This Military Service Page was created/owned by
A3C Michael S. Bell (Unit Historian)
to remember
St. Hilaire, Gerard P., 2nd Lt.
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Contact Info
Home Town Lewiston, ME
Last Address Laconia, NH
Date of Passing Jun 10, 2010
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From Patriot Guard Riders:
It is with a heavy heart that I post another of the Greatest Generation has left us. Gerard P. St Hilaire, WWII Veteran US, Army Air Corps Pilot, has passed away on his 88th birthday (June 10) at the Veteran's Home in Tilton, NH. Gerard was with the 459th Bomb Group, and 756th Bomb Squadron. He was actually shot down over Czechoslovakia on his 27th mission.
His family has invited the Patriot Guard Riders to stand for this Hero at his final formation.
LACONIA -- Gerard P. St. Hilaire, 88, died June 10, 2010, at New Hampshire Veterans Home, Tilton.
He was born June 10, 1922, in Lewiston, Maine, to Elie and Josephine (Grenier) St. Hilaire. He lived in Melrose, Mass., before moving to the Lakes Region 26 years ago.
He graduated from Boston University. He was a pilot in the U. S. Army Air Corps during World War II. He was shot down over Czechoslovakia while on his 27th bombing mission. He was rescued by partisans, staying with them for three months.
He had been employed at United Carr/Division of TRW, in Cambridge, Mass., for more than 33 years, retiring in 1984.
He was a communicant of Our Lady of the Lakes Church. He loved all sports and was an avid golfer. While in high school, he played football, baseball and hockey. He loved to watch the Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots.
IN HIS LIFE: Mr. St. Hilaire is survived by his wife of 37 years, Margaret "Peggy" (Flagler) St. Hilaire of Laconia; a brother, Roland, and several nephews and nieces. In addition to his parents, Mr. St. Hilaire was predeceased by four brothers, Lauzard, Rolando, Maurice and Lucin and by two sisters, Gaetan Begin and Jean Waugh.
SERVICES: Calling hours are Monday from 6 to 8 p.m. in Wilkinson-Beane-Simoneau-Paquette Funeral Home, 164 Pleasant St., Laconia. A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated on Tuesday at 11 a.m. at Our Lady of the Lakes Church, 50 Washington St., Lakeport. Burial will be in New Hampshire State Veterans Cemetery, 110 Daniel Webster Highway, Boscawen, Thursday at 11 a.m.
Donations may be made to New Hampshire Veterans Home, 139 Winter St., Tilton 03276 or to Beacon Hospice, 70 Commercial St., Suite 400, Concord 03301.
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.
