Veterans Day
Veterans Day
AS HIS B-17 BROKE IN HALF AFTER BEING STRUCK BY ANOTHER DISABLED BOMBER, PACE IN A SNAP WAS SUCKED OUT AND TUMBLING TOWARD THE EARTH.
On your very best day, Bill Pace has had one that much better. As a crewman aboard a B-17 bomber, Pace in a matter of seconds was out of the plane and free falling in the clear blue sky thousands of feet above the ground. Without a secured parachute. Pace’s ordeal was on Nov. 30, 1944, crewing on one of 2,000 American and British planes on a bombing raid over Germany. Pace was a gunner in the belly of the big plane. As his B-17 broke in half after being struck by another disabled bomber, Pace in a snap was sucked out and tumbling toward the earth. His best decision that day, and one he has carried forward 72 years, was abiding a hunch and bringing a parachute on the flight―he had not done so before. Though not fully secured to his flight suit and fighting to deploy it, he managed to wrestle the parachute into position and safely land. For a few crazy moments, Pace had tumbled through cold space with little hope.
The townspeople where he landed tried to kill him but an intervening stranger stopped the act. He was later sent to a prison camp. And yet Pace, who is now 91 and living in Bonita Springs, remains gracious. He rather enjoys retelling his story, smiling at the impact of his words, watching others imagining themselves tumbling through space with moments to live.
Pace through the years has been comforted by several things―that a passing German officer stopped the civilians; that a German man out of the blue phoned to thank him for his role in shortening the war; that after the war he was married for 66 years. Pace also likes to show a Western Union telegraph from 1944 that reads: “The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep regret that your son Sergeant William A. Pace has been reported missing in action since Thirty November over Germany.” Pace returned home in 1945, he says, with a Purple Heart and a length of barbed wire from the POW camp. His big regret was not asking the name of the German offic er who stepped in to save his life.
It is because of American service members such as Bill Pace that we salute them on Veterans Day, a federal holiday honoring their duty. “There are so many stories,” Pace says of fellow veterans. “You have to believe in a higher calling, in prayer. The Holy Spirit was flying with me that day.”
Veterans Day―the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918― became an official holiday on Nov. 11, 1954, to recognize all American veterans. It is different from Memorial Day, which is the last Monday of May, to honor those who died while serving with the armed ser vices. Millions of men and women from America’s founding have either been drafted or volunteered to serve. It is, in fact, because of them that we live as a free nation, or at least believe ourselves as defenders of others.
Dave Grossi’s is such a story. In early 1967, he volunteered for the newly created Air Force Ranger program for eventual deployment to South Vietnam. During his time there, Grossi served at two air bases, Phan Rang and Pleiku. He was discharged as a sergeant in 1970 and later became an upstate New York police officer. “It was just something as a proud American that I felt I needed to do,” says Grossi, 69, and also of Bonita Springs. Vietnam, he says, “was an eye-opening experience. But I’m glad I went.” Grossi later operated a law-enforcement consultancy, has given commencement, remembrance and motivational speeches, and chaired veterans groups in Bonita Springs.
Pace smiles when asked about his ordeal and whether he holds grudges. No, he says, recalling a damaged American bomber plane and its enemy pilot flying alongside it. The redemption of the story, Pace says, was that rather than shooting at the crippled bomber and killing its crew, the opposing fighter pilot escorted the bomber back to its base, waved his plane’s wings in a salute, and flew off for home.
IT WAS JUST SOMETHING AS A PROUD AMERICAN THAT I FELT I NEEDED TO DO.”
—DAVE GROSSI, BONITA SPRINGS MILITARY VETERAN