Staff Sgt. Harold Chapman was at the helm of a rapidly descending B-17 Flying Fortress. He was not a pilot. In fact, Chappie, as he was known, had just watched the pilot jump from the plane, his parachute failing to open. Hoping to avoid the pilot’s fate, Chappie was attempting to land the plane himself, according to his son, Rick Chapman of East Hampton. He was the last man aboard.
Looking at the controls, Chappie, who was flying his seventh mission as a waist gunner for the Army Air Corps, decided he couldn’t operate the plane. He jumped. “The most beautiful thing I had ever seen,” he reflected later on the sight of his open parachute. “It was my first jump and I was the last man out.”
By this point, he was falling through enemy skies 2,500 feet above ground — his estimate, as documented in an East Hampton Star story some time later — on the afternoon of June 29, 1944.
While flying a mission over factories in Leipzig, Germany, the bomber had been hit by what the airmen called “Jerry’s flak” (“Jerry” being a nickname Americans gave to Germans during both world wars, and “flak” referring to anti-aircraft rounds). The crew stabilized the bomber, but after turning back toward the airfield in England, two engines failed and a third caught fire.
Just a few years earlier, Chappie had been a young man working as a printer for The East Hampton Star, his hometown newspaper. He grew up on Cedar Street and left East Hampton High School early in order to support his family by working at The Star. He was drafted in 1942. He very much wanted to be in aviation, as part of the Army Air Corps, according to Rick Chapman.
When he landed with his parachute in a field that afternoon in June 1944, he stood up to find himself surrounded by a crowd of about 50 people. A man poked a pitchfork at him and said in heavily accented English, “American flier.” Chappie assumed he was in Germany.
Then he looked at their feet: “They all were wearing big wooden shoes.” He realized he had actually landed in the Netherlands, which was occupied at the time by the German invaders. The men with pitchforks told him to run. He ran.
In a wheatfield about a mile from the impromptu landing zone, Chappie pulled out his compass, money, and maps. “I never figured back at the base I was ever going to use that stuff,” he told The Star in a 1945 story.
While hiding in the wheatfield, Chappie heard a whistle. He took a chance and stood up. A boy greeted him, and told him to stay in the field until that night at 10. There wasn’t much choice but to trust the stranger.
At 10 p.m., a motorcycle arrived and transported Sergeant Chapman to a hideout, where he was reunited with the engineer from his B-17, Stuart Bully from Michigan. The hideout was on a farm owned by a family named de Bruin, according to a detailed East Hampton Star story published in 1968. There were four other Americans hidden there. It was in a village called Beerzerveld, near the German border.
“They took everything from him that made him look like an American flier, except his dog tags. He was dressed in Dutch clothing,” said the younger Mr. Chapman. According to the 1945 Star story, Chappie grew out his beard. The de Bruin family disposed of his Army clothes.
Chappie was now working with the Dutch underground. “They stayed up in a hay loft, for the most part,” Rick Chapman said. “They did these ambushes and things at night and came back and hid with this family in Holland.”
“They bombed bridges, they went out and did different types of things to harass the Germans,” said Mr. Chapman, whose father told him that German soldiers had a particular disdain for American fliers. Sometimes, they would locate discarded parachutes and torture Dutch families for information on American airmen hidden in nearby towns and villages.
When he wasn’t being a saboteur, Chappie was a resource in the kitchen. While on the farm, Chappie introduced one of the de Bruin daughters to American gravy, which called for milk and flour. The Dutch continued to make his version of gravy after he left.
Back at the hideout, the airmen had carved a peephole to see outside. Through the peephole, the Americans watched the Germans beat the father of the Dutch family, who, Mr. Chapman noted, was in a wheelchair. Chappie wanted to stand and fight. The Dutch fighters quickly told him that they could not do that.
In January 1945, 15 German soldiers arrived. Chappie and the Americans escaped. “The farmer’s family was arrested, the place destroyed, and we moved on,” Chappie told The Star. Later, the Americans received word that the family had been rescued by the Dutch underground.
At one point, while on the run, Chappie encountered a young German soldier — around 17, according to Rick Chapman — who was “shaking so hard he was almost peeing himself.” Sergeant Chapman took the young German to one of the Dutch brothers on the homestead.
“You go back up in the loft,” the brother told him. “I’ll take care of this.” The American did what he was asked. Later, Sergeant Chapman asked the brother what he had done with the young German. “I got rid of him” was the reply.
“American soldiers were great fighters, but they didn’t have the sadistic side in them,” the younger Mr. Chapman said in an interview this week. “It just doesn’t come naturally to the American soldier.”
His father struggled with this event, he said. One of the Dutch brothers explained that they had no food to spare, no resources to take prisoners, and that they had no means to send him back to German lines.
Sergeant Chapman was caught in the crossfire of a skirmish in the village in early April, 1945. A Canadian tank had been spotted circling the local church. Chappie only had to survive until the Canadians advanced, ideally another day or so.
And he did. The next day, April 5, Chappie was holding a Champagne glass filled with gin, courtesy of a Canadian officer. He enjoyed a hearty breakfast of corned beef, as much bread and butter as he could desire, and “fried eggs, blindfolded, just the way I like them,” according to the 1945 Star story. The meal was a stark contrast to those he had had over the past 10 months, which consisted mostly of raw pork fat, potatoes, and “coffee” brewed from pan-burnt rye.
About a week later, Sergeant Chapman telegrammed home to his parents in East Hampton: “Mom, am well and safe. Don’t worry. Hope to see you soon. Hello to all and will write later. Love.”
He made it back to East Hampton in time for President Truman’s proclamation of victory in Europe in May 1945. The following day, the town was bustling with whistles, sirens, and church bells.
In 1946, the de Bruin family was given a special citation by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower.
“Sometime after the war, all of us want to go back and see those Dutch people who were our friends,” Chappie told The Star. “Those people were game, they were not afraid of the Nazis.”
He got the chance to do exactly that. On Sept. 3, 1948, Chappie boarded the Nieuw Amsterdam to cross the Atlantic once again to visit the family who had protected him. He traveled with several members of the Rattray family, his employers at The East Hampton Star. Color-slide images from the trip show the farmyard of the de Bruin property, and Chappie pointing to the loft where he had slept.
The de Bruins eventually made their way to East Hampton, too. In 1968, the family completed a five-week tour of the United States, visiting all the Americans who had been concealed on the farm, except one.
Chappie later discovered that the bomber pilot — the one whose parachute, he thought, had failed — had, to his surprise, survived. While falling, the pilot managed to wrestle the chute open and land safely, according to Rick Chapman. The bomber aircraft itself had, incredibly, landed unmanned in a field relatively unscathed, not far from where Chappie returned to earth.
Due to shrapnel wounds in his leg, Sergeant Chapman was awarded a Purple Heart. This Saturday, June 29, is the precise 80th anniversary, 80 years to the day, of Sergeant Chapman’s bomber crash.
Including Rick Chapman, Chappie has several descendants still living in East Hampton. He had three sons, four grandchildren (three of whom he lived to meet), and 10 great-grandchildren.
