronx until I enlisted in the Army in nineteen forty two.
He was barely an adult on that Sunday afternoon, December seventh, nineteen forty one, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Well, I was playing basketball in the schoolyard. I was a little past at eighteen years of age, and someone came over. It was a Sunday afternoon and they told us, do you know the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor? And I remember my first words were, where is Pearl Harbor. I never heard of it, and they said it's in Hawaii. I says, okay, And we continued playing basketball as if
nothing happened until the next day. President Franklin Roosevelt says, we will all remember the Summer seventh, nineteen forty one as a day of them for me and I herewith asked Congress to declare war against Japan and Germany, and that's when we decided to enlist.
Terence says, every kid he knew was very eager to join the war effort.
No, none at all. I was just patriotic on me all my friends. We were going to get even with the German in the Japs, especially the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbor, and we were all gung ho.
Terren's own parents did not want him to serve, but finally relented when they saw that he would be the only kid in the neighborhood not to join the service. Terrence not only knew that he wanted to serve, he knew why. He just had to join the Air Corps, even though his plans didn't work out exactly as he envisioned.
I wanted to be a pilot, so I chose the AIRCUO. But when I applied for pilots training, I took a colorbline test that I failed, and I could not become a pilot if I was colorbline, and I couldn't believe I was colorblind, so I took the test again and I failed again. So I did the next best thing, and I became a radio operator. And I went to Radio Operator Mechanics School in sou Full, South Dakota for five months to get MAYA I degree.
Well disappointed in not becoming a pilot, Terrence quickly developed another vital skill, sending Morse code very quickly, not at all.
None whatsoever. But I became proficient in a radio I remember was called a five twenty two Superheterodyne receiver, and I became a very high speed Morse code operator.
I could take.
Morse code and send it as fast as my own could write it and as fast as he could send it.
Terrence was deployed to Europe on his twentieth birthday in nineteen forty three, and the secrecy meant he was a mystery no show at his own birthday party.
On my twentieth birthday, I was home on furlough and my parents had planned a big party in our apartment building. In an empty apartment, they planned a big birthday for me and I received in the morning they told me everyone was confined to the base. It was in Uraschell, New York, right on the Long Island Sound, and we shipped out boarded a boat that night. No phone calls, nothing. My parents to all the people at the party, had no idea where I was, what I was doing, wired
and show up for the party. But I boarded a ship called the Antlone Castle, a British ship, and we sailed up Long Island Sound and joined a nomada of about one hundred other ships because we felt safer when we sailed together. You know, there were so many German U boats out there looking the sink troop ships especially, and I was on a troop ship with about twelve thousand of the soldiers, and that would have been a big, a big win for the Germans if they could sink us,
but they didn't. Ten days later, we we didn't know where we were going, but we ended up in Liverpool.
Once in England, Terrence was tasked with taking care of the radios in several P forty sevens.
I was assigned to four P forty seven thunder bullfighters, and I was assigned to make sure that the radio the ship to air was working. That's the five twenty two Super hundred heterodign receivers, so that we had no radar radar in those days, so there were only communication and means of getting back to the base were this radio, the air the ground radio that would take them bring them back home if they were in distress or lost their compass or whatever. I would make sure that the
radio was working. I would every day before they went on a mission, I will test the radios to make sure they were okay.
More than eighty years later, Terrence still remembers the courage it took for the men to fly and the many who did not come home.
They did everything. They had a bomb on the reach wing. They escorted the B seventeen flying fortresses that when they went on bombing missions. I remember the first day on D Day, we had sixty planes on our outfit and we lost thirty. And I knew every pilot that got killed or was captured or bailed out or became a prisoner of war. And it was a devastating experience because within by the time I left the outfit, we lost every single pilot. Everyone was replaced. It was we were
losing the war. When I first got overseas well, I thought we were all going to get killed.
Terrence stressed that he rarely had to repair radios that had been shot up. He primarily made sure they were working prior to every mission.
