Alex Mark Erganian
MilitaryL-R: Sgt Billy B Freeman, T/Sgt Charles E Slayton, Lyle Sage, S/Sgt Harold D Broyles, Lt Alex M Erganian, 1Lt Charles J Kelly, Lt J M McGraw, Sgt Joseph Savickas, S/Sgt Thomas D Glaspell, S/Sgt Henry P Brannan.
Assigned to 327BS, 92BG, 8AF USAAF. 25 x combat missions. ETD
Awards: DFC, AM (2OLC), WWII Victory, EAME.
The Two Egg Raid
by Leslie Erganian, Captain Alex M. Erganian’s Daughter
Numbers are everything when you’re telling any story about a war, so here are some of the numbers I know. My father was a WWII bomber pilot flying raids out of England with the 327th Squadron of the 92nd Bombardment Group of the United States 8th Army Air Force; Captain Alex M. Erganian, born May 15th, 1919. He flew his twenty-five-mission tour of duty between June 1943 and March of 1944. For his first and forth missions he flew a YB-40, the Flying Fortress. For the other twenty-three, he piloted a B-17. That’s a lot of numbers if you think about it, but in the case of war, this war, any war, numbers assume a significance they don’t always have in other circumstances, they become coordinates that pin an action and a person to a place and a time, and their knowledge becomes essential to the reconstruction in the collective memory of just what happened and where and when and with whom so many years ago.
One of the stories Dad loved to tell was about how one morning at mess, instead of getting the usual one egg for breakfast, each of the men was served two eggs. They couldn’t believe their good fortune, and surmised that for whatever reason, it had been a busy week for local egg-laying, and that he and his crew were the lucky beneficiaries by chance. It wasn’t until breakfast was done and they were all assembled in the briefing room that they realized the real reason for the extra egg. The mission before them was a bombing raid with the target of Gdansk, Poland. That second egg was to supply each of them with the extra sustenance they would need to fly the extra-long mission and survive. My father dubbed it a “two-egg raid”, with all the shorter ones that had proceeded it becoming in retrospect “one-egg raids.” A two-egg breakfast from that day forward, would be a early sign of the kind of mission to come, a mission that was doubly long and doubly dangerous.
That day’s mission, flown on the 9th of October in 1943 out of Podington airfield, would at 1500 miles become known as the longest mission of the war. For my father, it was the first of many two-egg raids to follow, one of which would earn him the Distinguished Flying Cross. For me, there isn’t an egg breakfast that goes by in which I don’t consider how much one extra egg sticking to my father’s ribs might have been responsible for getting him through the war alive. As I said before, numbers are everything when you’re telling any story about a war.
Connections
See how this entry relates to other items in the archive by exploring the connections below.
Units served with
- Unit Hierarchy: Squadron
- Air Force: Eighth Air Force
- Type Category: Bombardment
- Unit Hierarchy: Group
- Air Force: Eighth Air Force
- Type Category: Bombardment
Events
Event | Location | Date | Description |
---|---|---|---|
Born |
St Louis, MO | 15 May 1919 | Son of Mark E and Arpen G Erganian. |
Enlisted |
Chicago, IL | 31 July 1941 | Chicago, Illinois |
Other Discharged USAAF |
7 August 1945 | Honourable discharge. | |
Died |
Palatine, IL | 9 January 1998 | |
Buried |
Evergreen CemeteryBarrington,Cook County, IL | 13 January 1998 | Evergreen Cemetery Barrington, Cook County, Illinois Section 29 |
Based |
Podington | Assigned to 327BS, 92BG, 8AF USAAF. |
Revisions
2023-04-07 Removed 384th Bomb Group from Related Units. In a review of personnel assignment documents for the 384th Bomb Group and related support units, no documentary evidence was found to indicate that Alex M. Erganian served in any capacity at AAF Station 106.
I am his daughter and I have seen his medal.
Drawn from the records of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force, Savannah, Georgia / http://384thbombgroup.com/_content/_pages/PersonnelSearch.php?LastName=…