Glen Stillings quickly enlisted in the Air Force at the start of World War II before he was captured by German forces and held as a Prisoner of War. His wife, Betty, at right, always had hope that he would make it home safely.
(Photo submitted)
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Glen and Betty Stillings’ daughter, Lynn, holds a letter her father wrote to her mother while he was in bombardier school in Childress, Texas, dated March 13, 1944. In it, he jokes that a recent three-page letter from his “Dearest Betty” almost made up for the days he didn’t receive any letters from her.
(Journal-Tribune photo by Kayleen Petrovia)
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Shortly after Betty Stillings’ new husband, Glen, arrived overseas to fly missions as a bombardier in the Air Force, she received a package.
Inside the metal tube was a painting of the couple’s wedding portrait, replicated from a copy of the photo Glen kept with him.
The image was meant to help sustain the newlyweds through their time apart while Glen flew six missions during World War II.
Their time apart grew and their reunion became uncertain when, following his sixth planned mission, Glen was declared Missing in Action and, three months later, formally named a Prisoner of War.
In those months of uncertainty, Betty said she held on to the two things she knew well: faith and love.
Still, it took years before Betty, now 99 years old, would learn the extent of what her husband endured after his crew’s plane crashed in Italy.
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The pair was married just months earlier on May 7, 1944 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Marysville.
Although the wedding was planned in less than a week, in many ways, it was a long time coming.
Betty and Glen met during the summer of 1938, when she was an incoming freshman at Chuckery Darby High School and he was a rising junior at Allen Center High School.
The two would walk to the pool together at 4-H camp until, one Friday evening, Glen invited Betty to attend Vespers with him followed by square dancing at the lodge.
She can still envision the outfit he wore on what was technically their first date: a white dress shirt with brown tweed pants and matching brown and white shoes.
“Dressed up, he looked good,” Betty said. “Especially the shoes.”
Camp came to a close the next morning and the two went their separate ways, but made sure to exchange addresses first.
Later that month, Betty received a card in the mail from Glen to mark her 14th birthday.
Over the next couple years, Betty said the two managed to stay in touch and “dated on and off,” including going to his senior prom together.
Many of her Sunday nights were date nights with Glen.
On Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, she opened her front door for Glen and the first thing he asked was, “Did you hear the news?”
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Betty said she and Glen went for a drive together as they talked more about the attack on Pearl Harbor.
He told her he already decided to enlist in the Air Force.
After he was turned down in Columbus for high blood pressure, he passed the physical in Dayton.
Even though it meant Glen would go to war, Betty said it was the outcome she desired.
“I wanted him to do what he wanted to do, so I was glad for him,” she said.
Betty went with Glen’s mother to drop him off at Ft. Hayes in Columbus, where he was to report on Feb. 1. From there, he was sent to Florida for boot camp.
While there, Betty and Glen sent letters to each other “almost every day.”
He also spent time in Kutztown, Pennsylvania and Nashville, Tennessee before being sent to Childress, Texas for flight school.
There, communication between the two became much more sporadic.
“I just thought, he must be really busy,” Betty said.
Without Betty’s knowledge, Glen called her mother in April 1944 to tell her that he had 10 days of leave and planned to arrive in Columbus on April 30.
That day, she and her mother were greeted at the Columbus airport with a surprise.
“There he was in a tailored uniform with bombardier wings pinned to his chest and gold bars on his shoulder,” Betty said.
Glen graduated from flight school a day earlier, April 29, 1944, and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant.
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After telling his parents the news, Glen visited at Betty’s parent’s home.
While catching up, Betty shared some news “that was hard for him to hear,” admitting she had been on one date while he was away.
“He must have made up his mind then and there he was going to be married before he got back to his next station,” she said.
By the next Monday, the pair was at the altar.
With just six days to plan, Betty said she couldn’t find a wedding dress, so she wore a street-length white dress with two flowers pinned to her shoulder.
The couple couldn’t have a reception at her family’s home because Betty’s brother was quarantined with scarlet fever, so their immediate families gathered at Glen’s home for cake and ice cream to celebrate.
The next day, Betty and Glen Stillings reported to Springfield, Massachusetts, where they began their married lives in the hotel they lived in together.
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They were separated shortly after when Glen and his flight crew were sent to Savannah, Georgia for further training as they prepared to fly a B-24 in bombing missions over Germany.
Betty went back to her parent’s home until Glen found a furnished home to rent in Savannah. They lived there with his co-pilot and his wife, Everett and Regina.
Betty said the group had a lot of fun preparing meals and sharing dinner together, even going out to eat every once in a while.
