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| William Schindler ’00 interviewed Benedict Yedlin
of Princeton. Yedlin was a ball-turret gunner during World War
II, bombing the Romanian city of Ploesti several times—a city
that supplied Hitler with a third of his oil reserves. In an excerpt of Schindler’s report, Yedlin describes one reason why he signed up to go to war:Why did I enlist? Well, I enlisted because there was a war on, and I wanted to serve in the war. A peripheral reason was that Brooklyn College required a year of speech. The first semester of speech, which I had taken earlier, was involved with the mechanics of speech. And the second semester of speech was public speaking. I was mortally afraid of getting up in front of a class and speaking. And so, I enlisted in the war. According to Schindler, it was a difficult decision for Yedlin to make. "He is Jewish, so there was an added twist with him flying over Romania because what if he were shot down and caught?" Schindler asked. "He had that fear." Yedlin served in the war as a ball turret gunner, fighting aircraft in a cramped space underneath a plane. Although Yedlin was not claustrophobic, Schindler writes "One of his greatest fears surrounded being shot down while trapped inside the ball turret. It was too restrictive inside the ball to carry a parachute, and to amplify the danger, it was practically impossible to escape from his position if the plane went into a spin." Luckily, Yedlin was never shot down. But it bothered him that he never saw Ploesti—which was always obscured by smoke during his missions. Needing closure, he returned 50 years later. Yedlin wrote a letter to Ploesti’s mayor, who greeted him warmly and invited him to the city. He made his way there in 1993. During his visit Yedlin realized what an effect he had on Romania through his involvement as a bomber. In addition to the destruction of the city, he indirectly touched the lives of the Romanian people. One example happened to be a love story—originated from a bomb that was dropped during one of his missions. Yedlin recounts: I was taken out to a farm and I met this guy who was probably five or six years older than I was. And it was explained to me that on July 9—and I looked at my records and I was on a bombing mission—the bombs set fire to his now wife’s home. So he said to the translator that he felt so sorry for her and he married her. So we embraced and I saw myself as the agency. It was very charming even with the language difficulty. Schindler said since he’s finished his report, Stephen Ambrose, a best-selling historical author who was a consultant for the movie Saving Private Ryan, contacted Yedlin because he was writing a book of oral histories. Yedlin gave the author Schindler’s report so it has a chance of being published. Tamika Allen ’00 spoke to a family of Uruguayan immigrants who came to the United States illegally in 1984. For obvious reasons, Allen used pseudonyms when referring to the four family members she interviewed, calling them the Gracias family. The family’s youngest daughter told Allen, "Sometimes kids here take for granted the things that they have, and they take for granted their opportunities...and to get the same thing you have, we had to cross this dangerous place." The mother of the girls described how nervous she was when the family illegally crossed the Mexican border into the United States: So we start walking and there was a hole in the fence, and a little hill, so you went into the bridge. We get into the bridge. So immigration on this side (motions right) looking at cars coming from over there, and immigration on this side (motions left) looking at cars from the other side. So we have to watch to see nobody turns to see if anybody’s on the bridge. That’s what we have to worry about at that time. So, in that morning my oldest daughter was the leader. She said let’s go mom, let’s go, we can do this, we can do this. My younger one...you could hear her heart from (pause), I don’t know from where. She was crying her heart out. It was beating terrible, you could hear it she was so scared. After crossing the border, the family was deported two months later, Allen said. But they have since become legal residents of the United States. Allen said talking to the family made her appreciate being American. "The things that they went through to get here were amazing. They sacrificed so much." The experience even made Allen think more about the Elian Gonzalez saga, which was at its pinnacle while she was conducting her interviews. "Over and over again, the mother in this family kept saying that she did it for her children...she did it for her children. And it was just like little Elian. He could have never survived if the other people on that boat hadn’t sacrificed for him." Allen said the project with Paces was the best experience she had as a history student at The College. "I loved it," she said. "It made me more firm on the type of history I want to do. It was life changing. You can’t have a history without having the words and stories of those you’re writing about. They made history come alive." She added that she wants to continue to write and thinks it would be great to "hop on a plane and start interviewing an unknown tribe in the middle of Africa." |
