¡Colores!; 1008; Mayhem was Our Business: Memorias de un Veterano; Interview; Part 3

Okay, we were talking about your first combat mission. The things that occupy your mind are, I think, primarily fear. Fear of the enemy, but I think fear of the unknown more than anything. We were being launched out into space. And they'd give us gum before a mission. That's so that we could clear our ears after we reached out the tube. In that first mission, they gave me gum, and I forgot it.

I had it to the end of the day. When we were coming back, I became aware of the gum. It wasn't gum anymore. It was powder. I had baked it. Fear with me is like a fever. I don't know how it is with other people. I had burned it. I had baked it into a powder. All right. We all assembled in the radio compartment. And with our body, we became a cushion for the next guy. And we packed our self-solid in the radio room, that was in the event of a condition. And we reached out to you.

And we all took our positions. And we communicated through income with each other showed all our positions were in order. And one of the things that we did was fired a few spurts or gunfire to see if our guns were working. And then we met at a point on the map of the sky. They had the sky mapped. And there was a specific point on that map where we met because these bombers were coming from different bases. And they assembled in a specific spot in the sky and the fighter planes that were going to escort us into Europe, assembled there too.

And then we took off. And down there in the Baltar, there is a feeling of complete aloneness, not loneliness, aloneness. You're outside of the world. You're even outside the plane and you're all aloneness. And that feeling can be very overwhelming, you're feeling that you want to just call on the intercom just to establish contact, to know that you're still belong.

That feeling is very overwhelming. Tell me about your first mission. What was your objective? I guess I'm interested to, well let's talk about some of your missions and what kinds of missions you had. I didn't describe all you one mission in my book and I called it combat mission. It was a mission to Berlin. And you see the fighter planes when a company is about one-third of the way.

And in that first third of the way we were safe because in B-51s, you know the B-51s and the B-38s and the B-47s, they kept the enemy away from us. So we would sat there and we would sit there and watch the dog fights and now we're going on you and we'd see the planes go down, sometimes there, sometimes hours. Then we'd cheer when it was one of theirs. It was like making a touchdown and of course when I meant when it was one of ours. Then the fighters wouldn't have to come back because they'd run out of gas.

Then they hit us with a flag. And that flag they would shoot missiles up into the air that were designed to explode at our level. And when they exploded, they strapped in every direction and you could see the puff of smoke when they exploded. But you couldn't hear the explosion. But what you did here was a shrapnel hit in your plane and you'd hear it hitting the tin skin of the plane and coming right through like a hail on a tin roof or rain on a tin roof and then we'd go into the bomb run and the bombardier took control of the plane and

we dropped our bombs and turned around and came back home. Well this time we were coming into the bomb run in Berlin when we were hit. We had a direct hit from an 88 and that was a big cannon that the Germans had. And this went right through the wing and broke the main spar of the wing and went through the left of the big hole on the plane and what was holding that wing together was a skin because the main spar was broken and we had 6-1,000-pound bombs.

We also had a dead gunner in the waste compartment. Some of what I told you that when a new crew came they spread it out among experienced crews. When a new crew had come in and they had given us this young man to fly his first mission. And we used to use steel aprons to protect us from black and steel helmets but this chunk of black came in through the bottom and hitting here. We avoided the aprons in the helmet and the pilot puts it in, 20 millimeter gun came

right through the steel helmet on one side and out the other scrambled in the brain and the copilot was flying the plane. So we talked over the uniform about what to do. The first thing to do was get rid of those bombs and say, where, so let's find, let's leave them something to remember us by because we figured our goose was cooked. Let's find, somebody said, let's find a swankey neighborhood. And somebody else says, yeah, let's do that.

So that's what we did and we all agreed and it's funny how your mind works in a combat situation. I didn't object, seemed like the right thing to do and that's what we did. We dumped it in a fancy neighborhood and then what do we do? And then what do we do? So the copilot said we can bail out and somebody says no way. Because every combat helmet knew that our worst enemy for an American aviator was not the German soldier.

It's a women, children and old men that were our enemies. For that reason, we all carried a 45 and a dagger to protect ourselves from the women and children. And you see, if we were captured by the military, there were agreements, international agreements that would protect us. They had to take a prisoner. They couldn't kill him. But the women didn't agree to anything. So somebody says, put it into a die, but you don't put bombers into a die, that'd be the first time. In the process, another motor had been hit, two motors were hit by the, and both on the same side, it was only one side, when we went into the dive.

