Depsite these difficulties, Staff Sergeant Cordisco was credited with destroying enemy aircraft over Augsburg, Germany. He was awarded an Air Medal with four oak leaf clusters and a Distinguished Flying Cross by General Ira Clarence Eaker of the 8th Air Force High Command, for heroism and extraordinary achievement while participating in aerial flight.

During Cordisco's European Theatre of Operations duty, he was based in Rattlesden, England in the 8th Air Force and flew missions over Germany and France. Here, he partook in a raid over Berlin’s military and industrial targets on March 6, 1944.

According to Al, “I just did what I had to do.” Flight crews had a set number of missions, usually a tour of 30. Al is one of the fortunate 447th Bomb Group, self proclaimed “Lucky Bastards Club,” who rallied forward and returned no less than those 30 times.

But, like so many veterans, Al unsentimentally ventured back to his life after the war, marrying and raising a son, the late BHS grad, Michael Alfred. He also raised a daughter, Wal-Mart employee, Patricia Kervick, who has a son, BHS grad, Michael who currently resides with him.
He is also a member of the Knights of Columbus Council #906.

Al also served as Sixth Ward (East Ward) Borough Councilman from 1956 to 1963. He has been a Democratic Committee Person for the past 25 years and has held Chairman positions on both the Police and the Street and Highway Committees.

Al Cordisco is truly a Bristol Borough legend, devoting his entire life to his country and to his community.

--
Cate Murway contributed to this article.

By Jeff Werner, BucksLocalNews.com

Their mission was to bomb out ahead of the troops as they swarmed across the French countryside.But his first flight with the 544th Bomb Squadron of the 384th Bomb Group never made it to its destination. Lioy and his crew were forced to turn back when two of the plane’s engines failed.

The plane barely made it home, dumping its bombs into the English Channel before setting back down in England.Subsequent missions into an almost endless barrage of flak would change Lioy’s life forever. Up until that moment he felt invincible.

That changed when the realization of war came rushing home, stealing his youthful innocence away.“It was horrifying,” he said. “I was scared. We all were. I saw planes in front of me blow up with friends aboard. They were gone in an instant -- that’s all, that was it. The flak was exploding all around you. And you never knew if you’d be next.”

As the top turret gunner, Lioy had an almost unobstructed view of the sky, as German Focke-Wulfs and Messerschmitts flew around the aircraft with one mission in mind - to shoot he and his crew from the sky.

Just a year earlier Lioy had been a high school student in the western Pennsylvania town of Altoona, more concerned about girls and teen life than being killed. He graduated from high school in June 1942 at the age of 18. Six months later he was drafted into the service of a nation at war.

The day he left home was emotional. His mother was in tears as her second son prepared to leave for war.

“I will never forget that,” Lioy said. “My mother and grandmother were sitting in the kitchen and there I was - I was going away to war,” he said. “I can still see them crying. It was hard for them to take that. It was hard for me.”

When Lioy entered the service, he was assigned to the air force. For about a year he trained as an airplane mechanic, attending engineering school in Oklahoma and working briefly at a Boeing Aircraft plant where he learned about engines and how they’re put together.

“The next thing I knew, no more mechanic,” said Lioy. “They needed air crew. So there I go - over to Las Vegas where I learned air gunnery. The next thing you know I’m in Oklahoma again where I trained with the crew.”

From Oklahoma, the crew flew to Georgia to pick up a new plane. After a one-day stop over in New Foundland, they were bound for England and the war.

“We were having a good time,” recalled Lioy of those training and pre-war days. “In our minds we never thought of what it could be like. Now when I think of what we did, I’m really scared. But back then you weren’t. You just did what they told you to do,” he said.

Lioy and his crew flew campaigns over Normandy, Northern France, the Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central Europe, dropping bombs on strategic targets -- submarine pens, oil fields, cities, and factories. Their longest mission was to the Balkans, near the Russian border, where they dropped a load of bombs on oil refineries.

Lioy credits the B-17, affectionately known as the Flying Fortress, with saving his life on more than one occasion.

“That was the best plane they ever built,” he said. “The fire power of it was great. It was protected all over, better than the B-24.”

Following Germany’s surrender, the B-17s were transformed into transport planes and Lioy, then stationed in France, helped fly troops home from Germany.

“We took all the guns and bombs out of our planes and it became a troop transport,” said Lioy. “We brought the boys out and dropped them in Marseilles. That was my job until I got out.”

During those transport missions, Lioy saw the damage wrought by the allied bombing campaigns.

“I can never forget Leipzig - just totaled. All you could see was rubble all over,” he said. “It’s a shame we had to go over there and do that. But if we hadn’t of stopped Hitler at that point, the world would be in a very different position today,” said Lioy.

For his participation in World War II, Lioy received the Air Force Medal with two clusters, Good Conduct Medal, America Theatre Service Medal, European, African and Middle Eastern Service Medal and five Bronze Stars.

Following the war, Lioy met and then married his wife of nearly 60 years, Henrietta, in 1951. They made their home in Clifton, N.J., for 32 years, raising two daughters, Janet Lioy, of Upper Makefield, a physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Linda, a Registered Nurse from Wayne, N.J. Ten years ago, the couple retired to Buckingham Springs.

