Memorial

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Eugen Gabay graduated from Textile High School.

He enlisted in March 1943 and was sent overseas in October 1944.

He was married to Veronica Wheeler in April 1944.

While over the target, the aircraft took a direct flak hit in the camera hatch. This burst killed both waist gunners, S/Sgt Enrico R. Ciotti and Sgt Eugene T. Gabay.

Shrapnel from this flak burst also wounded S/Sgt Robert W. Groh in the back, fragments lodging in his right lung. Controls for the rudders and ailerons were also damaged. The engineer T/Sgt Alfred J. Ebbing, receiving no answer to his calls over the interphone went back and saw the destruction in the waist area. Seeing Sgt Groh was badly wounded, Ebbing made his way back to the cockpit and informed 1st Lt Burman that they needed to land immediately. The crew let down from altitude and found an airfield on which to land. They fired red flares on the approach denoting wounded on board. As they touched down, they rolled to a stop off of the main landing strip onto a grassy area between the runways. An ambulance stopped some distance away. Ebbing exited the aircraft and waved the ambulance over, but they were beckoning to him. He ran the few hundred feet across the grass to where they waited and told them they had wounded on board. The ambulance crew said, "You lead the way." Ebbing took them back to the plane where they proceeded to give first aid to Sgt Groh. The ambulance crew later told Ebbing that the airfield had only been taken over from the Germans two days earlier and that they suspected the grassy area where the B-24 had come to rest contained land mines, but the area had not yet been cleared!

His brother, S/Sgt. John R. Gabay, completed 26 missions as a tail gunner.