And it rattled and cracked. And it felt like it was going to fall apart, especially when he pulled it out, a shock. But slowly, ever so slowly, pulled up a little. But by that time, the second motor was hit. And that second motor, it could run it, but then he had to turn it off, because the motor would heat up. So we started off from Berlin, going back home to the British Islands, 600 miles away, or so, with two motors going on one side.

And we couldn't reach altitude anymore, because we didn't have the power. So we threw everything that could come off, we threw it out the plane to lighten it up. And we were flying at three top levels. And when a plane is up in the air, you can see it coming from a distance. When it's flying right over the three tops, you don't see it until it's right on top of you. So we came up on a platoon of German soldiers marching down and having new trees. When we came up upon them suddenly, and we trained our machine guns on them.

And I was laughing insanely, because I had the silly notion that they were puppets, and that they would fold when I cut their strings. I enjoyed that fantasy, and I was laughing silly. It didn't occur to me that they were people. We went on, we fly over towns, and we'd rake our machine guns over the rooftops. On the Rhine, there were all those houseboats, they were fuller, and we'd rake our machine guns on them. And we'd listen to the radio, where the Germans were saying that we were a wild, elephant, running loose in Europe.

I didn't understand German, but we had a member of the crew that did, and he told us. Then we ran out of ammunition, because we didn't think we'd get as far as we did, because our plane was just cropping and puffing. Then the tailgunner says bandits had six o'clock. The plane was measured according to a clock. The nose of the plane was twelve o'clock, the tail of the plane was six o'clock. This was German fighters that had come in, it says nine bandits coming in at six o'clock. We all knew we were dead, because we couldn't even fight back, which we didn't have any ammunition. And you know, when I said it earlier, that in moments of drama in combat, when you think

deep philosophical thoughts, that you would find some answers to the mystery of life, no, all I could think of was stupid things. And then over the intercom, I heard the Swedish words in the English language, little friend to big friend, don't worry, we'll take you home. They are American fighter planes, P-47s, and that was a code, little friend was a fighter, and big friend was a moment.

And one of them parked itself on each wingtip, and one in front. And three went on to meet the nine Germans. We didn't see that skirmish. And we were just flying just barely over the water on the English channel. And the three French were down there, and they're both waiting to pick us up if we crashed. We had been advised. And we just clambered and seemed crawled over the white streets of Dover, white cliffs of Dover. When we landed, we were all in the radio room as usual.

We landed on our belly, because our landing gear had been shot. And as the plane was skidding across the landing field, tearing off its skin. There was a British station wagon racing alongside the plane, when we, I was in pretty good shape. When I got off the plane, the first thing I did was got down on my knees and kiss the ground. When I stood by the plane, and something began to happen to me, I began to feel it, like a shaking, like a quivering, like a scream that I was about to scream, that I was about

to become hysterical, when all of a sudden an Englishman appeared with a ball of whiskey and filled a tumbler, a hot tumbler full of whiskey, and he said, drink it. Drink it all, and I drank a full tumbler of whiskey, and that Englishman saved my life or at least he saved my sanity, because I was about to fly off. Doesn't that ever happen to you in a near accident, when the accident is over, then he grabbed you. That's... Got you. Okay. Are we good? Right. Yeah, I'm thinking we can come back, uh, God, whatever it's supposed to be, and for you.

How's the rest of the week look for you? The reason I think I get to date is because sometimes my wife has something, but usually if she does, she has to go someplace and she doesn't need to get you. Okay. Well, look at me. Tell me another little story, just so we've got it for the camera, and it doesn't matter what. What was the name of, uh, your plane? Redo. Uh-oh. Maybe you didn't take a shot of me. We'll get that next time. Yeah, I think so. We'll get you trying it out. Okay. But talk to me like you're just telling me some stuff so we can cut it in. You know, uh, people are crazy, in Wellingboro where I was, there were no bombs, we stalling there. Well, we, on the combat group who are giving, uh, three-day pass after ten missions, or after every ten days if you remember them.

And where would we go to the呢. And that's when the bombs were falling. They were falling like snowflakes. Don't be bombs that they have. So London was a black tower at night. And a black tower in London is absolute. If you went out in the street, all you heard was, so sorry, so sorry, so sorry, people were bumping into each other. And in the hotel room, the window pains were painted with black paint. And over that, they had black drapes. So when you turn out the light in your hotel room, it was pitch black.

You tried to see if you could see the difference between your fingers. And all the members of my crew, like all the other people, they would go out wetching. Wetching was taking women, wetching. And I was just recently married, so I wouldn't go wetching. And I'd go down to the Baton, to the cocktail lounge, and where they had orchestrated the Chamber of Music. It was very pleasant there. It's probably plenty. OK, well, OK, well, good. Thank you. Cut.