The only repair jobs we had were when the planes came back and they were damaged because of shrapnel. They were hit by shrapnel or enemy fire, but that wasn't that often. Every single day we checked the radio to make sure that it worked.
When Terrence got to Britain in nineteen forty three, bomber crews had some of the shortest life expectancies in the military. He says, completing the number of missions to earn a ticket home was considered a miracle.
When the Memphis Bell was if you remember that story, when that flying fortress flew thirty missions, it was like a miracle. No plane flew thirty missions, no plane survived that long. It was a miracle that they did and that they survived them and one home.
Terrence says he quickly became close with the P forty seven pilots as they prepared for and returned from their missions, a difficult practice given how many men were lost.
Every single one of them was a friend of mine. You know, we had a wonderful relationship. It was one big, happy family, all of us, including the captain, doing no hat.
More than twenty seven thousand Americans were killed in the skies over Europe and World War two, and another nine thousand were wounded. Terrence now gives us his gripping recollection of D Day and the days that followed.
The morning began about thirty six hours prior to the day. We were all confined to base. Nobody was allowed on or off. This was around June fourth, D Day with June sixth. On June fourth, no one could use the phone. No one could communicate with the outside world. There was no male coming in or out, no communication whatsoever. What we did for thirty six hours prior to D Day we painted a stripe across every under each wing of our plane, a white stripe. Every Allied plane had a
white stripe painted under each wing. I don't know if history knows this, but every Allied plane that was involved in D Day had a white stripe on so that they were easily recognizable by other Allied planes like the British or the Canadian Air Force. They would recognize our planes. Their planes also had a white stripe. All Allied planes were pain so we painted airplanes for We didn't even sleep. We just had to make sure everything was in order.
We had to check everything thoroughly. We knew something was we had no idea what was going on until D They when they when they came back, the planes were damaged. Some tried to land and exploded on on a landing, and it was a terrible scene for the for the balance of the my tenure at the station with the
three fifty terrible. I'm getting all emotional now. And they asked for volunteers around ten days after D Day to go to Normandy to bring back freed prisoners or war British and American pliers that were shot down in prison for years in the Stalags in the German prison camps and they were treated by Polly. I volunteered to go. It was quite an experienced landing in Normandy. Deep in Normandy is D plus twelve that I first winned, and one batch that we brought back with German prisoners that
we took that. We brought them back to England. They were young kids. Mostly, they weren't even twenty years old. Some of them they were Hitler was using all of whatever he had left, although we were still losing the war until D Day. Then things started to turn around.
That's Harold Terrence. He's a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War Two. We'll have much more of his story in just a moment. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Sixty Seconds of Service.
This sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile. T Mobile offers exclusive discounts for a veteran and military families and are prouch supporters of the National Defense Network. Visit t mobile dot com slash military to learn more about how they support our military community. Former Navy Seal Rick Robinson founded Veterans Fitness Connection in Nashville, a fitness program designed to help veterans regain their physical.
And mental strength.
The program focuses on building camaraderie through group workouts and outdoor activities like hiking, kayaking, and weightlifting. Rick uses his own experience with physical and mental recovery to inspire others, offering a space for veterans to find their strength again. Today's sixty seconds of Service is brought to you by Prevagen. Prevagen is the number one pharmacist recommended memory support brand. You can find Prevagen and the Vitamin Aisle in stores everywhere.
For more great veterans stories, just go to nationaldefensenetwork dot com.
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Harold Terrens, a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War Two. Just days after the Allies launched the D Day invasion, the Germans unleashed a surprise of their own, the V one rocket also known as buzz bombs, and Harold Terrence barely survived one while in London.
