World War II memories don’t fade for vet, 95
A tattered and faded green yearbook from Elmer Donald “Ed” Christensen’s 1943 Air Force cadet class rests bunched together with aged flight school manuals in a filing cabinet in his Katy home.
“I haven’t looked at that stuff in some years,” said Christensen, 95.
But the memories of that time and the World War II battles that followed when he was a 23-year-old pilot remain fresh.
He flew amidst hordes of fighter planes when allied forces invaded the beaches of Normandy in northern France on June 6, 1944 — D-Day.
The night before, Christensen and pilots of other Lockheed P-38 Lighting jets took off from a base in England. The crew soared overhead to protect paratroopers who were dropping onto the ground to destroy enemy forces’ weaponry and install signaling devices. The fliers made multiple trips from Normandy to the base and back during the night.
Christensen returned at 8 a.m. the next day as thousands of troops landed from Navy ships to face bullets and bombs raining down from the cliffs.
Thousands of feet above, Christensen fired off rounds of .50-caliber machine guns mounted to his plane. He also dropped 1,000-pound bombs that devastated enemy artillery.
Amidst the din, he saw comrades’ planes shot down around him.
“Everything imaginable was going on,” Christensen said. “It was non-stop action around the clock. I saw people die in every way you can imag-
ine. They paid the price.”
Hundreds of thousands of troops died in fighting to push the Nazis back.
“People from everywhere come to America, and some people think they can get things for free, but there’s also opportunity here — because we fought for it,” Christensen said as he reflected on the coming Fourth of July holiday. “It’s a day of thanks and day of apprehension because … freedom is not free. You earn it; you pay for it.”
Christensen, a Wisconsin native, joined the Air Force soon after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. He knew many men would have to join the military, and he preferred to fight in the air than on the ground.
At cadet school, Christensen’s wake-up calls came at 4 a.m., and training would last until 9:30 p.m. The routine lasted every day for two years as the nation raced to train Air Force personnel as quickly as possible.
Christensen flew on more than 70 missions across Europe. He’d wake at 4 a.m., board his aircraft after a cup of coffee and not return to the base until night. He earned numerous medals and honors.
He sometimes returned with fewer men than he left with. But he didn’t allow his mind to entertain the idea of death.
“You didn’t think about it; you just did what you had to do,” he said.
Christensen said that a year of combat felt like 50 to him.
Then everything changed on a summer morning in 1945.
Christensen was at a base in California waiting to be shipped to Japan for battle.
“I went to get breakfast, and they said, ‘It’s over. The war. It’s through,’” Christensen said. “I’m sure it was my commanding officer who told me. He was there to get breakfast, too.”
Christensen called his future wife, Margaret, and the two saw each other in St. Louis, Missouri. They married shortly afterward in Madison, Wisconsin, and stayed together until Margaret’s death in 2002.
Christensen returned to active duty for four more years after marrying. He was mostly stationed at an Air Force base in Massachusetts.
He entered the reserves after active duty ended, and in 1959, Margaret convinced him to move to Texas. She missed the state’s weather. They found a home in Houston, and Christensen flew cargo around the world from out of southeast Houston’s Ellington Field.
In 1988, the couple became attracted to the thentiny town of Katy, where only a few thousand people lived and rice dryers and railroad cabooses still dominated the scene.
They moved to the heart of the city, living a few blocks from Katy’s Veterans of Foreign Wars post. Christensen became a member at the post around the same time. The post still counts about 30 World War II veterans as members.
When he joined the Air Force reserves after eight years of active duty, Christensen began studying to become a lawyer.
He practiced law, mostly as a trial lawyer, for about 50 years, retiring in the mid-2000s.
By then, it had been more than two decades since he had been honorably discharged from the reserves after achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Christensen lives with one of his two daughters.
On July 4, he typically relaxes and watches the city’s fireworks from his front lawn. And he remembers. “I dream about this stuff every night,” Christensen said of his war experiences. “You think about it as you go to sleep. It’s just there. It never leaves you.”