The Dalton Daily Citizen 

03 February 2011

“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
— John 15:13, used in eulogy

Clifford Chastain said he “kept my mouth shut and didn’t say anything” for 27 years after his brother, Staff Sgt. Berthold Allen Chastain, went missing aboard a B-24 Liberator bomber in World War II.

“I was in Taiwan, and to the day that he went down 27 years ago, I turned to my wife and said, ‘Did I ever tell you what happened to my brother, Berthold?’” Chastain recalled in Cleveland on Wednesday, the day his brother was laid to rest 67 years after he and 11 crew members crashed in the jungle of New Guinea in the South Pacific.

A Whitfield County native, Berthold Chastain was a tail gunner aboard the “Shack Rat” and younger brother Clifford — whose “Squaw Peak” B-24 bomber was shot down later in the war — was a nose gunner. During the memorial service at Ralph Buckner Funeral Home, Pastor Dale Tennell said four of the five Chastain boys were in World War II at one time.

“At one time three of them were missing in action and one was in the hospital,” he said to over 100 congregants in the funeral home chapel. “All but one came home.”

Chastain, 92, said he was glad the Department of Defense found his brother, but added, “I think they should’ve left him there (to rest in peace).”

The wreckage was discovered in 2003 by a native islander, and Chastain said the DOD was able to identify Berthold with DNA they obtained from him.

The chapel went silent as a squad of soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Ky., slowly filed forward in cadence to stop and offer salutes in slow motion to a flag-draped coffin bookended by red, white and blue arrangements of carnations with matching ribbons. Chastain sat in a wheelchair up front.

Grandson Allen Swilling said he only knew his grandfather from a photo on the wall depicting him in flight helmet ad goggles, grasping his anti-aircraft turret gun with a bandolier around his neck.

“I never knew my grandfather but what my mother told me about him,” he said. “He embodied the principles on which this nation was founded — freedom and liberty, equality and justice for all.”

Swilling said he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps “because of my grandfather.”

“He served at a time when every soldier, airman, sailor and Marine’s service counted,” Swilling eulogized. “I always felt a deep debt of gratitude to him, and I always hoped he would survive. Because not knowing you can think anything. But all these years he lived in our hearts. I’ll close by saying, ‘Happy birthday, Grandpa, and welcome home.’”

Another grandson, Steve Swilling, sang a hauntingly beautiful “Guide me Jehovah” in the Cherokee language.

Tennell noted that Berthold and Clifford’s father was killed in a car wreck on the day his youngest son was born, and his mother never married again and raised her five sons on her own.

“One winter they ate dried peas three meals a day,” Tennell said. “They harvested a crop for a man ‘on the halves.’ She also sewed to support her boys, and if they didn’t have the money they didn’t buy it. Berthold tried to plow but he was too young.”

Tennell said when Berthold Chastain grew older he “thought it was his duty” to serve during the war.

“He sought to protect his country and it cost him his life,” he said. “His life continues to speak meaningful things to us ... we are inspired by him.”

The family lived in Dawnville and was a member of Harmony Baptist Church there.

After the service, a massive B-52 bomber performed a flyover, dipping both wings in a salute to Berthold Chastain and his family. At the McInturff Cemetery outside the roadside hamlet of Birchwood, Patriot Guard Riders unfurled American flags that began rippling and snapping toward the north in a frigid wind. The cemetery that goes back to Civil War times overlooks the rolling, bucolic Tennessee countryside.

“It’s been a long day coming,” Tulie Swilling, Berthold’s daughter and only child, said after the committal service. “I’m having a mixture of emotions today, and I’m amazed at the response of all these people and the community.”

En route to the cemetery, hundreds of citizens — including students at Cleveland Middle School — waved and held flags in respect.

Lloyd Frazier, who lives off Dalton Pike below Cleveland, said he arrived in New Guinea one week after the crash of the bomber.

“I was with an anti-aircraft artillery unit,” said the U.S. Army Air Corps veteran. “I wanted to find out what base he was flying out of. “(The family) told me he was flying out of Moresby (Air Field). I was at Nadzab (Air Field) in the Markham Valley.”

Frazier said he came to the funeral because, “It seemed like I had a connection.”

“They went so long without finding the wreckage,” he said. “Wondering all those years was hard on them, I know.”