Fighter Pilot

by Christina Olds

  Finally he said, “Well, what have you got to say for yourself, Olds? Give me one good reason not to draw up court-martial charges right this minute!”

  A ray of light broke through the dark and a glint of hope appeared in my well of despair. He actually wanted me to say something! He had given me an opening, right in front of the whole squadron, all of whom were at rapt attention. On the football field I had learned that aggressiveness often made up for size and sometimes a blind block carried the play.

  “Sir,” I replied in the steadiest voice I could muster, “I called you. I said, ‘Newcross Lead, this is Newcross Blue Three. There’s a train at eight o’clock. I’m going down. Will you cover me?’ and you said, ‘Roger, Blue Three.’ So I went down and attacked the train.”

  Major Herren glared at me. He clenched his fists, and his face turned red. He looked like he might explode. Now it was his turn to feel frustration. He opened his mouth but nothing came out. He tried again and only sputtered.

  Finally he managed, “Goddamn you, Olds, I wasn’t the one who said ‘Roger’!”

  It was chilly around the mess for a while after that, but the major was a fair man. Although he didn’t say so, he knew he had been outmaneuvered. Of course, I never told anyone it was impossible not to recognize my wingman’s way of saying ‘Roger.’ An Okie twang is an Okie twang, even over France.

  We flew a few more bomber escorts, but at squadron level we realized we were just a small piece of the fabric of war, and not privy to the plans of headquarters. Despite not being in on the Big Picture, all of us had a premonition that an invasion was imminent.

  Our targets in May had disclosed the Allied intentions: bridges, rail yards, airfields, troop concentrations, and fuel dumps were all concentrated along the west coasts of France, Belgium, and Holland as though we were isolating the area, which of course we were. We wondered when and where the blow would fall or whether the Germans had already figured it out. A sense of pent-up excitement pervaded all of Britain, in the pubs, on the streets of London, and in every village and hamlet of the land. You could feel it, taste it, and sense it. All the dark years of facing the German onslaught alone, all the losses and frustrations, all the courage and sacrifice, the shortages, rationing, blackouts, bombing raids, destruction of glorious old buildings and entire rows of homes, everything the people had suffered, everything they had suffered with an unbelievable stoicism, that British “stiff upper lip” and endless dry wit—now, by God, and with His good grace, it was going to be THEIR turn! The emotion was electrifying.

  The day the free world had longed for finally arrived. On June 5, Lieutenant Tommy Thomas routed us out of the sack at 0300 hours. We awoke to a dank, dismal, gray and cloudy day with a disagreeable wind. The 479th Group wasn’t scheduled to fly until late afternoon. That didn’t make much sense to us at the moment, but we didn’t have time to care. We’d just seen our P-38s with hideous black and white stripes painted around the engine booms and encircling the wings. Someone said they were “invasion stripes” to make it easy for the ground forces to identify the friendly fighters. It had been a lot of furious, hard work all night long by our ground crews, we were told. This had to be it! In fact, the rumor was spreading that the invasion had started without us. Surely, someone on base knew what was happening, but not us.

  Briefing was announced. We filed in, crowding the room with a rumble of excited chatter. Someone barked, “Attention!” and we snapped to as Colonel Kyle Riddle strode to the briefing platform. The room fell quiet as we took our seats. I won’t accuse him of a bit of dramatic license, but his long pause and sweeping look at our eager faces was just right. I was holding my breath. Everyone must have been, for when he said, “Gentlemen, this is it!” the windows rattled. We were whooping and hollering, pumping our fists in the air, slapping one another on the back, punching the guys next to us, jumping on the chairs, clapping and whistling. It was an incredible scene!

  After a few minutes, with order barely restored, the briefing continued. No, the big show hadn’t passed us by. In fact, we were to play an important part late in the afternoon. The armada had left port, and because we were P-38s and easily recognizable by the navy gunners, we were to join other Lightning outfits providing escort as the invasion fleet steamed toward the Continent. We weren’t shown the landing point or told much else, but who needed it? The show was on!

