Lander Vietnam Vet On Mission To Uncover Dad’s Heroic WWII Past

Thirty-three years after his father’s death, Lander’s Andrew “Andy” Gramlich has a whole new perspective on the man he knew and came to despise growing up.

The insight began with an email to his inbox in 2021, grew with a trip to Texas and became a full-blown revelation with his visit this summer to Germany, where he stood on the exact ground his World War II veteran father, Andrew Gramlich Sr., stood on nearly 80 years ago.

“It was awesome and for me, an emotional game-changer,” Gramlich said. “When I look back on it, he undoubtably had PTSD because he was angry and drank a lot. So, we never talked about any of this stuff.”

A decorated Vietnam veteran and pilot, Gramlich said he grew up without a real relationship with his father. The only thing he knew about his father’s World War II service was that he flew gliders — because he had seen a photo.

In 2021, he received an email from someone asking if he was the son of Andrew Gramlich, who had flown gliders in World War II.

When he responded to the email, he learned that the woman on the other end of the email was connected with the National World War II Glider Pilots Association.

The group was trying to locate relatives of pilots who were involved in a key World War II mission near the end of the war. They wanted to get the family a Bronze Star medal that had been awarded to his father.

Gramlich said he thought his dad had participated at D-Day. He had not. Instead, he was involved in the largest glider operation of the war named Operation Varsity that involved dropping 16,000 paratroopers across the Rhine River in Western Germany using more than 900 gliders on March 24, 1945.

Glider Pilots As Warriors

After four years of war, America was running low on troops. Andy Gramlich said the glider pilots for this mission were trained for combat and defensive warfare.

“They sent them to school for a month to learn weapons training and the assignment was as soon as they landed, they were going to take up defensive positions and substitute for the shortage of troops,” he said.

His father, as part of the 435th Troop Carrier Group, landed his glider outside Wesel, Germany, amid flak and small arms fire. He was immediately caught up in a battle of retreating Germans. It would be called the “Battle of Burp Gun Corner,” named after the famous German automatic weapon.

“They were assigned to hold a vital crossroads. During the night of March 24, 1945, 150 German troops moved in with a tank and other vehicles to breach the roadblock,” a Silent Wings Museum article states. “These glider pilots successfully repelled a German advance with small arms and infantry weapons and held the crossroads until the next day, when they were relieved by airborne infantry troops.”

Following the battle, the glider unit’s commander Maj. Charles Gordon recommended some of the officers for silver stars and others for Bronze Stars for their efforts during the battle.

“The paperwork didn’t go through and didn’t get approved until 1992. So, there was this huge gap in time. Well, my dad died in 1991,” Gramlich said. “So, they had a research arm of this group and somehow they found my email.”

Bronze Star

Andy Gramlich and his family attended a ceremony in Lubbock, Texas in 2021, where the Silent Wings Museum honors the war’s glider pilots and the gliders they flew. There Gramlich accepted the Bronze Star awarded to his father for his actions.

The irony, Gramlich said, was that he had served as a hospital CEO in a town just south of Lubbock before the museum was built and used to go to Lubbock to visit with a friend. He never knew that it was at Lubbock’s South Plains Army Air Field that his dad completed his glider training on June 15, 1944, at 25 years old.

While at the museum, he saw and purchased a book on the Battle of Burp Gun Corner written by a man from the Netherlands. In the book he found two after-action reports written by his father. One of the reports talked about how the glider in front of his father’s had its wing shot off. He also learned the name of his dad’s unit commander, Gordon, who recommended the Bronze Star for his dad. He saw that Gordon had been a resident of Johnson City, Tennessee.

“I used to be a CEO at two of the hospitals in Johnson City, Tennessee. So, I look him up and he was the past mayor of Johnson City. As CEO of the hospital, you are generally high profile. So, I am sure that I met this guy,” Gramlich said. “He is an entrepreneur, and he ran a furniture shop and he ran a distribution center for soft drinks.

“I bought my chest of drawers that I still have in my bedroom from him, and I am sure that I met him then if not at some function.”

Gordon died in 2004, but Gramlich called his son.

He learned that Gordon’s son was a pilot, just as he was a pilot, and that he flew out of the same airport while he was there. Gordon’s son also sent him a book that his father had written about his time fighting in Europe and Germany.

Visit to Europe

So, after reading the book, Gramlich decided earlier this year to go to Europe and see where the Battle of Burp Gun Corner took place. He called the Netherlands author of the book he purchased. The man agreed to be Gramlich and his wife’s tour guide at the site.

