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CITYVIEWMAG.COM
JULY AUGUST 2015
VETERAN SPOTLIGHT
A PATRIOTIC FAMILY
Jules was the third of six Bernard children—five boys and a girl—who lived among the hot, humid fields of Laurel Valley Plantation in a simple house with no electricity or running water. He and his siblings grew up tough and patriotic, coming of age as the clouds of the Second World War gathered on the horizon.
“One of my brothers did 25 missions in B-17s out of England,” says Bernard.
“A younger brother was a marine on Guam. The youngest was a sailor in the Pacific.” Jules’ eldest brother had
a child and wasn’t drafted into the military, but he went to work for Grey- hound. “That was deemed an ‘essential function’ because no one drove cars; just about everybody traveled by bus or rail. I would laugh that we were all in uniform, just not all in the service.”
In 1940, at age 18, Bernard was work- ing at a Ford garage, rebuilding starters, generators, and distributors. A National Guard recruiter who had been instructed to recruit mechanics made a persuasive pitch. “He told me if I joined I could guarantee my way to mechanical school,” says Bernard, “so I jumped at the chance.”
He joined the GHQ Air Force, which would become the Army Air Corps and,
later, the U.S. Air Force. After train-
ing at Delgado Central Trades School in New Orleans—“It was tough; if you used pliers on a nut instead of a proper wrench, you were out”—Bernard was stationed at an air base in New Orleans, then in Sarasota, Florida, before ship- ping out to Europe with a bomber squadron in the summer of 1942.
Early in his tour, a bold move ensured Bernard would remain behind the scenes, fixing and testing damaged planes and returning them to service. “They had been teaching us to march,” he says.
“One day they asked for volunteers who had worked in garages. My buddies said, ‘No, you never volunteer!’ But I did. They
took us into a hangar and showed us 1932 model bombers that had crashed wheels up. They said to take ’em apart for parts. So instead of learning to march and the manual of arms, I learned how airplanes were put together.”
IMMORTALIZED IN LIFE
In another crucial moment, Private Bernard made a lasting impression on his superiors. When the first B-17 bomber crashed, the mechanical crew wasn’t able to remove the tail. “I took my shoes off, climbed up, undid the fasteners, and
Bernard joined GHQ Air Force, which would eventually become the U.S. Air Force, with hopes of going to mechanical school afterward.
threw it down. I didn’t know the big shots were watching. The next week, I was promoted four ranks to staff ser- geant and given a crew of six men to do major repairs on bombers.”
Perhaps even more momentous, Bernard became part of a Life maga- zine painting by renowned artist Peter Hurd, portraying that B-17 with Bernard scampering up to the tail “like a monkey climbing for a coconut,” he says.
From England, Bernard’s service took him to North Africa in November 1942, where he crisscrossed the desert repair- ing Allied bombers. “Of course, just when I learned all about the B-17, they went and put me on B-25s,” he says with a wry smile. “They would come in all shot up, and we would fix ’em.”
In 1944, Bernard was sent to the island of Corsica, where he repaired bombers that attacked North Italy’s railroads to disrupt German supply lines. In early 1945, he moved to the U.S. air base in Fano, Italy, on the east coast of the Adri- atic, his last stop before returning home at war’s end.
COLLEGE ROMANCE
Bernard enrolled at Louisiana State University in the fall of 1945, hoping to become an engineer. But high school had changed since he had last attended in 1939, expanding from 11 to 12 grades and adding more advanced courses such as Trigonometry.
“On the first day of Trig class at LSU, the professor said, ‘We’ll start on the sine function,’” says Bernard. “I thought he meant sign, and I wondered what kind of sign I should be looking for. I real- ized I was in big trouble and eventually switched over to journalism.”
As Bernard contemplated becoming
a photographer, his eye caught a fellow student named Dorothy Pittman. “I sat behind this young lady on the first day
of Chemistry class,” he recalls. “She was one of the very few who had long hair.” They both worked on the school newspa- per and yearbook, he as a photographer and she in ad sales.