Front from left, James Cartwright, WWII; Don Kengerski, Korean War. Back row from left, Tyler Gucwa, Iraq War; Larry Perry, Vietnam War; Larry Carrithers, Vietnam War; Dane Guisbert, WWII; Ron Allen, Vietnam War; Robert Wilk, Vietnam War and  Samuel Mackey WWII. On Aug. 6  Area Purple Heart recipients gathered at the Ortonville Cemetery. Now, Ortonville will now be part of the Purple Heart Trail and join only Holly as Oakland County only Purple Heart Community. Photo by David Fleet.

By David Fleet

Editor

Samuel Mackey points to a small lump just above his right wrist, the result of a broken bone he suffered when the B-17 bomber he was navigating was shot down over Austria near the end of World War II in 1945.

“The mobility in my wrist is just not the same,” said Mackey. “But it did not hurt my golf game at all. In fact, it enhanced it.”

Mackey was one of nine veterans that attended the Purple Heart Community dedication on Aug. 6 at the Ortonville Cemetery, Veterans Memorial. Ortonville is now on the national Purple Heart Trail to give tribute to the men and women who have been awarded the Purple Heart medal.

Sixty-six local veterans representing the Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, Operation Enduring Freedom and the Iraq War are now recognized on a plaque at the cemetery and the veteran’s memorial in downtown Ortonville.

The Purple Heart project was spearheaded by Ortonville VFW Post 582 commander Dennis Hoffman.

“I would like to thank the community for coming out and honoring the nine Purple Heart recipients that were able to be at the ceremony as well as all those recognized on the plaque,” said Hoffman, an Army veteran who served in Korea from 1968-70. “We are still collecting names of the Purple Heart veterans past and present—it’s such a great honor to recognize those who gave much.”

While the veterans’ stories differ, the Purple Heart medal presented for being wounded or killed in any action against an enemy of the United States or opposing armed forces is the common thread among the service men and women recognized.

Born in Belfast, North Ireland in 1918, Mackey, now 98-years-old and a Clarkston resident, reflected on his military career more than 70 years ago.

“My father, Sam, Sr., immigrated to the United States in 1923, leaving behind my mother, Agnes, me, and my sister, Mildred,” he said. “Mom was pregnant when Dad left. She had a baby girl—Mary, but at 3-years-old she contracted diphtheria and that turned into double pneumonia and she died on her birthday. Dad never met her.”

In 1927 the family left Belfast and united with Sam, Sr. in the United States.

“We docked in Boston first,” he said. “Then in New York City. We did not have to go through Ellis Island because Dad was waiting for us when we arrived. From New York we took a train to Detroit where he was working for Ford Motor Company.”

At 15-years-old Mackey was accepted at the Henry Ford Trade School where he learned tool making. He worked as a machinist and lived in the Detroit area during the 1930s.

“When World War II broke out in 1941 I had a deferment since I was a mechanist and needed at home,” he said. “But my neighbor and friend Ronald Burdo was killed in a battle at Guadalcanal in the Pacific—he was awarded the Navy Cross for his action there against the Japanese. That moved me to enlist and take his place in the service.”

In the summer of 1942, Mackey, then 25-years-old, enlisted in the Air Force and began training as a navigator.

“I had been taking flying lessons at Detroit City Airport, but due to poor eyesight I never got through flight training,” he said. “My eyes were not good enough to be an Air Force pilot. The Air Force finally called me to duty in 1943.”

As part of his Air Force training, he studied aeronautics and other subjects at the University of Toledo. During this time he returned home to Detroit on leave and married his sweetheart Joyce.

In September 1944, after several months of training, Mackey and his crew of ten shipped out of Newport News, Va. The convoy sailed for about 10 days to Italy and was stationed at Sterparone Airfield near the Adriatic Sea.

The crew was part of the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, assigned to Fifteenth Air Force in Southern Italy. Mackey was a navigator and one of a crew of ten on a B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bomber.

