“Younger kids growing up today have no idea what this country went through in World War II,” Edwin Cottrell said.
That thinking is what pushed Cottrell to begin sharing his experiences as a World War II fighter pilot beginning about four years ago, when he was in his late 90s.
“That’s when I got into public speaking,” Cottrell said.
Demand for Cottrell, now 102, speaking publicly has only skyrocketed since he hit the century mark.
“The phone started ringing and it hasn’t stopped,” he said. “Apparently when you turn 100 and you’re a World War II veteran, suddenly people want to hear from you.”
Cottrell’s speaking engagements have taken him around the world.
His next stop is Columbia at 7 p.m. Tuesday, when he speaks at the Columbia Veterans of Foreign Wars, 401 Manor St. He’s the guest speaker for the monthly gathering of the Military Oral History Club of Lancaster.
After his service in World War II, Cottrell had a significant impact on southeast Pennsylvania and beyond as dean of the physical education department of West Chester University and coach of the golf team there, mentoring many, including Millersville University’s current, longtime golf coach Scott Vandegrift.
That work might not have happened, however, had things ended differently for Cottrell on a bombing run Dec. 17, 1944. That’s when his P-47 Thunderbolt fighter-bomber plane was hit by gunfire and soon flanked on both sides by German fighter planes.
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‘Learn how to fly’
Edwin Cottrell was an American fighter pilot in World War II, flying in the 48th Fighter Group, 493rd Fighter Squadron. Cottrell flew 65 missions including during the Battle of the Bulge. He will be speaking in Columbia Borough on Tuesday night as part of the monthly gathering of the Military Oral History Club of Lancaster.
Cottrell grew up in Butler County as his dad, World War I veteran Elmer Cottrell, was a professor at Slippery Rock State College (now Slippery Rock University), where Edwin Cottrell later attended college.
“In my freshman year, the college received a bulletin that the government was offering college pilot training,” Cottrell recalled. “I always saw Piper Cub planes flying around Slippery Rock. I thought that’d be fun to learn how to fly. The summer between my freshman and sophomore years I worked as a lifeguard at a swimming pool and trained to get my pilot’s license.”
Cottrell studied health and physical education at Slippery Rock, while also excelling in football, basketball and tennis — he was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003.
During his junior year in February 1943, he was called to active duty in the Army Air Corps. After seven months of basic training, he was sent to France in September 1944, where he was stationed through June 1945.
A pilot in the 48th Fighter Group, 493rd Fighter Squadron, Cottrell flew 65 missions including during the Battle of the Bulge.
His most memorable flight came Dec. 17, 1944.
WWII fighter pilot Edwin Cottrell reflects on memorable missions, years as a coach...
“On that day we were going to dive-bomb and take a bridge out,” Cottrell recalled. “On the way to the bridge we were told there were Tiger (German) tanks on the other side of Bastogne. We were diverted over there.”
Cottrell was among a pack of 12 pilots each flying a P-47 Thunderbolt. Each plane was equipped with eight .50 caliber machine guns — four on each wing — and two 250-pound bombs — one on each wing.
“My squadron commander spotted the tanks,” Cottrell said. “We went down on the bomb run.”
The bomb run consisted of three packs of four planes in a line. Cottrell was the fourth plane in the first pack to drop bombs.
“On the way up I saw a German Me-109 (fighter plane) aiming a cannon at me,” Cottrell said. “He turned towards me and the next thing I knew I heard a big pop. There was black oil all over my windshield. The engine almost quit. I chugged along … all of a sudden I look out and have a German Me-109 flying on either side of me.”
Cottrell felt certain he was about to be shot down.
‘My plane quit’
This painting depicts a scene from World War II in which United States fighter pilot Edwin Cottrell is in a P-47 Thunderbolt leaking oil after it was hit by a German Me-109, and now flanked by a pair of German Me-109s, on Dec. 17, 1944. Cottrell thought he was about to be shot down, but the German planes let him go, and Cottrell later landed safely after his engine died 100 yards from a runway. This painting is titled, "Waiting for the bullets" and was done by artist Gareth Hector, and commissioned by Valor Studios, a Florida-based company that commissions paintings to honor United States military veterans. Prints of “Waiting for the Bullets" autographed by Cottrell can be purchased at valorstudios.com.
Cottrell was struggling to nurse his badly damaged plane homeward, all the while expecting that one of the German fighters would finish him off in a burst of bullets. But then they “made a good luck gesture and peeled off,” Cottrell said.
