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Charles O. Mercer -759th Bomber Squadron - 459th Heavy Bomber Group

My mother met Charles while in high school and they married when she was 18 in 1942.  He was born in 1922 as Charles O. Watts.  His parents divorced when he was a toddler and his mother's second husband adopted him and so he became Charles Mercer.   Its confusing because legally he was under both names but all the military records show him as Mercer.   My mother's papers on the other hand show her as Jacqueline Watts before she married my father.    Both sets of his parents treated us like their own grandchildren.  I called her Mom Mercer and his biological father Pop.  She lived here in Washington, D.C. and Mr. Watts lived in Chicago.  We would make several trips to Chicago and he and his second wife Raeda would spoil us rotten!  Charles was his only child.  He and Raeda never had kids of their own.

My Mother Jaqueline and Charles - 1943

Charles' mother and Mr. Mercer later adopted a little girl in the late 1930's named Mary Margaret. She's pictured here with my mother (in the white floral dress) and a friend.    My mother is holding her friend's son.  The photo is from 1943.

Pop Watts and Charles                             My sisters and myself with Pop and his wife Raeda in 1969 Chicago
(Pop was his biological father)               (left to right Janet, myself, MaryClare, Raeda, Monica and Pop)

His yearbook from flight school

The inscription inside is to my mother and states:
a/c Charles O. Mercer SQ M-3 Wing I - Maxwell Field
"To my one and only sweethear, Charly O. Mercer"

Charles' flight training group from Kansas.  He noted their names.   He listed himself as Chuck.

Charles on a visit home to DC before heading off to Italy

Charles was a ball-turret gunner on a B-24 Liberator.  He wanted to become a pilot but washed out of flight school and became a gunner instead.  My mother said he never had good luck - poor guy crashed on his first flight - so the air corps made him a gunner.  Sadly he was killed on his first bombing mission as well - December 18th 1944.   They were returning from a bombing run to Oswiecim Poland and crashed in the Adriatic Sea off the coast of Italy where the 15th Air Corps was headquartered.  It was assumed that they ran out of fuel.  Below are letters my mother got from the War Department.  Its very poignant and she was only 20 years old at the time.  He was barely 22 at the time of his death.  I also found his name mentioned on a battle monument on the Tablet of the Missing at Florence American Cemetery - Florence Italy.  Click here for a  link to find the grave or memorial to American soldiers.

His listing on the Tablet of the Missing

Photos of his Air Medal are below along with my mother's gold star wives pin (they were war widows)

My Mother's Gold Star Wives pin.  Women who lost sons were known as Gold Star Mothers.

My mother was a Gold Star Wives Officer, here she is pictured with President Truman and some other Gold Star Wives and orphans.  My mother is on the left in the black dress with the checked collar.  This photo is right after the war, probably late 1945 or early 1946.

My mother is in the center with some other Gold Star Wives and children of killed servicemen.  She had laid the wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier in Arlington, VA

My mother from a clipping of the Gold Star magazine, 1950.