ARMY AIR CORPS

Earl Ashmore

Lamoine native Earl Ashmore served his country as an aircraft engineering technician for the 319th Air Depot Group of the 9th Army Air Corps Air Force Air Service Command in World War II.

He had served earlier with the 11th Field Artillery in Hawaii after graduating from Ellsworth High School in 1937, returning home in 1940.  Between Ashmore’s first and second Army stints, he attended aircraft engine school in Brewer. After graduating, Ashmore worked as an aircraft mechanic at Dow Field in Bangor.

He reported for duty once with the Army Air Corps on Oct. 18, 1943, serving as an aircraft technician which meant performing inspections on B17s and C47s, among other aircraft.  He also flew planes as a co-pilot, which began a passion that lasted long after the war. Ashmore flew with the local Civil Air Patrol for more than 30 years. He was a member of the Frenchman Bay Flying Club for several years until recently when his grandson took over his membership.

Ashmore was in a number of campaigns: Normandy, Northern France, North Appenines, Rhineland and Central Europe. One of his clearest memories is of Utah Beach in Normandy a week after D-Day.  The troops marched up and across the beach and bivouacked in the field that night in pup tents. It was raining. Bodies were everywhere, he said.

Ashmore recalls another chilling sight. Later on during that mission, in Carenton, France, he looked over a hedgerow and saw Germans.  One evening, Ashmore was on guard duty when he heard footsteps. He called out “halt” but the footsteps kept coming.

“It was a cow,” Ashmore said. “Where he went, I didn’t chase him.”  Later, Ashmore and a couple buddies walked up the first floor of the Eiffel Tower. He got the elevator operator to take them all the way up for three cigarettes.

“I could see a Volkswagen with a machine gun on its roof tearing around looking for Germans,” he said.  In Italy, he wrote his name on the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  Ashmore’s last mission was to deliver the inspector general and his staff to see the Buchenwald concentration camp. But he did not see the camp.  “I had to stay with the plane and watch for company,” he said.

Ashmore earned a number of honors, including the American Defense Medal, the Victory Medal, Good Conduct medal and Campaign Ribbons with five bronze stars, signifying his participation in the five major European campaigns.  He also received the Air Medal for flying a total of 405 hours, completing 100 transport missions to landing strips bordering enemy-occupied territory in France and Germany.

“In the execution of these duties he displayed courage and skill as an aerial engineer and through his accomplishments he effected a definite contribution to successful realization of the mission of his organization,” the citation stated.

Sixty years after his honorable discharge, he has what some might call survivor’s guilt.  “I don’t know how I went three years without getting hurt when I was in the middle of everything,” he said. He said he wonders why he survived when so many around him did not.

In 1948, Ashmore used $338 in leave pay from the government to start an auto body shop, Ashmore Brothers, with his late brother Clifton.  In 1957, Ashmore bought out his brother for $12,000.  After working 16-hour days for 50 years, Ashmore retired in 1998 at age 80.  Now, Julie Mason, daughter of Ashmore’s first bookkeeper, runs the shop for him.  Ashmore has been married to wife Elizabeth for 64 years. Their only daughter, Heather, is married to John Linnehan Jr.  The four took a trip to France in 2000 and visited Utah Beach.

— Jennifer Osborn