23 Jan Carl A. Heuser
This month the daughter of ball turret gunner Thomas E. “Tom” Stillson “found me” via the Liberty Lady Facebook page! So now, there is only one crew member whose family I haven’t been able to find, and that is Sgt. Carl A. Heuser, engineer and top turret gunner on the Liberty Lady B-17. He was born in Germany, and his nickname was “Tiny” … because he wasn’t.
Here are the clues I have collected:
He was born in 1921, probably May 19.
He died in 1991, probably October 12 either in New York or in Los Angeles. (not confirmed.)
On Ancestry.com I found more clues: In August 1924 August and Luise Heuser along with their son Carl left Hamburg, Germany on the SS Resolute and arrived in New York. In the 1930 census the family was living in Queens. August was a butcher in a meat store.
Heuser enlisted in August 31, 1942 at Fort Jay Governor’s Island. He’d had two years of high school and was working as a driver, possibly taxi or bus.
In my Dad’s address book I have a notation that after he left Sweden as an American internee, he was at Truax Field in Madison Wisconsin. Another address for him was Wyckoff Ave., Brooklyn, NY.
When the Liberty Lady B-17 force landed on the island of Gotland on March 6, 1944, the crew jumped from the plane and hid in a copse of trees. One of the first men to arrive on the scene was dressed in uniform and carried a German rifle. He called out to the Americans in a foreign language. Carl knew it was German and looked at his crew mates, “He’s a German … the jig is up!
Of course that wasn’t the case. They were on a Swedish island but in 1944 German was the most common 2nd language.
I would love to speak to anyone from Carl Heuser’s family. Please message me at pat@liberyladybook.com.
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