Pictured is Andy Dolan from the 2011 Crossville Memorial Airport Fly-In.
Crossville resident Andrew MacDonald Dolan moved to Cumberland County 26 years ago with his wife, Yvette. Andrew turns 96 next month, making him the oldest of the 142 known World War II veterans living in Cumberland County.
Dolan was born in Haddonfield, NJ, on Dec. 7, 1918, less than a month after the armistice of World War I. His parents were both Irish immigrants, though they came to the United States separately. His mother, Jennie, frequented trips back to Ireland, including at least one voyage made aboard the "Columbia" in 1924 with her children – Joseph, 7; Donald (Andrew), 5; and Frances, 3.
His father, Joseph, arrived in the U.S. in 1907 and became an attendant servant at the Bancroft Training School, previously known as the Haddonfield School for the Mentally Deficient and Peculiarly Backward, est. 1883. The school was created to develop innovative ways of teaching developmentally disabled children.
Bancroft had a summer camp in Owls Head, ME where the Dolans would spend their summers from June until early September.
"It was unusual in those days for people to travel like that," said Dolan. "It would take us three days to get to Maine. We'd start out with two spare tires on the roof of the car." He laughed. "The roads were terrible. You'd go for miles and miles under construction."
Dolan's descriptions of those journeys conjure images of Tom Joad's family crossing the dustbowl to get to California.
Very few people had an automobile in those days, but one of the patients at Bancroft had a car he would loan to Joseph for the trip to Maine every summer.
"We were just an average family," said Dolan. "Nobody was rich, of course, in those days. But we didn't know we were poor until Franklin Roosevelt told us we were, that we needed government help."
Dolan looks back on his youth with fondness.
"In those days, life was easy," he said. "We didn't see any real problems. We had enough to get by on. There was a lot of unemployment but, fortunately, my father was employed. Nobody made a lot of money but we lived relatively good."
At a very young age, Dolan fell in love with airplanes.
"I guess, as a kid you get stuck on things. Airplanes was my thing. I'd never miss a chance to see an airplane," he said. "I was always around airplanes. I made model airplanes and I always wanted to fly. We used to drive on Sundays to Central Airport in Camden and just watch the airplanes land and take off. It's a great thrill to be in the air."
Inspired by his childhood heroes, World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker and Charles Lindbergh, Dolan had already earned a pilot's license by the time he turned 21 years old. To get a license back in the 1930's, a pilot needed at least 35 hours of solo time before they could take the test. The cost was about $25.
"Lunch used to cost me 15 cents for a ham sandwich and a little bottle of chocolate milk. So I cut out the ham sandwich and got a tongue sandwich. That was a nickel cheaper. I saved a nickel for lunch every day," said Dolan. "It took me over a year to save $25."
His hard work and perseverance finally paid off.
"It was quite a thrill the first day – me, all alone in an airplane. Something that I dreamed of finally happened," said Dolan. "There were kids up there flying that had a hundred hours and they still hadn't passed their test. I spent my whole 35 hours practicing maneuvers. I didn't do any cross-country flying or anything. Every minute up in the air, I was practicing something I needed to do to get my license. I got my license with 35 hours and 35 minutes."
Dolan had a friend from school who worked at the local airport. After he got his license, his friend told him they were forming a club. They had five members but needed one more.
"He said 'let me show you something.' So I followed him around the other side of the hangar and there was a little yellow airplane there, a Piper Cub, serial number 20809."
As soon as Dolan saw the plane he fell in love. He asked if the owner would take $25 that day and $100 the next week. The owner agreed.
"Now, it took me over a year to raise $25. I had to come up with $100 within a week!"
Dolan didn't want to ask his parents for money, but he was able to secure a loan from a local bank.
"The next day, the pastor of our church said he wanted to talk to me. He said a couple of rough looking guys were there inquiring about me. 'Are you in any trouble?' he asked. I said, 'no, I just borrowed some money.' He said, 'well you better be careful, they looked like they meant business.'
"I knew the story – either I make my payments on time, or I would end up with a broken arm or broken leg. That didn't phase me a bit. I didn't care what was gonna happen – I had a 1/6 ownership in an airplane. That was the happiest day of my life."
Dolan's fascination with flying drew him towards military service. However, though he had a private pilot's license, he did not qualify to be a military pilot.
"I couldn't qualify for the flying cadets because you needed two years of college and 20/20 eyesight," said Dolan. "I had neither. But if I couldn't fly, I wanted to be around airplanes."
Dolan went to an army recruiting office in Philadelphia.
"I asked the recruiter if I signed up if there was any chance I would do any flying. And he says 'oh, absolutely. You sign up today and we'll send you to mechanic school down in Montgomery, AL, and after you get your license to practice maintenance, you'll get to fly the airplanes after you fix them to make sure they're okay for the lieutenants.' I thought that sounded pretty good," Dolan said as he laughed.
At the time, Dolan was working at the "Philadelphia Record." One of his colleagues, who was a captain in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard, had been trying to recruit him, as well.
"The last time I talked to the recruiter, he was still trying to get me," said Dolan. "I went home and there was a letter from President Roosevelt to come to Fort Dix the following Tuesday with clothing for three days. My number was the first one out of the barrel when they drew the numbers for the draft. I didn't think I wanted to be in the infantry, so I rushed to ask if I could still get in the guard."
