He felt called to serve, learned to fly and was lost on a mission. She felt called to take her brother’s place in the war. Two plane crashes – one brother and one sister never found.

Richard “Dick” Edwin Rozzelle was the first boy to arrive in his family. He was born to reporter Richard Ewell Rozzelle and his wife, Elsie Gertrude Roberts Rozzelle, on February 21, 1921.[i]

Before he was born in Washington, D.C., waiting on his arrival were two big sisters, Jean Roberts Rozzelle Hill, who was six, and Helen Fay Rozzelle, who was two.[ii]

Their parents had married in 1914.[iii] Richard was a widower. He had married Beal M. Davis in 1912[iv] but she passed away in less than a year, in March of 1913 at George Washington University Hospital.[v]

At the time of his arrival, his parents, Richard, and Elsie, and the two girls lived just outside of Washington, D. C. in a home they owned on Dorsey Street in Alexandria, Virginia. It must have been helpful to Elsie to have her widowed mother, Ernestine Roberts, living with them. Jean and Ernestine were native Washingtonians, but Richard was from North Carolina. According to the 1920 census, Richard was a reporter for the mercantile industry.[vi]

Then just 22 months later, a brother arrived for Dick to play with and they named him Russell Frederick Rozzelle, born on Christmas Day of 1923.[vii] This completed their family of four.

Richard Rozzelle, his father, lost his life just before Thanksgiving 1924. This left Elsie alone with children ages 9, 5, 3 and 11 months.[viii]

After the father’s death, at some point, Dick’s mother, had joined an extended family household formed by her siblings. The group was living together in a rental unit in the Olympia Apartments on Euclide Street in Washington, D.C. In 1930, Elsie was then 45, living with her sister, Helen, her sister, Sadie E. Roberts, 50, her sister, Gladys M. Roberts, 36, and her brother, Frederick Roberts, 52. Also living in the home were Dick and his three siblings, Jean, 14, Helen, 10, and Russell, 6. Jean was attending Central High School and the other children are also in school.[ix]

By that time, the Olympia apartments were already 32 years old. In later years, they became a part of the District of Columbia Inventory of Historic Sights. Finished in 1898, they were built near the 14th Street Streetcar Line. Being close to transportation was key in the 1930s for fewer people owned a car. All of the adults in Dick’s life worked in the city so the streetcar was surely a necessity. His mother, Elsie, and his Uncle Frederick were clerks in an insurance agency. Aunt Sadie was a clerk in a U. S. Government office and Aunt Gladys was the chief operator of the telephone company. At night, the family must have gathered around the radio they owned for entertainment and news.[x]

Helen has graduated from high school. She is working six days a week as a clerk in a law office.[xi]

Sometime in the mid-1930s, Dick’s older sister, Jean, marries Lee R. Hill. The young couple are near-by in Washington, just 3-miles from the family.

HIS LIFE BEFORE MILITARY

As they head into the war years, 1940 sees the family still making their home in the Olympia Apartments. Sisters Elsie, Sadie and Gladys are together along with Helen, 21, and Dick, 19,who are now adults. The sisters have maintained the same positions as they had a decade ago with Elsie clerking in insurance, Gladys with the phone company and Sadie is also still a clerk but now with the War Department.

Dick is the only one still in school. At 19, he is nearly finished with high school.[xii] Another change is that Dick is now Uncle Dick as his sister, Jean, had a little girl named Sandra.

HIS MILITARY STORY

Soon, his family is drawn into the war effort. Three of the siblings head to war. Dick is the first to enlist and chooses the Air Force. He leaves his job as an electrician, on October 30, 1941.

Dick decides to enter a Civilian Pilot Training Program in North Carolina, the state where his father is from. High Point College (now High Point University) in North Carolina had begun working in the war effort in 1939. They allowed ten students at a time to study for a private pilot’s license, later adding meteorology and navigation.[xiii]

The flying course is a joint offering of High Point College and Clinton A. Johnson, flight operator at the Greensboro-High Point Airport. To enter the program, Dick had to be over 18 years of age, pass a physical exam and a complete eye refraction test, and sign an official affidavit that he would enter the Air Force if he were eliminated from the program or not selected to proceed with more training.

According to an article in The High Point Enterprise Sun newspaper, “a large proportion of the men who have taken this training in previous sessions have entered military flying and several are already on active service over the Atlantic and in the Far East.”

On January 25, 1942, it was announced in the newspaper that Dick Edwin Rozzelle and other trainees of High Point College and Clinton A. Johnson under the Civilian Pilot Training Program entered the armed flying services of the United States.[xiv] His service number was O-661969.[xv]

Just seven months into his tour of duty, Dick is injured in the line of duty and admitted to the hospital in Lubbock A.C.A.F.S., Texas.[xvi] He recovered to return to flying.