According to the Air Force, the missions with the 840th Squadron were long-range strategic bombardment of enemy military, industrial and transport targets, such as oil refineries and oil fields in Italy, France, southern Germany, Austria and the Balkans.

“All 27 of the missions with the 840th (Squadron) were good,” he said. “Just one really bad one over southern Poland. We were over the target at 28,000 feet and our left engine got hit and we lost our oxygen which was needed at that high altitude. So we had to go down to 12,000 feet so we could breathe on our own.”

“The plane was shaking really bad so we slowed down from 180 knots to 120 knots or about 140 mph,” he recalled. “We were all alone out there, away from our squadron, but luckily it was late in the war and I guess the Germans were running out of planes and fuel at that time so they did not go after us. Then all of a sudden, somewhere near Yugoslavia, a group of our P-51C Mustang fighters came up and were right on our wing tips. It was part of the Black Squadron—Tuskegee Airman— I’ll never forget the faces of the pilots looking at us just off our wing tips. We made it back safely.”

After they returned, Mackey was reassigned for one mission to a different plane, but the same 840th Squadron due to the illness of their navigator.

That would be his last mission.

“On April 20, 1945 we were on a bombing run into Germany on some rail lines,” he said. “We were flying over the top of the Alps into Austria to the drop site when we were hit by flack from anti-aircraft guns. Two of our four engines were hit and we needed to descend to 5,000 feet, but we could not because the Alps are much higher. We could not bail over the Alps either, since we would freeze to death or you’d land on some mountaintop. So we just dumped bombs and started tossing everything out of the plane we could to make it lighter before we attempted a crash landing. Everything is going so fast at that point you just don’t have time to be scared.”

In the front of the plane was the pilot, co- pilot, and engineer. Mackey, the navigator, was in the middle of the plane, one of seven crew members sitting in the radio room, when the B-17 crashed into a farmer’s field near Villach, Austria.

“The pilot lost control just before he hit the ground and it broke up,” he said. “The impact threw us out (of the plane) except for two crewmen who were crushed when the plane flipped. The plane cartwheeled when we hit and I ended up 40 yards from the crash site. The crew members on either side of me were killed. The three in the front of the plane did not receive a scratch. I did not know any of their names since it was my first time with the crew.”

Mackey was in and out of consciousness following the crash.

“When I came around, a farm woman was standing over me digging dirt out of my mouth so I could breathe,” he said. “Her fingers were in my mouth. I remember she was crying—I could feel her tears drip on my face.”

Mackey then recalls being inside a barn with some big German men waving pistols around.

“Three or four German officers were there, but they did not question me. They were really interested in our radio man, I think they thought he was Jewish,” he said. “But actually the crewman was Greek, not Jewish. At that time in the war we had no idea of the atrocities going on in Germany. Still, their hatred toward the Jewish was very evident.”

Mackey was transported to a hospital in Villach.

“When I woke up the next morning (in the hospital) my right arm was in a cast and my left toe bandaged,” he said. “The impact of the crash tore my laced up boot right off my foot. The Austrian nurses were very nice, the German nurses, not so much. We ate barley soup there.”

Since the war in Europe was winding down, Mackey was liberated and sent to the 100th General Hospital in Naples, then to an Army hospital ship and back to the United States. He was released from the hospital at Kelly Field, San Antonio Texas in October 1945.

For his actions he was awarded the Air War medal with two bronze oak leaf clusters, Purple Heart, the European Theater of War with four bronze stars, the Presidential Unit Citation, the Good Conduct medal, the Prisoner of War medal and the World War II Victory medal.

Mackey returned home to Detroit and was employed at Stellar Tool for many years. He and wife Joyce had three children, Susanne, Nancy and Robert. The couple were married for 73 years. Joyce died in 201

5 at 96-years-old.

“I kept in touch with some of the 840th squadron after the war,” he said. “But I believe they all are gone now, except me.”