Dolan joined the Pennsylvania Air National Guard in 1941. He left home on Feb. 16 for one-year of active duty.
"When Pearl Harbor came along, that changed everything. I was in for the duration then," he said.
While on active duty, Dolan would always review new regulations that came in to see if there had been a reduction in the requirements for flying.
"They kept gradually changing, not for cadets, but for ferry pilots and stuff like that," he said.
Dolan didn't have enough experience to fly most of the equipment he would otherwise be qualified for. The majority of his flight log was in the Piper Cub, while most of the military planes had the more powerful 150-horsepower engines.
In 1944, a regulation came in for glider pilot training in Arizona. Dolan made some phone calls to get transferred in to glider school. In the mean time, the military was consolidating and reorganizing squadrons. Dolan got the opportunity to join the intelligence section as a photo interpreter, which required six weeks of training in Florida.
"The day after I got back from Florida, they busted up the squadron and scattered us all over. That probably saved my life because I never got my application to glider school back," said Dolan. "I looked at pictures from D-Day and saw those gliders piled up in hedgerows, upside down, one on top of the other. I thought I was sure lucky that I never got to that point in my life."
To be sure, the life expectancy of glider pilots in combat was 17 seconds. And if they survived, they became infantrymen immediately upon landing.
For the first three years of his service, Dolan was headquarters staff sergeant in the 103rd Observation Squadron, Pennsylvania Air National Guard, which had been nationalized. Year one was mostly training; years two and three were spent doing anti-submarine patrols off the east coast. Years four and five, he spent overseas as a photo interpreter with the 33rd Photo Reconnaissance Squadron.
On April 17, 1944, the men of the 33rd PR boarded the SS Nieuw Amsterdam II bound for Europe as a military band played "Auld Lang Syne." The ship was a luxury liner that had been converted into a military transport. However, for the enlisted men, the journey was anything but luxurious.
Dolan chronicled his experiences for the 33rd Squadron's website:
"Our quarters were cramped and stuffy," said Dolan. "Three hundred men occupying a space that would have been little enough room for a third of that number."
Instead of bunks or cots to sleep on, the men were issued hammocks and mattresses.
"Half the men slept on hammocks slung side by side, while the rest had thin mattresses which were laid on the floor close together," Dolan remembered. "It was not uncommon for a mattress man to have a shoe or body drop on him during the night or have his face stepped on by a dismounting hammock tenant."
They finally arrived in England and waited for the invasion. Dolan's unit played a major role in both the preparation for the invasion of France and continued to be instrumental throughout the entire Western Europe campaign. After D-Day, the landing forces fought through to St. Lo. Once they were able to break out the engineers came in and built landing strips for the intelligence assets to fly in.
"Fast-flying aircraft, new automatic cameras and modern laboratory equipment made it possible to turn out as many as 20,000 prints a day," explained Dolan. "I was the ranking non-commissioned officer in photo intelligence and was responsible for overseeing the flow and interpretation of the prints as soon as we received them from the lab. We had the operation so well organized that camera repair could remove the cameras from the returning aircraft, rush them to the lab and have prints under interpretation in less than hour. We performed first phase interpretation, looking for targets of opportunity – locomotives under steam or troop movements, or any changes at air field activity, and that information was relayed immediately to the fighter squadrons. As other areas of interpretation were completed and plotted, the information was rushed to group headquarters where detailed interpretation was done and the intelligence was then relayed to the ground forces in a matter of a couple of hours."
Most of the images Dolan interpreted were taken by F5s flying at an altitude of 20,000 feet. Another squadron flew P51s converted to reconnaissance. Their cameras were pointed out at an angle, so most of their photographing was low level, 25-100 feet off the ground.
"We followed the army, as they advanced, we were right behind them – sometimes about 15 miles behind them," said Dolan.
His service took him through France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.
"During the Battle of the Bulge, we were about 20 km from the Muse River," Dolan recalled. "The German Panzers were on the east side of the Muse. As the Battle of the Bulge went on, they evacuated our squadron back to France. I stayed behind with another member of the photo intelligence section along with some guys from the photo lab to destroy anything that might aid the enemy if they broke through. So, at that time, the only thing that stood between the Germans and Amsterdam, was about seven PIs and photo lab technicians with 30 caliber carbines," he joked.
On May 8, 1945, victory was declared. The war in Europe had been won.
"When the conflict in Europe ended, you needed 85 points for discharge. You earned points by awards, medals, length of time in a combat zone. I had 102 points so I was stuck in Europe until October because the ones who were going to be sent home and reassigned to the Pacific got first priority out. We had to wait until things ended over in the Pacific before we could get out of Europe."
Staff Sergeant Andrew M. Dolan came home aboard the USS Frederick Lykes; he had been deployed for 19 months. For his efforts, he was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, Belgium Fourragere, American Defense Service Medal, American Campaign Medal, Good Conduct Medal, World War II Victory Medal, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign with Silver Star and Bronze Star for the following campaigns: Air Offense Europe, Ardennes, Central Europe, Normandy, Northern France, and the Rhineland.
Reflecting on the years that have since passed, Dolan recounts tales of an active and happy life. Though some health issues have slowed him down a bit recently, he still remains active through writing and his passion for politics.
"Seems like with every adversity, I ended up coming out on top," said Dolan. "I've had a pretty fortunate life."
Story and photos: http://www.crossville-chronicle.com
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