The Way to the Land of Sky
They called him Gid, although his real name was Egidius, the name
of saint ? but he was a soldier. Egidius, patron saint of nursing
mothers and of cattle. However his family name, Truempy, carried
the sound of war. It was derived in the Middle Ages from the word
«trumpet», as a historian might suppose.
Perhaps it was the sharp sound of a trumpet that woke him early
on the morning of the 11th of April, 1944, in High Whycombe west
of London, where the 8th Airforce Command of the US Army had its
base. Technical Sergeant Gid Truempy had a hasty breakfast in
the mess hall of the barracks; half an hour later he attended
the briefing, hurried afterwards to the plane together with the
other 10 men in the crew ? pilot and copilot, navigator, bombardiers
and gunners ? climbed the narrow ladder to the turret on the top
of the aircraft, put on the helmet, the earphones, checked the
oxygen mask and loaded the machine gun for the mission. The Combat
Chronology of the Air Forces report that on this bright spring
morning 830 Flying Fortresses (B17) and Liberator bombers (B24)
took off to destroy what was left of the German aircraft factories
around Leipzig. The target of Gids mission was the Junkers-88
twin-engine fighter production in Bernburg.
«My brother left for the States in 1936», remembers the old lady,
sitting in the drawing room of the baroque Truempy villa in Glarus,
Switzerland, She has white hair, a wrinkled face and bright green
eyes. «But Im sorry, sir. My memory is getting weak.» She is
eighty-six, she remembers «playing and quarreling as all children
do. But we had a good time together.» Egidius was one year younger,
born in 1912. Their father died when he was seven. Maybe the early
loss was a reason of his problems in school. «He was dislexic,
as they call it nowadays.» The mother sent him to a religious
private school, later he got a diploma as a professional mechanic
from the well known Winterthur metal workers school. Despite
being a descendant of one of the richest families of the Glarus
valley, Gid became a blue-collar worker, specializing in car repair.
During the Great Depression of the thirties he decided to emigrate.
His mother was of Dutch origin and one of his cousins already
lived in the United States. «Egidius had a return boat ticket
in his pocket», remembers his sister. «But one year later a letter
arrived saying that he had sold the ticket to set up a car repair
shop with a Dutch cousin.»
They specialized in repairing Greyhounds in Enka near Asheville
in North Carolina. «Surrounded by the chain of the Blue Ridge
Mountains, Asheville is known as the ‚Land of Sky,‘ a city where
the quality of life is high, the weather is mild, and the people
are friendly», remarks a tourist guide. Maybe the mountains reminded
Egidius of his rocky homeland, although the mountain slopes of
the Glarus valley are steeper, the sky narrow and the people not
always friendly.
«He could have returned to Switzerland when the war broke out»,
complains his sister. «He was too old to be called up anyway.»
She remembers a phone call and her brother saying: «I will fight
for Switzerland.» His Dutch mother had written to him, tellling
him not to return to Europe. A few weeks after her death in 1940,
the German forces occupied her homeland. «Gid was fighting for
all our freedom», says his sister. «In those days we feared that
the Germans would also occupy Switzerland. In our small town everybody
knew who supported the Nazis and who was against them. We would
have had a bad time.» Gids brother, who is four years younger,
remembers: «He had a mind of his own. He was almost stubborn.»
And so the war diverted his path from the «Land of Sky» to the
sky above Germany where his duty was to protect the bomb-loaded
Flying Fortress with his machine gun against the attacks of the
Nazi hunters. It must have been a horrible and lonely job, but
he had gone to war as a volunteer. He wasnt married, he had no
family and perhaps he had always been a lonely man in a foreign
country. The patron saint of nursing mothers and cattle had become
the patron saint of a bomb-nursing aircraft in the battle against
Nazi war machinery.
