Nick Reid, 81, works at the Pennington Market, where he toils in the produce department 30 hours a week. He recently took time off to go to Colorado reunion.
By John Tredrea
The bonds between crew members of a warplane run deep.
They last for life, Nick Reid says. So seeing his old crew buddies for the first time in nearly 60 years, as he did a few weeks ago, was a watershed event in his long life.
"We had a reunion in Colorado," said Mr. Reid, who still works at the Pennington Market at age 81. "Actually, they’ve been having reunions for about eight years now. But this is the first one I was able to get to, because they weren’t able to find me until this year. They thought I was in New Jersey, you see, because they remembered that’s where my late wife, Bettye, was from. She and I got married while I was still in the service. We had a military wedding in 1944, shortly before I went overseas.
"Seeing the guys I was in the service with again for the first time since 1945 well, it was a special thing. We went through a lot together. You’re really happy to see them. It’s kind of overwhelming, too."
Mr. Reid, a lifelong Yardley, Pa., resident does not like to talk about the war much in a way that reflects on himself. He’s proud to be a veteran who volunteered, but becomes self-effacing when asked to talk about his personal experiences as a bombardier. But, if prodded a little, the recollections he shares make it easy to see why he feels like his crew members are almost like brothers.
The plane he flew, a four-engine B-24 Liberator, sometimes went through "a carpet of flak" from German anti-aircraft guns. "The Germans had 360 anti-aircraft guns at Vienna and 260 of them at Linz, both places where we flew missions. It seemed like solid flak right under you at times," Mr. Reid said. "You had to wonder if you were going to make it. It’s pretty memorable, all right."
He remembers how it felt to be the one who actually released the bombs from the B-24.
"Well, you had to concentrate hard on what you were doing. You had a target to hit, and you had to pay attention to the orders and your bombsight and other instruments. But things changed. In the beginning, our targets were refineries, supply depots, things like that. Toward the end of the war, we bombed some bridges. And of course you tended to wonder about who might be on it. But they were legitimate military targets, of course. We had a job to do."
After enlisting in the Army Air Corps back on Dec. 30, 1942, Mr. Reid was part of a nine-man B-24 crew that trained together in Pueblo, Colo. The crew included a pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, radio operator, flight engineer, tail gunner and ball turret gunner.
"After we finished our training in Pueblo, we sailed to Naples, Italy," Mr. Reid said. "Our base was inland, at Cerignola. It’s in south-central Italy."
By that time, Mr. Reid, who had gone to bombardier school for nearly five months before shipping out overseas, had been commissioned a second lieutenant.
From that base, seven-plane squadrons of B-24s bombed targets in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Italy.
"I got to Italy in January of 1945. I was required to fly 35 missions. I did 25, then the war in Europe ended. But we thought there would be more for us. Word was we’d going to Japan aboard B-29s. But the war there ended before we went."
He plans to attend the reunions every year from now on. "We had some nice get-togethers in Colorado," he said. "We had tours every day and got a chance to see one another again after so long."
In civilian life, after retiring from Wise Potato Chips, where he worked for 40 years, Mr. Reid took two weeks off. Then he started working at the Pennington Market, where he still toils in the produce department 30 hours a week, at that. He’s been at the market 16 years.
"Not slowing down at all," marvels store manager Don Rellstab.
"We have over 200 associates here in our store. I rate Nick at the top in terms of loyalty. He’s the epitome of what we preach in terms of customer service," said market owner Larry Rothwell.
Mr. Reid grew up on a family farm and was educated in a one-room school house.
"I grew up during the Depression," he said. "It was hard times, but we pulled together and made it OK."
He met his late wife while working behind a soda counter in Trenton. During the 40 years he worked at Wise Potato Chips, he didn’t miss one day of work. Except for a brief hospitalization that kept him away from the Pennington Market for a few days years ago, he hasn’t missed any time there, either.
Mr. Reid is proud of that, but he doesn’t make a fuss over it. He’s what some call "Old School." He does what he thinks he supposed to do and that’s all there is to it. A good kind of man to have on your crew, no?