Valley loses a veteran, an activist and a true patriot
Remembering Wilfrid E. Hebert, who died at 96
CUMBERLAND — It seems like it was just yesterday that Wilfrid E. Hebert and I were talking at the Cumberland Monastery about his efforts to locate a special monument to war veterans there.
It wasn’t just yesterday, as those things go, and in reality, it was several years ago. But this week I learned Hebert, a former resident of Woonsocket and Cumberland, had passed away at the age of 96 at Our Lady’s of Haven Nursing Home in Fairhaven.
I was saddened by the news, as are, I’m sure, many of the people who knew Hebert, or who read his occasional letters and creative writing pieces in The Call.
He had a patriotic view on things, and for good reason. After moving to Woonsocket in 1927 and attending Mount Charles Academy, the native of Lawrence, Mass., joined the other young men of his era heading off to fight in World War II.
He signed up in October of 1942 and would become a flight engineer in a B-17 bomber crew with the 840th Squadron of 483rd Bomber Group.
I had the chance to talk with Hebert about his war experiences several times over the years
and he was one of several World War II veterans from the Woonsocket area, like the late Raymond Noury, a waist gunner on a B-24 Liberator, who had experienced all aspects of the air war over Europe. Hebert and Noury both faced the day-to-day risks of flying missions over Nazi-occupied Europe and both saw their planes shot down before being captured and held as prisoners of war. Noury, who died in 2013, was the only member of his bombers crew to make to the ground in the Czech Republic when his plane was shot down on Feb. 22, 1944.
Hebert’s first mission out of Stamperone, Italy, was a run to Vienna, Austria, where enemy anti-aircraft guns hit the B-17 with shrapnel and killed two of his fellow crew members.
It was on a later mission on Oct. 23, 1944, in a B-17 named the Shadrack that Hebert was forced to bail out of the plane with the rest of its 10-member crew when battle damage knocked out its engines. The crew survived and spent time in prisoner of war camps before being released when the war ended in May of 1945.
After returning home and going to work for area companies, Hebert also began to cope with his war experiences. It was a challenge that he would continue to face for the rest of his life.
Going it alone for many years, Hebert eventually joined a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder group at the VA in Providence and began to understand how his war experiences were still having an impact on his life.
He also met with fellow POWs and worked out how those experiences also carried lifetime impacts. “It takes a POW to help a POW,” Hebert said of his meetings at the VA.
Hebert, I learned through our talks, did have days like the anniversary of his plane being shot down and even some holidays, like Veterans Day or Memorial Day, when he had to take on managing his experiences all over again.
But I also learned from Hebert that doing something, working on a special project, can help someone put those difficult experiences into perspective and counter them with something positive.
For Hebert, it was telling his story like other World War II veterans have done in the area, and giving a new generation an understanding of the commitment his generation made to ensuring the freedoms they enjoy.
He also, surprisingly, made connections with people in Austria, in particular a businessman in Innsbruck, Wolfgang Deutsch, who had located the wreckage of the Shadrack on the Tashach Ferner Glacier in the Austrian Alps.
Hebert went to visit Deutsch in Austria and brought home a plane part that his friend gave him from recovered items he had assembled for a museum display.
And another project that is likely to be Hebert’s most lasting legacy, came together at the Cumberland Monastery where we had met to talk that time in the past.
It is where Hebert worked with Cumberland officials, the administration of Mayor Francis Gachen at the time, and fellow veterans to erect a monument just for those who had experienced combat in a war.
The granite monument bears an inscription on its front stating “DEDICATED TO THE COMBAT VETERANS OF ALL WARS, THAT FOUGHT SUFFERED, AND DIED, SO THAT AMERICA CAN BE FREE. GOD BLESS AMERICA.” He added a poem on the back dedicated to those who never returned home.
As the sun filtered through the trees onto Hebert’s monument on Thursday, the American Flag could be seen on the flagpole nearby, and below it the black and white flag remembering prisoners of war and those still missing in action, a fitting, symbolic juxtaposition of the things Hebert had dedicated his life to.