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Fortunately, the enemy gave little resistance
to Denny
By BILL WHITAKER
During last week's ceremony honoring area veterans who participated
in the D-Day invasion 53 years ago, former B-26 tail-gunner Denny
McFarland admitted his mission that historic day brought only
a hollow victory.
Denny, 73, one of Abilene's most colorful characters, was part
of the massive invasion of Normandy in 1944, undertaken by the
Allies to liberate France from the Nazi menace. His own role was
as a tail-gunner on the famed B-26 Martin Marauder.
The bomber crew's assignment took them to the north end of
Utah Beach where the bomber crew was to take out a crucial German
gun emplacement.
Mission accomplished, too. When they were through, the gun
emplacement troubled no one. Only later did Denny learn that the
reason the enemy gave little resistence there was because the
Germans had not even gotten around to moving in yet.
"All we did was plow up an empty field," Denny said,
laughing. "We just kicked up a bit of French soil!"
So much for great war stories for any grandkids.
I said Denny and his crew members must have felt embarrassed
when they returned from their mission, only to discover they'd
bombed an enemy who wasn't even there.
"Not really," Denny deadpanned. "I only learned
about it a year or two ago. Read it in a book!"
TOUGH TURKEY
If you thought Abilene's budding, "Hispanic-oriented"
publication <I>El Escritor<I> had folded after just
a few issues, you're wrong.
At least, so says publisher Harvey Mireles. The man behind
the only English-language publication specifically for Hispanics,
Harvey says his paper simply took an eight-week <I>siesta<I>
because his other master, Dyess Air Force Base, dispatched him
to Las Vegas as chief of protocol for red-flag exercises.
I ran into Harvey during last week's family celebration at
Sears Park, which saw everyone from community leader Billy Enriquez
to City Council member Carol Martinez to state Rep. Bob Hunter
joining in festivities for a neighborhood revitalization plan.
Harvey told me he missed Abilene, his family and his sideline
of putting out El Escritor during his work in Las Vegas, but that
things could have been worse. At one point, he feared he'd be
doing duty in Saudi Arabia.
During one of his Dyess assignments, he was shipped all the
way off to Turkey. Worse yet, when he and some others went into
a hotel to secure a room, the clerk looked at him, smiled graciously,
then said, "You stink!" Pardon?
The clerk then paused, got out an English phrase book, fumbled
to a particular page, then spoke up once more.
"Oh, I mean, have a seat!"
UNDER THE BED
Lucille Tally of Buffalo Gap, who turns 86 come Wednesday,
tells me she was glad to see the late Howard Hollowell's name
in the paper once again. In addition to pastoring Potosi Methodist
Church in 1935, Hollowell once pastored Buffalo Gap's Methodist
church.
And Lucille ought to know. Rev. Hollowell baptized her, her
husband J.L. and several others in the nearby creek in 1938. It
was one of the highlights of her life, she said.
"He was a great guy, good-looking and friendly and one
of the best speakers in the world," Lucille told me the other
day. "I don't have anything bad to say about him. We even
had a Baptist wanting to join our church while he was here.
"If he'd stayed any longer, he would've pastored the whole
countryside."
Lucille also confirmed the Rev. Hollowell's sense of humor
as well as his extraordinary patience. She recalled that he and
his wife Sally had a daughter who, in her youngest years, would
cry and cry till the reverend took her for a drive on the country
roads around Buffalo Gap.
Apparently the gentle hum of the car engine and the rocking
motion on those old country roads in the south of Taylor County
lulled the child to sleep.
Even so, Rev. Hollowell knew this could not continue forever.
He reportedly told Lucille and others one morning (and from the
pulpit, no less) that he had finally taken to leaving the vacuum
cleaner underneath the bed. When it was time for the child to
go to sleep, he would switch it on.
Then he would stand behind the bed and shake it gently till
the child at last dropped off to sleep.
I told Lucille that seemed like an awful lot to go through
every night to get a child off to dreamland.
"Well, yes," Lucille said. "And I don't think
they had anymore children after that, either!"
Bill Whitaker, who cannot sleep when anyone is shaking his
bed, can be reached at 676-6732.
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Copyright ©1996 or
1997, Abilene Reporter-News / Texnews / E.W. Scripps. Publications
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