But they knew their time together was dwindling, and the crew was soon sent to New York to be deployed overseas to Greenland.
Betty said it was becoming more and more difficult to say goodbye, but she and Glen’s mother traveled to Long Island to see him off.
The package containing the Stillings’ wedding portrait was the most information Betty would know of her husband for quite some time.
“From (Greenland), we don’t know for sure where they went,” she said.
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Betty believes Glen was stationed in France when his crew departed for their sixth and final mission – one on which they were flying a different plane than their own.
They couldn’t gain the normal altitude and, instead of parachuting, the crew decided to ride the plane down. They crashed into the side of a mountain, killing the co-pilot of the plane but saving the other nine crew members.
When they escaped the wreckage, Betty said, “Germans were right there with their rifles pointed.”
The crew was separated and Glen was taken on a train from Italy to Berlin, where he spent three weeks in solitary confinement.
After 21 days, Glen was forced to begin a march from Berlin to Nuremberg – about 278 miles – though Betty doesn’t believe he knew where they were marching him.
At the time, there was no information on Glen’s whereabouts – he was simply reported as “Missing in Action” from the time his crew’s plane went down.
“For three months, all I knew was he was missing in action,” Betty said. “I didn’t know if he was dead or alive.”
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After months of waiting, Betty was given a spark of hope.
Glen’s parents received word from a Prisoner of War that he saw Glen passing his prison camp. Then, Glen’s loved ones received official word that he was listed as a POW.
Glen remained a prisoner for about six months, while Betty knew almost nothing of her husband’s well-being.
Over that period, she said she received “maybe three cards” that were largely blacked out and censored.
“All he could say was he missed me and he was O.K.,” she said.
She said she always believed that Glen would return home.
Betty’s friends helped keep her spirits up by taking her to dances hosted by the Farm Bureau, although it was mostly the women dancing with one another because their husbands were at war. Betty also went with her friends and family members to high school basketball games.
She said she only recalls one time when she “got a little upset” after listening to a radio broadcast that reported that many soldiers who fell ill during marches were left to die alone.
Betty said her mom told her that she’d been optimistic so far and she needed to “keep it up.”
“The good Lord’s been good to me and he must have controlled my mind so I didn’t get really upset,” Betty said.
She even managed to find hope in the manner that Glen became a prisoner of war.
“When the crew decided to ride the plane down, can you imagine the prayers that were being said?” Betty said.
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On Memorial Day 1945, Betty was spending her day off work at her parents’ home when the phone rang.
“I said it loud, I said, ‘Mom! It’s him!’”
Glen had survived the prison camp and was liberated, then sent to New York by ship. He called to let Betty’s mother know he wanted to surprise her, but didn’t realize Betty would be home for the holiday.
Glen still managed to work in a surprise, in his typical fashion.
He learned from his wife’s coworkers at the light company in Marysville that, when he was declared Missing in Action, she told them she’d jump over the counter if he’d just walk through the front doors.
In early June, he rode the train to Milford Center, then stopped by Betty’s workplace with their mothers.
When he walked in, he told Betty, “Well, let me see you jump over that counter!”
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Betty said Glen’s experience during World War II remained much of a mystery because she decided early on “he’d been through enough” and she wouldn’t ask “a bunch of questions.”
“Those things were never really mentioned,” she said.
Over their 44 years of marriage, she gathered details bit by bit.
Glen said he was thankful that he had a newer pair of boots when they began the march from Berlin, so they didn’t give out during the long journey.
She learned that he never once took his wedding band off while he was gone, even when he was imprisoned.
“They either didn’t (take it) or he wouldn’t let them,” she said.
Just like Betty never lost hope that Glen would come home, he always felt he would see her again.
Lynn, Betty and Glen’s only daughter, said years later she asked her father if he ever worried that he wouldn’t make it home.
He told her, “I always thought that I had people at home I had to go see.”
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After his military service, Betty and Glen spent much of their marriage farming the land next to Fairbanks High School.
Together, they had three sons and one daughter they built a life with in Union County until Glen’s passing in 1988.
After years apart, Lynn said her parents became “the couple that did everything together,” whether it was farming, traveling on vacations or even rebuilding their family home following a devastating house fire.
While they lost much of Glen’s military memorabilia, Lynn still has a few photos of her dad in his uniform, the Purple Heart he received for his service and some of the letters her parents wrote back and forth.
Most importantly, the metal tube protected the cherished wedding painting Glen sent to Betty, before they knew what was in store.
To this day, the portrait that always kept her going hangs squarely above her bed.
“We went through a lot together,” Betty said with a smile.