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© Emil Zopfi
The Way to the Land of Sky
They called him Gid, although his real name was Egidius, the name of saint ? but he was a soldier. Egidius, patron saint of nursing mothers and of cattle. However his family name, Truempy, carried the sound of war. It was derived in the Middle Ages from the word "trumpet", as a historian might suppose.
Perhaps it was the sharp sound of a trumpet that woke him early on the morning of the 11th of April, 1944, in High Whycombe west of London, where the 8th Airforce Command of the US Army had its base. Technical Sergeant Gid Truempy had a hasty breakfast in the mess hall of the barracks; half an hour later he attended the briefing, hurried afterwards to the plane together with the other 10 men in the crew ? pilot and copilot, navigator, bombardiers and gunners ? climbed the narrow ladder to the turret on the top of the aircraft, put on the helmet, the earphones, checked the oxygen mask and loaded the machine gun for the mission. The Combat Chronology of the Air Forces report that on this bright spring morning 830 Flying Fortresses (B17) and Liberator bombers (B24) took off to destroy what was left of the German aircraft factories around Leipzig. The target of Gid’s mission was the Junkers-88 twin-engine fighter production in Bernburg.
"My brother left for the States in 1936", remembers the old lady, sitting in the drawing room of the baroque Truempy villa in Glarus, Switzerland, She has white hair, a wrinkled face and bright green eyes. "But I’m sorry, sir. My memory is getting weak." She is eighty-six, she remembers "playing and quarreling as all children do. But we had a good time together." Egidius was one year younger, born in 1912. Their father died when he was seven. Maybe the early loss was a reason of his problems in school. "He was dislexic, as they call it nowadays." The mother sent him to a religious private school, later he got a diploma as a professional mechanic from the well known Winterthur metal worker’s school. Despite being a descendant of one of the richest families of the Glarus valley, Gid became a blue-collar worker, specializing in car repair. During the Great Depression of the thirties he decided to emigrate. His mother was of Dutch origin and one of his cousins already lived in the United States. "Egidius had a return boat ticket in his pocket", remembers his sister. "But one year later a letter arrived saying that he had sold the ticket to set up a car repair shop with a Dutch cousin."
They specialized in repairing Greyhounds in Enka near Asheville in North Carolina. "Surrounded by the chain of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Asheville is known as the 'Land of Sky,' a city where the quality of life is high, the weather is mild, and the people are friendly", remarks a tourist guide. Maybe the mountains reminded Egidius of his rocky homeland, although the mountain slopes of the Glarus valley are steeper, the sky narrow and the people not always friendly.
"He could have returned to Switzerland when the war broke out", complains his sister. "He was too old to be called up anyway." She remembers a phone call and her brother saying: "I will fight for Switzerland." His Dutch mother had written to him, tellling him not to return to Europe. A few weeks after her death in 1940, the German forces occupied her homeland. "Gid was fighting for all our freedom", says his sister. "In those days we feared that the Germans would also occupy Switzerland. In our small town everybody knew who supported the Nazis and who was against them. We would have had a bad time." Gid’s brother, who is four years younger, remembers: "He had a mind of his own. He was almost stubborn."
And so the war diverted his path from the "Land of Sky" to the sky above Germany where his duty was to protect the bomb-loaded Flying Fortress with his machine gun against the attacks of the Nazi hunters. It must have been a horrible and lonely job, but he had gone to war as a volunteer. He wasn’t married, he had no family and perhaps he had always been a lonely man in a foreign country. The patron saint of nursing mothers and cattle had become the patron saint of a bomb-nursing aircraft in the battle against Nazi war machinery.
