It’s been 65 years since Staff Sgt. Robert Chandler Smart’s B-17 went down in the North Sea off the coast of Germany, but it was Sunday the Weatherford soldier was officially laid to rest.
Bobbie Lou Smart McBride, Smart’s sister and last surviving immediate family member, gathered with nieces, nephews, cousins and grandchildren in the Curtis Cemetery this weekend, where the rest of the Smart family is buried, for a military-style memorial conducted by American Legion Post 163.
In 1941, Smart enlisted in the Army Air Corps at age 18 before the bombing on Pearl Harbor. He trained in the United States and served in England and Europe making 189 missions over enemy territory. He was assigned to the 385th Bomb Group, 551st Bomb Squadron, 8th Air Force as a crew chief and waist gunner on The Southern Cross when he was lost at sea on Feb. 3, 1944. He was 21.
Smart was awarded the Air Medal with one Oak Leaf cluster, European-African-Middle Eastern Campaign Medal, AT Ribbon, Good Conduct Medal, Citation of Honor and Purple Heart. He is one of 67 servicemen from Parker County killed in World War II.
According to a newspaper clipping from the time of his death, the plane “was leaving the German coast when it collided with another plane in its formation and went into a 5,000-foot dive.
“The pilot seemed to have gained control and the plane was last seen about 45 miles from Texal Island, where it disappeared into the clouds. No further definite information has been obtained.”
McBride was 12 when her brother went missing.
“When the telegram came that he was missing, my brother, Vernon, was home alone, and Mother and Daddy and I had gone with some of their friends,” she recalled. “He didn’t call us or anything. We walked through the door he was sitting there crying, holding the telegram.”
A later news clip, dated April 13, 1944, stated, “There is a possibility, it is believed, that the plane could have lost its bearing and flew back over enemy land and grounded or could have landed on the water and the crew picked up by an enemy vessel.”
McBride said her parents always held onto hope that Smart was being held prisoner or had lost his memory, but would someday find his way home.
One of Smart’s nephews, also named Robert Smart, keeps a family scrapbook filled with his uncle’s military photographs, news information and letters. A letter from the postmaster to Smart’s siblings dated Dec. 15, 1959 includes all of the Robert Chandler and Robert Smart listings in the Chicago and suburban area.
“That’s what I remember,” Robert said about his family searching for his uncle who went missing before he was even born. “There wasn’t a lot, but every time they heard one they’d check out a rumor.”
He said his grandparents held out hope for his uncle’s return until the day they died. Now a memorial stone for Smart is laid near his parents’ in the Curtis Cemetery in Weatherford.
“It was hard,” McBride said about her family’s continued search for her brother as she clutched the American flag presented to her during the memorial service Sunday. “You just don’t have a closure without something. This is something we’ve needed for years, and I just didn’t know how to go about it. It was something that was really bothering me.”
Smart’s name is listed on the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial along with others who were missing and buried at sea, and he was included in a memorial service decades ago for 32 local high school students who died in World War II, but there was never a formal ceremony for the family.
“There was no body, no stone, memorial, no grave,” Robert said. “And so all of these years nothing has really been done. There was never any closure. By dedicating this memorial marker in our family plot, this is our way of bringing him home and giving our family some closure.”
Jill Anderson, one of Smart’s nieces, was only 5 when her uncle disappeared. She and McBride held onto each other during the memorial service Sunday as they finally saw Smart laid to rest.
“He’s always remembered,” Anderson said. “This family does not forget.”
Another nephew, Glen Smart, addressed the family at the ceremony stating, “This is a very important day in our lives. This is kind of, to some of us, this is closure. We had an uncle that never made it home and he’s sort of home now.”
