Fighter Pilot

by Christina Olds

  We had only a glimpse of the Big Picture, but we were swept along with the tide of national emotion and felt it on a visceral level. We were able to keep up with the war news and follow the overall action from briefings in the squadron meeting room, through florid reports in the English tabloids, and through our own Stars and Stripes newspaper. In the fields of Normandy our troops fought slowly from town to town, facing stubborn resistance from the Germans dug into defensive positions behind every mound and sunken road. It was tough going but they persisted. We learned of their bravery through our favorite source of news: the great correspondent Ernie Pyle. As usual, Pyle was right there with the attacking units at the front line of the action. We all loved and respected the man for the way he kept the free world in touch with news of the individual fighting GI. He had done this throughout the African campaign, across Sicily, then on into Italy. Now he was in France and still at it. He wrote of big events in terms of the little guy who was making them work. Later, he went to the Pacific to cover the war and, sadly, was gunned down by a Japanese sniper on Ie Shima, a coastal island off Okinawa. It was a tragic loss.

  After two weeks of providing beachhead cover, the 479th was released to join a bombing campaign designed to slow the movement of enemy supplies and reinforcements. We were thankful at being switched to interdiction missions throughout northern and central France. We loaded 500- and 1,000-pound bombs to hit bridges and rail yards. We dive-bombed supply dumps and troop concentrations. We strafed airfields and shot up truck convoys. It was wild, and though we suffered steady attrition, we didn’t let up. We were hitting Hitler finally and it felt damned good. Anything remotely resembling enemy activity came under our guns and bombs. For the young, dumb, and eager, this was more like it! We were no longer the new guys on the block. It was a relief. Our missions were only a very small part of the war, but intensely meaningful to a group of young pilots just barely into our twenties.

  Our losses were dispiriting yet not devastating. We dispelled sadness by lauding our fallen comrades over pints of beer. Old friends disappeared, replaced by a stream of new faces at the mess and briefings. Our CO wrote dispassionate daily reports of pilots lost, but always concluded with an optimistic “and we hope for their safe return.” Time had little meaning. One day flowed into the next. Looking back, I can see how we changed individually and as a squadron. We were maturing as warriors, not necessarily as civilized men. What had been exciting a month ago became routine. Rather than flying willy-nilly into danger, we thought before we acted, acted quickly whenever we had to, yet still felt frustrated when the action passed us by and the older groups were given the more lucrative targets, or when operational reports told of aerial battles that we had missed.

  Those of us who survived those days went on to fly and fight with an appreciation of life that can be known only by those who have been in combat. Laughter was as profound as sadness. Friendships deepened. Every moment of each day felt exactly right, and the edges of time seemed tinged by light.

  6

  The Heat of Many Battles

  The third week of June started with a bang. Make that several. A B-17 bellied into a field about 500 yards from the officers’ club. The crew escaped, except for the tail gunner, who didn’t get out. We were in the club when the bomber hit, and we ran out to help. We were held back by the intensely burning fire and watched as the crash guys raced to put it out. Quite a crowd had gathered, but there were plenty of men on the job, so we stayed out of their way—until crewmen started running away from the aircraft toward where we were standing.

  “Bombs!” one yelled as they streaked past us. “The fucker’s loaded with bombs!”

  We turned en masse and hightailed it back toward the shelter of the closest buildings, tripping over one another. I raced pell-mell into the club, barreled through the tables, and dove behind the bar.

  “KABOOM!”

  The concussion of the massive explosion blew out the facing windows of every building in the vicinity. The front of the officers’ club was completely ventilated, several bottles of fine whiskey were sadly destroyed, and my ears rang for hours. Fortunately, no one was hurt beyond minor cuts from flying glass. We spent the rest of the day sweeping up shards covering every surface in the club.

  News came that Lieutenants Kuentzel and Grdenich had failed to return from a mission. They’d been trapped atop an overcast topping out near 28,000 feet. When last seen, both aircraft were in a steep spiral headed for the ground near Rouen. Just three days later, more bad news. This time, four were lost, including my pal Al Tucker. He was hit by flak while returning home on one engine. Canella, Ilsley, and Lutz went down, too, lost forever; but it turned out that “Tuck’s Luck” held, and Al survived to sit out the rest of the war in a Stalag Luft.

  Bad weather kept us grounded until the Fourth of July. We were celebrating Independence Day the afternoon the squadron finally got airborne. Captain Jeffrey led us on a sweep of the area Saintes-Niort-Saumur-Nantes. We did everything we could to lure the elusive Luftwaffe out of its hiding place. No deal. We had to settle for taking out five locomotives and about a dozen supply vehicles. Lots of strafing but more frustration about never seeing any air-to-air combat.

