mobanmarketEVERGREEN PARK, IL —Nearly 80 years after he was reported missing in action during World War II, USAAF 1st. Lt. Edward Timothy McGuire finally came home to the neighborhood he left many decades ago to enlist in the fight against Hitler and the Third Reich.
McGuire was just 22 when he was shot down over Romania in August 1943. Although his many descendants filling the pews Saturday inside Most Holy Redeemer Church had never met their war hero uncle, they knew of him. His nieces and nephews and their children have spent decades searching for the person behind the photograph of the dashing young pilot they remember being on display at their grandparents’ home.
USAAF pilot, 1st Lt. Edward Timothy McGuire
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“As I think back, my dear grandmother would only have talked about her dear son by reading his letters,” said his niece Mary Lynn McGuire Clarke, 70. “He had a great sense of humor. He was very earnest about learning how to fly.”
‘Dear Folks’
McGuire was born April 11, 1921, one of three children to Timothy McGuire, a Chicago police officer and his mother Delia, of the Merrick clan, who was a nurse. Both immigrated to the United States to escape British Imperial rule over Ireland. His parents settled on the South Side, raising their family near 55th Street and Bishop Avenue in St. Basil’s Parish.
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“My grandfather – we called him Dodd – was a great storyteller who’d tell us stories about Ireland, but he was all in for the USA,” Clarke said. “My grandparents knew how they were supposed to live. The Irish couldn’t own land or worship as they pleased in Ireland, so they were grateful to be in a country that allowed them to practice their faith, own a house, and educate and feed their children.”
By his parents’ example of patriotism, McGuire put his plans to become a teacher on hold after graduating from Mount Carmel High School. He got his parents’ permission to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Forces, not yet 20, a month after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. McGuire had already applied for aviation cadet training that taught young pilots how to fly in formation.
McGuire was devoted to his parents and wrote to them practically every day, beginning his letters with “dear Folks.” His letters were full of humor and unabashed pride in his Irish heritage.
“A merry St. Pat’s Day to you. Keep swinging your [shillelaghs]. Everyone down here makes a lot of mention of my being Irish,” Edward wrote from flight training school. “Sometimes I kid them along and tell them that the River Shannon flowed right past my door … We’ve (three or four Irish fellows) been going around for the last week singing Irish songs.”
In another letter, McGuire sends money to his father to go buy a winter overcoat “because I know you won’t buy anything for yourself,” to repay his parents back for their many years of funding his Catholic school education.
‘Lost’
On Aug. 1, 1943, McGuire took part in a massive bombing raid called Operation Tidal Wave. His B-24 Liberator was one of 177 planes sent on a low-level mission to fly into a hail of enemy aircraft fire to bomb the oil refineries of Polesti, Romania, that fueled Hitler’s war machine.
While the result of the mission was not a decisive air victory for the Allies, there was no shortage of courage. McGuire’s valor is recounted in James Dugan and Carroll Stewart’s book “Polesti,” who the authors say flew in with the fifth and last wave of B-24 bombers. With his plane hit by enemy aircrat on fire, McGuire took it up to give his crew members a chance to bail out. He managed to “deposit three living crew members on the ground.” Fifty-three liberators were lost that day – including McGuire’s plane – and an estimated 446 airmen were killed or missing, an unparalleled loss for the USAAF.
McGuire’s parents got the dreaded Western Union telegram from the U.S. War Department informing them that their son was missing in action. His mother, Delia, received a letter from first lady Eleanor Roosevelt expressing her sympathies “with you in your anxiety and sincerely hope you will have good news of him before too long.”
In March 1946, the U.S. the Army issued an official finding of death. McGuire’s remains were buried in a mass grave in Polesti, Romania. The American Graves Registration Command retrieved the unknowns that were reinterred in Belgium.
“A number of the Operation Tidal Wave pilots were POWs,” Clarke said. “Some were reported dead but were still alive. My grandparents didn’t give up hope. It wasn’t until a year after the war ended that they accepted that he went down.”
Clarke’s own father – Bill – who followed his big brother Edward into the Army took part in the amphibious landing on Anzio Beach with the knowledge that his brother had been reported MIA.
After Bill returned home from the war, he and his wife, Marilyn, moved into the second floor flat above his parents’. Marilyn gave birth to six daughters in 7.5 years and “had her hands full,” Clarke laughed.
Bill and Edward’s sister, Marnie, and her husband, Francis, also a World War II veteran, and their son, Edward, named for her lost brother, lived on the third floor. Running in and out of her grandparents’ flat, the felt the heavy presence of their missing uncle.
“My grandparents were rocks, they were very stable,” Clarke said. “My grandfather said the rosary every day. They went to Sunday Mass until they were too old to go. They were salt-of-the- earth-people who had endured a lot in their lives, but they just didn’t fold. That’s not what they were about. There was no ambiguity.”
‘Found’
In 2017, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency began exhuming the unknowns for comparison with the unaccounted-for airmen lost during Operation Tidal Wave.
This past June, Clarke got a phone call out of the blue from the DPAA. Cousins on both sides of the family – McGuires and Merricks – submitted DNA samples. She and her cousin, Ed, were on the family contact list.
“I was taken aback – ‘you found him’ – I never expected it,” Clarke said. “My uncle’s parents, my parents, my aunt and her husband are all gone. It brings a certain closure to a story we didn’t expect to ever be resolved.”
On Saturday, 1st Lt. McGuire was given a hero’s send off. A dozen great-nieces and nephews flew in from all over the country, and all the grandchildren, great-grandchildren and cousins. They never knew Edward, but said they were coming. An uncle lit a candle from Ireland when the funeral was taking place, which was live-streamed.
The heroic pilot, forever frozen at age 22, was buried with full military honors at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Alsip, next to his parents.
“We’re so grateful to the Army, they didn’t give up on finding him,” Clarke said. “This is about honoring the memory of my dear grandparents and their love for their son.”
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