Charles Kelley

Charles E. Kelley–“Chuck”–grew up as a devout Catholic kid in the small, hilly community of Elliot in Pittsburgh’s West End area. He was a junior in high school when he heard news on a neighbor’s radio about Pearl Harbor.  Chuck knew that it was a matter of time before he would be called up for duty.  Until then, he would spend his final year of high school consumed with dances and basketball.  It was the same year, he remembers, that a priest came into his classroom one day and said, “This time next year most of you boys will be shouldering guns.”

After high school, Chuck spent two years at Duquesne University but enlisted in the Army in the

fall of 1942.  He was not called up for service until February 1943. It would be five years until Chuck would return to his accounting studies at Duquesne, supported, like thousands of his fellow veterans, by the GI Bill.

During the war Chuck Kelley was a bombardier, first aboard the A-20 attack bomber and then the newer A-26—the Army Air Corps’ supreme twin engine tactical bomber.  By the summer of 1944, Chuck was flying regular missions against Nazi targets—sometimes twice a day.  He first flew from airbases near Corbeil-Essonnes in the north, and then Cucuron in the south of France.  Unlike the rotation for long range strategic bombers, the mission quota for the more agile attack bombers was an astounding 62 missions.

“Sometimes your could tell when I guy…just cracked,” Chuck says softly.  He would get quiet.  If the Flight Surgeon took note, the affected man would quickly dissapear from the unit.  The other men understood.  They were respectful.  No one knew how they would react on their next mission.  “When your time comes,” Chuck recalls a common sentiment among the flyers, “you’re gonna get it.”

When the war ended in Europe, Chuck had flown least 33 sorties.  He still had a lot of flying to do, thought the Army, and he was reassigned to the States in preparation for re-deployment to the Pacific.  Fortunately, the war ended before Chuck Kelley was sent westward toward Japan.  His time had come, but in a different way.  He got to go home.