  The rest of the briefing mostly concerned the weather and a lot of speculation about what was expected from the Luftwaffe. Old Stormy, our weather officer, turned out to have the right scoop. Just as he said, the weather stank. High winds with heavy low clouds persisted all the way across the Channel and throughout Normandy. I thought this would work against the German Luftwaffe, but wondered how General Eisenhower was going to fight the coming battle with thousands of seasick GIs. Well, as Caesar had noted, the die was now cast. As for us, we’d find out about the enemy air opposition when it happened.

  In spite of the excitement and tension, the premission preparations got done and we headed to the airplanes, launched, and joined up in our group formations. To the confusion of many whose map sense wasn’t too sharp, we headed a bit southwest to make our rendezvous with destiny. Then something odd happened. As we flew across the Thames estuary east of London, I swear I heard harp music, melodious and heavenly harp music on our VHF radio frequency, where such interference never happened. It couldn’t, according to the signal people. It wasn’t possible. But there it was. I heard it loud and clear. Was I the only one? Was someone or something sending me a signal? Surely I wasn’t hallucinating, and I certainly wasn’t going to break radio silence or risk the derision of every other pilot in the group.

  Those weird thoughts were soon forgotten when we crossed the south coast of England, hugging the underside of the dark gray clouds in high winds. The turbulence was brutal. Visibility wasn’t that bad, but we had to stay below 1,500 feet to avoid going completely on instruments. We found ourselves scudding through patches of low-hanging mist barely above whitecaps, staring ahead across an angry, wind-whipped expanse of empty sea. Suddenly, there was a ship ahead. No, it wasn’t a ship. It was an object being towed by a large tugboat. As we hurried past, I saw that it was some kind of floating dock. What the hell was it doing out here? But then there was another and another and then, my God, there were ships, tens, hundreds, thousands of ships stretching to the horizons. All headed in the same direction. There were ships loaded with tanks and trucks, destroyers and gunboats, oilers, landing craft and supply freighters—every imaginable, and some unimaginable, kind of thing that could float. It was mind-boggling. Then, ahead, there was a cruiser, surrounded by escorts, and still more ships with more infantry, more vehicles. The heaving sea was black with objects, all moving inexorably toward France. I remember chills cascading down my spine, a feeling of utter awe and the soulful realization that we were part of what would become one of history’s most unforgettable events.

  Highway Lead finally called for a turn back the way we had come. We reversed to again pass the fleet along the coast of England near the Isle of Wight. There, we could see masses and columns of boats coming out of The Solent between the Isle of Wight and the Hampshire coast. As we paralleled the coast in our turn back toward the Channel, there were more ships converging from every direction, steaming to join that already unbelievable force headed for France. We tried to reach the head of the fleet, but I don’t think we ever reached that point. We saw neither hide nor hair of the Luftwaffe. I couldn’t believe it! Surely they knew by now. For God’s sake, Sir Francis Drake and Admiral Frobisher had spotted the Spanish Armada approaching England in these very same waters 356 years before. Where were they? Why weren’t they attacking? So much for the intelligence part of our briefing! The Luftwaffe was hunkered down waiting for the attack.

  Dusk fell before we headed home to Wattisham. We landed after dark to find the base alive with excitement. My flight suit was soaked with sweat and my legs were weak when I climbed out. I tried to e
xplain to my crew chief what we had seen but didn’t have the words. It was too vast for rational comprehension. All I could think of were ships, ships, and more ships stretching from England to wherever, a bridge of ships, from island to Continent, streaming into battle to ignite an instant of history, to write in the annals of a dark war a glorious page of exultation and purpose.

  The debriefings were raucous; everyone was yelling, a reaction to the emotional impact rather than the cold statistics of numbers and positions. Poor Horton must have done his best, but his intel report could only say, “SHIPS!” Things were quieter as we downed a beer or two before the usual evening mess of bangers and mash with grayish brussels sprouts. It wasn’t totally silent at the tables, but I noticed that almost everyone who had flown was doing a bit of deep reflecting. Their thoughts, like mine, were on the troops headed for the battle. What awaited us in the morning? We thought of home and loved ones, wondering if we would see them again. The realization that this might be a last night on earth for many slowly sank in.

