CPL Harold Terens, U.S. Army Air Corps, World War II

·34 min·3 clips

Harold Terrens woke up stark naked on the Sahara Desert after being drugged in a Tehran nightclub.

Harold Terens, a 101-year-old U.S. Army Air Corps veteran, recounts his World War II service and his 2024 wedding in Normandy. Host Greg Corumbas interviews Terens, who served as a radio operator after being disqualified from pilot training due to colorblindness. He was deployed to England with the 350th Fighter Squadron, maintaining radios for P-47 Thunderbolt fighters that escorted B-17 bombers. Terens describes the high casualty rates, noting his squadron lost 30 of 60 planes on D-Day and eventually replaced every original pilot. He details the secretive preparations for D-Day, including painting white stripes on Allied aircraft for identification. Days after D-Day, he volunteered for a mission to Normandy to retrieve freed prisoners of war from German camps. Terens survived a German V-1 "buzz bomb" attack in London, which buried him in debris and sent him to the hospital. He was unexpectedly transferred to North Africa, flying alongside boxer Joe Louis, and later served in Iran to support shuttle bombing operations. In Tehran, he was drugged and robbed, waking up stranded naked in the Sahara Desert before military police rescued him. His final assignment involved supporting 24-hour shuttle bombing operations from Poltava, Ukraine, until a German bombing raid destroyed his tent. Terens nearly died from dysentery after drinking unpasteurized milk in Russia, his weight dropping to 88 pounds. The day after Germany's surrender, a German woman offered him tea and said "Heil Hitler," a moment that profoundly disturbed him. In June 2024, at age 100, he married 96-year-old Jeannie Swerlin in a Normandy town near Omaha Beach, with a local mayor officiating. Following the wedding, French President Emmanuel Macron invited the couple to a state dinner in Paris attended by world leaders. At the dinner, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Terens he and his wife were on front pages worldwide, and he met figures like Carla Bruni and Nancy Pelosi. Terens reflects that many students today lack knowledge of D-Day or World War II's scale, where an estimated 50 million were killed. The episode is conversational and narrative, driven by Terens's vivid, personal anecdotes and emotional recollections. History enthusiasts and listeners interested in firsthand accounts of WWII from a non-combat specialist's perspective would find this compelling. Those seeking broad historical analysis or discussions of military strategy might find the focus too personal and anecdotal.

As heard by us

A steady wartime oral history that finds its strength in plainspoken detail.

Veterans Chronicles follows Harold Terrens through a wartime life that stretches from the Bronx to Pearl Harbor, England, London under V-1 attack, North Africa, and the logistics of Allied shuttle bombing.

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You hear a Bronx-born Army Air Corps vet carry you from Pearl Harbor news to a wartime landing in Casablanca.

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