His sister shows a framed photograph and for a moment her sad
eyes look proud. The picture shows Technical Sergeant Egidius
Truempy being decorated by a US officer, maybe the Commanding
General Lieutenant James H. Doolittle. The tall officer is bending
down to fix the medal on the small Sergeants breast pocket. Gid
stands still, staring forward with strong eyes and a nose like
a hawk. We don’t know why he was perceiving this honor; it was
probably his part in the success of the 8th Airforce Command during
the campaign of the so-called «Big Week» in February, 1944, when
the bombing of the Messerschmidt and Junkers factories broke the
the German airforces neck. 10,000 tons of bombs were thrown from
almost 4,000 aircraft. The command was prepared to lose 200 aircraft
a day, but they lost only 137 bombers and 28 fighters during the
entire week. And they lost 2,600 men. Gid survived, got his decoration,
was sent to the next mission, which should have been his next-to-last
because after 25 missions the crews got dismissed. Their nerves
were wrecked, they were burnt out.
But on this 11th of April, 1944, Egidius, who emigrated to the
«Land of Sky» returns to the sky above Europe. Egidius, the descendant
of a family of industry founders, returns to destroy industry.
And maybe during the long and boring flight above the Northern
Sea, his thoughts fly back in time while he is curled like a baby
in his cradle in the plexiglass dome behind the machine gun. The
other members of the crew are chatting, exchanging commands and
jokes over the intercom system. Having reached 12,000 feet they
put on their oxygen masks and start searching the horizon for
German hunters, immersed in the roaring sound of the heavy planes
drifting across the dark blue sky.
Five generations ago, in 1796, the first Egidius Truempy, born
and raised in Lisbon, returned by coach to his ancestors homeland.
In Glarus he set up a hand-printing mill that exported fantastically
patterned and multicoloured fabrics to Turkey, South America,
Egypt and even India. Egidius the First was one of the most important
entrepreneurs in Swiss industrial history. One of his ten children
was named Egidius, and during the next five generations, one Egidius
followed the other until Gid was born, the last male offspring
of the industrial dynasty.
The Truempy factory in Glarus was called the ‚Castle‘. With its
wooden drying towers, its large printing buildings, and color
kitchens, it overlooked the town like a kings castle. In February,
1837, the first organized workers strike in Switzerland shook
the place. Hundreds of angry workers flocked to the ‚Castle‘ threatening
to set it on fire. Four of the founder sons including the second
Egidius, had hung a bell in a small tower on top of the factory
roof to signal the beginning and end of the workday. The Truempy
brothers stood in front of their enterprise and defended it successfully
against the mass of workers, who were unwilling to accept the
strict regulation of the workday. The Truempy hand-printing factory
has made history in the introduction of time measurement to industrial
life.
By the time Gid was born, the Castle was in ruins. The business
had deteriorated around the beginning of the 20th century, lacking
money for investments in modern printing technology. Among the
crumbling walls of the ‚Castle‘ the so-called Strike Bell was
found. It hangs now in a museum among many artifacts like hand
carved printing equipment, books containing old patterns and color
receipts that commemorates history of disappeared industries.
But history has forgotten Egidius, as well as most of the Swiss
soldiers who fought in the US army during World War II. In the
military library of the Swiss government there are only documents
about the many Swiss Nazis fighting for the German SS forces.
There were no letters, no calls. There were still no mobile phones
and satellite communication. «It was war, our country was surrounded
by the Germans. I tried to contact my brother through the Red
Cross,» says the sister. The 11th of April had been a disaster
for the 8th Airforce. «Enemy opposition downs 64 bombers, one
of the heaviest single-day losses of Word War II,» writes the
combat chronology which is dedicated to «those who didnt come
back.» Gid was one of them. «His machine hadnt been hit, as far
as we know,» his brother relates. «It was said that they had engine
trouble and tried to return to the base.» The plane disappeared
over the Northern Sea. But there was still hope. The New York
Times wrote that several planes had landed in Sweden.
One year later, a letter arrived in Glarus informing the family
that the US Ministry of Defense according to American laws, had
officially declared the death of Technical Sergeant Egidius Truempy.
The last Egidius died lonely and lost in his turret at the top
of the plunging aircraft. No bell tolled for his funeral. Posthumously
he was decorated with a Purple Heart. And we can imagine, at some
war memorial a ceremony in his honor, with airforce soldiers in
dress uniforms carrying wreaths and firing gun shots, and from
somewhere sounds the cry of a trumpet. Maybe our fate is written
in our names. But only God can read whether we are on this earth
to be saints, soldiers or both.
(Edited by Jen Hofer)