ONE MORE VET: We have the story of one more local veteran to share in honor of Veterans Day.

Before James Edwin Heasley of Marshburg completed high school, he enlisted as a flight officer in February 1943.

He became a navigator on a B24 Bomber with the 8th Army Air Corp during World War II.  Basic training was in Greensboro, N.C.; pre-pre-flight school at Slippery Rock University; pre-flight school in Montgomery, Ala.; Ariel Gunnery School in Harlingen, Texas; and Navigation School in Hondo, Texas, where he got his wings in October 1944.

Flight crew training took place in in Tucson, Ariz. The whole crew picked up their new B24 in Lincoln, Neb., and headed to England. While over the Atlantic Ocean the plane hit a thunderhead at 2,2000 feet that destroyed the instruments. They made a crash landing in Northern Ireland.

The plane was ruined. After being rescued from Ireland, Heasley was stationed at Grafton Underwood Royal Air Force, just outside Kettering, England.

From here his crew flew low-level, night missions to drop arms and supplies to the resistance forces in Norway and Denmark. Heasley sometimes was navigating by roads and telephone-pole lines.

The supplies were loaded into canisters to fit the bomb bay. When dropped they were picked up by men on bicycles. They would put straps between two bicycles and load the canisters onto them.

According to Greg Trebon, a former U.S. Air Force Special Operations brigadier general, only the best navigators were handpicked to fly the night, low-level missions.  

After Victory Day, Heasley came back to the United States to train for the war in the Pacific. With the dropping of the bomb on Japan, that training was cancelled.

He was honorably discharged on Oct. 23, 1945. Heasley owned Heasley’s Trading Post for many years. He served as the grand marshall in this year’s Memorial Day parade.