In Memory of Ed

My friend Ed died on December 12th. I went to visit him yesterday, and the receptionist told me that he was no longer with us. I had a birthday card with a big '95' on it. It was to be his birthday on January 23rd.

I was hardly surprised by the news. I had visited him after Thanksgiving and I could see how tired he had grown. He had been a widower for nearly a decade; his heart, both physically and emotionally, was wearing out. He needed rest. It was as if his soul was trapped in a cage and was longing to be free.

And now he is. He is with his Creator. 

Death, as natural as it is, always seems unnatural to me. I'm not grieving over Ed's death, and yet, I feel somber and restless. People die and leave their broken bodies behind, but there is so much more to people–to us–than bodies. My friend is gone, but not really.

In memory of Ed, I am sharing with you a bit of his story. On his 92nd birthday, he came to my house for beef stew and carrot cake (his request) and I took some time to interview him about his service in the Air Corps during World War 2. His memory was impressive. He knew every date, every location, and every airplane in his stories. And it all sounded like an epic movie.

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When Edward Marnell turned 18 on January 23rd, 1942, he wasted no time. Twelve days later, he was enlisted as Private Marnell with the Air Corps.

Ed likes to laugh about how quickly he rose in the ranks. Within weeks, he was trained as a mechanic, then sent to aviation school for a 30-day crash course on the B-25 bomber. Two days after graduation, he became acting crew chief. He boasts that while he was the acting crew chief, his plane was always ready for a mission, even if this 3-men crew had to work all night to make it so.

About a year later, Ed received his overseas shipping orders. His officer wanted him for a crew chief, but only sergeants could be crew chiefs. The solution? Ed became Sergeant Marnell and had his stripes sewn on.

Ed was then sent to Alameda, California, to leave on a transporter with 5,000 other soldiers. He remembers watching the fog roll into San Francisco as his ship sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was so beautiful that Ed told himself, "If I get out of this mess, I'm going to settle in California." None of the soldiers knew their destination, and they wouldn't know until they were well on their way. Finally, they were told that they were headed to Brisbane, Australia, and they were going to have to sail dangerously close to Japan to get there. When a Japanese fishing boat spotted the transporter, there was a skirmish in which 2 pilots were lost.

Besides this incident and a few occasional storms at sea, Ed's time on the ship was uneventful. There were no planes to work on, so he spent his days playing cards, watching schools of flying fish and porpoises race in the waves, and taking his shift on watch in the crow's nest. When given a choice of shifts, he chose midnight to 4am. Most people thought he was crazy but he knew something they didn't: the freshly-baked goods came out of the galley at 4am.

The soldiers finally arrived in Australia, and they boarded a train and another ship to get to New Guinea. Along the way, they were constantly watching for the Japanese, with good reason. The Japanese had bombed the airfield in New Guinea just before the soldiers arrived.

19th Bomb Squad, Engineering Department, New Guinea, August 19th, 1943
Ed is in the third row, eighth from the right

Ed was then assigned to a B-26, which meant he couldn't be crew chief after all. But he kept his sergeant status and worked with the men on New Guinea until he broke his femur and spent nine months in a West Virginian hospital.

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Ed with my daughter in 2013

Ed also told us about the cockatoo that swore like a sailor and hopped from shoulder to shoulder at meals, looking for hand-outs. About how the men would chill the rare keg of beer by flying it up 20,000 feet in an airplane. About the memorable two-egg breakfast after six months of nothing but pancakes. About soldiers risking their own lives to save their brothers with nothing but basic radios and navigation equipment, their quick thinking, and their own bare hands. And Ed, who finally did settle in California and met a beautiful young lady named Jean, became a husband, a father, and a grandfather. When he wasn't talking about World War 2, he talked about Jean. I am honored to have been a small part of his 95 years.