The stories of Henry Countians who served with distinction in World War II are plentiful. As in hundreds of other communities across the United States, most of them performed their duty under horrific circumstances and then simply returned home to resume their regular lives, talking very little, if at all, about their experiences. Many of these stories are revealed by descendants who pore over memorabilia left behind by those who served but have since passed away.

  Jim Chafin has been doing some of that investigative work, spurred on in part by a recent trip to a World War II museum in New Orleans. On a trip with his wife in mid-February, just before COVID-19 brought the nation to a standstill, he got an up-close look at a B-24 Liberator, the exact airplane piloted by his father during the war. Through documents he has only uncovered in the past couple of weeks, he learned in more detail about a particular hair-raising mission in that plane which earned the elder Chafin a distinguished flying cross.

  A yellowed copy of the actual citation, produced on a manual typewriter complete with 1944-style typos, identified 23-year-old First Lt. James T. Chafin Jr. as the son of Mr. and Mrs. J.T. Chafin, whose address was given as “R.F.D. 2, McDonough, Ga.”

  According to the information in the document, Chafin’s plane lost its number-two engine to a fire during a mission to attack oil installations in Germany and he was forced to drop out of his formation. The flames in the engine were extinguished but he and his crew could not contact the formation and resume the mission. However, on the return trip to their base in Italy they spotted an “enemy airdrome” – a location for flight operations – and bombed it thoroughly, damaging grounded aircraft and repair facilities.

  The plane was over Yugoslavia when the number-one engine went out due to loss of oil pressure, but Lt. Chafin got the crippled plane back behind Allied lines in southern Italy before ordering the crew to bail out. All of them survived.

  He was the last to leave the plane, jumping from less than 600 feet. He was 23 years old at the time.

  Jim Chafin recalled a story told by his father, who died in 2005. “He landed in friendly territory and sat down under a tree waiting for someone to come find him. An Italian farmer walked by with a donkey. He got on the donkey and the farmer took him to one of the American bases.”

  He never knew which mission his father was describing or any other details. After finding the citation, he learned far more than he ever heard from his dad.

  He has another unusual (and amusing) piece of history from that event.

  “I still have the ripcord that he used when he bailed out,” said Jim Chafin, whose own military experience is considerable. “The military trains you, and you do what you are trained to do. He was trained to pull the ripcord but they stopped the training there. He never let go of the ripcord before he landed. I guess he decided to bring it back with him, and we still have it.”

  The elder Chafin flew a total of 35 missions in Europe and north Africa during the war, earning another distinguished flying cross and a few more air medals along the way. It was a part of his life that led to a career he never could have imagined a few years earlier.

  After graduating from the old McDonough High School in 1938 (high school ended with 11th grade back then), he went to work. It wasn’t long before he was hired by the Southern Bell Telephone Company as a lineman. He was stringing telephone lines in south Georgia near Brunswick when the war broke out.

  “He always said he was in great shape and basic training never bothered him because he climbed those poles with the phone company,” according to his son.

  He never imagined that he would have a career in the military. But that’s exactly what happened. After the war he remained in the Air Force, flying B-47s in the 1950s and eventually retiring as a lieutenant colonel in 1963, when he returned to McDonough.

  “It changed the whole arc of his life,” said Jim Chafin. “He had a high school education, and he became a commissioned officer. It gave him a lot of opportunity that he wouldn’t have had as a basic laborer with Southern Bell.”

  His final assignment was a three-year stint in Madrid, Spain, during the height of the Cold War. He was part of an operation by which NATO forces rotated nuclear weapons around the Soviet Union on a regular basis via bases in Turkey, England and other locations.

  Jim Chafin was in elementary school here when the Cuban missile crisis occurred. His father told his mother about the seriousness of the situation and how a nuclear war was a distinct possibility. It was certainly a stressful time for her, but her son smiles and even chuckles a bit when talking about what she did next.

  “We were in Spain when the Cuban missile crisis occurred. My dad told my mom that it was really serious and we were on the verge of nuclear war. She packed our small car, which was the Spanish version of a Fiat, and was ready for us to drive to Switzerland when the war started,” he said. “They really though it was going to happen. They were prepared for a nuclear war. We tiptoed right up to the line on that one.”

  Chafin’s father was truly part of an entirely different generation, one that faced a number of impossible situations and never backed down. As far back as World War II, he was well aware of the cost to many of his peers and what could happen on any given mission.

  “So many planes never came back,” said Jim Chafin. “When they flew through antiaircraft fire, there was nothing they could do but just ride it through. The uncertainty of whether you were going to get hit really did a number on these guys.”