Farmboy Comes Home

When Cliff Wherley was 14, he saw a movie about Sergeant York. That was in March 1942. He thought it over until 4 a.m., then slipped out of his Elmwood, Ill. home, caught a bus for Peoria, enlisted. Big for his age ("the best hay baler in the country"), Farmboy Wherley looked 18 to the U.S. Army.

Last week, not yet 17, Staff Sergeant Clifford R. Wherley, his chest bright with medal and campaign ribbons, leaned back in War Secretary Stimson's office chair, sitting before Robert Todd Lincoln's old desk, and received the press. Still under age, Hero Wherley was being discharged from the Air Forces. But before his uniform and stripes are put away, Cliff will make a nationwide morale tour. The story he has to tell is a boy's dream in Technicolor. The Army believes it will spur a landslide of 17-year-old enlistments. Cliff Wherley :

> Won the African ribbon, with Star for action over Italian islands; the American Theater ribbon; the Army Good Conduct ribbon; the Air Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters.

> Trained in England; fought at Kasserine Pass ; helped bomb Pantelleria.

> Can say, without boasting: "While I was on those three bombing raids with Major General Jimmy Doolittle . . ." or "Officially, I have just one Messerschmitt to my credit, but there were really about 15 more. . . ."

> Manned the gun turrets of two Martin Marauders, called the "Thunder," and the "Coughin' Coffin."

> Lived on Ration C ; slept on straw in Telegma; shot at Nazis over La Hencha bridge.

Cliff's mother kept his age a secret as long as she could: for 15 months. Then she asked the Army to send Cliff home.

But Cliff's mother will not try to keep him down on the Elmwood farm, now that he has seen Oran. Until he is old enough to start all over again in the Army, ex-Airman Wherley has picked his job: inspector of Marauders in Glenn Martin's Omaha plant.

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