Most people don't know about the V one and the V two rockets that the Germans had. The one rocket was called a buzz bomb. It was set off from Belgium and it chugged along in the sky. It was a bomb that was set up and designated to land in London. When this bomb stopped and you could see the bomb going because it was it just chugged along in the sky and when it stopped, it just went straight down. Its purpose was to blow up whatever was
it in its path or at the end of the road. Anyway, I was in an apartment building and a buzz uponmb We watched it and stopped. We were praying for it to pass by, and it hit the building next to us pretty much an our building just crumbled. I was on the fourth floor and I remember rescuing some some families, you know, kids, and the whole place was on fire and I ended up in the hospital. You don't get a purple heart for that. The ceiling came down army by my head. I was all cut up and I
was unconscious. It was I was almost buried in plaster from the from the walls of the building, and I thought it was buried alive at the time.
That was a harrowing experience.
Less than a month after D Day, Tarrence suddenly found himself being transferred and not knowing where to or why. He suspected it was because the base commander had an eye for Terren's English girlfriend. Regardless of the reason, Terrence was soon in North Africa.
I went to Land's End. I boorder the plane. I remember sitting next to Joe Lewis, who was the heavyweight champion of the world at that time. He was entertaining troops and six hours later, I think it was with radio silence and of flying over enemy territory, we landed in Casablanca. But while we were flying, I said, where am I going? Why am I leaving my outfit? And where am I going?
And why was I sent on this mission?
It was either to get rid of me because Captain Neuhart wanted my girlfriend, or the fact that I was a high speed radio operator and they needed me for a special assignment because they were Morse code operators. With my knowledge and wisdom of the code, they needed me for a special assignment. I didn't know. To this day, I don't know why I was sent anyway, I landed in Casablanca. A few days later. We went to Algier's Tunisia, Libya, and finally Cairo, and stayed there about a week waiting
for further orders. And then we went to the Tripoli Baghdad and finally Terran Persia.
I stayed there a couple of weeks.
I remember.
Terrence was assigned to several spots in the Middle East to support Allied shuttle bombings, including Tehran, which led to one of his most unpleasant memories.
I decided to go out one night, and I didn't know when I was going to be leaving Torr and I went into a nightclub in Turin. I sat at the table. I ordered a glass of wine. I didn't drink, but I guess I had ordered something. And the young girl sat down at the table and said, may I sit here? She looked like clear patcha very beautiful and she said I have a glass of wine. I said yes,
and she slipped me a mickey. I don't know if you know what that expression means, but in those days it was very popular.
She put a little pill.
In my drink while I wasn't looking, and it knocked me out almost completely. Two men came in, took me on the reach, one on the reach arm put me in a big black car, and the next thing I knew, I ended up on the Sahara desert, emblazing sunlight. The next morning, stark naked, burning to death. Can you picture that? Picture? Me on the sand dune on the Sahara Desert in Africa, Stark naked. I just had I did have my dog takes on. They left me with that, and I'm holding myself,
covering myself from the from the sun. It was burning hot, and I stood. I was stood that way. I lay on the hot sand for five hours. Luckily, an mp G, a jeep with two MPs came by because it happened before, and they took me and put me in jail. They didn't know who I was, and they kept me a couple of days until they found my papers.
I had my papers there. I told them to look through.
They checked everything out and I was okay, and then they after a few more days, I was put on a plane to go to a poul Tava in Russia.
Heraldared this is a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War II. We'll hear the rest of his story, including his wedding in Normandy on the eightieth anniversary of D Day in twenty twenty four. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Harold Terrans. He's a
US Army Air Corps veteran of World War II. Terrence serviced radios for P forty seven Thunderbolts with the three hundred and fiftieth Fighter Squadron in the eighth Air Force based in England. In just a moment, we will hear all about how Harold and his new bride made worldwide headlines in June of twenty twenty four when they got married in Normandy on the eightieth anniversary of D Day. And that was just the beginning of a magical day for Harold and Genie thanks to royal treatment from the
French government. But first we head back to the war and the Allied shuttle bombings that Terrence was supporting in North d Africa and the Middle East. Eventually he ended up doing the same in Russia. Terrence explains what shuttle bombing was and how it worked.
