EXCELSIOR SPRINGS – Based on a community effort led by volunteer Dianne Mischlich, eight veterans “touched by war” received a Quilts of Valor quilt during a ceremony at the Elks Lodge. “They don’t necessarily have to be in combat because some wounds are invisible. It’s just to let them know we appreciate what they’ve done for us,” Mischlich said.

The latest group to receive quilts included Vietnam Army veteran Bruce Roberts, a radio operator responsible for calling strikes against the Viet Cong; Korean War veteran Bernell C. Raye, who maintained an electronics system that broadcasted the Voice of Freedom in 16 languages to foreign lands; and Roy Cheek, a World War II Army airman.

Cheek served as a ball turret gunner who took a cramped sitting position in a movable, plexiglass ball, about 4 feet in diameter, attached to the underside of a B-17 Flying Fortress. Inside the spinnable ball, the gunner controlled two heavy, 50-caliber machine guns designed to help protect the aircraft from enemy fighter planes.

In the turret, the gunner made a relatively easy target. Making matters worse, if the mechanical system failed and the plane had to crash land, the gunner inside the ball would be crushed like an egg under a sledgehammer. The horror of the situation is summed up in a 1945 poem by World War II Army Air Force veteran Randall Jarell, “Death of Ball Turret Gunner,” which includes these lines: “I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters. When I died, they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”

Cheek, 97, Lawson, had a close call in a ball turret during the war. On a bombing run to Aschersleben, Germany, about 120 miles from Berlin, his bomber flew the lowest in the group and as the ball turret gunner on the underside of the plane, he personally held the lowest spot in the formation. Flak struck his plane, once near his head, and he sustained an ankle injury, based on various sources, including Cheek’s own recollections.

Cheek escaped the turret, and shortly thereafter, a German Messerschmitt 109 fired a cannon round that struck near the turret. With the plane shot up, Cheek bailed into Holland, landing in a ditch Feb. 22, 1944.

“The … resistance picked him up and took him to a safe house to recover,” information provided by Mischlich stated.

Quilts of Valor is a national organization that started in 2003 and has more than 10,000 members who have contributed nearly 281,000 quilts to veterans, Mischlich said.

“I’ve been a member for about four years,” she said. “I got onto the website for Quilts of Valor, and the more I read about it and saw what they were doing, the more I wanted to be involved.”

In Excelsior Springs, Mischlich is the group’s only official member, but several people help her create quilts.

“My quilter friends find out what I’ve done, and they want to help,” she said, with the group including Karen Weber, Donna Krugman and Sherri Wollard.

Mischlich has no direct or family military connections.

“I had friends who were in Vietnam and then I found out how much it meant to them (to receive a quilt),” she said. “The first time I did this, I saw how much it meant to these veterans to get these and to be honored like this, and it just touched my heart.

Creating quilts to honor those who provided service to the nation is a heartfelt act of thanks, Mischlich said.

“I am from the era of the boys that were in Vietnam. When I was a teenager, every night I prayed for the boys,” she said, explaining her reason for volunteering. “It was my peers that were over there, and I know when they came home, they had a rough go of it because they weren’t appreciated the way they should have been, so that’s kind of why.”

Giving thanks is accomplished through action by Mischlich and her co-quilting group.

“It takes a long time to get these quilts made,” Mischlich said. “We’ve already started for next year.”