- November 19, 2024
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Flagler County residents Les DeWeerdt and Bob Marple didn’t know each other before Tuesday, but they’d come close, in a European battle zone almost 70 years ago.
“I flew over him,” said Marple, 91 and a retired Army Air Corps lieutenant who piloted P-51 Mustangs in the Battle of the Bulge in WWII. “I was in reconnaissance for Gen. Patton.”
DeWeerdt, now 88, fought in the battle as a private in Patton’s Third Army.
The two men met for the first time Tuesday at the Funky Pelican restaurant at the Flagler Beach Pier after Dennis Kemper, assistant general manager and Air Force veteran, who knew both men, suggested they get together.
DeWeerdt and Marple came with their wives, and showed up wearing memorial WWII service hats: DeWeerdt’s custom-embroidered with the word “Nuts,” the defiant response uttered by besieged American commander Tony McAuliffe when German forces requested his surrender at Bastogne, and Marple’s pinned with four red poppies.
“These are for the four roommates that I lost during the war: Pete, Joe, Alan and Michael,” he said. “That keeps me pretty humble.”
The Battle of the Bulge was one of the largest and bloodiest of the war. About 500,000 American soldiers fought in the battle, and about 19,000 died.
DeWeerdt was on the ground with an anti-aircraft artillery battalion when the German army launched an offensive in the Ardennes region, starting the battle. Patton rerouted the Third Army divisions north to help besieged American troops, including the 101st Airborne in Bastogne.
“We were heading east, and we needed to be heading north, toward Belgium,” DeWeerdt said.
Marple’s air squadron was searching for the 101st from the air.
“The role was, first, to find where the 101st Airborne was,” he said. “My squadron leader found them. Then they were able to drop them supplies, so they didn’t run out of food, didn’t run out of ammunition.”
Marple says he flew 68 missions and 100 sorties, but he thinks of it as 82 missions. “All I know is I flew over 82 times when they could shoot at me,” he said. The Mustang, a reconnaissance plane, flew without its guns fully loaded, so it wasn’t always easy to shoot back.
After the battle, DeWeerdt was promoted to the rank of private first class, and Marple receieved an Air Medal with 10 oak leaf clusters.
Both men left the service after the war, and they went to college. Marple studied chemical engineering at Drexel College, now Drexel University, and worked for the Rohm and Haas chemical company for 35 years. He lives in Palm Coast with his wife Margaret.
DeWeerdt went to Albany State Teachers College, and then taught sociology until his retirement in 1980. Then he got on his sailboat and took off, living on the boat, an Endeavor 37, from 1984-1996 in Marineland with his wife Jonni. They live together in Daytona North.