My final destination. I finally got my final flight to Russia, to the Ukraine, to a town called Poltava, and we set up what is known today and they don't know this in the history books, that was called twenty four hour shuttle bombing. It started in England. The B seventeen bombers would take off from England. They would bomb the Polasti oil fields in Romania which were under German control and they were too far from England to get back.
They didn't have enough fuel, so they continued on to Russia to the airfield where I was waiting for them. They would land there. Yeah, they would spend six hours there refueling, getting new bomb loads, taking care of themselves.
The wounded would be taken to hospitals. Then they would take off, bomb the plus the oil fields again and continue on to Italy where they did the same thing and then flew back to England, all in a twenty four hour period, and that was called twenty four hour shuttle bombing.
But shuttle bombing didn't last long from his position in Russia, and Terrence almost didn't last very long either. Another questionable decision left him close to death, but he managed to pull through.
It ended the twenty four hour shuttle bombing when our planes were followed into Russia by German Messa Schmidt fighter planes. And then the next night they came over and bombed our air field. They destroyed my tent where I lived, and I wasn't named. The mission was aborted. It ended right there and there I developed this CENTERIO ended up
in then ePRO in a hospital where almost died. I ended up going down to eighty eight pounds in a coma, so I drank milk that I was warned not to drink, that it was not pasteurized, and it made me very sick.
The German surrendered to the Allies in Europe officially on May eighth, nineteen forty five, although the surrender to the US occurred a day earlier, on May ninth, nineteen forty five. Relieved that the war was over, Terrence found himself utterly shocked by his encounter with a German woman who showed no change of heart at all by the end of the fighting.
The worst story I ever heard in the war had nothing to do with wounds or anything. It happened that day after the war ended. It happened May ninth, nineteen forty five. The war ended May eighth, and everybody was celebrating that night. Before we partied, everybody was drunk. I didn't drink at the time, so I just served the whiskey in the officers club till all the pilots, everybody
got smashed. They got wasted, everybody except me. And the next morning they asked for volunteers to go to Germany to bring back three prisoners of war, and I volunteered, and I went on a B seventeen flying fortress, and we landed in Munster, Germany, which was bombed in every single day and night for almost seven months. I walked along the streets there looking for free prisoners, and they were all wandering aimless. They were emaciated. These little pilots
that were shot down just released. While I was gathering these pillows together, a German woman came over to me and asked me if i'd like a cup of tea, and I said yes, so I would. And she took me into her house and she couldn't speak English, just a few words, and she poured the tea and lifted her cup and she said Heil Hitler. And I had never heard that before, and that shook me up terribly. It sort of made me crazy. I lost control, and I said to her, lady, you lost the war. The
war ended yesterday. It's over. The boat sank. Get used to it. And I stormed out of that place or all upset. And to this day, some nights I closed my eyes and I think of that scene. I said that I shouldn't have killed her, but the war was over. It was a day later. I was very upset. I never heard Heil Hitler before he was also dead Yell.
Harold Terrans returned to Normandy in the years that followed, and was present for the ceremonies commemorating the seventy fifth anniversary of D Day in twenty nineteen. He enthusiastically planned to return in twenty twenty four, but something had changed
over those five years. Terrence was now in a deeply committed romance with Genie Swirlin, and since he has his own French connection, Terrence and Swirlen not only made the trip to Normandy for the ceremonies at the beaches, they made plans to tie the knot just a few miles away. Swerlin was ninety six and Harold Terrence was a spry one hundred years old.
I have friends at the French embassy down in Miami, so general as a friend of mine, they recommended that I get married.
Why not it?
