SUNBURY - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was not something many doctors understood at the end of World War II.
"I knew there was something wrong, but I just had to deal with it," Guy Shipe said about his battle with the disease. "They had no idea what it was at the time, and they treated it with anything you can think of. They called it anxiety."
Shipe, 92, of Sunbury, was a radioman and top turret gunner in the Army Air Corps version of the B-24. He was a member of the 451st Bomb Group in the 15th Air Force.
In May 1945, he left the military with what is now called PTSD, which was never properly treated. "It never passes away," he said. "They couldn't do anything with it."
Patriotic duty
After Pearl Harbor, he remembers how Americas were looking to get involved in the war.
"Everyone was looking forward to it. It was their patriotic duty," said Shipe, who was drafted at age 19.
Shipe flew 52 missions over Regansburg, Germany, and Axis-occupied Europe in a matter of six months between January and July 1944, where he and his fellow fighters bombed the German airplane factories and bridges on the Danube River.
Battlefield 'black'
Of the 10 individuals who flew with Shipe, only he and Harry Fryar, of Colorado, who provided Shipe with a private memoir of all the missions the men flew together with dates and details of the attack, are still alive.
In one mission for troop support in Anzio, Italy, on Feb. 15, 1944, Fryar described the battlefield as "thick, just black."
"I just turned my turret and crossed my fingers," he wrote.
Fryar said the Americans may have unknowingly been shooting at their airplanes along with the Germans in that day's confusing haze.
"When we returned to base, they immediately canceled the second mission because there were too many bombs going astray and falling on the American side."
Two brothers died
Shipe, who lives alone on Haas Avenue in Sunbury, is a son of the late William K. and Jeanette Shipe, and grew up on Catawissa Avenue. He was the youngest of three brothers, but was the only sibling to survive the war.
He was married in 1947 to Madlynn Garhart, who passed away in 1998 after 51 years of marriage. Together, they had one son, William, 61. After the war, he worked as a correctional officer at the federal prison in Lewisburg for 20 years.
Shipe has knee problems, but otherwise he said his body and mind are relatively healthy. He still meets old friends at the Fourth Street Burger King and is able to drive his car to the Susquehanna Valley Mall to get his haircut.
However, he said he realizes his limitations, and has his nurse drive him on long-distance trips.