Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, July 15, 1994                   TAG: 9407150070
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By MIKE FEINSILBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

PILOT WHO RECORDED WAR'S HORROR HONORED AS HERO

``My bullets tore into them and blew things apart,'' the Minnesota farm boy wrote his sweetheart, Jackie, back in Baton Rouge, La., in a letter he decided was too gruesome to mail.

``The emotional impact on me was terrible. My right hand and trigger finger wouldn't function. I couldn't grip the control stick.''

Thursday, at a Bastille Day ceremony, the government of France made Aanenson, 73, a commander of the Legion of Honor.

In selecting Aanenson - who said he accepted as a stand-in for those more heroic than him - France honored a white-haired retired insurance executive who couldn't forget his war but still had trouble talking about it.

Finally, he devoted two years to making a film, with the help of a son-in-law, a video editor.

``It purged devastating memories,'' he said about showing the film to Jackie and their children and grandchildren.

He showed it to comrades. At their urging he sent it to Washington's public television station. Two months later, someone watched it and put it on the air. The impact was so sharp that PBS stations across the country broadcast it - all three hours - last month.

Aanenson flew 75 combat missions. On three flights, his cockpit burst into flames. He was wounded and listed as missing in action. He once landed with 50 shrapnel holes in his plane.

The day after he was reassigned to ground duty, two planes he had flown - ``Rebel Jack'' and ``Rebel Jack II,'' both named after Jackie - were shot down, both pilots killed.

Aanenson told his story through the letters he wrote to Jackie, the secretary he met at a dance at Harding Field, La., and dated every day and sometimes twice a day until he was sent overseas. He left her ``not technically engaged'' because they both knew the mortality rates of P-47 Thunderbolt pilots.

Some letters are sweet, some terrible.

``Dear Jackie: Before every mission, as I'm climbing into the cockpit, I whistle the first bar of the air corps song and kiss the ring you gave me. It seems to do the trick because I'm still flying. Johnny Bathurst carries one of his baby shoes with him. One of the other fellows recites a little poem.''

From the letter never mailed: ``I live in a world of death. I have watched my friends die in a variety of violent ways. Sometimes it's just an engine failure on take-off, resulting in a violent explosive crash. There's not enough left to bury. Other times it's the deadly flak that tears into a plane - if the pilot is lucky, the flak kills him.''

Another encounter with German troops: ``Some just crumpled to the ground, but the tremendous impact of .50 caliber bullets at 120 rounds a second threw most of the bodies several yards. I got sick when I landed.''

A colleague's death:``I watched him frantically trying to disconnect everything and bail out. I was just a few feet away from him, but he was too low. He waved to me an instant before his plane crashed into the trees and exploded. Debris flew everywhere - I barely got through it. To this day I can still see the expression on his face as he looked directly at me before crashing. In that instant, he knew he was dead.''

Home on leave, March, 1945: ``I was wearing my .45 automatic in a hip holster, and I probably looked as tired as I felt. The stationmaster spotted me. ... He then said to the crowd at the gate, `Let the captain through, he just came in from the war today.' The people started applauding. ... I almost felt guilty being alive.''