Editor’s note: As the 82nd anniversary of D-Day approaches on June 6, The Sun Times News is honored to share a remarkable series of stories about Chelsea-area veterans whose lives were forever shaped by World War II. Drawn from extensive interviews, letters, photographs, and local history research by Cynthia Furlong Reynolds, these accounts preserve the voices of men who witnessed some of the war’s most defining moments, from Omaha Beach to the skies over Normandy.
Author’s note: As soon as the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, George Winans (1922-2016) hurried to Detroit to enlist in the Army Air Corps. After training on a B-26 in Texas and Utah, he joined a multi-ethnic crew that landed in Britain three months before D-Day. In subsequent months, two of his planes were shot down. He ended up a POW in neutral Sweden, sharing accommodations with Nazi pilots who were also POWs.
George Winans
“Nothing can compare to those thrills.
“War is terrible, no question. Yet it proved to be the salvation of my family’s jewelry business, as well as the salvation of many families in Chelsea who had been struggling during the Depression years. When I graduated from Chelsea High in 1940, there wasn’t much doing in town, so I went to Ann Arbor and got a job in a drug store. On Sunday, December 7, 1941, Dad and I were decorating our store in Chelsea for Christmas and listening to the radio when the President came on to announce the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
“’Where’s Pearl Harbor?’ I asked.
“Things started happening right away. Almost everyone I knew was prepared to volunteer immediately. We didn’t want to wait to be drafted—we felt that would be a stigma.
“The idea of being a pilot seemed very glamorous to a kid of eighteen. I was immediately accepted into the Air Corps, but it took nearly a year before I was sent to the classification center at San Antonio, where volunteers were tested to see what job best suited them. Navigators were the choice position for the Army—but not for the guys. The dumbest of us got to be pilots—and we were thrilled when we heard we qualified.
“I was assigned to be co-pilot on a B-24, a four-engine bomber. In March of 1944, we picked up a brand-new plane at Kansas City and took the northern route to the British Isles, by way of Iceland, Newfoundland, and Wales. When we arrived, we were sent to the 392nd Bomb Group in Kingsley and Wendling, one hundred miles north of London.
“Our crew was assigned our first flight late in April: to bomb a submarine base on the coast of France. The mission went like clockwork. We weren’t attacked, and when we returned to the base, we boasted, “We’ll be home in a month.” Later, we learned that the chances for surviving to finish twenty-five missions at that time were about fifteen percent. Good thing we didn’t know!
“On D-Day we were supposed to fly three missions. We were put on alert and confined to the base several days earlier, but we didn’t know what our target would be until we were awakened that morning. Our commanding officer handed each of us a pamphlet from General Eisenhower commending us and telling us the point of our mission: ‘You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you.’
“We took off at five o’clock that morning. It was a beautiful sight to see all those ships below us and all the planes in the sky. I can’t express the feeling it gave me, to be part of such a huge operation for such an important cause. We dropped our bombs and headed back for more, but the fog was so thick that Air Control grounded us—we couldn’t be effective in those weather conditions. During the next few days, we flew missions to prevent the Germans from getting their equipment to the front.”
Postscript: The stories are adapted from Reynolds’ forthcoming book, A Village at War, now in final editing. Through these narratives, readers will gain insight not only into battlefield experiences, but also into the courage, sacrifice, and resilience of an entire community during wartime.
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