First Lieutenant Donald W. Allee of Hammond, Indiana, is my father. He was born 10 February 1921, the eighth of eleven children of George W. and Etta Jane Allee.

In World War II, he served in the U. S. Army Air Corps as a P-61 pilot in the 9th Air Force's 422nd Night Fighter Squadron.

My father's story shares much with the stories of other Americans during those war years, beginning with the Monday morning after the Pearl Harbor attack, when my dad and his younger brother Jerry showed up to enlist along with thousands of other American men. The crowd in front of the Hammond recruiting office was so large that they were among those told to come back later. My Uncle Jerry chuckled as he related this memory to me over forty years later. He and Don decided to go swimming at the YMCA. When they returned after the exertion of swimming, the examining doctor mistook my dad's rapid heart rate for something irregular and so turned him away.

Later in 1942, my dad was accepted and went to basic training in Santa Ana, California. He had excellent vision and so qualified for training as a pilot, but at six-foot-three he was too tall. With a bit of practice he was able to stand several inches shorter and thereby pass the physical exam for flight school. He trained first at Visalia, California, and then at Chico, California. (The picture above is from his time in Chico.)

From Chico he traveled with a group of cadets by chartered bus to La Junta, Colorado, to earn his wings. En route to La Junta, at a Sunday afternoon stopover in Salt Lake City, he met my mother, Celia Irene Folbridge. She was a WAAC recruiter working in the Rocky Mountain region. In May 1943, he earned his wings as a pilot in Class 43E, and in this same month he married my mother.

My father did his night fighter training in Florida at Orlando and Kissimmee, during which time he and my mother lived together for the only time in their lives. Then in late February 1944, my father and his squadron transferred overseas, sailing from New York to Liverpool, England, on the HMS Mauretania. My mother returned to her hometown in northern Illinois, and I was born in May 1944. I am told by his buddies in the 422nd that my father handed out big cigars to celebrate my birth.

After months of training in England and awaiting the delivery of their aircraft, the 422nd Night Fighter Squadron entered combat prior to D-Day flying V-1 intercept missions over the English Channel. My father flew the Northrop P-61A Black Widow named "Wacky Wabbit."

After D-Day, the 422nd Night Fighter Squadron moved to France and flew out of Maupertus on the Cherbourg peninsula, and then, after the Breakout and Liberation of Paris, his squadron was transferred to Chateaudun where they stayed for two weeks before moving on 16 September 1944 to an airfield at Florennes, Belgium.

During his service in WWII, my father flew combat missions over the English Channel, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. He earned four Oak Leaf Clusters for missions flown, and he is credited with a "probable" -- a German Ju-88 that he shot to flames on 14 December 1944.

On the third night of the Battle of the Bulge, my father and his R/O (Radar Observer) T/Sgt Richard Heggie crashed in the fog after being unable to locate any clear airfield at which to land.

Before going overseas, my father had told my mother, "If I die, bury me where I fall." True to his wish he rests on a Belgian hillside in the U.S. Cemetery at Henri-Chapelle along with eight thousand other American servicemen.

His loss permanently marked my life. I miss you Dad. We will remember always.