inducted into the U.S. military. ….

inducted into the U.S. military. They went to war to advance the cause of those freedoms.

Alfred Arrieta, born and raised in El Paso, Texas, was one of them. Before it was all over, he completed 32 missions over enemy-occupied Europe as a waist gunner in a B-17 bomber. In mission No. 29, he survived a Christmas Eve crash and rendered aid to his seriously wounded crewmates. By war’s end, he was awarded an Air Medal with Four Oak Leaf Clusters.

The real reward was a less tangible one—he survived. The average crewman had only a one in four chance of actually completing his tour of duty, according to www.eyewitnesshistory. com.

And he went on to marry twice, raise 10 children and own a TV and VCR repair shop in Norwalk for several decades.

He continues to live a life of purpose in Leisure World. He is looking forward to his 100th birthday in May and still enjoys tooling around LW in his golf cart with his wife, Frances.

Even through the veil of years, his war experience remains in sharp relief.

War quickly takes the measure of a man, and even at his young age, Arrieta found that he measured up.

“We were all young,” he said. “You just take it in stride. We had the best training of anyone.”

Arrieta did well on aptitude tests. After basic training, he was assigned to a radio operator/ mechanic school in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. “I was never so cold in my life,” he said, but he learned a lot there.

He warmed up in his next duty assignment, the Army Air Force Flexible Gunnery School at Kingman, Arizona. Activated on Aug. 4, 1942, Kingman Army Air Field was built on more than 4,000 acres in three months and existed for just over three years. In that short period, Arrieta and 36,000 other gunners were trained.

The training started in the classroom. Arrieta studied orientation, safety, gun installation, aircraft recognition, turret training and tactics. He also learned aerial gunnery, aircraft recognition and how to field strip and reassemble a .50-caliber machine gun while blindfolded and wearing gloves.

Next stop was Dyersburg Army Air Base in Tennessee, the largest combat aircrew training school in the U.S. and the only B-17 training base east of the Mississippi River.

There Arrieta practiced air-to-ground and air-to-air weaponry, plus night flying with brand new pilots in the B-17 cockpits.

Dubbed the “Flying Fortress,” the first mass-produced model carried nine machine guns and a 4,000-pound bomb load, according to wikipedia. com. About 7,700 crewmen received their final training in Dyersburg before heading into the war zone.

Fully trained at last, Arrieta was ready for war.

But first came a furlough to see his mom, Maria Garcia, in Texas: “My poor mother, she worried a lot. She bore the brunt of my service,” he said. It was a bittersweet three weeks with his family, given the uncertainty of what lay ahead.

In early 1944, Arrieta left home and flew to Dow AAF in Bangor, Maine, where he joined a crew to transport a new B-17 to Royal Air Force Prestwick, located near Glasgow, Scotland.

From Bangor, the northern route required a fueling stop in Newfoundland and then to RAF Prestwick, a big air base built in 1936.

“Everything was exciting. I was there for one week doing nothing but eating. From there I took a slow ship to Liverpool,” he said. It was August 1944.

The Allies would launch a second invasion from the Mediterranean Sea of southern France on Aug. 15, and the liberation of Paris followed on Aug. 25. Allied ground attack aircraft inflicted a devastating toll on German tanks, vehicles and infantry.

As the waist gunner of the B-17 bomber crew, Arrieta was good at his job. He praised the pilot, Capt. Donato Yannitelli, Jr., as super smart and steady as a stone. As lead pilot, Yannitelli was at the higher-risk apex of attack formations that consisted of hundreds of planes. Arrieta’s first missions were bombing Nazi-occupied regions in France. They were short runs, three or four hours at most.

As the Free French (military and quasi-military organizations operating with other Allied nations) gained control of the area, the B-17s of the 92nd Bomb Group were rerouted to targets in Germany. These were long-haul raids, up to 12 hours total.

