Former Student at East High and Morningside Decorated for Bravery
Capt. Woodbury Also Was Stranded on Coral Island
Capt. Willard “Bill” Woodbury, 24, former East High school athlete and Morningside college student, holds the Bronze Leaf award for bravery displayed during the battle of Midway and has memories of spending several days on a storm-swept coral reef after his plane forced down while hunting Japs in the Solomons.
But the flier failed to mention those details last January when he visited Mr. and Mrs. E. P. Follis, 2329 S. Helen Street.
Clippings from a Honolulu newspaper revealed these stories about the boyhood friend of Larry, son of Mr. and Mrs. Follis.
The clippings reached them recently from Larry’s navy station at Jacksonville, Florida. Larry had received them from another friend “Chuck” Keims, presumably stationed in Hawaii.
Greetings on Envelope
On their way to Larry, the clippings must have passed through the hands of a fourth friend. Scrawled on the envelope was a cheerful salutation by Larry Jones, employed in the naval postal department.
One clipping pertains to the award for bravery. The other begins, “Lost at night in a storm over the Solomons, out of gasoline, no land in sight. This was the plight of the United States army Flying Fortress crew--.”
The Fortress piloted by Capt. Woodbury, was one of a heavy flight of bombers which took off from an air base one afternoon to intercept and destroy a Jap carrier, the Honolulu newspaper continued.
Encountering a violent storm, Capt. Woodbury was unable to find the target but the plane used precious gasoline in the search.
“Had To Go Through”
“We could find no way to go around the storm so we had to go through it,” the flier told a Honolulu reporter. A few minutes later, at a 100-mile-an-hour clip, the plane smashed against waves that rolled against a little island.
One member of the crew suffered a broken leg. Not knowing that the water was fairly shallow and fearful that the plane would sink immediately, Capt. Woodbury and his men lifted their injured comrade on a raft and fought their way to shore through a mile and a half of wind-ripped sea.
They spent three days and four nights on the beach before being rescued by a navy plane.
Capt. Woodbury now is stationed at a flying field near Boise, Idaho, Mrs. Follis said. His mother has been living in Omaha since the death of her husband several years ago.
Source: The Sioux City Journal-Tribune, April 12, 1943 (photo included)
