Historic Laredo

ead them their letters from their mothers and
grandmothers. They were cocky men, full of
bravado, the way young men are. They didn’t
come to chapel like the rest of us to pray or take
Communion every morning. One who spoke for
the rest said, ‘If it was your time to go, it was your
time, and prayer wouldn’t intervene.’ On their
first mission out, they lost a crew member. They
came to chapel after that. They became believers.
On their seventh or eighth mission out, they were
all killed. It was very hard to look at their empty
beds and to prepare their personal effects which
would be sent to their families,” Guerra said.
“The sight of their empty cots and having to prepare
their possessions, the finality of it, this converted
into men whoever of us were still boys.”
Guerra completed 35 air missions over
Germany, the last on February 14, 1945 over
Madenburg. He was decorated with seven Air
Medals and five Battle Stars for service in
Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes, and the
Battle of the Bulge. He also received a
Presidential Unit Citation. He had spent 36
months in the service, 18 in combat.
Guerra recalled the trip home from war. “We
came home on the Queen Mary, docking in
New York on April 12, 1945. The war was not
behind us. The well and the living were on the
topmost decks. The wounded were carried
below. I came to Laredo by train, thinking all
the way home that the life I lived before 1942
was not the life I lived now.”
“The first thing I did when I got home was to
ask my prospective mother-in-law for Amanda’s
hand,” he said. José Guerra married Amanda
Gutierrez on April 16, 1945.
In 1967, he was appointed by President
Lyndon Johnson to serve on the Selective
Service Draft Board. He served until 1976.
FROM A JOURNAL OF WAR
I would hope that this gives my grandsons and
granddaughters an idea of what the war was, what
war is. There is no way that a person can rationalize
that war is dramatic or heroic or beneficial or
necessary. War is a terrible business, attested to by
those who can no longer speak, by the wounded
and maimed, by those who lost a loved one, by
those who know their lifespan has been considerably
shortened by experiences under fire and
stress, both physical and emotional.
Long after actual combat—whether it was on
land or at sea or in the air—there endures the
sharpness of the ordeal an absolute appreciation
for the wonder of life itself. I have a very special
thankfulness for the colors of the sky, the textures
of the greenery, and above all that my life was
spared in war to enjoy the blessings of a family
such as I have of my wife and five children.
The stress of combat so many years ago
allows me not to press the panic button when a
problem presents itself, as though the war gave
me a sense of value to differentiate the important
from the not-so-important.
There are some who wail over what was
destroyed in the American and British bombing
of historic Dresden—cathedrals, castles, the
wall of the city. It was terrible, the way war is,
but it should be remembered that German air
power destroyed much of London, including
churches, schools, cathedrals, and thousands of
Londoners. During the Battle of Britain, the
English had to resort to sending many of the
children of southern England to northern
England to save them. This was a heartbreaking
blow to many families.
I was in England at this time. After the
Germans lost the Battle of Britain, they started a
bombardment directed at London with pilotless
planes with buzz bombs and only enough fuel
to reach London. The Germans also perfected
the use of rockets to firebomb London.
English civilians—men, women, and children—would
fill the subway system at night to
be safe from the nightly bombardment.
On a mission to Kassel, Germany, we were hit
by flak and lost an engine. The flak had torn a
hole in one of our wing rubber gas tanks.
Gasoline sprayed throughout the plane. We saw
flame exhaust coming from one of the engines a
few feet away from the stream of gasoline.
We turned off our heated suits, the intercom,
the radio, anything to prevent a spark. After five
minutes, the gasoline emptied from the ruptured
tank. Another five minutes and the fumes
and gas had evaporated. The lack of power
caused us to fly out of formation. German fighter
planes loved to wait for bomber stragglers.
They would line up and take turns at the stragglers.
We needed to get back to England. Over
an open field we dropped all our bombs. We
were flying at about 50 feet to get away from the
46 ✦ HISTORIC LAREDO