Memorial

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Sgt Henry G. Gebhardt attended high school for 4 years before he joined the Air Corps of the U.S. Army Reserve in Fort Devens, Massachusetts on 13 December 1943.

On 13 February 1945, pilot 1st Lt. Roland Louis Guerin, Jr. and his crew of the B-24J-20 aircraft 44-48966, was on their ninth mission. During the bomb run, the airplane was hit by intense flak. Engine #1 was lost and later engine #2. Guerin struggled to keep the shaking plane level but the aircraft lost altitude and dropped back some 10 miles falling below the clouds. The entire crew bailed out. After a spiraling decent, the plane crashed about two and one half kilometers northwest of Sklkoeveskut near Vasasszonyfa, Hungary.

All of the crew were captured and sent to the interrogation center at Oberusel. When on 20 February the POWs were being transferred from Dulag Luft Wetzlar to Nuremburg by train, the boxcar they were riding in was strafed by American P-51s. 1st Lt. Guerin and Sgt. Henry G. Gebhardt were standing in the open boxcar door. Gebhardt was hit by .50 cal bullets in the right knee, which almost separated the lower half of his leg from his upper part. After the attack his comrades tried to stop the bleeding as good as they could. On hour or so later an ambulance arrived and carried Sgt Gebhardt to a hospital in Frankfurt. There he died on 2 March 1945.

According to one crew member, William Matzok, the German medical service was so lousy at that time, that it is his belief, Sgt Gebhardt must have died from the loss of blood.