After the War, Living a Lifetime of ‘What Ifs’

A long time ago, on a battlefield in Korea, I escaped death because an artillery shell that hit a tree next to me was a dud. Not far away, in the same barrage, a friend died because the shell that landed near him wasn’t. I’ve wondered about that ever since.

I had been with him earlier, but for some reason hadn’t liked the position and moved up the mountainside to wait out the barrage. I didn’t say why I was moving because I didn’t know why. But should I have urged him to go with me? If I had stressed my vague uneasiness with that position, would he be alive today?

Emotions have long memories, especially for those of us who lived for a while on their dark side. They engender episodes of pain and guilt as we think back to the what-ifs of decisions made, or not made, in the shifting environment of war. It’s that way with me, and it’s that way with Sam Maas.

I mention my own experience only as a prelude to the condition I find Maas in today. At 87, living quietly in the San Fernando Valley with his wife of 53 years, he’s troubled by words he didn’t say during World War II and wonders: Had he said them, would 10 men who died in the crash of a B-24 be alive today?

One of them was Lt. Gen. Millard Harmon, U.S. Army Air Corps commander in the Pacific, a gentle, soft-spoken man that everyone knew as Miff.

Maas was a flight engineer on the plane used by Harmon to move about the South Pacific. On Feb. 26, 1945, as the war was winding down, the general scheduled an island-hopping flight out of Hawaii’s Hickam Field.

As it turned out, it was a flight into eternity, and Maas had just missed being on it. That caprice of fate and timing has rested heavily on his conscience ever since.

Days before the fateful flight, Maas had been granted a 30-day furlough and was awaiting transportation home. As he passed the converted B-24 that would fly Gen. Harmon and a nine-man crew on an inspection trip through the South Pacific, he noticed a mechanic repairing a heater due to be installed in the plane.

“I told him that he ought to get a new heater rather than repair the old one,” Maas said the other day in the living room of his West Hills home. He’s frail in some ways and can’t hear too well, but his mind is sharp and his memory clear.

“He said he could fix it OK. In retrospect, I wish I’d told the pilot. I wish I’d told someone. I was the only one who knew. If those heaters weren’t put together properly, they could explode. They were fueled by 100-octane gasoline, and the fumes could ignite. I’m 90% sure that’s what happened.”

The B-24 took off toward the islands of Kwajalein, Guam and Tinian. Maas left for his home in Milwaukee. It was there, two weeks later, that he learned that Gen. Harmon’s plane had disappeared in the Pacific. An 18-day search failed to reveal its fate.

“I was with some buddies at a hamburger place after a movie. One of them said he’d heard on the radio that Harmon’s plane had gone down. I couldn’t believe it. I called the newspaper and they said it was true. I felt terrible. There were tears in my eyes....”

Maas paused for a moment to regain his composure. Piles of newspaper clippings, photographs and research papers lay on a table next to him, all relating to that B-24 and its crew. Then: “I lived with those guys. Four of them were my friends. I knew them personally.” He recited their names in a tone of litany: “Anderson, Savage, Geist, Harmon.” Another pause. “If my theory is correct and I’d have told someone....” The sentence faded into silence.

We honor in different ways those whose deaths trouble our conscience. I write about my experiences. Maas devotes time and energy to seeing that Gen. Harmon, whom he considers a forgotten hero, receives credit for having initiated low-level bombing techniques both in the islands and in attacks on the Japanese mainland.

It was Harmon, he said, who helped bring the enemy to its knees, and hardly anyone knows that. After the war, Maas ran the family bakery in Milwaukee, then moved to L.A. in 1972 where he eventually retired. A life’s work since then has been to publicize as much as possible Harmon’s contribution to America’s victory in the Pacific.

“Harmon came up with the idea of getting down to 200 to 400 feet to do the bombing, instead of 15,000 to 20,000 feet. But who got the credit for it? Douglas MacArthur. That’s not right.”

Maas liked Harmon. He remembers him as an intelligent and reasonable man who wouldn’t seek publicity on his own. “That’s why no one has ever heard of him,” the old tech sergeant said, upset by history’s shortcoming. “He just wouldn’t claim credit.”

So Maas tells the story whenever he can, lights a candle every anniversary of the plane’s disappearance and up until recently gathered veterans of Harmon’s command together as a way of honoring him. But time has thinned their ranks and left most of the others unable to make the trips required for a reunion.

I looked through the photos that Maas loaned me, especially those of the flight crew that included him. They were young back then and strong and resolute, bonded in the kind of relationship war forges with fire and steel. That’s why loss assumes such a horrific form and conscience burns so brightly over the long years.

I hope this column helps Maas. I hope that giving credit to a general for a wartime innovation damps the fire a little. It’s the least I can do, for both of us.

Al Martinez’s column appears Monday’s and Thursday’s. He’s at al.martinez@latimes.com