CHAPTER 1
TRANSITION
I sat back and laughed with enjoyment as the sweat streamed down the pimples of Tanner's red face. He gunned first #4 motor. Then all four engines together, trying to rock the giant left wheel of our B-24 out of a sand hole. His forehead and chin, both slanting back from the tip of his small pointed nose, made him look like a fox at bay. He had always treated his big bomber like a pursuit ship -- a "pea-shooter" -- but now he was feeling its 50,000 pounds. All my hours as a terror-stricken co-pilot were beyond the bump on the lovely homeward slope. But Tanner had gotten stuck. On top of that, he had come within a fraction of twisting the left landing gear off. The final deep-throated gasp and blurp of the engines signaled his admission of defeat. Two master sergeants and a major had just reached the plane from the engineering area.
"Who in hell is the pilot of this thing?"
"The wingtip's nearly on the ground."
"That gear's ready to come off. Keep everybody from under the wing!"
We opened the bomb bay doors, and I was careful to let Tanner crawl out first. All Tanner's hours of sweating out steep turns had resulted in one long wing pointed straight up; the other straight down only 500 feet above ground, was about to make another record. But I was about to forgive those pursuit landings, because I was going to get a new pilot. That was being settled by the conversations outside.
Instead of taxiing on the paved strips that formed a small triangle, Tanner had tried to gun the ship across the triangle through soft sand, and the great left tire had uncovered a hole. (Tanner had accomplished the rest). It took days of jacking and minor repairing before the ship was safe to fly from our Florida field to the repair depot at Tampa. By that time I had a new pilot.
Ed Thompson had been on leave the first two weeks I was in the squadron. Major (then Captain) Sturgis told me Thompson would be my pilot, so the first time I saw him shuffling down on the path by our pup tents, I anxiously tried to know him on first sight. We were to go into combat together within a month. He was fairly thin and his shoulders tended to stoop just a little. He was my height -- about 5'11", dark hair and complexion. His cheeks were a bit sunken, and there were lines in his face that suggested calloused-hand knowledge of hard work. When he looked at me, his dark eyes were honestly noncommittal, but there was pleasantness in the lines of his mouth.
"Thompson?" I said. "I guess I'm your new co-pilot."
"Guess so," he answered unemotionally, and stuck out his hand. He didn't smile. I had no way of knowing then that he was frightened at being a first pilot with only 30 hours in a B-24.
That was just about the extent or our acquaintance until our own ship arrived. The first pilots did most of the flying and training the next three weeks. Ed and I flew together about twice before the bombardier, Gimble, and navigator, Swetland, joined the crew. Gimble had been in another squadron of the same group before being transferred to ours.
I knew him by his animated friendliness and admirable physique before I knew we were assigned together. He was blond with a rosy complexion, and was about 6' 2". Usually happy and carefree as a puppy, he thought ill of almost no one but himself – and that at long-separated intervals.
At practically the last minute, four navigators (they were straight from school) arrived in the operations tent. Someone tossed a coin and Swetland came with us, while his close friend, Bradson, was put on the Squadron C.O.'s crew. Our crew was Capt. Rodger Sturgis, now a full Colonel and holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor. His is almost as legendary name now, but he was just as hardworking, much-loved Captain when I joined his squadron. His men a year later had grown to like him less.
Paul Swetland was a nice guy. In a sweet way, he was a "mother's boy," yet men admired him because he was interested in a great many things, was talented, and showed good taste in whatever he did. He was an only child whose father had died while he was in navigation school. I remember seeing his luxurious Buick standing across the sandy road from our tent area, and his mother was sitting at the wheel waiting. Paul felt he should eat with us at the officers' mess tent that first day, so Mrs. Swetland patiently waited until Paul was sure he had no duties for the afternoon, and was free to go into town where she had a room. I have never before or since known a mother and son who were as close as those two were. There was a mutual feeling of complete responsibility and intimacy.
The four officers of the crew became acquainted first on a trip we made to Albuquerque for some practice bombing. We didn't see much of Swetland, because the work was chiefly with the bombardiers and pilots. I got to know Jerry's – Gimble's – voice over the interphone as he talked us on course, described where the bombs hit, or swore through the explanation of an error. At Ed's suggestion, Jerry showed the two of us how to operate the synthetic bomb trainer so that we would know more about the working of the bombsight and understand some of the bombardier's troubles.
Ed and I stayed at the field, but Jerry had a room in a hotel with Swetland and two Air Corps wolves who were with us. About nine o'clock one night, Paul, stripped to a pair of shorts, was quietly reading a book in the room, when one of the boys strolled in with a nice-looking girl. In an embarrassed frenzy, Paul stumbled into pants and shirt, begging pardon all the way.
