Uncle Ralph made the ultimate sacrifice

By Ralph Echtinaw

Editor and Publisher

I was named for my mother’s oldest brother, Ralph C. Weting, the son of Hazel and Howard Weting of Hazel Park, Michigan. 

Born in 1922 Uncle Ralph was drafted by the Army in 1942. He became a top turret gunner on a Martin B-26 Marauder bomber with the 585th Squadron of the 394th Bomb Group.

The 394th began flying missions over German-occupied France in March 1944. Uncle Ralph’s pilot, Lt. Donald E. Ihle, named his plane the Sassy Lassy. His crew was co-pilot Buford Bowen, bombardier Leonard Collen, radioman Walter C. Schaefer, tail gunner Eugene B. Klinzing and Uncle Ralph.

“As long as I’m flying with (Ihle) you never need worry about me,” Uncle Ralph wrote in a letter dated April 24, 1944.

Through 47 combat missions the Sassy Lassy crew was “scared as hell” a number of times, according to Collen (whom I personally interviewed by phone in 1997), but never in dire straits.

Wartime censorship forbade Uncle Ralph from describing his combat experience in letters home, but he had this to say in a May 4 letter: “It’s an experience I wouldn’t want to have missed for the world. Believe it’s making a helluva lot better man out of me.”

In a July 10, 1944 letter he was less insouciant: “It’s surprising what (God) does for you when the going gets rough. I feel closer to him since coming over here than I ever did before in my life. In fact, I think he has taken us by the hand a brought us home a couple of times. That’s the only way I can still explain my being here.”

In writing to Uncle Ralph’s widow, Schaefer had this to say: “Ralph showed no nervous tension. He was always happy go lucky and never worried much about the missions. He was very confident that he would come through okay. He was one of the few guys in the outfit who sat on a pillow in the turret so he could see better. Most of the turret gunners sat down as low as they could. It takes a lot of nerve to stick your head way up in the thing. Feels pretty lonely out there. I rode the turret once, and that was enough for me.”

Lieutenant Collen also wrote to Rita, saying that “Ralph was the favorite in our crew, and we were all like brothers, so long had we worked together.”

Rita wrote to Uncle Ralph almost every day he was overseas. “She seems to be worrying about this war, etc., changing me,” he wrote June 5. “It’s changing me all right. It’s giving me a deeper appreciation of Rita and everything she stands for: A home, love and a few little comforts that were always taken too much for granted.”

In Uncle Ralph’s last letter to his parents, three days before his death, he wrote: “There is a swimming hole located on the field, and I was planning on giving it a try tonight. But looks as though I’ll have to let it slide until tomorrow. Oh well. What’s the difference? It looks like I’ll be here for a while yet.”

It’s difficult to piece together what happened on the Sassy Lassy’s 48th mission Aug. 7, 1944 against a railroad bridge at Nugent-sur-Seine, even for those who were there.

In a letter to Rita, Schaefer said the Sassy Lassy hit the enemy coast at 12:30 p.m., flying at 10,000 feet. German anti-aircraft gunners started shooting at the formation 15 minutes later. “Since we were expecting no flak in that particular section it caught us all as quite a surprise,” Schaefer wrote. “And before we were able to do much in the way of evasive action all hell broke loose.”

Lieutenant Ihle picks up the story in a letter to the widow of co-pilot Buford Bowen: “The controls were shot out, and the right engine was on fire. I gave the order to leave the ship, and Buford got out of his seat and walked back to the bomb bay followed by Lt. Collen.”

Schaefer wrote about the fateful moments, too. Parenthetic remark is his: “A burst came up through the floor behind me, about a foot in front of the turret (it’s possible part of this burst hit Ralph’s chute) and then it felt as if the ship slowed up and started to glide. The interphone was shot out, and we were cut by voice from each other. When I glanced toward the tail, Gene was putting on his chute, so I turned to get mine and as I did so, I saw Ralph coming out of the turret. Then I felt the wheels dropping and the bomb bad doors opening. Gene went out the waist immediately, and I followed right on his heels. I think Ralph was right behind me, but I’m not absolutely sure. I thought and thought about it but everything happened in such a split second that certain parts are still hazy in my mind. If he was behind me it was the last time I saw him. As far as I could tell in such a short time he wasn’t wounded or hurt when I saw him come out of the turret. 

The next day, While sheltering in a farm house six miles from where he landed, Schaefer was visited by a Frenchman who told him that two of his crew mates were killed. He drew a picture of a man falling and explained with his hands that the parachute never opened properly. “Then he wrote WETING on a piece of paper and pointed to the diagram he had drawn. Since he had gotten the name somewhere I figured he had found Ralph’s dog tags on him.”

Collen’s most vivid memory of the incident was standing at the forward end of the bomb bay urging co-pilot Buford Bowen at the aft end of the bomb bay to jump. “That memory will never leave me,” he said. “He just would not move. He was catatonic. He was frozen there.”

Collen jumped, leaving Bowen behind. Ihle told Uncle Lawrence after the war that Uncle Ralph stayed behind to try to make Bowen jump. “It’s possible Ralph could have come down out of his turret and also tried to get Bowen out,” Collen said. “I wouldn’t doubt that one bit. He was so concerned with the welfare of everybody else. He always was the type to see that everybody was comfortable and had what he needed.”

Uncle Ralph was ultimately the last to jump, but either the plane was too low or his chute didn’t open. His body was later recovered and identified. Bowen went down with the plane. 

Schaefer, Klinzing, Ihle and Collen landed safely and were hidden by French families until liberated by the British Army.

“Ralph was one of the finest boys I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with - sober, conscientious and one of the most dependable men in my crew,” wrote Ihle in a letter to Uncle Ralph’s father Howard Weting. “He saved us from having to bail out and lose a ship sometime before that, when we returned from a bad mission and the ship was all shot up. It was only thru his doing his work wonderfully well that I was able to bring the ship in and make a safe landing. So you can see there was a strong tie between us and you’ll understand when I say that I also feel his loss very deeply.”

My grandparents corresponded with two French citizens who were involved after the crash. One of them, R Dumoutier, a Catholic priest, wrote that Uncle Ralph’s death saved bombardier Collen from capture indirectly. “The Germans were close by and looking for those still alive, and we sent them to the spot where your son was. And when they found that he was dead did not look anywhere else which gave time for Leonard to escape.”

Among the papers I inherited from my grandparents is a photocopy of a family diary, probably written by Rita shortly after a telegram announcing the death of her husband arrived in February 1945.

“Dear Ralph: I loved you more than I can say. Know you would say, ‘Keep your chin up,’ and that is what I will try to do. It is so hard without you beside me. Why do these things happen? I cannot understand.”

Uncle Ralph’s body was exhumed from a French grave and re-buried in Meade Cemetery in Meade, Michigan in 1948. Rita remarried but stayed in touch with the Wetings. Before she died she stipulated that she was to be buried next to Uncle Ralph. And so she was.