8/12/2007

Herman  "H.A." Alexander Somers 


    ELON — Herman  "H.A." Alexander Somers , age 83, of Jimmy Bowles Road, went home to be with the Lord on Friday, August 10, 2007, at Moses Cone Hospital. He was a native of Alamance County and the son of the late Herman  Alexander and Beulah Wrenn Somers .
    H.A. worked 18 years with Motor Bearings and later retired from Somers  Manufacturing. He worked in recent years with Food Lion Grocery on South Church Street. He attended the First Baptist Church of Elon for over 20 years and was a member of the Disciples Sunday School Class. H.A. was a charter member since 1949 of the Altamahaw-Ossipee Fire Department. After helping organize the fire department he worked until 1982 when he was made an honorary member and appointed to the Board of Directors. H.A. served as president of the board for many years and was active until his death.
    H.A. was a US Navy veteran serving in the Pacific Theatre during WW II and he was a member of the Gibsonville VFW Post # 2972. He was a member of the Tabasco Masonic Lodge # 271 of Gibsonville since December 3, 1949, where he served presently as Treasurer and formerly as Master of the lodge.
    Survivors include his sons and daughtersin-law, Mark Somers  and his wife, Anne of Burlington, Bryan Somers  and his wife, Kathy of Burlington;
Kyle Somers , Kevin Somers , Mitzi Chandler; sisters, Doris Godwin of Elon, Bonnie Huskey of Elon and Marie Bunn of Gibsonville; brother, Ervin "Bid" Somers  of Elon. He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Paul Somers .
    The funeral service will be held on Tuesday, August 14, 2007, at 11:00 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of Elon by Rev. Mark Mofield and the burial will follow at Alamance Memorial Park with military honors provided by the US Navy Honor Guard. The family will receive friends from 6 to 8 p.m. on Monday at Lowe Funeral Home and Crematory and other times at the home of Bryan Somers , 3057 Sandpiper Trail, Burlington, NC 27215.
    Memorials may be made to the A-0 Volunteer Fire Department, 2806 Old NC 87 Hwy, Elon, NC 27244.
    Condolences may be sent to the family at info@lowefuneralhome.com 3, Herman "H.A." Alexander Somers

12/22/2001

ALTAMAHAW — The memories of nearly nine months of combat in the Pacific during World War II are nearly as fresh as the two silk “Blood Chits” that 78-year-old H.A. (Herman
Alexander) Somers Jr. still treasures.
The chits were used as rudimentary communications devices for downed American fliers
over the China Theatre of Operations during World War II. Somers keeps the 60-year-old silk
flags between two cotton towels on the top shelf of a bookcase in his home on Jimmy Bowles
Road.
Between January and early September 1945, Somers spent 1,115 combat hours in the nose
of a Martin PBM Mariner seaplane as ball turret gunner/ bombardier.
The Mariner was used by the U.S. Navy as a search and rescue craft as well as an
air-to-surface attack airplane.
The mission for Somers and the rest of the Mariner’s 11-member crew was to fly from the
island of Keramaretto, near Okinawa, and harass or sink Japanese military ships and
freighters in the Yellow and China seas.
“We would take off in the early dawn hours of the morning, and we would never come back in
less than 12 hours,” Somers said. “And the longest mission I can remember was 16.”
Although the massive Mariner’s speed was relatively slow (maximum speed 211 mph), its
range was 2,240 miles.
Somers manned two of the aircraft’s eight .50-caliber machine guns in one of its three ball
turrets.
Somers said that most missions were fought at levels of 50 to 100 feet for both offensive and
defensive reasons.
“We hit mostly shore installations and Japanese shipping,” Somers recalled. “Anytime we saw
a ‘sugar dog’ (a Japanese freighter), we’d go after him like a bat out of hell. You’d get right
down to the water, come over the horizon and surprise them.”
Somers said combat was usually defined by long hours of flying over an empty Pacific
combined with intensive moments of terror.
“We’d been on a mission to knock off a Japanese island in the Yellow Sea, right off the coast
of China, which we did,” Somers said. “Then we started on the second leg of the mission, and
then the third, and we barely had 50 rounds of ammo for each of our machine guns.
“That’s when we came out of one of the rainsqualls that we were always flying in and out of.
Suddenly, right in front of me was one big puff, then another. Right below us were about 15
Japanese warships. I remember thinking, ‘I’m all out front by myself.’ Fortunately they may
have had the right altitude, but they had the wrong range. We called in some submarines, but
I’m not sure what the final outcome was.”
Somers was on leave on Eniwetok when his crew found out about the Japanese surrender.
“The horns on the ships started blowing all at the same time,” Somers remembered. “The
next morning we got the official word, the war was over.”
Somers said traces of his war-time identity still run deep. He discovered that fact during a
recent hospital procedure.
“I was coming out from under the anesthetic when the doctor asked me if I had been a
bombardier,” Somers said. “I answered yes I was, but how did the doctor know. He told me
that I kept saying that there was a Japanese ship that we were going in to attack. I guess old
habits can die hard.” 88