When I saw him the next day, he looked tired, and I told him so.
"Shucks," he said, grinning like a school kid, "The guy wasn't in the room more than ten minutes when he practically shoved me out the door and said he was sorry. I wanted to go to a movie. Heck! I didn't want coffee. Then I called the room until the hotel operator sounded sore, but nobody answered. I finally came out here about midnight and got a room."
The three of us, without Swetland, would show up at the Casanova in town for a beer and to check the prospects for a date among the girls gathered there. At the jute box began a ribbing that Jerry continued around the world. His favorite recording was Nelson Eddy's rendition of "Ride, Cossack, Ride." He played it about fifteen times a night for the four days we were there, until Thompson and I just about carried out our threat of mayhem if he ever played it again. We heard that recording in the Near East, the Middle East, and the Far East until we screamed, grew numb to it. Then decided it might have some merit, and finally played it ourselves. War does terrible things to a man's musical sense.
* * *
For weeks, we had been wondering where we would go. I started wondering when I first joined the Air Corps and I knew I would eventually go overseas. As time went on, we had less and less real hope of knowing before we left. Information like that leaked out only as unfounded rumor, for which the Army is notorious. Then one afternoon we had a surprise. There was a plane near the field, and it sounded like a B-24, but we couldn't see it at first. Then someone saw it reflecting its color in the sky.
"Hey! There it is! Look, it's kinda pinkish -- flesh-colored! Brother! I know where we're goin' now! The Sahara Desert!"
There was no other explanation worth listening to. The two planes that came in that day were a dull pink, instead of the usual green, and the bellies were a bluish-purple. The next few days planes came in two or three at a time. A designated pilot signed for his ship after checking its equipment, and the ferry pilot took the receipt. Ed got the fourth one, and together we checked it over thoroughly and made several test flights. It was a tremendous thrill to practically own and be responsible for so great a machine worth $300,000. When it proved to have a weak fuel pump on one engine, the whole crew turned out to assist in changing it.
At the time our pink B-24's started arriving at our field about July 1, 1942, most of the co-pilots had been flying AT-6s (a single engine training plane) in the flying schools three months before and were now at their fourth field since graduation. The pilots had had about three additional months since school, but had done only a meager amount of flying. Some of that had been in twin-engine planes. Thompson's first night landing, and the only one until we were in combat, was made during our brief stay at Albuquerque. After we were safely down, he told me that it had been his first. I think they heard my gulp in the control tower.
Because we were desperately needed overseas and there were no combat-experienced men to train us, our preparation was far less than that of crews who trained six months to a year later. The combat teams barely knew each other, and had flown almost no formation together. We had no idea how close we would come to the enemy and were teaching ourselves to throw knives and axes. We did not think it possible that we would never see the enemy face to face in over a year in combat. I had never fired a sidearm or army rifle. We did have a fair knowledge of our airplane equipment, but we had never been briefed nor had we flown on a simulated mission. All officers were second lieutenants, except for one first lieutenant, and a doctor and commanding officer who were captains. Sturgis became a major just before we left.
Eleven men were assigned to go in our plane. In addition to the four officers, were Sgt. Adamowski, the engineer, a Polish boy of nineteen who was in charge of the enlisted crew -- that is, all but Sgt. Taylor who "submitted to no man, by God!" Taylor was a short stocky blond of twenty-two or three who had run away from home. He was a loveable tough kid with a lurching swagger, more pronounced at some times than others. He had joined the Army and had been stationed in Panama. Of that much I'm certain. I hesitate to set down as fact any of the many other tales he told at one time or another. At any rate, he was a tough soldier of the peacetime Army and served as a very capable tail gunner on our crew. Ed and I wanted both "Adam" and Taylor with us, but they were capable of spontaneously punchy speech, some of which had already blown between them. A good deal of reconciling had to be done before Taylor would fall in line with the dictate that the engineer, though younger and with a shorter army career, should be in charge of the entire crew.
"Hell, Lieutenant," Taylor once said, "I got more time in the pay line than that guy has in the chow line!"
In spite of his gruffness toward other enlisted men, Taylor's attitude toward the officers was excellent, and he always greeted us with a salute and smile even under the most informal conditions. When we pointed out that he had hurt himself frequently by being "busted" because of his own acts, he agreed to stick with our crew, because he felt we were really interested in him.
The assistant engineer and waist gunner was Sgt. Tony Filipo, a tall thin Italian. The radio operator was a pleasant boy of nineteen and the most intelligent man on the crew. He had a beautiful soft red hair and was named Chadwick. Burns, a non-entity, was his assistant and a waist gunner. In addition to this combat crew were the chief crew, M/Sgt. Weeks, and the squadron Engineer Officer, Tucker.