  Sipping one last beer before turning in for the next morning’s critical mission, someone muttered, “I heard harp music, bloody fucking harp music. Did anyone else hear it?” What a relief! We all admitted to hearing the same thing. There were chuckles as we confessed not wanting to be the first to talk about it. We never did figure out where it came from.

  The sixth of June, 1944, was a day the world will never forget. The action was so vast, and so intensely important, that I think future historians will compare it to the battles of Marathon and Thermopylae, to the campaigns of Alexander and Caesar, to Charles Martel’s battle against the Moors at Poitiers, to Napoleon’s defeat in front of Moscow (which apparently hadn’t made much of an impression on Hitler), to Trafalgar—to every decisive, turning-point battle in recorded history.

  Those of us who had pleaded and fought to go on the first missions of D-day had front-row seats in the crowded briefing room that morning. Our mission was to fly top cover for the landing forces, to protect the ships from Luftwaffe attack. The weather and intelligence were the same as the day before: stinko and guesswork.

  We took off at dawn in miserable weather then hurried to our rendezvous point off the coast of Normandy. There, the vast panoply of war was spread before us in a mind-numbing vista. Gunfire from cruisers and destroyers flashed in the gloom as they shelled the tops of the bluffs along the beaches. Strange bargelike craft spewed barrages of flaming rockets toward unseen targets ashore. Small craft crowded with men circled near their mother ships and then, as we arrived, set course for the beaches. Large, blunt-nosed landing craft stood off at sea, obviously waiting their turn. Columns of black smoke marked burning ships already hit by the German shore batteries. The sea around the small boats boiled and frothed with fountains of gunfire. Occasionally a boat erupted in flame and smoke, to disappear quickly in the roiling water. My stomach churned knowing that brave young men were dying even before reaching land.

  We could see the initial waves of landing boats plow into the shallows. The front ramps dropped, and men splashed out into the water and struggled to wade ashore, some of them chest deep in the surf. Others sank out of sight in deeper water under the weight of their combat gear. Shells and machine-gun fire kicked up the water, and we could see red stains of blood spreading from floating bodies. Men surged up the beach toward the cliffs that rose a hundred yards ahead of them. My God, could they ever reach shore through that gunfire and then make it over the beach defenses extending ahead? They pushed on, some suddenly falling into total stillness. Dark forms lay in the shallows and on the sands. Other men followed, group after group, wave after wave, on and on through the surf. Vicious explosions erupted among them, explosions that could only be mines planted in the waters and on the sand. I wondered briefly about my West Point classmate and football teammate Harry Romanek. Harry had become an engineer for the army. He was assigned to the landing craft. I knew he was down there somewhere, and the thought of him in this turmoil sickened me. I saw the first of the figures reach the beach and run forward to the protection of the bluffs. They huddled there, gradually spreading out and arraying themselves in clumps. It seemed total confusion amid the smoke and shell bursts.

  We orbited, watching from just off the shore. Our orders were to keep over the boats to protect them, but this was too much, too intense, too huge, and too personal to want to obey that order. Over and over, we had been admonished not to fire at anything on the ground. The planners had forecast the situation to be too confusing, and above all, we didn’t have any air-ground communication to make sure we knew friend from foe. But, goddamn it, we could easily see the gray-uniformed German troops firing down on our GIs from the top of the cliffs. Christ, those cliff-tops were tempting! I knew we could make passes without endangering our own troops. I dutifully obeyed my orders.

  Common sense and discipline prevailed. We had to believe that the commanders organizing this massive invasion knew what they were doing. If I went into the fray, I would more than likely be shooting blindly, get hit by our own artillery fire, or, worse, get in the way of the other fighter forces especially trained for close support. I couldn’t see them, but I knew they had to be there. So along the beaches we flew, back and forth, over and over; as far as I could tell, the only people shooting at us the whole time were our own naval guys. Under the circumstances, it was hard to blame them, though later we wondered about the extent of their recognition training. I couldn’t imagine anything in the air that looked friendlier than a P-38 with black and white stripes painted all over it.