“At first I never thought too much of it,” said Henrietta, of her husband’s service. “The older I got the more I realized what he went through. And it was hell. “Communism under Hitler’s regime? It would have been horrible,” she continued. “Our life would have been horrible. My husband and the men and women who went over there fought for our freedom and made the ultimate sacrifice. How can we ever thank them?”

By R. Kurt Osenlund, BucksLocalNews.com

Photo courtesy of Larry Kerwood.

Larry Kerwood is a fine exemplar of “practice makes perfect.” Or, at the very least, “practice makes effective.” After enlisting in the National Guard in 1982, the Warminster-born, William Tennent High School grad spent roughly 20 years serving in a handful of infantry units and bouncing around to various army bases along the East Coast. During his regular Guard duty (which typically consists of one weekend per month and two weeks per year), Kerwood frequently trained with active duty units at Fort Indian Town Gap in Lebanon, Pa., and engaged in what he calls “Army hand-me-down stuff” like running training modules with limited resources. While climbing the ranks from his initial status as an E1 private, Kerwood participated in his fair share of flood, hurricane, and snow storm relief efforts, but never saw any real military action. That is, until Sept. 11 arrived and changed the world.

“For the first 20 years of my military career, it was like practice,” Kerwood, 45, says. “Then, after 2001, I was ready for the big game. My superiors had always tried to instill in me how important my training was, but (Sept. 11) was when I truly realized it had been for a reason and that it was time to put it to use.”

In 2002, Kerwood, who'd been busy conducting the training programs designed by his commander, was put on active duty in Philadelphia, assigned to run a family assistance center for soon-to-be-deployed soldiers and their loved ones. For two years, he helped to support troops headed for Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, while also providing their spouses, significant others and children with comfort and counsel. Kerwood says that during his stay, the center offered assistance to families dealing with anything from financial hardships to relationship issues, and also helped soldiers find or reclaim jobs upon returning to the U.S.

“Any problem you could think of, really – we were there to help,” Kerwood says.

That desire to help would soon become a running theme of Kerwood's military service. In 2004, an opportunity arose for Kerwood to go to Afghanistan. He seized it and volunteered. By that time, he'd become the superior to other troops and enlistees, and his lack of overseas field experience wasn't sitting right with him.

“I thought, 'it's my turn to go,'” Kerwood says. “If I'm leading troops, I should have the same experience in the combat zone. I planned on staying (in the service), and I couldn't be a leader without leading from the front.”

Kerwood's mission landed him in an Embedded Tactical Training (ETT) team, a small group of soldiers who were charged with training members of the primitive Afghan National Army on how to effectively combat a common enemy: the Taliban. Only in its second year of existence at the time, the ETT program required that the American soldiers live among the Afghanis in remote, dangerous places like the Herat Province and Kandahar, both of which Kerwood inhabited. There was no military base. No sanitary conditions. No runnning water. The only things the Army gave to Kerwood and company were M-16 ammunition and money to purchase food, fuel and other supplies.

“The Army told us, 'as far as you're concerned, you're part of the Afghan army now,” Kerwood says.

Supporting themselves and living in mud huts, Kerwood and his fellow soldiers – including two interpreters – began teaching the Afghanis hygiene, discipline, marching, weapons usage, you name it. Kerwood says he was mainly the mentor for the local military's Command Sgt. Major, and as he and his men moved from unit to unit, he also worked with the the army's battalion commander, medical officer and supply officer.

One of Kerwood's first responsibilities after arriving in Afghanistan was to help break up a tank battle between two warlord groups, who were successfully appeased. He also trained the Afghan soldiers on how to conduct weapons searches, find smuggling routes, raid villages and look for Taliban terrorists. He'd then accompany the soldiers on their missions as an advisor. In addition, Kerwood and his ETT team members presided over weapons collection sites, where “acres” of found and surrendered guns and ammo would be gathered to be destroyed.

Kerwood says that by the end of the year he spent in Afghanistan, he saw a huge improvement in the Afghan army.

“When we got there, they didn't want to wear their uniforms,” Kerwood says of the Afghan soldiers. “When we left, they were proud to wear them. We kept increasing their abilities to conduct themselves as soldiers within a unit, and then a unit within an army. A lot of them joined to see change because they hated the Taliban. This was their way to change something. We felt as though our mission had been accomplished.”

Kerwood's tour ended in late July of 2005. He came home, and not long after, as his 25th year with the military was approaching, he retired. He still follows the progress of the army training in Afghanistan, as other ETT team members have followed in his footsteps. He's able to devote more time to his job as a medical researcher with Bristol Myers-Squibb in Lawrenceville, where he's been employed for the last 18 years. He's able to see more of his wife, Sandra, to whom he's been married for 24 years. The couple has two sons, Andrew and Sam, who are both off at college.

Throughout his time in the military, Kerwood was awarded a Combat Infantryman Badge, a Bronze Star (for a rocket attack rescue), Army Commendation with Valor, a Meritorious Service Medal, an Afghan Campaign Medal, a Global War on Terrorism Medal, a Good Conduct Medal and a Humanitarian Service Medal, which was earned for his volunteer involvement with a Hurricane Katrina relief operation in a city just north of New Orleans.

Shortly after retiring, Kerwood says he considered returning to active duty, and then, he reconsidered.

“I thought about re-enlisting,” he says, “but I also thought, 'I like being home.'”