Local WWII vets reminisce at screening

Dick Nelms of Mercer Island talked of the 35 minutes back in 1944 that are still vividly alive for him today: the half-hour he piloted a B-17 bomber over Berlin and was attacked. By the end of the flight, his plane had 300 holes in it.

Art Unruh of Arlington talked about the last of his 50 missions during World War II, when five of the seven planes in his squadron were lost during the first eight minutes of flight.

With many World War II veterans reaching the end of their lives, such stories are "drifting away from us," said Unruh, one of the veterans who attended a preview screening of a Second World War documentary series Saturday at the Flying Heritage Collection at Arlington Airport.

The 15-hour, seven-part series, the latest from documentary producers and directors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, focuses on the experiences of citizens from four American towns during World War II.

In conjunction with the documentary, KCTS is producing its own series featuring the stories of local residents who lived through the war. Saturday's event was one of several featuring 30-minute snippets of Burns' documentary and discussion and interviews with local veterans.

Amid the Paul Allen-owned Flying Heritage Collection's World War II planes, veterans including Nelms and Unruh talked about why it was important to them to tell their stories.

Nelms, 84, a retired graphic designer, showed a dented German anti-aircraft shell he'd brought with him in a plastic bag. He'd found it mere inches behind his head, embedded in armor plating behind his pilot's seat, after that aerial battle over Berlin.

These days, Nelms shares his war stories with groups at the Museum of Flight when the museum hosts a B-17. Afterward, when people thank him for his service to the country, he says it was a privilege.

"I'd always loved airplanes," he says. The military "taught me to fly."

Unruh, 84, a retired auto-repair-shop foreman, speaks at schools, senior centers and historical societies, and as a volunteer docent at the Flying Heritage Collection.

He's worried younger people don't know much about the war, and that history will repeat itself.

He might tell his audiences about being a gunner on a B-17, flying missions out of Italy, the buddies he lost in the war, or the little old lady in Casablanca who apparently didn't know what an airplane was and who was killed walking into a moving propeller.

His outfit lost so many in combat, he says. "So very, very many."

At one point, "we lost so many, so fast, we couldn't get all their stuff sent to St. Louis," where personal effects of the dead were sent for storage until they could be shipped to relatives.

"I'd like for people to remember the horrendous sacrifices that we made," he says. "If this stuff is not recorded, it's just forgotten about."

Janet Tu: 206-464-2272 or jtu@seattletimes.com