Jim Humm has a vague recollection of his older brother. He isn't sure whether the hazy image is an actual memory or a fragment of wishful thinking.

The 67-year-old Stow resident was a toddler when Tech Sgt. Harold Humm flew his last mission in World War II.

''I think I saw him once, but I don't know,'' he said.

What Jim Humm does recall is Memorial Day. Every year on the holiday, four veterans visited the family's home on Fourth Street in Cuyahoga Falls to bring flowers to his mother, Nellie.

They were four friends who grew up together, went to school together and joined the military together. They entered the service as five friends, but Harold Humm didn't come home.

Ray Klapp, Kenneth Lyell, Harvey Morrow and Edward Corbett made the Memorial Day pilgrimage for at least 20 years.

''Kenny was almost a next-door neighbor to Harold's family,'' said Morrow, 85, of Cuyahoga Falls. ''We'd get together and go see
his mother. . . . I
remember getting flowers and taking them to her. She was always appreciative.''

''Every year, we took flowers to her on Memorial Day,'' said Lyell, 84, of Cuyahoga Falls.

Nellie Humm and her husband, Jesse, had 12 children. Harold, born in 1923, was 18 years older than the youngest sibling, Jim, who was born in 1941.

Harold was a friendly, slender boy with black hair. He was a good student, a Boy Scout, an all-American kid.

''A heck of a nice guy,'' Lyell recalled. ''He would do anything in the world for you.''

''He'd go along with whatever the group decided,'' Morrow said.

Adventures and mischief

The friends had many adventures. Lyell recalled when he and Humm got stuck at the top of a roller coaster at Brady Lake and had to wait for a push.

Another time, they borrowed Harold's father's 1936 Chevrolet and barely missed getting hit by a train at the double tracks on Broad Boulevard. The rushing locomotive knocked a spare tire off the back bumper.

The two boys later bought an automobile together — a 1929 Model A Ford — and drove around town. The car began to fall apart in a rainstorm during a double date to a dance.

Morrow remembers getting into mischief, too.

''We used to bowl on Sunday afternoons,'' he said. ''We'd go to Sunday school and leave before church. I don't know if his
folks or anybody knew that.''

Four of the friends graduated from Cuyahoga Falls High School in June 1941. Their class motto was ''With Extended Wings We Begin Our Flight.''

Enlisting together

After Lyell graduated in 1942, the young men agreed to enlist in the military before they got drafted. All entered the U.S. Army Air Corps except for Morrow, who became a Marine.

Before traveling overseas, Humm got engaged to his high school sweetheart, Ann Page, a student at Bowling Green State University.

He joined the 91st Bomb Group in Bassingbourn, England, and trained aboard a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress.

Humm mailed a photo of the giant airplane to his family.

''This is the plane I am working on,'' he wrote on the back. ''It is also the one I will be a gunner on (I hope). Quite a big ship for a little guy like me.''

The soldier weighed about 135 pounds and stood no taller than 5-foot-10. Because of his build, he was chosen as ball turret gunner.

The ball turret was a claustrophobic sphere in the belly of the plane. A soldier climbed into it after takeoff and operated two Browning .50-caliber machine guns that rotated 360 degrees to fend off enemy planes.

Navy veteran John Lilley, 84, of Kent, who graduated from Cuyahoga Falls High with Humm, said the ball turret was a cramped, noisy place to be.

''Your feet went up in front of you,'' he said. ''You might be in there for six hours. The belly gunner could rotate the ball and he could also maneuver his machine guns up and down.''

Diary entries

Jim Humm owns a palm-size diary that his brother kept of his B-17 missions against Germany. In black ink on white pages, Harold Humm provided brief descriptions of aerial battles.

The gunner flew aboard the bombers Miami Clipper, Wabash Cannonball, Wee Willie, Dame Satan II, Black Magic, Texas Chubby, Chow Hound, Ack Ack Annie and Fifinella.

''In between attackers, I sure was praying,'' he wrote of a raid on March 6, 1944. ''Almost every place you looked, you would see chutes floating down.''

In a March 18 entry, he described how his turret caught fire on the Wabash Cannonball.

''The waist gunner pulled the wire loose with his hands and in doing so burnt them,'' he noted. ''I had a little trouble cranking myself out but finally succeeded in doing so.''

On March 23 aboard Texas Chubby: ''Got a good look at Berlin and from what I saw there wasn't much left of the place.''

On April 11 aboard Dame Satan II: ''The flak bursts were so close I could hear and smell them. It sounded like someone was beating the sides of the ship with a hammer.''

Paging through the diary, Jim Humm, an Army veteran, stopped to consider such battles.

''I was in Vietnam for a year, and I can't imagine doing that,'' he said. ''I can't imagine doing what he did.''

Harold Humm's last five missions were aboard the bomber Sleepy Time Gal. On May 7, he wrote: ''The flak over Berlin was tough as usual but we only got three holes.''

On May 19: ''There sure was some good dogfights up there.''

His final entry was June 6, 1944: D-Day. ''They told us then that this was invasion day,'' he wrote. ''Boy such a yell went up . . . When we got back, they told us that troops had landed successfully. Landed at 10:46. Easy mission.''

Fallen soldiers

Crews that completed 25 raids over enemy territory were allowed to return home to the United States. On June 21, Humm began his 23rd mission.

The 11-man crew of Sleepy Time Gal launched a bombing raid on Berlin railroad yards.

At 22,000 feet, two German fighter planes attacked the U.S. plane from behind, fired 20 mm cannons and hit gas tanks on the left wing. As the fire raged out of control, the pilot ordered the crew to bail out.

Five men were able to parachute from the burning craft. The other six, including Humm, were still trying to get out when the B-17 exploded.

They didn't have a chance.

A Western Union telegram arrived July 1 in Cuyahoga Falls, with the U.S. secretary of war regretting to inform the Humms that their soldier was missing.

Later, they learned the devastating news that 20-year-old Harold had been killed. His remains were never recovered. His grave marker stands at Lorraine American Cemetery and Memorial in France.

News of the loss spread across Cuyahoga Falls. ''The sad thing is he was almost ready to come home,'' Lyell said.

After the war, the surviving friends began their Memorial Day tradition, which they maintained until the 1960s.

Getting to know him

Jim Humm was 3 when his brother died. He remembers looking at Harold's photo and Purple Heart as a child.

He didn't know the full story of Harold Humm's valor until his family began doing research. In 2004, he and his wife, Shari, and daughters Sarah and Wendy were among the relatives who attended the 91st Bomb Group reunion in Washington, D.C.

Wendy Humm Allport surprised her father with a detailed scrapbook about Harold's life.

They also attended the 2006 reunion in Colorado Springs.

A few years back, Jim Humm's children paid for him to ride a B-17 bomber during a show at Akron-Canton Airport.

He peered into the tiny entrance for the ball turret gunner and thought about the bravery of an older brother he never knew.

''I can't imagine doing that 23 times,'' he said.