His sister shows a framed photograph and for a moment her sad eyes look proud. The picture shows Technical Sergeant Egidius Truempy being decorated by a US officer, maybe the Commanding General Lieutenant James H. Doolittle. The tall officer is bending down to fix the medal on the small Sergeant’s breast pocket. Gid stands still, staring forward with strong eyes and a nose like a hawk. We don't know why he was perceiving this honor; it was probably his part in the success of the 8th Airforce Command during the campaign of the so-called "Big Week" in February, 1944, when the bombing of the Messerschmidt and Junkers factories broke the the German airforce’s neck. 10,000 tons of bombs were thrown from almost 4,000 aircraft. The command was prepared to lose 200 aircraft a day, but they lost only 137 bombers and 28 fighters during the entire week. And they lost 2,600 men. Gid survived, got his decoration, was sent to the next mission, which should have been his next-to-last because after 25 missions the crews got dismissed. Their nerves were wrecked, they were burnt out.
But on this 11th of April, 1944, Egidius, who emigrated to the "Land of Sky" returns to the sky above Europe. Egidius, the descendant of a family of industry founders, returns to destroy industry. And maybe during the long and boring flight above the Northern Sea, his thoughts fly back in time while he is curled like a baby in his cradle in the plexiglass dome behind the machine gun. The other members of the crew are chatting, exchanging commands and jokes over the intercom system. Having reached 12,000 feet they put on their oxygen masks and start searching the horizon for German hunters, immersed in the roaring sound of the heavy planes drifting across the dark blue sky.
Five generations ago, in 1796, the first Egidius Truempy, born and raised in Lisbon, returned by coach to his ancestor’s homeland. In Glarus he set up a hand-printing mill that exported fantastically patterned and multicoloured fabrics to Turkey, South America, Egypt and even India. Egidius the First was one of the most important entrepreneurs in Swiss industrial history. One of his ten children was named Egidius, and during the next five generations, one Egidius followed the other until Gid was born, the last male offspring of the industrial dynasty.
The Truempy factory in Glarus was called the 'Castle'. With its wooden drying towers, its large printing buildings, and color kitchens, it overlooked the town like a king’s castle. In February, 1837, the first organized worker’s strike in Switzerland shook the place. Hundreds of angry workers flocked to the 'Castle' threatening to set it on fire. Four of the founder’ sons including the second Egidius, had hung a bell in a small tower on top of the factory roof to signal the beginning and end of the workday. The Truempy brothers stood in front of their enterprise and defended it successfully against the mass of workers, who were unwilling to accept the strict regulation of the workday. The Truempy hand-printing factory has made history in the introduction of time measurement to industrial life.
By the time Gid was born, the Castle was in ruins. The business had deteriorated around the beginning of the 20th century, lacking money for investments in modern printing technology. Among the crumbling walls of the 'Castle' the so-called Strike Bell was found. It hangs now in a museum among many artifacts like hand carved printing equipment, books containing old patterns and color receipts that commemorates history of disappeared industries. But history has forgotten Egidius, as well as most of the Swiss soldiers who fought in the US army during World War II. In the military library of the Swiss government there are only documents about the many Swiss Nazis fighting for the German SS forces.
There were no letters, no calls. There were still no mobile phones and satellite communication. "It was war, our country was surrounded by the Germans. I tried to contact my brother through the Red Cross," says the sister. The 11th of April had been a disaster for the 8th Airforce. "Enemy opposition downs 64 bombers, one of the heaviest single-day losses of Word War II," writes the combat chronology which is dedicated to "those who didn’t come back." Gid was one of them. "His machine hadn’t been hit, as far as we know," his brother relates. "It was said that they had engine trouble and tried to return to the base." The plane disappeared over the Northern Sea. But there was still hope. The New York Times wrote that several planes had landed in Sweden.
One year later, a letter arrived in Glarus informing the family that the US Ministry of Defense according to American laws, had officially declared the death of Technical Sergeant Egidius Truempy. The last Egidius died lonely and lost in his turret at the top of the plunging aircraft. No bell tolled for his funeral. Posthumously he was decorated with a Purple Heart. And we can imagine, at some war memorial a ceremony in his honor, with airforce soldiers in dress uniforms carrying wreaths and firing gun shots, and from somewhere sounds the cry of a trumpet. Maybe our fate is written in our names. But only God can read whether we are on this earth to be saints, soldiers or both.
(Edited by Jen Hofer)
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