By: Anna Trusky

Bob Blair was born just one house away from where he lives today in Chester.  He grew up there and was president of his senior class at Chester High.  But there was a time when duty called and Bob left the idyllic New England village to serve his country in World War II.  Soon he would be flying bombing missions over Europe.

“It was an easy choice to join the Air Corps,” Bob says.  ”As A kid, I was always fascinated by flight.  I flew kites, dropped parachutes with rocks tied to the end and jumped off the roof with a piece of cardboard behind me for the wings.  I was always drawing pictures of planes and I watched every small plane that flew overhead from Doane’s Airport in Essex.”

Bob went to Basic Training in Utah and was sent to Indianapolis for training to be an X-ray technician.  He completed that course and signed up to train as a Cadet.  ”I was stationed in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and attended the University there.  It was a great experience to be on a college campus.  I took part in football and cross country and picked up some college credits,” he says.  After that, Bob was sent to San Antonio, Texas, to be a bombardier, but there were no openings, so he signed up to train as a gunner on a B-24 and was trained at a gunnery school in Charleston, South Carolina.

From there Bob went to Bangor, Maine, where his 10-man crew – the 15th Air Force, 376th Bomb Group – was assembled.  ”we flew to Bermuda and waited for favorable conditions to fly to the Azores and from there to North Africa.  Soon after that we flew to San Pancrazzio in Italy, where we were based.  There were hundreds of crews there.  We stayed in tents, rigging up homemade stoves to keep warm.”

As a top turret gunner, Bob went on  bombing missions that typically took six to eight hours.  ”We flew at high altitude with oxygen masks and heated flight suits.  Fighter planes escorted us partway to the target,” he explains.  ”Because we had to fly at a lower altitude to drop the bombs, our risks were high from anti-aircraft fire.  They would shoot flak at us, small bombs that exploded with shrapnel, which sometimes came straight through the windows of the plane.

“On our 25th mission, our plane was shot down and the pilot was severely injured.  We made an emergency landing in Northern Italy.  After being escorted back to base by the Tuskegee Airmen, we were shipped back to the States.  We crossed the Atlantic on a troop ship with Red Skelton [the famous comic actor] hitching a ride with us.  I can still remember hearing the Andrews Sisters singing ‘Rum and Coca Cola’ as we docked in Virginia,” Bob recalls.

Since returning to Connecticut, Bob has been involved mostly in sales – cars and real estate; at 88, he’s still working.  He served for 22 years as First Selectman of Chester. “Joining the military is a great opportunity, but the duties can be harsh and it’s not for everyone.  Still, a Veteran is always much respected,” Bob points out.

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By: Anna Trusky

It all started when Bahria Hartman was a 14-year-old girl growing up in Norwich.  World War II had been brewing for two years, but so far the United States had only watched from afar with as the conflict spread and intensified overseas.  Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and the US became directly involved in the bloody struggle that would rage on for nearly four more years.

Two young men from Norwich – Michael Quarto and Harry Carlson – were stationed on the battleship USS Arizona and were among the 1,177 American lives lost that day; Bahria knew them personally.  When articles about the deaths appeared in the Norwich Bulletin, she lovingly cut them out and pasted them in a scrapbook.

This was the first act in a labor of love that continued through the First Gulf War.  For 50 years, Bahria kept track of every serviceperson from Norwich who was killed in a war and memorialized them in her scrapbook with newspaper clippings; photographs, letters and poems provided by family and friends; and gold stars, American flags and the religious symbols of their faiths.  All-in-all, the scrapbook, which consists of three volumes, commemorates the wartime sacrifices of 123 Norwich residents who served in World War II, 50 who served in Korea, 15 who served in Vietnam and a handful from the Iraq, or Gulf War.

Bahria, who is of Lebanese descent, was born in Utica, New York and moved to Norwich as a young child when her father George Harb got a job at a wool mill.  ”I always felt a close tie to the military because my father served our country in the infantry in Germany during World War I,” she explains, showing photographs of her father who she included in the scrapbook.

Bahria’s close ties to the US Armed Services continued when she fell in love with Herbert Hartman, a young Navy man stationed at the Subase in Groton, at a Base dance.  Herb, from Memphis, TX, attained the rank of Lieutenant Commander during his lifelong career in the Navy.  ”It’s interesting that my name in Arabic means ‘sailor’ or ‘navy,’” Bahria  says.  ”After I married my husband, we traveled the world for 15 years and then returned to the United States.  We eventually moved to Norwich and I worked as a bookkeeper.”

Originally the scrapbook was in one huge volume, but time took its toll on the pages and it began to fall apart.  The book was divided into three volumes and restored with the help of contributions made on the occasion of the Hartmans’ 50th wedding anniversary on September 7, 2007.  He passed away the following February.

“The books are dedicated to the memories of my husband and father,” Bahria says.  ”I honor their service, as well as, the service of all those brave men and women who gave their lives for our country.”

The Veterans’ Memorial Scrapbook is available for viewing at the Otis Library at 261 Main Street, Norwich.

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