There are a few reporting errors, but I found this article compelling. The storm heading into Greece caused the U.S. Air Force 97th Bomb Squad to lose 10 planes. It was a near miss for those who made it. As the whirring engines of dozens of Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress Bombers took to the skies, dark clouds would soon engulf them. It was a storm and 40 B-17s were heading straight for it. U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Warren Kepner was manning the top torrent (should be turret) of the B-17 when the pilot pushed the controls forward, diving under the dark, dense clouds until they hit clear skies. He braced himself. It was at that moment, as the plane was nosediving, that he caught a glimpse of the underbelly of another B-17 flying overhead. “I don’t think it missed us by much,” he said. And he remembers it like it was yesterday. More is learned today about World War II from black-and-white stills, second-hand stories, films or documentaries, movies and what’s written in high school history books than stories told by those who were there. It’s a piece of history resting with every veteran who died — both decades after the war and those who were lost on the battlefield. And while the aging population of veterans like Kepner, 93, are dwindling, leaving their families to tell their wartime tales, the three-war veteran — who served in WWII and the Korean and Vietnam wars — documented his own history during WWII in real time. He vividly remembers all of his 52 missions not only because his memory of the war has yet to catch up to his age but because he kept a diary of it all. From September 1943 to June 1944, Kepner, of Mansfield, flew 52 missions in the Mediterranean. The Harrisburg native was 19 and survived more missions than most. Kepner recently joined about 20 other area veterans at the Millville Army Air Field Museum, in Cumberland County, where he shared the same experiences he wrote down at 19 years old. He was a part of a series of interviews to help document first-hand accounts of the war. “To tell you the truth, I was scared to death,” he said, recalling what he wrote decades ago. “I guess we all were. Although I never felt that I was going to get hurt and thank God I never got a scratch.” For every mission there was a letter. He wrote 52 letters by the time he was discharged in 1945. Every letter, handwritten and well-preserved, are stored in a white, plastic binder put together by his wife, Roberta. Each one has been carefully placed in a clear plastic sleeve for all to see. Typed copies of each letter are also stored near the originals and nearly a dozen wartime photos show a 19-year-old, 111-pound Kepner sitting on top of a B-17 in Italy, riding a camel in North Africa and kneeling with his B-26 squadron before they were deployed overseas. That was 73 years ago. Most of the men he served with are long gone. “As far as I know, I’m the only one left,” he said. He faced hundreds of German fighter planes, taking on as much heavy fire as he shelled it out, and went on “milk runs,” or easy missions with little enemy fire. He explained that his crew was always weary of anti-aircraft fire coming from the ground because there was not much they could do to stop it. He couldn’t explain why he felt the need to write, but he’s glad he did. Kepner was discharged on July 15, 1945, right before the European invasion. (error. Should be Asian) A few years later, in 1952, Kepner was called back to serve in the Korean War. He was assigned to B-29 bombers but never flew into Korean territory. Instead, he was sent to Alaska where we he supplied radar for all flights coming in and out of Alaska. He was there for two years, flew missions in and out of Vietnam until he retired from the Air Force in 1969. Before he retired after 26 years in the military, he was offered a job by Pan American Airlines. Kepner was an instructor for airline pilots, flight attendants and flight engineers. He wrote and produced audio and visual training programs and eventually was promoted to manager of the flight training programs. He retired from Pan American in 1990. The 93-year-old veteran will turn 94 in November. His hearing and some of his eyesight might have faded over the years, but his memory of the war is strong. As he sits at his kitchen table to reminisce a bit more about his missions during WWII, the letters sitting in the binder in front of him bring him back. He pulled a thin, slightly aged paper carefully out of the plastic sleeve to read. He held it a bit close. His eyes carefully scanned the words that were handwritten in cursive long ago. He said he sometimes doesn’t realize the amount of danger he was in until he begins to read. When he reached the final line of the first letter written about a mission in Salerno, Italy, he remembered how he felt because of what he wrote. “P.S. I was plenty scared,” he read. Three-war veteran recalls his 52 missions during WWII
