Remembering a Brother Who Died in World War II
BERUBE
The Standard-Times
Anika Clark
Boston University Washington News Service
11/22/06
This fall, 63 years after Japanese forces shot him from the sky, a Massachusetts man boarded a final flight home.
It took six decades to positively identify the remains of Staff Sgt. Joseph “Freddie” Berube, a native of Fall River and a former Air Corps gunner whose plane was shot down in New Guinea.
Japanese enemy fire hit Berube’s B-25D-1 Mitchell bomber on Oct. 24, 1943, and he and the other crew members—1st Lt. Robert H. Miller of Providence, 2nd Lt. Robert L. Hale of Newtonville, Mass. and Staff Sgt. Glendon E. Harris of North Monmouth, Maine—were presumed dead.
Remains of what were believed to be the four men were found at the crash site three years later but medical technology had not advanced to the point where they could be positively identified, and they were buried in a cemetery in the Pacific marked only by a number.
Yet even before he officially went “missing,” Berube seems to have left few traces of his life in Fall River.
“Freddie was the big brother,” said Berube’s sibling and sole survivor from his immediate family, Normand, 83. “I looked up to him, and we spent time together, but it was rather limited.”
In 2001, Normand was asked to provide a DNA sample which was used to definitively determine the identity of his brother’s remains, a process that took nearly five years. Normand finally received his brother’s remains this fall, and on October 28, Berube was laid to rest in a funeral planned by nieces he never knew. Of the approximately 30 people who attended the ceremony in Natick, Normand was the only one Freddie had ever met.
Any letters Berube sent to Normand from the war have vanished with time—along with many of Berube’s classmates from Durfee High School’s graduating class of 1936. During his senior year, Berube was too busy working, according to his brother, to belong to clubs or play on a sports team. With many of his classmates now gone, it is almost impossible to find anyone in the area who remembers him. In his senior yearbook his name is listed only once—with the other students whose pictures are missing.
But Berube’s brother recalls a young man who, while perhaps low-profile, seemed to work tirelessly on behalf of his family and fellow soldiers. “We were growing up during the Depression,” said Normand.
When Normand was about 9-years-old and Freddie was about 14, the boys’ mother died. As the oldest son—with two other younger brothers, Leo and Albert, and an older sister, Jeannette—Freddie Berube’s high school extracurricular activities consisted of jobs.
“Freddie was both a grocery boy and a paper boy,” Normand said. “He did both jobs and probably earned five or six dollars a week, which was a considerable contribution to the family income.” However, as a result, “he was away from the family quite a bit of the time.”
After graduating from high school in 1936, Berube moved to Northbridge, where he worked as an apprentice machinist before getting a job at the Pratt & Whitney manufacturing company in Hartford. In November, 1940, Berube enlisted in the Army Air Corps.
As a member of the 8th Bomb Squadron, Berube found himself facing peril on a regular basis. Three months before his final mission, Berube participated in a successful attack on the Japanese at Cape Gloucester airdrome for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. On that flight, although their turret guns jammed, Berube and another member of the crew “worked frantically and cleared their guns as the enemy fighters were pressing their attacks to close range.” They managed to use “skillful evasive action” to elude the attacking airplanes and return safely to base, according to an Air Force citation.
But on Oct. 24, 1943, Berube and his crew would not be as lucky. Maxine Pray, the niece of Berube’s crew mate Staff Sgt. Harris, has researched her uncle’s military history extensively. That October, the 8th Squadron was forcefully targeting a Japanese-controlled base in the South Pacific, she said.
“They were taking their bombers out…and hitting Rabaul every day the weather was in their favor,” she said. “On October 24th…between 60 and 70 Japanese planes were trying to break up the attack.”
On that day, according to eyewitness accounts filed with the military, at least one of these planes attacked Berube’s bomber.
“The plane, a Zero, dropped down below Lieutenant Miller’s plane…and came up from underneath with his guns blazing,” wrote Staff Sgt. Benny C. Cessna in his account. “Lieutenant Miller’s right wing was blown off just inside the star insignia and the right wing dropped.”
In a separate report, Staff Sgt. Verlon E. Woodard added his observations. “The plane crashed on the water edge in a grove of palm trees…. As it crashed there was a large flame and a lot of black smoke.”
Although Berube didn’t make it safely home, his recent return to Massachusetts has reopened his story.
“Up until I heard from the Joint Command of Missing in Action and Prisoners of War in 2001, I’d essentially closed the book on Freddie,” said Normand.
In the spring, Normand will have the chance to meet the relatives of the other crew members. Not all of the human remains from the crash site could be specifically identified by the military’s identification laboratory, and these collective remains will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
“I’ve had calls from all three families,” Normand said. “I’m looking forward to that.”
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