My Papaw, My Hero

It's no secret how proud I am of my Papaw, Harvey H. Wallace. I only wish I was a fraction of how brave he was. He was a true American Hero. But, he wouldn't have agreed with that title. None of our brave soldiers ever think that they are hero's. That is what makes them so special. They are so humble...I guess that is what the true American Spirit is all about. I know that if it were me, and I had medals, newspaper articles, awards or anything like that...I would have them displayed and everybody would know about it within the first few minutes of talking to me. But that is not the way that our great troops roll...they are modest in their heroism.

I recently came upon a few pictures of my Papaw from his war days. I scanned and cropped them and made copies for my Dad for his Father's Day gift. Like I have mentioned before, he was a bombardier for the United States Army Air Force during WWII. He was a member of the 351st Bomb Group...511th Squadron, stationed at Polebrook, England.


A bombardier is the one who sits in the little glass bubble and drops the bombs on targets. They are the ones who yell..."BOMBS AWAY!!!" I can only imagine how frightening that was like. I have found pictures that were classified at one time, of bombs actually being dropped on targets. Just thinking about the excitement they must have felt, with machine guns shooting, air blowing, shrapnel and flak flying all over, gives me chills.

Cap. Harvey H. Wallace

One of his war buddies did this picture for him, many years ago, before photo-shopping! This is one of my favorite photos of photos of him, he looks so handsome!

This was taken right after one of his missions.

My Papaw also served in the war with Clark Gable. They even flew in a mission together. My dad has a dollar bill with his autograph on it.

One of the coolest things about the Internet is the research and wealth of information you can find. All my life, I always knew that my Papaw had served with Clark Gable and that Clark Gable was filming some kind of movie while at Polebrook. We even had tons of pictures of filming. I never knew just what was being filmed though. My Dad didn't know either. I researched and researched and finally found what it was. It was a movie called COMBAT AMERICA.

Combat America was a propaganda movie filmed by the USAAF in 1943. It was a film that showed what everyday day to day life was like on the base in England. The purpose of the film was to get more volunteer enlistments. By the time the film came out though, there was more than enough volunteers. It was still an interesting movie, especially for us today so that we can see what life was like back then for our soldiers.It was pretty cool for me to finally get to see what these pictures was all about. The whole time I was watching the movie, I was thinking about which picture I had seen before in certain shots.

This was a mansion that was used by the Red Cross as a place for injured soldiers to recuperate.

My Papaw was in a ton of missions. His last mission he was hit by flak (shrapnel flying in the sky), and lost his right arm. Thank God that is all he lost, because had he lost his life I wouldn't be here!:-)