¡Colores!; 1008; Mayhem was Our Business: Memorias de un Veterano; Interview; Part 5

It's over there, what's your zebra say, how do you have it set up? Are you going to close, huh? I'd rather be brighter than often. Okay, let's pick it up with the package.

Chocolate? No, I'd say the wench package. Well, that's it. The wench package included chocolates, cookies, gum, canned food of any kind and parachute nylon. Before we went on pass, the guys would go to the repair shops and they would give us pieces of nylon from torn parachutes. And the English girls love to have them because they made bandanas out of them. They said they made underwear. I cannot verify that. They made underwear out of them.

Because it's very fine, thick, satin-like material. But of course the guys called them the hot ladies, hot mamas, because evidently this material didn't breathe, and those panties would be very, very hot. As I say, I never verify that. Okay, you had a chance meeting. I understand it. We used to stay at a hotel called the Strand Palace. There was right on the Strand, right where the action was. It was a very fine hotel.

And my crew members would take off. And we generally didn't go to the same places. Because I'd go to the Tower of London. I'd go to the Buckingham Palace, Madame Tussaud's collection of wax figures, you know, points of interest. But they weren't outwrenching. And during the day the moms were falling. And if there was a bump shelter nearby, we all ran there until the all clear signal was given. If there wasn't the English people, they just walked. That's if nothing were going on.

What was amazed me? And what was the use of running? Because you didn't know where the mom was going to fall. So instead of running away from a mom, you might be running into it. And then in the evening we went back to our hotel to our prepared meal. And by that time most of them had picked up a wench. And after dinner they'd go to, they were dances. Coven gardens and other places for GI's. And anybody who hadn't picked up a wench by then would certainly find one of these dances. But I didn't go because I was recently married and very much in love and I wasn't wenching. So I'd stay in the cocktail lounge or the hotel that was in the basement.

You went down and went through a revolving glass door into this bar. And there was a glass bar with collector's items, glassware on glass shelves. And a string orchestra that played chamber music. And I proceeded to drink myself into a nearest stupor. And this particular night I was riding upon. I loved one through my wife. When a bomb hit across the street, it shattered the revolving door. It shattered the mirrors in the glassware and the bar shattered the bottles of liquor. And pieces of plaster fell off the ceiling.

The lights went out and I ended up under a table. And there was someone else under a table with me. When the lights went on, I discovered that other person under that table was a young English woman. And evening clothes. But her evening clothes were wrapped around her neck. And I could see everything. And I could see nothing because they wore the bloomers. bloomers that came down all the way down to their knees. And she didn't have the nylon bloomers. So that was encouraging. And I thought at the time I remembered

all's quiet on the western front. Who was the Gregory Peck, the actor, or Gary Cooper. Gary Cooper, I found himself under a table during a bombing raid with a lovely French girl. And he had a bottle of champagne and he removed her shoe. And poured that champagne on a shoe. And they both drank champagne. That was real romantic. But I didn't have a bottle of champagne. And then I didn't even see her foot. So it was that part was disappointing. Well, she seemed to have all her faculties around her all this time. She stood up, striking her clothes on.

And I still was laying down on the floor. I still wasn't able to put things together. And she looked down on me and she said something like, I don't know exactly what she said. And said something like, ripping, isn't it? Or something very British. Smashing, isn't it? I don't know. But it was ludicrous. I felt like laughing only I didn't, and I stayed enough. And she invited me to meet with her friends. They were out for a night. And we became very close friends. Did she tour London with you? No, yes. After that, we agreed that for my next pass,

she'd meet me at the railroad station. So when I found out about my pass, I dropped her a note, and I got off the train. And there she was. And it was something of a shock because she was in uniform. I had never realized that she was an evening dress when I saw it. But almost everyone in England was in service. And we went to my hotel, and she was carrying a suitcase. And she said she had to change. So I got the key to my room, and then handed it to her. And she went upstairs and changed. Then I waited for her down in the lobby.

Times were different. It never even occurred to me to try to go up with her, or insist, no. And that's the way it was with us. I learned from her later that she had a boyfriend who was on the continent. He was fighting. And she felt safe with me. And I felt safe with her. So we had a beautiful, disinterested arrangement. She took me to all the nooks and crannies that are significant in London, and showed me that legendary city from within. Like I never would have seen if it hadn't been for her. One thing, she took me all over the London,

second-hand stores. First of all, I thought I'd bring my wife a set of a tea set, silver. And we went to the stores. I found out that the tea set was far more expensive than I could afford. So then we thought we'd try the second-hand stores. The same thing happened. So I shifted to Pewter. Pewter looks all right. And we looked all over. No pewter, too expensive to one. So I didn't get the tea set. But in the meantime, we traveled all over London. Let's take a little break. We're going. When I finished my combat tour, I came home

and I became an instructor in a gunnery school for combat crews that were going overseas. And I proceeded to forget a lot of my experience in Europe. I think it was self-defense. I don't know. But I didn't give it any thought. And I was dismissed from the service quite early because we were given points. So many points for combat duty.

So many points for time overseas. And so many points for decorations. And I had received a distinguished flying cross the air metal with three oak leaf clusters. So I had a mass quite a number of points. And I was liberated. I came home. And then I read in the paper that there was famine in England. And a wave of guilt came upon me that I had forgotten, that lovely person that had been so decent to me in England.

And I wanted to send her food. I wanted to send her money. But I didn't remember her address. I couldn't remember the street. I couldn't remember the number. And I dedicated myself body and soul to bring it out for the past. It seemed that I went at it letter by letter, pulling it out of memory until I had the street name. Then I had the problem with the number. And the same thing happened. Eventually I got them all out. And I sent the letter because I didn't know whether she still lived in the same place. Because the last time I had seen her home, it had been bombed. And I didn't get any answer for about three months.

Then one day I got a letter from her from Canada. That married her boyfriend, a Canadian, and she lived in Canada. And that was the last I ever heard of my lovely lady from England. Let's back up into some of your flight experiences. How many missions did you fly? What was it like being on that last mission? When I started flying, combat crews were required to fly 25 combat missions. That was a complete tour.

But we were flying just before the invasion. And all of the shipping was going to the infantry. So we in the Air Force were under manned and we were not getting as much equipment as we needed. So they raised the number from 25 to 30. Then came the invasion. And they raised the number from 30 to 35. And they were flying us over and over again. And the reason for that limit is that the medics believed that that is about as much as a human body could take.

And we were flying over the limit. There was one time when we flew six combat missions in six consecutive days. It got to the point where we'd come back from a mission and we were too tired to even eat. It got to the point where we couldn't sleep. We were kept on going by whiskey. They were feeding us whiskey. It got to the point that we were like sleepwalkers. We were trudged to the plane in the early morning without breakfast because we couldn't eat anymore.

We stopped talking. There was too much of an effort. So from the time I landed in Belfast, Ireland to the time I was back in New York, it was 70 days. And I had to wait 15 days for my last mission. Because we were given the choice of selecting our last mission. So I kept waiting for what we called a milk run, a short mission for my last one. And every morning I'd get up and I'd go to orientation

and I'd look at the target and say, no, it's too risky. I'll wait for another one. 15 days I did that. And everyone was long. I finally made a decision. I said, I'm going tomorrow, no matter where it goes. I can't take it anymore. I was getting edgy and nervous and uptight. So I went on the last mission and it was the longest in the most vicious of all my missions. What happened on that mission? We were hit by jet planes for the first time. We had never seen a jet plane. But remember what I told you that the combat fighter had to gauge his speed to the speed of the bomber, the target.

And this jet plane.