Pearl Harbor recalled by World War II veteran

Seventy years ago, on December 7, 1941, high school student Bernard Cheney of Lubec was gathered around the radio with other family members listening to news about the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many Americans had never heard of the Hawaiian port until that day, but Bernard's older brother, Alger, was stationed there as a technical sergeant with the U.S. Army Air Corps supply.
"I think it was several weeks before the Red Cross notified us that he was alive," recalls Bernard. "But his picture ran the next day on the front page of The New York Times, shooting a .50-caliber machine gun, with two others, in sandbags."
The 70th anniversary of the surprise attack that propelled the U.S. into World War II is being remembered by many this year, but Bernard Cheney also recalls battles throughout the war, as he and three of his brothers served in the European and Pacific theaters. Bernard and Alger were the sons of Reginald and Margaret "Maggie" (Yorke) Cheney and had three brothers and two sisters. "My father died very young," recalls Bernard. He notes that Burt Turner ran a pearl essence factory in Eastport, and his father ran one in Lubec. "You needed fish scales, and Burt used to say the fishermen gave my father the best ones."
When Alger Cheney volunteered for service in September 1940, he was 20 years old, two years older than Bernard. After surviving the Pearl Harbor attack, Alger eventually fought in major battles in the Pacific and was wounded at the Battle of Midway.
"It was one war after another war for him," says Bernard of his brother. "Al became a pilot and flew B-17s over Germany with the Eighth Air Force. He buzzed the house on the way to Europe. He was shot down twice over there."
Alger was honored with the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal with Four Oak Leaf Clusters and returned to the states in 1944. "He stayed in the reserves and became a pilot for General Motors. He always wanted to fly the biggest thing they had," remembers Bernard. "Then he was recalled [to service] during the Korean conflict."
Alger Cheney was piloting a C-124A Globemaster II at 9,000 feet on November 22, 1952, when it crashed into a remote glacier on approach to Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. The impact killed all 52 aboard.
Alger's wife, Elaine, was pregnant when she became a widow, and son Alger Junior was born one month later. "Ten or 12 years ago, he went to Alaska to see what he could find out about his father," says Bernard of his nephew. "When he got home, there was an article in the local paper about the trip, and he was contacted by a woman who said her father had been killed in the crash and her mother had been pregnant with her at the time. It's a small world."
Alger was not the only Cheney sibling to serve his country. Oldest brother Clifton was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1945 and served in Naples, Italy, for one year before settling in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raising a family there.
Another brother, Victor Wilson Cheney, was born on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918, so was named Victor after the U.S. victory, and his middle name came from the president. He was in the Civilian Conservation Corps when he entered the service in 1940. "He was serving as a drill inspector in Georgia," recalls Bernard. "But during the Battle of the Bulge they needed everybody who could move, walk or stumble, so at Christmas 1944 Victor left on a ship to Marseilles."
Two months later, on February 19, 1945, 25-year-old Sgt. Victor Cheney was killed in action in France. "My brother had been in the service seven or eight years, but he was only in combat for 15 minutes before he died," points out Bernard.
Bernard Cheney says that six weeks after he graduated from high school in Lubec "we all received a telegram from Uncle Sam," and he entered the service in November 1942. A member of the 551st Parachute Infantry Battalion, he served in North Africa as well as Europe, seeing much action during the invasion of southern France.
In early January of 1945, the battalion "was annihilated" after it was ordered to capture Rochelinval, Belgium, where the bridge over the Salm River offered a last possible escape route for the German army in the northern sector of the "bulge" that pushed into the American lines. The 551st began the attack against the German 62nd Volksgrenadier Division on January 3 with 790 men. Four days later it had captured the town, but the unit has lost 680 men, including the commanding officer. Less than a month later, the battalion was disbanded and the survivors were transferred to other units. "After that, the Pentagon wouldn't say we existed," says Cheney.
It wasn't until 46 years later, on February 23, 2001, that the U.S. Department of Defense finally rectified an oversight and awarded the soldiers in the 551st the Presidential Unit Citation for the attack.
"There were only 44 left of the 800, but we finally got the recognition we deserved," says Cheney.