Decades later, Cottrell tried to track down those pilots to express his gratitude.
“I hoped someday I could meet them in person,” Cottrell said. “But that never happened.”
Cottrell got his hobbled plane back to an American runway when the engine quit just 100 yards from a runway.
“I was able to dead-stick land it to get it onto the runway,” he said. “There’s no power. And the engine (at the front of the plane) is very heavy. So you have to trim back hard to keep the nose up as much as you can to land.”
After Cottrell landed the plane and brought it to a stop, he hopped out of the cockpit and kissed the ground, thankful to be alive.
A later inspection of the plane revealed that the 18-cylinder engine had been shot, with just 10 cylinders still working before the engine lost power, evidence that backs up the notion of the Thunderbolt being known for its durability.
Cottrell’s wife, Millie, gave birth to their first daughter during the war. After the war, the couple had another daughter. Cottrell went into a career in education, bouncing from high school teaching gigs in Beaver, Allegheny and Dauphin counties before landing at West Chester University.
At West Chester, Cottrell became associate dean of the School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation and professor in the undergraduate and graduate programs — the university now has a leadership center named after him.
Cottrell also served as the West Chester golf coach for 20 years. It’s a sport he was first exposed to as a child when he caddied for his dad on the weekends.
“I started out as the tennis and swimming coach at West Chester,” Cottrell said. “The golf coach told me he was going to retire. I did not want to keep coaching tennis, so it worked out that I became the golf coach in 1959.”
By the end of the next decade, Cottrell recruited Vandegrift to join his team.
‘That’s who I call’
Edwin Cottrell, 102-years-old, speaks with a reporter about his time as a pilot in WWII as well as his time spent as the golf coach at West Chester University, where Scott Vandegrift, right, was a student and one of his golfers on Monday, July 29, 2024. Cottrell was a pilot in the 48th Fighter Group, 493rd Fighter Squadron, and flew 65 missions including during the Battle of the Bulge. He was nearly shot down over Belgium by a German fighter plane on Dec. 7, 1944. Cottrell will be speaking in Columbia Borough on Tuesday, July 30, as part of the Military Oral History Club of Lancaster.
When Vandegrift, a Delaware native, was a high school golfer in the 1960s, he was being recruited by three collegiate programs to play at the next level. Vandegrift discussed his college decision with his dad.
“You’ll be more successful playing for that man (Cottrell),” William Vandegrift Jr. told his son.
Scott Vandegrift went with West Chester despite not being offered any athletic scholarship money to play there.
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“I could guarantee (Vandegrift) playing time and a good education,” Cottrell said. “Plus, one of my jobs was doing scheduling for students in health and physical education. As a result, I was able to get all morning classes for my golf team through the scheduling officer before classes got out to the student body. … My golfers never had class in the afternoon. That’s a big plus for a college student having to play golf.”
Vandegrift was on track to contend for the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference crown in his last year of collegiate athletic eligibility in spring 1973 before coming down with appendicitis, resulting in emergency surgery to remove his appendix, leaving him unable to compete in the conference championship just days later.
“That’s tough memories for me when my appendix went,” Vandegrift said. “My side hurts right now just thinking about it. I was having a tremendous year.”
Vandegrift “and I have kidded about that for the last 50 years,” Cottrell said. “He would’ve been the conference champion if not for his appendix.”
Vandegrift, now 72, has been the Millersville men’s golf coach since 1986; he’s been the women’s coach since the program’s inception in 2008. Both Cottrell and Vandegrift are members of the West Chester University Athletic Hall of Fame.
“To this day I listen to” Cottrell, Vandegrift said. “If I have a coaching problem, that’s who I call.”
The calls are welcomed by Cottrell, especially since he became a widower four years ago when wife Millie died. She was 99. The couple had been married for 76 years.
Two years later, Cottrell did a tandem skydive out of a plane a month before his 100th birthday in 2022. He did the same around his 90th birthday. Both occasions were to honor two of his roommates who were killed in action in World War II.
Sixteen million Americans served in World War II.
According to the United States Department of Affairs, about 100,000 World War II veterans were still alive as of September, with their median age at 98.
That makes the chances of hearing directly from those who were there slimmer by the year. And with the passage of time, Cottrell hopes the sacrifices of those who served aren’t soon forgotten.
“All the men and women who gave their lives to retain freedom, I hope they serve as a reminder to people that freedom is not free,” Cottrell said.
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