The planes were unheated and open to the outside air. The crew wore electrically heated suits and heavy gloves that provided some protection against temperatures that could dip to 60 degrees below zero. Once above 10,000 feet, Arrieta donned an oxygen mask. Nearing the target, each crew member would put on a 30-pound flak suit and steel helmet designed to protect against antiaircraft fire.

These missions penetrated deep into enemy territory. For hours, the men anxiously scanned the skies for attacks by fighters armed with machine guns, canon or rockets. The planes maintained their positions at all costs to ensure the most devastating results once their bombs were dropped, according to historical accounts.

It was Christmas Eve 1944, Mission No. 29. The Eighth Air Force launched 2,046 bombers and 1,000 fighter escorts to attack German airfields, fuel depots and communication centers. Arrieta’s 92nd Bomb Group would be flying broad daylight at an altitude below 10,000 feet, with no cover at all.

“For the Germans, it would be like shooting clay pigeons,” said Arrieta. “We knew we would probably be shot down.”

He was 21 years old. The Battle of the Bulge was raging in the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg.

Arrieta was aboard the brightly colored lead ship piloted by Yannitelli, who directed the bombers to predetermined points where they would organize themselves into attack formations.

Arrieta was braced on the curved floor of the fuselage, while standing in front of an open window, freezing in the 200-mph slip stream.

He recalls: “The Germans had overrun our troops in the Ardennes Forest, and we bombed and strafed German troops in support of our foot soldiers. We dropped our bomb load and barely made it inside the border. Our plane was all shot up.”

And so were they. Top turret gunner Stanley Bellman from Minnesota was unconscious with an eye out of its socket. Arrieta, who was the medic, gave him morphine, pushed his eye back in and bandaged it up as the plane plummeted to earth: “You’re young, you do what you have to do. They train you for that.”

None of the crew had parachutes to bail out as they, and the guns, had been jettisoned to make the plane lighter.

The crew got into crash-land position as pilot Yannitelli, who was also wounded, bellylanded the plane on a French farm field. A total of five were wounded, and “four of us lucky ones were OK,” Arrieta said.

“We were picked up by the Free French fighters and taken to an American hospital in Lille, France.”

Each man had a sealed escape kit. When Arrieta opened his up, he found the usual supplies—K-rations, water, chocolate, medical equipment, etc.—and 5,000 francs. So he and crewmates got a hotel room in Lille, France, and had the best Christmas of his life.

“We were so lucky to be alive. A taxi driver took us to a place where there was beer and dancing,” Arrieta said. “It had little lights everywhere and was packed with people. Everybody was so happy.

“We all thought that the end of the war was near.”

The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, ended up being the last major German campaign on the Western Front.

Between Dec. 16, 1944, and Jan. 16, 1945, the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces shot down more than 400 enemy fighters and destroyed 11,378 German transport vehicles, 1,161 tanks and other armored vehicles, 507 locomotives, 6,266 railroad cars, 472 gun positions, 974 rail cuts, 421 road cuts and 36 bridges, according to www.britannica. com. The Allies of World War II formally accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945, marking the official end of World War II in Europe in the Eastern Front, according to Wikipedia.

The last shots of the war were fired on May 11, 1945.

Arrieta left the front and returned stateside to live a full life. His legacy includes 10 children, 17 grandchildren and eight great grandchildren.

“My days are really not long enough. Everything in my life is working. My children are doing well, and I’m busy,” he said.

He looks forward to doing crossword puzzles, visits from friends, library books and following the news of the day.

“I’m a fortunate man,” he said.

Indeed he was. He got to go home.

When he looks back on his war duty, he does not consider himself a hero. But his valor and courage speak for itself.

He, along with millions of other U.S. veterans, changed the world.

They helped build a better one, one in which more people than ever can access those essential human freedoms.

The B-17 was a heavy bomber known as the “Flying For-tress." The first mass-produced model carried nine machineguns and a 4,000-pound bomb load.

Sgt. Al Arrieta was 19 years old when he was drafted.