Before it was time for us to leave, three ships had gained names. One was "Little Amber," one was "Alice the Goon," and looking forward to the results of its mission, another pink ship was called "Rosie Wrecked 'Em." Swetland painted a picture of an "Eager Beaver" on our ship, and so labeled it.
On the morning of July 11, when the first ten ships took off and assembled in formation, we knew only two things: that we would land next at Morrison Field, West Palm Beach, and that the color of our planes suggested the Sahara Desert. As we left the ground, I looked down and saw a big Buick on the edge of the road at the field, and something white moved in the black frame of the window, only vaguely lighted by the early morning sun. Swetland's mother was saying goodbye to a priceless son in his fighting ship snouted with a .50 caliber guns.
Within an hour we were lined up on a strip at Morrison Field. In two days, four planes returned to Tampa to have some work done. They were not too well put together, and the pilot had not accepted one, because a great number of rivets were loose in the wing structures.
On July 16th, we returned to Morrison were briefed on our forthcoming flight, and were issued personal equipment: a .45 automatic and holster for each officer, Springfield rifles for the crew, mosquito netting for our sleeping bags (which we already had), head netting for night wear, limp suede mosquito boots, dark glasses, flashlights, and many other articles of flying clothes. Our ships were loaded with spare parts even to an extra tire we could barely get into the bomb bay. Our gross load was above what was considered the absolute safe maximum. At 5:30, just as we were ready to eat and go to the hotel in town, we were told to get some sleep and report at our planes at 12:30. Takeoff was 0200 (2 a.m.). We unrolled our luxurious down bedrolls that we had been told to leave behind, but following Major Sturgis' example, had kept, and stretched out on them to sleep by the plane until midnight. Many times we were glad we had disobeyed orders and brought those bulky bedrolls.
Although for three weeks we had known we were to leave the United States, it was only this last evening that men showed signs of uneasiness. From our point of view, we were like Magellan or Columbus starting off into the unknown world. The mere fact we had by now seen our destination on a map didn't improve the situation worth a damn.
There was none of the usual rowdiness and kidding and swearing that always flowed as boisterously as beer on Saturday night, but there was a feeling of restlessness elation. You could tell by the smiling lines around the men's eyes even when they talked soberly that they felt both fear of the unknown and an excited desire for it. Perhaps the most remarkable picture was that of Taylor and Adam being friends. They sat cross-legged in front of the nose wheel in the semidarkness while Taylor, with fatherly gruffness, told about his eighteen months in Panama -- what the jungles and the towns and the people were like. I'm sure the youthful Adam was reassured by the prideful enthusiasm of our tail gunner
"Is that you, Lt. Gilbert?" asked Taylor with his New England accent. "I just been tellin' Adam here about Panama. You ever been out of the country?"
"No," I admitted. "This is my first time."
"Why, Lt. Gilbert," the little man rumbled, "I ran away from home when I was fifteen. Me and the old man didn't get along so good. I was really a devil, I guess. Me an' another guy used to go out with a gang an' drink, an' I was alla' time ditchin' school. This other kid an' me had a cabin we use t'stay at when my old man was huntin' fer me. He wanted me t'work in the garage with him, but I got tired of that stuff. I ain't seen my folks or wrote 'em for three yee-ahs."
"Don't they even know you transferred to the Air Corps and are going over?" I asked, not quite sure how much truth I was hearing.
"Naw," he said, looking down and growing quiet. I sensed pride and regret and was determined his folks should get a letter when we reached our destination.
Before my mind would give in to sleep that night in the States, it insisted on mulling just what we, as individuals, were leaving behind to see or never see again. That "never" scared me. It sounded very permanent.
My chief concern was my mother, whom I had sent north a few days before. I know I was the most important thing in her life. She had relatives, but no husband for comfort. Mother had an unbounded interest in everything that happened in the world. I think she would have liked to be co-pilot, though she was sixty-five years old. It would be up to me to bring the world to her through my letters. As for girls, I was starting from scratch. My engagement had just been broken, and I was beginning to realize that I felt more relieved than sad.
Ed's mother and father worked at an oil well in Texas, and I know that Ed felt a great respect for his mother. I felt sure there was no girl he was deeply attached to.
I had met Swetland's mother and knew that there were several girls he was interested in, but not seriously. Since his mother had just lost her husband, she would have a great deal of loneliness to overcome in Paul's absence.
Gimble who was particularly close to his dad, just moaned about leaving girls -- he didn't specify which one.
At that time, I knew almost nothing about the background of the crew, except for Taylor's conversation that evening. All the men were twenty-three years old or less; Adamowski, the engineer, was the youngest – nineteen, and he and Filipo were from Pennsylvania. Chadwick was from a little town in Montana. No one had a job he minded leaving in order to join the Air Corps.