Dick was serving in the 20th Bomb Squadron, 2nd Bomb Group, whose motto was “Defenders of Liberty.”[xvii]

In the Air Force, Dick was flying missions in B-12’s. He flew 24 successful missions, according to a Memorial Day Bulletin from High Point College in 1946.[xviii] He had finished his mission quota and was ready to go back to the states.[xix]

While Dick is battling overseas, his brother, Russell[xx], goes next, enlisting on March 16, 1943, leaving his job as a library assistant at Mt. Pleasant Library.

About six months later, it is his sister Helen’s turn to join the military.

HIS LAST DAY- August 19, 1943

On August 19, 1943, Dick was finished with his quota of flying missions. However, they were short a man and he stepped up and volunteered to fill in.[xxi]

Normally, Co-pilot Lt. Scachtschneider would fly #42-20467, nicknamed Big Jeff, but on this day, he was assigned to another plane.[xxii]

So, it was Big Jeff being piloted by 1st Lt. Richard E. Rozzelle, assigned to the 20th Squadron. The rest of the crew included 2nd Lt. Robert G. Kingsbury, 2nd Lt. Alexander G. Mayberry, 2nd Lt. Carmel F. Parsons, T/Sgt. Sebastian S. Hernandez, S/Sgt. Robert E. Woods, S/Sgt. John E. Adams, S/Sgt. William E. Groot, S/Sgt. Arthur P. Panini, and T/Sgt. Earl H. Bjorklund.[xxiii]

Rozzelle, a veteran pilot, was the new guy on this mission. Parsons and Adams were also crew changes that day. The others had flown together and knew each other well.[xxiv]

The men were successful in their mission that day at Foggia, Italy, destroying electric substations and marshalling yards with 500-pound bombs. As they flew in the smoke from the bombs, they were taking flak causing some crews in other planes to be wounded and one casualty.[xxv]

Then, action escalated. Enemy aircraft came in on the squadron giving all they had with machine guns, cannons, and bombs, out numbering the squadron planes with as many as six or even eight to one. The enemy hit their mark on some of the squadron taking out five planes while retaliation took out some of the enemy fighter planes. One of the 20th Squadron planes they lost that day was piloted by First Lieutenant Richard W. Rozzelle.[xxvi]

According to Second Lieutenant Richard G. Kingsbury, as told in The Second Was First: The Lives and Times of the Men of the Second Bombardment Group (Heavy) During World War II by Charles W. Richards, they were quickly outnumbered. “They knocked us down like ducks in a shooting gallery,” he recalled after the war. Shrapnel ripped through the plane and smoke filled the cockpit. The No. 1 engine caught fire, the oil lines were cut, and the No. 2 engine quit. A rocket hit the plane killing the tail gunner, Panini.[xxvii]

They had no choice but to abandon ship. Pilot Dick Rozzelle gave the order to bail out.[xxviii] One by one, the crew jumped out the escape hatch, yanking the ripcord to open their parachutes.[xxix] They had bailed out at 19,000 feet over the Tyrrhenian Sea, south of Salerno and ten miles west of Licosa Point. “The pilot (Rozzelle) apparently floated his parachute toward the sea instead of directing it toward land," according to Kingsbury in a history at the Brookline War Memorial website.[xxx]

That day, August 19, 1943, B-17 Bomber Pilot First Lieutenant Richard E. Rozzelle failed to return from the mission he was flying. He, and all of the crew but one, were missing in action in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Italy and declared dead.

Dick’s surviving crew member, Second Lieutenant Richard G. Kingsbury survived 31 hours in the water only to be captured as a prisoner of war and spent the rest of the war in Stalag Luft III.[xxxi] The pilot who usually flew “Big Jeff,” Lt. Scachtschneider, also lost the plane he was in that day, and was also captured as a POW.

Dick was 22.

TWENTY-ONE MONTHS LATER

Dick’s sister, PFC Helen Fay Rozzelle, service number A-1001333, enlists in the Women’s Army Corp, WACS on May 30, 1945 in Washington, D.C. She served in the 1202nd Army Air Force Base Unit, WACS.

According to HonorStates.org, the women who were in the 1202nd were older, with an average age of 28, than the usual recruit and were chosen for their “maturity and work experience.”

They left for overseas from a Miami, Florida airfield in September[xxxii].

A reporter caught Helen as she waited shipment overseas, according to the Johnson City Press newspaper. Helen told the newspaper that she had joined the WAC to take the place of her brother, Lt. Richard Rozzelle, a B-17 pilot whose plane was shot down in flames off Italy.[xxxiii]

By November of 1944, Helen was one of 159 WACs in Accra, British West Africa to serve with the Air Transport Command.

PFC Helen Rozzelle was with 17 other women of the Women’s Army Corp on a normally routine 776- mile[xxxiv] flight from Accra, British West Africa to Robert’s Field[xxxv], Liberia. The WACs were onboard as they were being transferred to a new assignment.[xxxvi]

Her plane, piloted by a crew of three[xxxvii], a C-478 #44-76406, disappeared.[xxxviii] A search was conducted by aircraft and surface craft over a wide area of the French Ivory Coast.[xxxix] No sign of the plane was found. She went missing on May 30, 1945 and was declared dead while missing in action off the coast of Ghana, Africa.[xl]

PFC Helen Fay Rozzelle is remembered on the Tablets of the Missing, an American Battle Monument, North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, Tunisia. She is honored and remembered by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum on their Wall of Honor.[xli]

Helen was 26.

