Newsletter for the Alumni and Friends of
Hicksville High School Hicksville, New York

The Editors:
Buffalo Bob Casale '61	Linda (Piccerelli) Hayden '60
Pat (Koziuk) Driscoll '56	Bob (Gleason) Wesley '61

Contributing Editors: Bob Gillette & Walter Schmidt

Webmaster: Roger Whitaker

To contact the editors, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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HICKSVILLE VIETNAM WAR ERA MEMORIAL - PROJECT UPDATE

No new donations were received in October and as we enter late fall, with its cold weather, the possibility of the Memorial Dedication Ceremony, will likely be delayed until next spring, when the weather improves and we can hopefully put the Covid Pandemic in the past!

We'll keep you posted as things change and promise that we will alert everyone of the dedication ceremony date, once we have it officially approved. We will also give everyone as much advance notice as possible, in the event they can and wish to attend.

At this time the Memorial stones can be viewed in the Hicksville Memorial Gardens on an individual basis at the south side of the Hicksville Middle School on Jerusalem Avenue.

Additional donations will continue to help us cover the cost of the Dedication Ceremony gathering for school district and local official dignitaries, as well as to honor donors who have made very significant contributions to the Memorial. Further donations will also help with maintenance and upkeep of the Memorial for many years to come.

The project will be officially complete once we are able to conduct the Dedication Ceremony at the Memorial.

Please visit the Honoring Our Veterans tab of this newsletter for the full update, along with information on how to send in donations.

On behalf of the Project Team,
Joe Carfora, HHS 1962

The Newsletter

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Birthdays & Anniversaries

Memory Lane

Dramatic Escape From Albania

September 20, 2021 by Jenny Ashcraft

In November 1943, a C-53 transport plane loaded with 13 medics, 13 flight nurses, and four aircrew members left Sicily headed for Bari, Italy. Their mission was to transport wounded soldiers to hospitals farther away from the front lines. A storm, combined with a run-in with German fighter planes, forced them off course. The airplane crash-landed in Nazi-occupied Albania, and the survivors spent nine harrowing weeks trekking 800 miles across Albania. They encountered severe challenges and narrowly escaped death. The majority reached freedom on January 9, 1944. Three nurses who became separated from the group did not get rescued until March 21, 1944.

Aircrew of plane forced down in AlbaniaOn the rainy morning of November 13, 1943, the crew, medics, and flight nurses from the 807^th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron boarded a C-53D for the two-hour flight from Sicily to Bari. Bad weather had grounded the flight for the three previous days, and the number of injured needing transport to areas with better medical care was increasing. When the plane left Sicily, the skies had cleared, and visibility was good.

As they neared Bari, the skies turned dark. Pilot Charles B. Thrasher saw ominous clouds ahead. They flew into a violent storm and lost all communications with the ground station at Bari. Thrasher decided to ascend above the clouds, but when they reached an altitude of about 8,000 feet, the wings began to ice up. He quickly descended. Disoriented, he flew for three and a half hours before spotting a coastline through broken clouds. Assuming they had reached the western coast of Italy, Thrasher and co-pilot Lt. James Baggs began looking for a place to land. Spotting what appeared to be an abandoned airfield, he began an approach. Suddenly, tracer bullets began screaming past the aircraft window. Dodging German fighters, Thrasher ducked into a cloud and flew for another hour through overcast skies.

With the plane's fuel was running low, they began looking for a place to land. They eventually saw a flat spot and crash-landed the C-53. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured. As the group disembarked the aircraft, members of an Albanian resistance met them and informed them that they'd crossed the Adriatic Sea and were in Nazi-occupied Albania. The partisans led them to a nearby town, but they had to flee when a German detachment approached. While walking down a road, three Messerschmitt 109's dive-bombed and strafed the group as they ran for cover. British officers were operating in the country, and the partisans let them know that Americans were in the area. One British officer was assigned to serve as a guide for the group. Later they were met by an American officer who had been sent into Albania to lead them out.

Group of ten of the nurses who escaped Albania
recover after their ordealEarly on, three nurses became separated during a chaotic German attack. A wealthy Albanian family in the town of Berat sheltered the nurses in the basement and later helped them escape disguised as civilians. It would take that trio nearly five months to reach Allied lines. They crossed the mountains on donkeys, and when they finally reached the coast, an Allied torpedo boat skirted them to safety.

For the next two months, the remaining group walked up to seven hours a day. Sometimes the snow was knee-deep. Their journey took them across Albania 's second-highest mountain peak during a raging blizzard. As they journeyed, kind Albanians shared their meager food and lodging with them. Several times military officials attempted to extract the group, but German forces intervened and made rescue impossible. As weeks passed, the nurses' shoes wore thin. The group suffered frostbite, hunger, dysentery, jaundice, and pneumonia. The nurses demonstrated determination and grit and gained the admiration of all.

Nurses who escaped Albania show their worn shoesOn January 9, 1944, the group finally made it to the coast and rendezvoused with rescuers who rowed them out to a British launch, and they were transported to Bari, Italy. The trio of separated nurses arrived at Otranto, Italy, on March 21, 1944. All of those rescued were forbidden to talk about their experiences. Officials feared it would endanger the lives of those who helped them. The 800-mile hike proved the Army nurses' ability to withstand hardships during the war.

Casale's Corner

Phenomenal ... Israeli Medicine

The pride of Israel is that its technologies will be able to be used by all humanity:

1. Tel Aviv University is developing a nasal vaccine that will protect people from Alzheimer's and stroke.
2. The Technion, Institute of Technology (Haifa), has developed a simple blood test capable of detecting different types of cancer.
3. The Ichlov Center (Tel Aviv) isolated a protein that makes colonoscopy unnecessary to detect colon cancer, with a simple blood test. Colon cancer kills about 500,000 people annually.
4. Acne doesn't kill but does cause anxiety in teens. The Curlight Laboratory has created a cure. Emitting UV rays at high intensity, kills the bacteria that cause acne.
5. The Given Imaging Laboratory has developed a tiny camera in the form of swallowed pills and transmits thousands of photos of the digestive tract. These high-quality photos (2 per second for 8 hours) can detect polyps, cancers, and sources of bleeding. The photos are sent to a chip that stores them and sends them to a computer. At the end of the process, the chamber is eliminated via the rectum.
6. The Hebrew University (Jerusalem) developed an electrical neurostimulator (batteries) that is implanted in the chest of Parkinson's patients, like the pacemaker. The emissions from this device block the nerve signals that cause tremors.
7. The simple smell of a patient's breath can detect if a patient has lung cancer. The Russell Berrie Institute for Nanotechnology has created sensors capable of sensing and registering 42 biological markers that indicate the presence of lung cancer without the need for a biopsy.
8. Catheterization can be dispensed with in many cases. Endopat is a device placed between the indicator fingers, which can measure the state of the arteries and predict the possibility of a heart attack in the next 7 years.
9. The University of Bar Ilan studies a new drug that fights viruses through the bloodstream. It is called Vecoy Trap, as it tricks a virus into self-destruction. Very useful to combat hepatitis, and in the future Aids and Ebola.
10. Israeli scientists at Hadassah Medical Center (Jerusalem) may have discovered the first cure for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as Lou Gehring's disease, in an Orthodox rabbi. Stephen Hawking, a famous British scientist, suffered from this disease and used methods invented by Israeli scientists to communicate.

The world shouldn't live on bad news alone so spread this good news.