In late June they flew to Europe, met the author and went to Wesel, Germany. There Gramlich stepped into the father’s past which helped him better understand the distant man who raised him.

“He takes us to the landing zone and it looks exactly the same. It hasn’t been touched in 80 years. It looks exactly the same as the pictures from 1945,” Gramlich said.

Photos showing the gliders on the ground during the battle allowed them to find the exact spot where his father had landed. Gramlich paused as he spoke.

“You can hear that I am emotional about it,” he said.

They went into the town of Wesel where his father’s all-officer group were assigned positions to defend. He said the found the exact spot where his dad’s foxhole had existed. Buildings in the battle captured in photos are still there today — updated and refurbished.

“You can recognize the buildings, exactly. The command post and some of the other stuff,” he said. “In 80 years you could recognize everything and the landing zone was pristine. Now, what are the odds on that?”

Gramlich said his father was raised in New York City and quit high school to go to work. After Pearl Harbor he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Initially he applied to flight school and was accepted but was removed due to an unauthorized incident involving his plane.

In 1944, the Army needed glider pilots and, because of his flight school training, the elder Gramlich was chosen and trained to fly the gliders. The glider pilots also served as copilots in cargo planes. Gramlich said his dad was a flight officer, a rank that corresponds to a warrant officer in the U.S. Army today.

The Son’s Path

Gramlich’s own path to the air and U.S. Army, where he served nine years including an extended tour in Vietnam during the war, had nothing to do with his dad’s influence. He said grew up next to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, in the 1950s.

In college at the University of Florida from 1964 to 1968, every male student was required to take Army ROTC classes the first two years. He voluntarily signed up to join ROTC for his final two years and received some pay. He was also sent to a civilian flight school where he learned to fly.

Because he finished first in his class, he was offered a regular commission in the U.S. Army. His intentions were to spend the rest of his career in the military. After attending officer’s training, he was sent to missile school and served for a year in that career field. Then the Army sent him to flight school.

Gramlich again finished first in his class and was initially told that whoever finished first would get a big plane and immediate orders to Vietnam. That didn’t happen. He was sent to airborne school and other schools and finally transitioned to fly the “best plane we ever had. It was a secret.”

The OV-1 Mohawk was a twin-engine turbo-prop aircraft the Army used for reconnaissance missions with the capability for Side-Looking Airborne Radar.

“We did photo missions, infrared missions, Side-Looking Airborne Radar, convoys and things like that. Most of my flight time is not in Vietnam, it is in Cambodia, Laos and North Vietnam,” he said.

The type of mission dictated how he flew — either over the treetops or at 10,000 feet or more. Many days he was buzzing low to the ground. Because of their intelligence role, his unit was separated on the flight line and base from other units. They could not intermingle with other troops.

“All of our information went straight back to the Pentagon and the White House every day,” he said.

Grasshopper Aircraft

The Mohawk was a side-by-side two-seat aircraft that resembles a grasshopper. As pilot, Gramlich was responsible for flying, navigation and operating four radios while the person in the right seat handled the electronics and called in targets for other attack aircraft.

His missions did not lack for drama, there were times he was trying to outfox enemy fighters and evade missiles.

“I had a MIG on me, I got shot at a lot,” he said. “We had (surface-to-air missles) on us and we had detection equipment for the SAMS.”

He also flew a single-engine Cessna L-19 Bird Dog aircraft used for observation and reconnaissance.

“There were times that if you came back to the unit without a hole in your aircraft, they gave you are hard time for not really flying the mission,” he said. “And then you come back and get mortared at night.”

After spending his year in Vietnam he returned to the states and served in various assignments and commands until 1977. He said he lost his flight status because of injuries to his back caused by “jumping out of too many airplanes” and “getting shot out of ejection seats.”

He resigned his commission as a captain. Gramlich then attended Duke University, where he earned a master’s degree in health administration and began his career in hospitals. That role brought him to serve in Lander in 1990 for several years before retirement.

Like his father, Gramlich has Bronze Stars. Those stem from his time in Vietnam on the secret intelligence missions. He said he was also told he was nominated for the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Gramlich still enjoys flying. He has his own business as a certified flight instructor.

And he has a new perspective on his dad. He quotes a friend to sum it up: “The acorn doesn’t fall too far from the tree.”

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.