A proud veteran

Luis Pena

As Veterans Day approaches, Mike Hartunian finds himself thinking

more and more about his days as a bombardier during World War II.

The 82-year-old Newport Beach resident joined the Army Air Corps

in September 1942 to help in the war effort. He was sent for training

to the Santa Ana Army Air Base, which is where Orange Coast College

now stands.

Although he dreamed of becoming a pilot, Hartunian was classified

as a bombardier and became part of a B-24 Liberator crew. The B-24

was a heavy bomber that was known as the “box car.”

For Hartunian, Jan. 15, 1945, is one day he’ll never forget. While

on a bombing raid over Vienna Austria, his plane was hit twice by

enemy fire. The pilot told him to take over the top gun turret to

help fight off the enemy. When Hartunian reached the turret, he

couldn’t get his headphones plugged in so when the order to bail out

of the plane came, he didn’t hear the call. Luckily, the co-pilot

pulled on his leg, and he came down to see what was going on.

Hartunian grabbed his parachute and jumped.

“I did a summersault in the air, and then I pulled the ripcord and

the chute opened -- then my pain started,” he said.

Hartunian had landed on a pole. While he was not injured, it was a

painful landing, he said, followed by a feeling of hopelessness.

“I’m looking at the Alps Mountains down south of Vienna, and the

snow and all that and its cold. So I realized that I had to give up,”

Hartunian said.

He and his crew were captured and taken to an airfield, where they

spent a few nights. Every night, their captors would take their shoes

so they wouldn’t try to escape.

They were later taken to an interrogation center, where Hartunian

said he got off easy.

“To them, I was a small fry [because] I was only a second a second

lieutenant,” he said. “What the heck did I know?”

He was later taken to Luckenwalde, a prisoner of war camp, where

he feared death at every turn.

“I remember we went into [the showers]. I saw all of these

showerheads overhead, and I didn’t know what was going to come out of

them,” he said. “I didn’t see any water. I thought it was going to be

some kind of gas, but after a while, it was water.”

Then suddenly, on April 21, 1945, all of the Germans soldiers

guarding the camp were gone, replaced by Soviets who were marching

through on their way to Berlin. Hartunian said that the Soviets

wouldn’t let them go because they wanted Soviet prisoners of war back

that the Allies had liberated. He was finally released in late May

1945.

When Hartunian returned home from war, he decided not to make a

career out of the military. Instead, he went back to school, to Santa

Barbara State College. He married and eventually moved back to Orange

County. He had fallen in love with the area when stationed at the

Santa Ana base.

In his retirement, Hartunian spends about 30 hours a week creating

handmade backgammon boards, which he gives to people who donate a

minimum of $30,000 to an Armenian based charity.

But he remains active in veteran’s causes and is a member of the

American Ex-Prisoners of War, a support group for former prisoners of

war.