COMMENDATIONS FOR RICHARD E. ROZZELLE

Air Medal

★ Purple Heart

★ United States Aviator Badge Army

★ World War II Victory Medal

★ American Campaign Medal

★ Army Presidential Unit Citation

★ Army Good Conduct Medal

★ European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign[xlii]

MEMORIALS

First Lieutenant Richard Edwin Rozzelle is remembered at the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial in Nettuno, Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale,in Lazio, Italy.[xliii]

Richard Rozzelle is remembered at the website of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

AFTER THE WAR
The two surviving siblings lived long lives. Jean Rozzelle Hill[xliv] lived until age 86.

Russell Rozzelle survived WWII. He was a member of the China, Burma, and India Veteran’s Association. He had a long military career. He retired from the U. S. Army and Air Force Motion Picture Service. After the war, he married, had a family and one of his daughters is named Helen like his lost sister. He lived to be 83.[xlv]

ABOUT THIS STORY

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smart phone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

[i] http://library.highpoint.edu/archives/WWII/WWII%20Honor%20Roll%20Book%203.pdf

[ii] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/imageviewer/collections/6061/images/4391984_01079?pId=23085513

[iii] https://basic.newspapers.com/image/214644383/?terms=%22richard%2BE%2BRozzelle%22

[iv] https://basic.newspapers.com/image/28894422/?terms=%22richard%2BE%2BRozzelle%22

[v] https://basic.newspapers.com/image/28931708/?terms=%22richard%2BE%2BRozzelle%22

[vi] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/imageviewer/collections/6061/images/4391984_01079?pId=23085513

[vii] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056194955/facts?_phsrc=Zvj658&_phstart=successSource

[viii] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056194955/facts?_phsrc=Zvj658&_phstart=successSource

[ix] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/imageviewer/collections/6224/images/4531901_00995?pId=121213539

[x] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/imageviewer/collections/6224/images/4531901_00995?pId=121213539

[xi] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056194955/facts?_phsrc=Zvj658&_phstart=successSource

[xii] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056194955/facts?_phsrc=Zvj658&_phstart=successSource

[xiii] http://www.highpoint.edu/library/2019/11/07/from-the-archives-remembering-wwii-veterans-of-high-point-college/

[xiv] The High Point Enterprise Sun, January 25, 1942, “CPT Program Changes Trainees’ Regulations.”

[xv] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=25644

[xvi] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056196117/facts

[xvii] http://www.2ndbombgroup.org/

[xviii] http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Gallery/Mayberry.html

[xix] http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Gallery/Mayberry.html

[xx] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/imageviewer/collections/2238/images/44004_10_00022-00267?pId=6438910

[xxi] http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Gallery/Mayberry.html

[xxii] http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Gallery/Mayberry.html

[xxiii] http://www.2ndbombgroup.org/TheSecondWasFirst.pdf

[xxiv] http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Gallery/Mayberry.html

[xxv] http://www.2ndbombgroup.org/TheSecondWasFirst.pdf

[xxvi] http://www.2ndbombgroup.org/TheSecondWasFirst.pdf

[xxvii] http://www.2ndbombgroup.org/TheSecondWasFirst.pdf

[xxviii] http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Gallery/Mayberry.html

[xxix] http://www.2ndbombgroup.org/TheSecondWasFirst.pdf

[xxx] http://www.brooklineconnection.com/history/Gallery/Mayberry.html

[xxxi] http://www.2ndbombgroup.org/TheSecondWasFirst.pdf

[xxxii] https://basic.newspapers.com/image/585352259/?terms=%22helen%2Brozzelle%22

[xxxiii] Johnson City Press Chronicle, June 8, 1945, “Lost WACs First Group Sent on Overseas Duty”

[xxxiv]https://chicagotribune.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=22956270&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjM3MDE5ODM5MSwiaWF0IjoxNjAwNjUzOTMxLCJleHAiOjE2MDA3NDAzMzF9.GGROPxU0pGgcIxOv2cUjLCtQalRy9746RfogyVqiR44

[xxxv] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56250251/leona-marie_elizabeth-seyfert

[xxxvi] https://www.abmceducation.org/understandingsacrifice/soldier/rose-puchalla

[xxxvii] https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/56250251/leona-marie_elizabeth-seyfert

[xxxviii] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[xxxix] New York Times, June 7, 1945 “18 WACS Missing on African Flight”

[xl] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=334268

[xli] https://airandspace.si.edu/support/wall-of-honor/pfc-helen-fay-rozzelle

[xlii] https://www.honorstates.org/index.php?id=25644

[xliii] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056196117/facts

[xliv] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056195705/facts

[xlv] https://www.ancestryinstitution.com/family-tree/person/tree/17654976/person/28056196473/facts

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Richard E Rozzelle