Under His Wings

UNDER HIS WINGS

MY GRANDFATHER, Martin Fry, moved to Bonner’s Ferry, Idaho, in 1875,” said Orah. “He and his brother, Richard, bought the ferry that crossed the Kootenai River from its original owner, Edwin Bonner.” The Fry brothers also ran Fry’s Trading Post, and Richard was the first postmaster of Fry, Idaho.

Orah’s father, Adelbert “Del” Fry, had degrees from Gonzaga University in civil and steam engineering and was operating a successful freight business running from Bonners Ferry to Nelson, British Columbia, Canada, when he met and married Rebecca Ratcliff Dykes.

Rebecca was a widow with four children when she married Del. They had three more children, each about two years apart. Then, seven years later, in 1918, Rebecca became pregnant with Orah. She was 39 years old, fearful of pregnancy at her age, and resented being pregnant. By the time Orah was 5 years old she had told him he was unwanted, and that message was repeated often during his childhood and adolescence.

Rebecca feared for Del’s safety on the 40-foot tug and 50-foot barge he ran for his business and convinced him to make a career change to farming. The family moved to Hood River, Oregon, and fell into poverty. After Orah completed eighth grade, Rebecca insisted that he drop out of school and go to work. He objected and left home. Before long Rebecca relented and wrote to tell him that if he came home he could attend the local high school. Orah knew his parents needed his help. His brothers and sisters had all left home, and his parents had no income. So he returned and helped support the family by picking up odd jobs that fit around his school schedule.

Orah was eager to learn. His curiosity about how things work was key to his learning. That curiosity paid dividends when one of his teachers came to school one rainy day with a windshield wiper that didn’t work. Orah fixed it, and a couple of weeks later that same teacher asked if he would like to work in a garage. Orah’s response, “I don’t have training for that,” didn’t deter the teacher who told him to report to the head mechanic at the local Pontiac garage in town. Orah worked until 10 p.m. most days and gave his earnings to his parents.

Orah taught himself to play the piano and during high school played the baritone in the concert band. He also played the cello in a string quartet, the bass viol in the concert orchestra, and the sousaphone in the pep band. His string quartet had played for every church in town except his own when his music teacher asked him to find out if the group could play at his church. When the head elder learned that the other members of the quartet were not Adventists, he refused to let them play. Not one to be deterred, Orah took matters into his own hands and invited his fellow church member musicians to get together and practice for special music. Out of the several members he invited, Orah was the only one to show up for practice. These experiences and others were so discouraging to Orah that he stopped attending church.

During his senior year of high school, Pearl Harbor was bombed. After he graduated, he went to work as a welder at the Kaiser Shipyard in Vancouver, Washington. Orah thought during this time that his family didn’t care about him, his church didn’t care about him, and God didn’t care about him. Just a few months later he was drafted into the Army.

Irene, the wife of his older half-brother, drove Orah to catch the train to Fort Lewis where he was to report for duty. Her parting words to him were, “Orah, I know you think God doesn’t care about you, but next to my husband and my children, I care about you. I’m going to be praying that God will take care of you during this war and that He will take you through some experience that will teach you that He cares about you.” That was the first time in Orah’s life that anyone had told him they cared about him.

That evening at Fort Lewis, an announcement over the public address system invited all cadets interested in trying out for Aviation Cadet School to be at a certain building by 0700 the next morning. Orah—and 138 others—showed up for a day of physical and mental testing. At the end of the day, Orah was one of seven chosen.

His training included basic training in Clearwater, Florida; officer candidate school in Miami Beach; the equivalent of two years of college in five months at Butler University in Indianapolis; aviation ground school in San Antonio; flight training at Stamford Flying School, Arledge Field, in Stamford, Texas; basic military flight school at Perrin Field near Denison, Texas; and advanced flight training at Ellington Field in Houston. Orders for B-24 transition training sent him on his way to the war in Europe.

Once Orah was fully trained, he flew a B-24 with his crew from Manchester, New Hampshire, to Italy by way of Gander, Newfoundland, the Azores, Africa, and Tunisia. Shortly after arrival in Italy, the crew watched B-24s landing as the planes returned from combat. On the third plane to land, the nose wheel collapsed, folding the fuselage into the windshield and killing both pilots. Chuck Comstock, the first pilot of Orah’s crew, turned to the engineer and said, “One of your jobs will be to check and make sure that nose wheel is locked in place before every landing.”

They were assigned to the 759th Bombardment Squadron, part of the 459th Bombardment Group that flew out of Giulia Airfield near Cherangola, Italy. The 759th carried out bombing missions to northern Italy, Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Orah and his crew participated in missions in March and April of 1945.

“I have tried to forget about World War II,” said Orah. Some things are not easy to forget, however, and he recalls bombing runs as if they happened yesterday.

