Caroline offered four Happy Dollars: one for the presence of Joe Shadroui’s family; another for a successful bowling event; a third for her third appearance as Mrs. Claus in the
Annual Holiday Parade; and one for seeing her brother and her kids at Thanksgiving.

 

(Pictured above is Gary Hass, the founder of the Central Vermont Santa Fund Wrap.)

 

 

 

 

Tom began his presentation by describing Dick’s role as a radio operator mechanic on a B-17 during World War II while holding a model plane and identifying its parts. Dick served in a squadron of the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) and he kept logs of its missions including the number of parachutes in the air, bombs dropped and struck and wounded men. In the summer and fall of 1944 he flew thirty-four missions in five and a half months from a base in Italy.  He was mainly responsible for communicating within the plane and among the squadron focusing on radio signals for the purpose of determining direction. Before Tom read excerpts from Dick’s logs, he provided us with several acronyms so that we could better understand the content of some of the entries. One of those most often used was FLAK representing the first letter of German words. “FLAK is defined as the bursting shells shot at aircraft from enemy guns on the ground.” Many of the entries of Dick’s logs described missions avoiding being hit by this anti-aircraft fire or accounts of being hit and causing damage to the plane.  The excerpts from Dick’s logs revealed that  bombing missions took place over: Yugoslavia, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary; cities such as Munich, Salzburg, Budapest, and Bologna; and targeting oil refineries, jet propulsion production facilities, bridges, front lines and railways. The average time of a mission seemed to be about eight hours. Dick had a couple of life-threatening experiences. After an engine was knocked out, the plane had to make an emergency landing and with a controlled spin, it made it safely to the ground. In another situation they crashed into the Adriatic Sea. They lost power in all four engines due to being hit by FLAK and the loss of fuel. Dick rescued one of the crew members who was going under. He let lower ranking crew members into the only raft as he hung onto the side.  It’s likely they were spotted by a British Spitfire and it had notified a nearby ship. They finally boarded the ship to witness the sinking of their plane. Tom’s presentation ended with a CD of Dick singing and playing the piano: The Way We Were and What I Did for Love. Rotarians and guests thoroughly enjoyed Tom’s presentation which gave us an insightful glimpse into the life of our beloved Rotarian Dick Shardoui. Thanks, Tom. In the picture below, Dick is in the bottom row, third from left.