  The Luftwaffe never showed up. Our flailing back and forth off the beaches counted for nothing except perhaps adding a bit of noise to the din. We were part of the chorus without a speaking part. Finally, it was time for us to be relieved. We headed back to England, awed by the immensity of what we had witnessed and fully aware of the absolute necessity to keep those troops of ours safely on the beachhead.

  We had ringside seats for one of the greatest events in history. Yet, for those of us flying over the carnage, smoke, and flame, the massive sweep of action lacked the reality of sound. Not even the largest of the thousands of shell bursts reached our ears. Our own engines blanked out all external noise, and we were so used to them as background noise that we heard them only if one of the Allisons coughed or sputtered. All we needed were subtitles to complete the sensation of watching a gigantic, silent epic war movie unfolding below us.

  Everyone in the 479th made it home safely. Debriefing was far more solemn than the day before. Mental exhaustion set in as each pilot dealt personally with the scope and intensity of what he had witnessed.

  The Allied invasion was successful, but that scarcely does justice to the event. Over 350,000 troops and millions of tons of supplies hit the beaches of Normandy between the mouth of the Seine and Cherbourg. Free French forces and Canadians were part of the ground invasion; paratroops and glider troops were inserted before dawn behind what were to be the impact points. The British army hit the beaches in front of the town of Caen at sectors code-named Sword and Gold. Air and naval support was provided by the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the Royal Norwegian Navy. Canadians took Juno. There were contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, and the Netherlands joining in the fight. Our troops landed to the west on beaches named Utah, Pointe du Hoc, and Omaha. The scope of the operation can barely be appreciated.

  Throughout that day and the days that followed, our group patrolled over the invasion forces. We flew our missions over the beaches and farther inland as the troops advanced. Missions soon turned routine, and as time passed, we began to sneak still farther inland. The Luftwaffe never showed, but the battle became a personal thing. We identified with the ground troops as they clawed their way up the bluffs and fought their way through the hedgerows. Gunsmoke and artillery bursts marked their progress. It was remarkably sobering to see the hundreds of American and British gliders littering the fields and orchards. Some
were intact, but many had run head-on into the hedgerows bordering every open space and lay there smashed in crunched-up heaps. Their invasion stripes stood out starkly against the green of the fields, and I felt a pang at the thought of the men on board those wrecks. I wondered how many of them had survived, but, all too quickly, our concern for their fates melded into the relentless routine of the war. Increasingly we knew that fate had little time for individuals.

  Tons of supplies and ammunition, supporting tens of thousands more men, were poured onto the beaches during the next couple of weeks. By then we felt that nothing could stop our armies as they expanded the beachhead and moved inexorably inland. There was stubborn resistance by the German forces. The grind for the infantry and artillery troops was tough, field by field and hedgerow by hedgerow. With the beachhead established, two artificial Mulberry harbors were towed across the English Channel in pieces, then quickly assembled by June 9. One harbor at Arromanches was constructed by British forces and the other at Omaha Beach by Americans. The construction was fascinating to watch from the air. Severe storms destroyed Omaha harbor on June 19, and the landing of supplies stopped for several days, but by then the British and American forces combined had landed well over 600,000 men, 100,000 vehicles, and 200,000 tons of supplies.

  Each of the pilots in the 479th Group flew ten to twelve missions over the Normandy beachhead in the two weeks following D-day. Exciting as the whole affair might have been, we still lacked personal involvement, for we still hadn’t engaged the enemy air forces. Daily combat reports from the other 8th AF groups told of furious action, some air, mostly ground. Each day we were briefed on the progress the troops had made. The first major movement seemed to be a thrust by American forces that were fighting intensely on the roads to Cherbourg at the end of the Cotentin Peninsula. The Allies needed a deepwater port and needed it badly, but it would be almost two months before the port of Cherbourg became operational again.