“The first mission I flew was to a railroad marshalling yard in Budapest,” said Orah. “The city is divided by a river and the railroad yard was on the Pest side. We flew to the city just under 30,000 feet. A B-24 with a load of bombs could not fly any higher. The last 10 minutes of our flight we were flying straight and level in order to give the bombardier time to line his bomb sight up on the target and adjust it for wind drift and altitude. Once he got it set, it would automatically track the target and drop the bombs at the proper time so they would hit the target. This is the most dangerous time on a bombing mission because it gave the anti-aircraft gunners a chance to align their guns to track us. Some of the crew were swearing while others were praying.

“Flak was bursting in front of us as we entered the bomb run,” continued Orah. “We could see the flak bursts ahead of us and a little higher than we were. The next set of flak was about half as far away and right on our altitude. The third set of flak bursts were just ahead of us. The anti-aircraft bullets were designed so when they exploded, they broke into many pieces about an inch long and a half-inch wide. They sounded like hail stones hitting the plane. As soon as our bombs were released, we turned left and gained a little more altitude to throw the anti-aircraft guns’ range off.”

On another mission Orah recalled, “As we started our bombing run, flak bursts were just ahead of us and on our elevation. The second set of flak was right where we were. Shrapnel was flying everywhere. One piece came from behind my left shoulder, whizzed by my face so close I could feel the wind from it, and went into the instrument panel, knocking out our instruments. The next thing we knew our power steering was shot out and the number three engine got hit. Smoke poured from it, so I turned on the fire extinguisher for that engine and feathered the prop. Our bombs had hit the target, and a lot of black smoke was seen coming from the tanker cars on the railroad yard beneath us. When we got back to our airfield, our left side gunner showed us the tears in his shirt where shrapnel had gone by the front of his body, ripping his shirt, then under his arm where it tore his sleeve. Our maintenance crew later told us we had over 200 holes in the plane, but none of the crew got a scratch.”

Without the power steering, it took the strength of both pilots to pull the nose of the plane up for landing. If either pilot had been incapacitated, it would likely have been a crash landing.

Orah’s individual combat flight record indicates that in addition to the more common targets of bridges, tunnels, railroad marshalling yards, ammunition depots, and oil refineries, he conducted missions to the “St. Valentin Tank Works, Austria,” and one location simply titled “5th Army Front, Italy.” His certificate of service indicates he was involved in battles and campaigns in the North Apennines, the Po Valley, the Rhineland, and Central Europe, for which he was awarded the Europe- Africa-Middle East ribbon with four bronze stars. He was also awarded the Air Medal. As far as Orah is concerned, however, the most important mission was the one he was scheduled to fly, but didn’t.

“When the war ended in Germany, the flying stopped. I, and a number of others, had all our pay sent to our homes. We had to fly six hours a month to get our flight pay, so the Commanding Officer organized some reconnaissance missions so we could get our flight pay. I was scheduled to fly the second mission. The war in Europe had been over for two weeks. The day before I was to take off, a friend of mine came to my tent and asked to go in my place. I didn’t want him to go, because I needed the money. He followed me around all day begging and pleading with me to let him go in my place. Finally, at 10 minutes till five o’clock, we went to the flight room and scratched my name and put his name in.

“He took off the next morning at 5 a.m. About 10 o’clock, the field commander got a phone call telling him that the plane we had sent out that morning had been shot down by the Russians.”

Orah recalled thinking, “I should have been on that plane. My life should have ended that day.” As he thought about flying 10 missions with none of the crew getting a scratch even though their plane was shot up and planes all around were either knocked out of the sky or shot up so badly they couldn’t get back to base, he could have concluded that the four-leaf clover the 759th Bomb Squadron wore as a shoulder patch had brought him good luck. Instead, he remembered what his sister-in-law told him when she dropped him off at the train station: “Orah, I’m going to be praying that God will take care of you during this war and that He will take you through some experience that will teach you that He cares about you.”

“Right then I knew her prayers had been answered,” said Orah. He said that one of the best things to happen to him during WWII was being given the assurance that God cares for him. With that assurance, he became a serious Bible student and returned to church. He graduated from WWU in 1959 with a degree in education and taught at Myrtle Point School, Sutherlin Adventist Christian School, and Tualatin Valley Junior Academy. In 1966 he became caretaker at Rosario Beach Marine Station, a position he held for 18 years.

Orah is 99 years old now and lives in Ventura, California, with his granddaughter and her husband. “I try to live like I am flying on instruments,” he told me, describing his method for living a Christian life. Pilots learn to trust their cockpit instruments even when there is no visibility. For Orah, flying on instruments and trusting what those instruments tell you is the equivalent of trusting God’s guidance system—“His Word.” That is the method for living he recommends for everyone.