ELLENVILLE – On December 7, 1941, local businessman George Slutsky was still just a junior at Ellenville High School when Japan struck the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, thus beginning American involvement in WWII. Of that day — the "day that will live in infamy,"— Slutsky says, "I knew I would be in the war. I was reading the available literature on the events and I decided that I wanted to be in the air force. I joined up when I was 17."

After training as a flight navigator, Slutsky was assigned to the 707th Squadron of the 446th Heavy Bombardment Group, and by November 1944 they had been sent to the little village of Bungay, in Norfolk, England. Nicknamed the "Bungay Buckeroos," they were one of many squadrons equipped with the B-24 Liberator bomber, a four-engine high-performance plane that was the most numerous and popular American bomber of the war.

"On the B-24," Slutsky recalls, "which had a crew of ten, the navigator sat at a little desk just behind the nose gunner, facing backwards. We flew at 20,000 feet, so it was 15 to 25 below zero in the plane. We wore electric heating suits, and when we were over a target we put on flak jackets, which were armored to protect us from flak shrapnel. All of that made it difficult to work with calipers and the rest of the equipment I used for navigation."

"We made training flights for a few weeks, and became operational at the end of November."

Slutsky remembers his first bombing mission.

"We were sent to bomb an oil refinery at Hamburg. It was one of the worst raids I was ever on, as far as the flak was concerned."

Flak — the term is derived from the German Fliegerabwehrkanone, "aircraft defense cannon" — became the popular term for anti-aircraft fire.

"Approaching Hamburg, we could see the cloud of flak exploding over the city. And so we put on our flak jackets. The flak that day was really intense. The plane was hit quite a few times by the shrapnel, but we made it through, dropped our bombs, and went back to England."

"I like that plane," Slutsky says of the B-24. "It always got me where I wanted to go and then it got us home again."

"After about 15 missions, our crew became an elite crew. But we had arrived just in time for the Battle of the Bulge."

This was Hitler's last throw of the dice, and the last offensive by the German Army in the war. Gathering 30 divisions, the Germans attacked in the hilly Ardennes sector, seeking to repeat the successful strategy of 1940, splitting the allied armies along the seam, trapping the British against the seacoast, where they might be destroyed. The German offensive opened on December 16, 1944, while the weather was poor, thus limiting the effectiveness of the Allied Air Forces. Slutsky and the rest of 8th Air Force were soon called on to try to halt the German thrust.

"We were sent to bomb railroad marshalling yards behind the German positions, to keep them from bringing up reinforcements. But our primary target was totally covered with clouds, so we had to make a big turn to get to the secondary target. Anyway, our pilot, George Wallis, determined that we wouldn't have enough gas to get back."

The situation on the front was fluid, no one being sure where exactly the German forces were.

"On this mission, I was pretty sure I knew where we were when we crossed the coast. When we were about ten minutes from the target, I would tell the crew to put on flak suits, but on this mission we started getting flak early. I learned later that the Germans had advanced 40 miles since we took off in England."

Low on fuel, Slutsky's plane was in trouble.

"George Wallis took us down to land in Brussels. They said we couldn't land, because there'd just been an attack by German planes and there were fires blazing, but he ignored that. They wouldn't let us off the plane either, just gassed us up and told us to get out of there. That's how close we came to the action in the Battle of the Bulge."

Slutsky would end up flying 24 missions over Germany before the war in Europe ended in April 1945.

"We were lucky, in that by that time, the German air force was pretty much destroyed. One time we were attacked by their jet fighters, the ME 262. But I was very fortunate, and came through it all without a scratch."

The war in Europe was over, but the war against Japan was still going on. Slutsky got back to the States and learned that he was likely to be deployed to the Pacific Theatre.

"I had no thought that it was over for me, and that I wouldn't be going on to the pacific war. There was a shortage of navigators. So I wound up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, just waiting to be assigned. And then Japan surrendered and I left the Air Force."

Eventually, George Slutsky returned to Ellenville, worked six years at Ellenville Lumber, then left to start his own business, Slutsky Lumber, which in his own words, "is still going strong."

Looking back on his wartime experience, George Slutsky says, "It was a life-changing experience. We were kids, I was called up at 18, and I was flying combat missions when I was 19 and 20. I was just fortunate that I got through it without getting hurt."