Northern Neck Times

University of Richmond issued the following announcement on Nov. 9

To mark Veteran's Day, UR Now tells the stories of Spiders who served as well as how campus was affected by war — and war's end. See previous coverage of alumni vets, including current faculty, and the stories of women combat vets.

James Boehling remembers April 21, 1945, as if it were yesterday. It was his first mission as a navigator in the Army Air Corps, the precursor to the Air Force, in World War II.

“We had to cross a cold front, and my pilot got vertigo,” the 1948 grad said. “I felt the plane stall out and we went into a spiral.”

As the B-17 bomber spun out of control, he looked at the man sitting next to him.

“I pointed at the altimeter, which was unwrapping rapidly, and I pointed to my parachute, and I pointed down. And he just stared back at me, unresponsive,” he said. “We were spinning down. We were spiraling. I grabbed my parachute, and I decided I would jump out.”

He opened the door and jumped, headfirst, at 28,000 feet. He was holding his parachute so tightly, it opened almost immediately. He was falling through the air over Germany.

“I saw the plane crash,” he said. “All eight of the others on the plane were killed. I was the only survivor.”

When he made it back to earth, he saw a line of military vehicles heading back to the site of the crash. As he ran toward the cars, he saw an American Jeep, signaled it, and jumped in. The soldiers took him back to their camp for the night. The next day, he went to Paris, and the following day back to his base in England.

Boehling’s parents, along with his 12 brothers and sisters, were eagerly awaiting to hear If he were alive in their home on Hanover Avenue in Richmond. He wrote to his parents immediately to tell them what had happened.

I wasn't ready to settle down and study after all this excitement. It took a little adjustment.

“My father was so nervous he couldn’t bring himself to answer the phone, so my brother Dick answered it,” Boehling said. “He was only 12 or 13. It was another family we knew saying their son had been killed in action, and wanted to know about me. Later, they finally got my letter with the date April 25, so they knew I had survived.”

Boehling, now 96, still lives in that same home to this day. He and his younger brother, Dick, are the only living siblings. Stepping into his living room is like stepping back in time. He points to the spot on the wall where the phone that Dick answered that day used to hang. He sits in the corner by the single-pane windows, looking out onto his front porch, reminiscing about how his parents brought him here when he was 10 months old. The piano, where his sisters would play, still sits across the room.

“I’ve lived here 95 and a half years,” he said. “I look around and I have so many memories. In the five bedrooms upstairs, my seven sisters lived in two of them, my four brothers and I lived in two others, and my parents lived in the main bedroom.”

He attended high school across the street at Benedictine College Preparatory School, and attends Mass there daily. After he returned home from the war, he attended the University of Richmond and graduated with a degree in accounting. He lived at home and used to hitchhike on Grove Avenue every day to get to class.

“Well, it took a little adjustment,” he said. “I wasn't ready to settle down and study like that after all this excitement and so forth. But I did, I settled down.”

He never married, spent his early career working for his father’s feed and seed business, then he later worked at Reynolds Metals as an accountant. He now owns a few warehouses in the area which he rents out and manages to this day.

“No matter where my work took me, I always came back to Richmond,” he said. “I always liked to be in Richmond.”

His message to those in the Spider community in honor of Veteran’s Day is simple: “Keep up the good work and try to maintain the peace. I’m real proud of my service. I think about that plane every day. It doesn’t worry me, it’s a miracle I survived. And I thank God for that.”

Original source can be found here.