Normandy went on there on June sixth, so I said the Genie. I got on one knee in the garage. I said, you want to get married? She said sure. We had the most magnificent wedding ever in caroonton Ley my day in Normandy, which is about twenty twenty miles from Omaha Beach. The mayor of the town, which is part of history, like the most fierce fighting took place during the Normandy invasion. More in Caronton, More books. I have so many books about Caroonton and the mayor of Caroonton,
Je Jean Jacques Olona, married us. My little great granddaughter of sixteen was the flower girl. All of Genie's children were there, My children were there. My grand daughter, who was that president of the a cappella group at University of Pennsylvania sang Whitney Houston song.
I Will Always Love You.
It was one of the most beautiful wedding ceremonies.
You love.
My friend had twenty four bagpipers playing there as well, and we had one of the greatest opera singers, Miss Liberty, singing. And then we had a lunch and I had all my French friends, my dear friends there, and then I got a call from the head of protocol in Paris that the President Macrone of France is inviting me and Jennie that night to a state dinner at the Palace, and Biden.
Was there, and I'm overwhelmed.
It was the greatest day of my life to get married in the morning and have the friends secret service drive us three hours from Normandy to Paris to the directed the Palace. And you have no idea what took place there. You can't imagine. It was so exciting. We were the guests Ubonna, Kings and queens and presidents and prime ministers all stood up and applaud me and Jeanie as we walked them. And we were in every newspaper in the world that next morning. And I remember to
get your political affiliations. I remember sitting at the table with his cabinet, the Ministry of Culture. I was sitting with Genie in the former and ambassador to Washington. Some man put his arms around me. He says, Harold, you.
And Genie, at this very moment are.
The most popular people in the entire world. You're in every front page of every newspaper in the world. And I wasn't after newspaper's home as far away as Mongolia. And the man that put his arm around me was our Secretary of State, Anthony Blincoln, who was a friend of mine. I became friendly with the lady sitting next to me. We held hands the whole night. She's very prominent socialite in Paris. Her name is Michelle laminastral Ulrich and she is the founder of the French Historical Society,
very very famous. And then my friendly ambassadors ask me anybody else you want to see? I says, yeah, would call a Bruni be here, call her Brunie. It was my favorite friend's singer. She's married to a former president of France, President Nicholas Sarkozy. She's the former girlfriend of Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones.
And she came running over to me and threw her arms around me.
I got her picture of her hugging me at the at the dinner, at the stake dinner. Whoever thing thought I'd be at the palace at a steak dinner and have all. And then President Maccone toasted me and Jeanie in French and in English, and Nancy Pelosi came running over and threw around. She remembered me from five years prior, and she sent me a hundred birthday Greennie. There's all one day, my wedding in the State dinner, all in one day. People don't experience that in their lifetime.
It's clear that spending just a few minutes thinking back to World War Two resurfaces some fascinating and painful memories. For Harold Terrence. He wishes students were taught a lot more about the war, and specifically about D Day, but his memories always come back to those he served with, many of whom were killed in service to their nation.
First of all, it's unfortunate that most high school students today do not know anything about D Day. They never heard of normany. They don't even know much about World War Two. I don't think much of it is taught in history classes today, and it's unfortunate that they don't know the history of their country and the suffering that
everybody went through. That fifty million people were killed because of of the war, that over forty million were wounded, that the suffering that went on in every country of the world at the time.
It was a nightmare.
And I have so many stories that I can tell that me and myself, I was in three different hospitals and three different countries. I'm lucky to be sitting here. You need luck to be one hundred and one years old. But two years I was in a war zone. Constantly in a war zone. There was a very unpleasant experience. Even though there was a lot of fun in games, there's a lot of tragedy and suffering.
That's Harold Terance. He's a US Army Air Corps veteran of World War Two. He and his wife, Jeanie, made worldwide headlines by getting married in Normandy on the eighties anniversary of D Day in twenty twenty four. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information, please visit American Veteranscenter dot org. You can also follow the American
Veterans Center on Facebook and on Twitter. We're at AVC update. Subscribe to the American Veterans Center YouTube channel for full oral histories and special features, and of course, please subscribe to the Veterans Chronicles podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks again for listening, and please join us next time for Veterans Chronicles