Veterans2007

Lynn Students Learn Valuable History Lesson, and Video Going to the Library of Congress

LYNN - It was Christmas Eve, 1944, and 19-year-old Ed Oullette was a long way from the familiar streets of Lynn. Just one year after graduating from Lynn English High he had enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, and found himself and four counterparts stranded somewhere in Poland. The temperature was -17 degrees, and one of the men, a built, 250-pound professional baseball player, was wounded so badly the other men did not know how they would carry him to safety.

Reeling from the reality that five other men were lying lifeless in the wreckage of the B-17 they managed to parachute out of, they were taken captive as prisoners of war, the baseball player carried over 100 miles by a female Russian soldier they nicknamed "Buick" because her teeth looked like the grill of a car.

Across the ocean, in the Highlands area of Lynn, the Belitsos family was deep in prayer. A short time after word came that 22-year-old Air Force pilot Peter Belitsos had been taken prisoner in Europe, another telegram arrived, announcing that his 19-year-old brother, Gus, a member of the Army, had also fallen into enemy hands at the Battle of the Bulge.

"The person that suffered the most through all of this was our mother," said Gus. "I can't imagine what was going through her mind. Her faith got her through, but that was the toughest part of the whole war."

All three men were fortunate. Unlike many of their brothers in the war, they returned to Lynn and to their families. Veteran's services even had to remove Oullette's name from a missing in action memorial that had been set up during the war once he was freed from the prison.

World War II and the Korean War defined an entire generation of families, but as those who lived through it grow older, and still remain reluctant to talk, the United States government is putting forth its best effort to put the stories of survivors on record before it is too late.

Oullette and the Belitsos brothers were on hand at Lynn Classical High School Monday for that very reason, as Congressman John Tierney moderated a videotaped discussion with an honors history class.

The video will soon make its way to Washington D.C. for safekeeping in the Library of Congress as part of the country's Veteran's History Project.

"There are so many veterans who have served whose stories will soon be gone with them," said Tierney. "Now that we have all of the technology, we want to record living history so that we can continue to tell these stories."

The three men sat humbly in front of the 10-15 students and teachers who squeezed into the classroom with the video equipment, Oullette clutching a box filled with old newspaper articles and original letters sent home from the war.

He said he was inspired to join the service after his brother told him that five people he had graduated English with had already died in the war. After surviving a scary crash while flight training in Colorado, he became a tail gunner and was almost immediately sent to Europe.

Peter and Gus joined out of patriotism, saying that there was so much going on during that time people couldn't avoid hearing about the atrocities of the war every day.

"I had never flown before, not even commercially, but I was always interested," said Peter Belitsos. "As a kid, I would ride my bike from Lynn to Logan Airport and we would lay on our backs and watch the planes take off and land. That's what got me interested, but I had never flown before then, and I haven't flown an airplane since."

The three men shared brief stories of their time as prisoners, and then split up to meet with smaller groups of students to record a more intimate question and answer session for the library.

"I am in awe of this generation," said Tierney. "Not just because of what they did for this country, that allows us to live the way we do today, that made it so I didn't have to go do what they did, but I am in awe of their humility."

Tierney said the tapes would be submitted to the library once they are completed, and should be available within six months as part of the project in Washington, D.C.