Livermore WWII veteran to take Honor Flight

By Stephen Clearheart Johnson
North Forty News

Glacier View resident Charles Abernathy saw plenty of Europe as an infantry rifleman in World War II. Now, thanks to a program by the nonprofit Honor Flight Network, he is making a pilgrimage to tour the war memorial completed in 2004 and dedicated to the men of his generation.

Abernathy's neighbor Rebecca Bizzell read an article about the program and urged her friend to apply. She will act as the required escort, or guardian, for Abernathy and two other veterans for the trip to Washington, D.C.

The program pays the veterans' costs, but requires guardians, who must be nonfamily members, to accompany and care for the veterans. Guardians must pay their own expenses. Bizzell, a registered nurse, may become a team leader guiding as many as nine veterans on the trip.

Abernathy, the son of a Colorado coal miner from Erie, was drafted shortly after marrying Elizabeth, his late wife of 63 years.

Assigned as a rifleman with the 35th Infantry Division, Abernathy went ashore on Omaha Beach on D-Day+1. The beach was still under fire, with bodies "stacked like cordwood," said Abernathy. He went through the deadly hedgerow fighting and participated in the battle of St. Lo, which led to Patton's armored breakout in Operation Cobra.

Abernathy was later with Patton's army assaulting fortifications in the Nancy/Metz area. As his company was forming up to assault yet another tree line, he was knocked unconscious by artillery. When he awoke, his company had moved out, he had a gaping hole in his leg and his pants were on fire. He put out the fire by packing on mud, and then moved on to help a wounded medic.

Spending four months recuperating, Abernathy missed his division's winter move to counterattack the German offensive in the Bulge, relieving the surrounded Americans in Bastogne. He rejoined the unit in time to cross the Rhine at Rheinberg where they fought in the pincer movement to surround the Ruhr. They fought east to the Elbe River, where they came closer to Berlin than any other American unit.

Abernathy noted that he never knew where he was and that because they were always ahead of their supplies he was usually cold and hungry. "Nothing was together--all chaos," he said.

One of his most worried moments, Abernathy said, was when an American P-51 fighter dropped an empty fuel tank overhead. He remembers thinking, "I go clear through the war and now I'm gonna get killed by a gas tank."

In August 1945 he was boarding a ship in Brussels, expecting retraining and shipment to the Pacific Theatre, when he heard the news of the atom bomb ending the war with Japan.

Abernathy, who spent his civilian career as a mason, never sought medical treatment from the VA until he met Bizzell. She encouraged him to begin getting treatment for hearing loss, restless leg syndrome, migraines and lingering effects of his wounds. Before meeting Bizzell, he said, "I never spoke of my experiences."

She drives him to VA appointments. "He's a really special guy," she said. "It is a privilege to take care of him and go on this trip with him - as a WWII vet and a great human being."

Abernathy said he thinks the WWII memorial "is the most beautiful of all. The Vietnam memorial is the saddest."

When asked why he wanted to go on this trip, he replied, "So I can cry."

After their trip, slated for Sept. 23, Abernathy and Bizzell will present a talk and slideshow at the Red Feather Lakes Community Library on Veteran's Day, Nov. 11. They plan to show pictures of the trip and give out information about how others may apply for and take an Honor Flight.