Norval Seeley
experiences to teach others Norval Seeley flew 50 missions as a bombardier on a B-17 during World War II and lived to tell about it more than 45 years late By Pamela Selbert, Special to the Post-Dispatch Norval Seeley of House Springs may not have fond memories of fighting in World War II. In fact, although Seeley never was seriously injured while flying 50 missions out of Amandola, Italy, as bombardier aboard a B-17, he still wasn’t able to talk much about the war for more than 45 years after it ended, he says. But he’s talking about it today, and he doesn’t seem to have forgotten a single detail. Seeley, 78, moved to House Springs from Overland 42 years ago. Before his retirement in 1977, he commuted many miles to his job at the Defense Mapping Agency in St. Louis. He says that after his long silence about war experiences, “the whole thing, the training, the combat time, the coming home, all came flooding back one day in 1992.” Seeley attended a reunion of his Bomb Group Association in Omaha – he’d flown during the war with the 97th Bomb Group, often as squadron bombardier – and suddenly realized that wartime experiences would be lost unless he and others like him handed them down to younger generations, he says.
He says he returned home from the reunion, sat down at the computer and wrote for a week about what happened to him in the war. The result is a book of roughly 100 pages, which he calls “A front Row Seat,” which, of course was his position in the B-17, just inside the bubble in the nose of the plane. Seeley gives copies of his book to anyone who is interested. The books have photos from the era, including many of himself in his Air Corps uniform and of the aircraft he flew in. Several years ago Seeley also began offering programs to elementary and high-school students because he says he realized “they weren’t getting much information in their history book.” So far he has visited about 30 schools in St. Louis and Jefferson counties and Illinois to give 45-minute programs “tailored to the age of the children I’m talking to,” he said. He has addressed more than 1,500 children, he says proudly. He also corresponds by computer with students at an elementary school in Greensboro, S.C., whose teacher learned of the programs from a member of Seeley’s Bomb Group Association. “I tell the older children about the war and the missions I flew,” he said. “The younger ones learn about life on the home front, the rationing, having to cook everything from scratch, no microwave ovens, no dishwashers or freezers, no convenience foods, and the kids are dumbfounded.” Teachers enjoy the programs too, he believes. Women in the 1940s often wore skirts to the ankle but realized that if they cut them off to the knees they’d have enough cloth for another garment and often did so, he says. They also had to substitute rayon stockings for silk ones, and sometimes used eyeliner to draw a fake seam up the back of their bare legs to resemble silk stockings, he adds. “You couldn’t get silk from Japan then, and nylon, which was used for parachutes, was as sought after as a box of chocolates,” he said with a smile. “They stopped making cars, and gasoline was rationed.” Seeley adds that gasoline was abundant; the rationing was to keep drivers from wearing out their rubber tires, as that commodity was not available. Seeley explains that when the war broke out, he had a job with Curtiss-Wright in St. Charles, “training women and men who were classified 4-F to work with aluminum rivets.” He immediately wanted to enlist in the old Air Corps, but his mother refused to sign for him as he was not yet 21. But on July 8, 1942, the day he turned 21, he went downtown to the federal building on Market Street to enlist. He was sent to Texas for pilot training but soon washed out of the program, he says with a grin. “I had my own plane at the time, a 1929 Curtiss-Wright Robin and had my own ideas about flying.” He said. He then was sent to navigator school but learned that a bombardier program had room for six more men. Seeley jumped at the chance. As bombardier manning a .50 caliber machine gun, he flew 50 missions over a five-month stretch in 1944, 15 of them against the Ploesti oil fields in Romania. “I was on the first high-level mission to Ploesti with about 300 planes, and my last mission was the last one flown there,” he says. His planes often were hit; once the bubble was shot out, sending a shard into one eye with no permanent damage, and another time flak ripped open one of his boots, he says. Once a plane in his squadron limped back to base after being shoot through more that 1,700 times, he says. Within a few weeks it was back in service. During every flight Seeley carried a Bible in the knee pocket of his uniform and hoped that if he were shot down and captured, the Germans would allow him to keep it, and he’d have something to read, he says. Now every December, he reads the Christmas story from the same Bible to the congregation at his church, Faith United Methodist in House Springs. When Seeley came home from the war in late October 1944, he says with a laugh, he had two days to get ready for his wedding. He met Betty Jeanne at church before the war started. The couple has two children, daughter Suzanne Wakefield of High Ridge, and son Randall of Charlotte, N.C. Betty Seeley was chief juvenile officer for Jefferson County from 1967 until her retirement in 1986. Norval Seeley’s home, which he built, is filled with unusual antiques and many clocks, including three grandfather clocks, which he repaired for 20 years after retiring from the mapping agency. He moved the house, complete with the limestone chimney, when new Highway 30 claimed the land. He achieved the seemingly impossible task of transporting it from one steep hill to another. There on the 33 acres that are the reason they moved to the House Springs location, the Seeley raised collies “for show and to sell,” he said. Now his dogs include Mac, a golden retriever, and Buddy, a beagle. Three years ago he also joined the Confederate Air Force and suits up in the gray uniform for monthly meetings. “I’m too old to do much heavy work now, but if I had an assignment I could do it,” he says. On the lower level of his home, in a room with a wide view out over the surrounding hills, Norval Seeley has his memorabilia displayed. These include photos of four generations in uniform: his father, George Seeley, who served in the First Infantry Division on the Mexican border and was among the first to land in France in World War I; Norval Seeley with his training group in 1943; his son standing beside a T-38 trainer aircraft in 1975; and his grandson, Christopher Harrawood, grinning in his sailor uniform in 1992.
The propeller of his plane, the Curtiss-Wright Robin, hangs in this room, and bookshelves display various artifacts, including models of aircraft Seeley flew in, a belt buckle featuring the B-17, a gift from friends in the Confederate Air Force, and a slide rule-like device called an “aerial dead reckoning computer” used by the navigator in Seeley’s plane to plot the course during the last mission over Ploesti. “I never did like the name of that computer much,” he jokes. Seeley’s travel today are much more enjoyable, he says with a grin. He and Betty have toured all 50 states and 26 foreign countries, he says. But his mission is to tell young people what happened during World War II, he says. “I intend to do that as long as I’m alive,: he said. “They’re just not getting it in the history books.” The students are “anxious to hear, and they ask intelligent questions,” he said. He treasurers a book he’s complied containing dozens of thank-you letters. He adds, “But the best thanks I get is when they ask me to come back.” Published in St. Louis Post-Dispatch – Jefferson County Post, February 2000. |
