Honor your hero with thoughts, memories, images and stories.
Harry Francis Sherman, named for his grandfather, was a bright young man who was an average American of the period between the World Wars. Raised, in a large part, by his Irish-American Catholic step-grandmother, Harry would serve as an altar boy at St. Brigid's church in Amherst, Massachusetts.
He showed talent in art and his family still has drawings he produced during his school years, including one from the late 1930s which reflects his growing concern with world politics and strife. Depicting a grieving man holding a wounded child, it has the words "Stop War" across the top.
Harry enlisted with friends in October of 1942 and after training became a member of the 571st Bomb Squadron of the 390th Bomb Group stationed at Parham, England, serving as a tail-gunner in a B-17.
Sherman was killed, at age 21, in the crash resulting from the collision of two of the B-17s just off the coast of Hoorn, Holland.