​John Granby Benjamin
2nd LT. US Army Air Force
459th Bombardment Group
Torre Giulia, Italy ’44-‘45

 
John Benjamin was born June 2nd, 1917 and believes he is a direct descendent of John Benjamin who arrived in the New World in current day Boston in 1672 on a ship from Portsmouth, England.  John was born in the Bronx and shortly thereafter moved to West Hartford, CT where he attended William Hall High School, which is still standing today.    After high school he joined the Aviation Cadet program but found out that he needed a college degree to be a pilot.  He also found out that you didn’t really need a degree to learn how to fly.  So, he lied about college and apparently no one checked, and he went to training.  He went to Georgia for training and graduated as a 2nd LT.  Before leaving for Europe, he learned his girlfriend Betty was pregnant.  Her parents insisted he marry her before leaving for the war, and so he did.
 
He arrived at Coffee Field in Torre Giulia, Italy.  He was assigned to a B 24 Liberator with a crew of 10.  There were 6 enlisted men who were machine gunners, and 4 officers including the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and bombardier.  His group engaged primarily in strategic bombardment from March 1944 to Apr 1945, attacking such targets as oil refineries, munitions and aircraft factories, industrial areas, airfields, and communications centers in Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Rumania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece.
 
“Everything happened so quickly” John said.  “I volunteered for every mission.  I wanted to complete my requirement and get home.”  In total, he flew 34 combat missions with the same crew of 9.  No one died and no one was injured.  John said he made a few emergency landings, all of them because he ran out of gas.  On one occasion he ran out of gas and was unable to find an open field to land the plane.  The crew had to parachute out over northern Italy.  “I was the last one to jump because I had to hold the plane even until the others jumped.  When I jumped, the others didn’t see me jump and they assumed I went down with the plane.”  His wife received a telegram saying he was MIA behind enemy lines.
 
“I saw the ground when I was about 25 feet away.  It was really socked in with fog.  When I opened my eyes and looked up and saw an old lady dressed in black with white hair.  She thought I was German, but I convinced her I was American.”  She said, “Oh! American”.  She helped him to her house.  John remembers it as a large unpainted wooden structure with one room and one wooden table.  He eventually heard 3 gunshots that sounded like an American issue .45 pistol.  He looked outside and saw his co-pilot.  They were eventually rescued by a US plane crew.
 
John said “They had spies all over the place. We had Italians working for us.”  One day they found that the pins in their parachutes had been bent and that would prevent the parachute from opening.
 
I asked John if he was ever scared.  He quickly responded, “No.  Being scared never occurred to us.  We had no time to be scared.  We had a job to do”.
 
John said every mission was tough.  “The German planes used to shoot me full of holes, but I never got hit.”  Of his 34 missions John remembered bombing Vienna, Austria, Brux, Czechoslovakia and Munich, Germany.  “They were pretty well defended”.
 
John told me that he eventually succumbed to PTSD, or “shell-shocked” as it was known back then.  “By the last three missions it was tough to even stand on the flight deck.  “Eventually, the flight surgeon wouldn’t allow me to fly anymore, so they sent me home.”  He was sent home aboard the passenger ship, the USS America.  While he was on board, he remembers President Roosevelt dying.  “Everybody was pretty sad.  He was president for so long he was like a God.”
 
John came home and started a career in sales.  He stated with the Abbott Ball Company in West Hartford CT and then went to the Superior Ball Company in Unionville, CT.  He eventually went on to become an independent manufacturers rep for the steel ball and ball bearing industry.
 
John said that if he had to do it all over again, he would.  As I was leaving, I said to John, “thank you for saving the world.”  He laughed and said, “no need to thank me.”