Memorial Day, and the Theis family

In the early 1900s, "parents were used to surviving at least some of their children. People regarded death very differently. It was a regular visitor; they were less afraid." [Source] I'm not sure if this is true, but Nicholas Theis would have been a better authority on the matter.

Nicholas "Nick" Theis was born in 1899 as the eighth of ten children. His parents, Mathias and Anna Mary Theis, had come to the U.S. in 1880 from Geichlingen, Germany, a small town about 5 miles from the Luxembourg border. They settled first in Illinois, then in south-central Kansas.

After Nick finished high school, he continued to work for a few years on his parents' farm. In 1920, he married a fellow second-generation German-American named Elizabeth "Lizzie" Vierthaler, and the next year, they welcomed their first child, James.

Mathias, James, and Nicholas Theis (c. 1942)

Over the next ten years, Nick and Lizzie had another five sons, followed soon after by their first daughter.

Here, then, is the family in 1934. Lizzie is holding the newborn Patricia. The boys, from right to left, are James (13), Vincent (11), Daniel (10), Joseph (8), Norbert (6), and Donald (3).

Although Nick and Lizzie had two more daughters in the next several years (Elizabeth and Karen), tragedy struck in December 1941 when their son Daniel fell from the back of a pickup truck while rabbit hunting, and broke his neck. He died soon after.
As a result, there are only eight children in the family picture of 1942. James, having enlisted in the Coast Guard, is in uniform. Vincent would later join the Army, and Joseph would serve in the Navy. Although Norbert was too young to enlist during the war, he did so soon afterward, and became a radio operator in the Army Air Corps' 14th Troop Carrier Squadron.
Thus, as the United States initiated the Berlin Airlift in 1948, Corporal Norbert Theis was deployed with his unit to the Rhein Main Air Base near Frankfurt, Germany, to shuttle supplies to Berlin as part of "Operation Vittles." In the beginning, the the operation was a mess. In Frankfurt,

"... everything was being done on a temporary basis. Mechanics and flight personnel could not tell us how long they had worked, what their schedules were for the next day, or even when they were supposed to eat. They were sleeping in airplanes, in the mess hall, and anywhere else they could stretch out. In Berlin the situation was just as bad on the ground, and the air traffic, compounded by the lift, was horrendous; near-misses were an everyday occurrence." [Source]

It took General Bill Tunner to clean things up, and aircraft maintenance was among his highest priorities.

"All planes had to be inspected after every twenty-five hours of flight. At two hundred hours they had to be taken out of service and given a thorough check. Every thousand hours a complete overhaul from nose to tail was required. Facilities and schedules had to be set up; minor inspections would be accomplished at Wiesbaden and Rhein Main. The two-hundred-hour checks would be done at Oberpfaffenhofen, near Munich, and when the base could be made ready, at Burtonwood, England."[Source]

Norbert Theis was on one of these flights to Burtonwood on January 7th, 1949. His C-54D had a crew of four, for which he was the radioman, and two passengers. In the cargo hold were a number of aircraft engines that were also also due for repair.

Unfortunately, on the way to Burtonwood, Theis's aircraft experienced interference from a local radio station, and the pilot overshot the destination. To make matters worse, the weather was bad that day, and visibility was poor.

"At approx. 16.45 witnesses on the ground near Garstang heard the aircraft's engines as it descended through the cloud and then it appeared out of the mist only some 80 feet above the ground. Seconds later and probably before the pilot realised the danger of his situation, the aircraft was seen to strike the face of Stake house fell as there was a flash through the mist as it exploded on impact." [Source]

All six on board were killed instantly.

I have been to four places that honor Norbert Theis. The first is the Luftbrückendenkmal in Berlin, where Templehof Airport used to be.


The second is at the Rhein-Main airport near Frankfurt. It looks exactly like the one in Berlin, except with the addition of a C-47 and a C-54; the two sites, like bookends, represent the departure and arrival locations for the Airlift.
The third is in Wiesbaden, at the corner of Willy-Brandt-Allée and Schiersteinerstraße. And the fourth is the street next to my shuttle bus stop on Clay Kaserne. Theis Way.
This Memorial Day, I will be thinking of Corporal Norbert Theis -- the young man who gave his life in the defense of his grandfather's homeland -- not to wage war, but to further the cause of human freedom.