  Finally! Victory for the 479th at last! On the fifth, Jeffrey drew first blood from the enemy when he found an Fw-200 Condor taking off from the Château-Bernard Airdrome and shot it down before anyone else could get close. The O club scene that night was memorable! The following day, Lieutenant Tipps got the squadron on the board again by downing an Me-109. The rest of us were itching to continue the streak and were frustrated as hell by weather socking us in for four days. It had to be a joke.

  Gleason and I got some jollies blasting an ammunition dump on the fifteenth but we both limped home with damaged ships. We were lucky. Both P-38s were full of holes, mine from flak and Gleason’s from debris that was blown into the air when the dump went up. Sergeant Wold’s face was the picture of misery when he saw his airplane, but it didn’t stop him from running to get a camera before I’d even taxied to a stop. For him, even battle damage was a validation that his airplane was part of the war.

  In mid-July I became a flight commander and was promoted to captain. Although the promotion wouldn’t be official until August 1, the news mitigated some of my frustration over zero kills and formed a heady, make that headstrong, brew. I guess I decided to take it out on our intelligence officer, Mother Horton, by stressing what I thought was an intelligent point. After all, he was the one who told us where the Nazis were and weren’t, wasn’t he?

  I barged into the ops office one afternoon and said, “Hey, Don, you busy?”

  Captain Horton looked up from his cluttered desk and gave me a welcoming smile. “What’s up, Robin? You mad at someone or something this morning? Why don’t you go work it off by drawing another cartoon.”

  By this time, almost everyone in the squadron knew that I spent a lot of time in meetings doodling what I was feeling on whatever piece of paper I could find. It seemed a more reasonable thing to do than react verbally to express my frustration. Maybe I was just bored. Horton, in his damned debriefings, had already been the subject of a few of these doodled caricatures, and unfortunately, he’d seen a couple of them.

  I thought this might make it up to him. “Naw, Don, not mad, just thought if you had time we could go for a ride in the piggyback.”

  Horton’s eyes lit up at that and I knew he was ready. He hadn’t been flying yet, despite dispensing intelligence reports and debriefing us after missions. We’d been trying to schedule the two of us in the makeshift two-seater P-38 for a couple of weeks, and the right time had hit this morning. I’d already been out on the flight line conferring with the crew chief, and the aircraft was all set to go. I didn’t bother to tell Don that the armorer had been asked to load and charge the four .50s and the 20 mm gun. That was going to be my little surprise. The weather was perfect for what I had in mind: a solid deck of clouds at 800 feet and almost 300 feet thick c
overed all of East Anglia, stretching across the North Sea and well out over the Continent.

  I took Don into the parachute shop to fit him with a chute and helmet. Sergeant Claybaugh and I tried not to grin as Don bent his lanky frame into the chute straps before pulling the helmet down over his scraggly hair. With his long, lean body and his head jutting forward over a prominent Adam’s apple, he looked like Ichabod Crane of Sleepy Hollow. The image was so acute, I often caught myself about to call him that. It’s how he was portrayed in my doodles.

  Claybaugh, nicknamed “Mudnuts,” drove us out to the piggyback’s hardstand. I wasn’t so sure the crew chief wouldn’t give me away. No one had loaded ammunition into his guns before, and he seemed nervous as I performed a walk-around. I calmed him down by saying I was going to a practice range on the west side of the Wash (the North Sea), and promised I’d be careful not to hurt his bird. I suspected he was thinking about having to persuade someone to clean those guns later and didn’t relish the thought.

  Finally, Don asked, “Robin, where are we going? What are we going to do?”

  “Tell you what, Don, how about going up north just below the Wash? The countryside up there looks a lot like Holland: windmills, canals, dikes, real flat, pretty farms and little villages. I think you’ll be interested.” Don agreed, and we set about getting him folded into the small space behind me where the radio normally sat. That put Don’s head peering just over my shoulder when I strapped in.

  Engine-start and takeoff went smoothly, and I turned north as we cleared the runway. I kept the bird in a climb, and we quickly entered the thick overcast. I leveled, made a sneaky turn east, then continued my climb. We burst into sunlight and hurtled up into a bright blue sky. I heard Don gasp and couldn’t blame him, knowing he had just experienced that always-exciting moment for the first time. I know I never tired of it and was pleased he reacted as he did.

  “Hey, Don,” I asked, “how about a few maneuvers? OK?”

  He shouted his approval, and I pulled the nose up to do a gentle barrel roll left, then right. I leveled, added power, pulled up almost vertically, and rolled inverted. I let the nose come through with the least g-force possible, and we sailed over the top, then down the other side of my loop. He gave several excited whoops. I pulled out of the loop gently, not wanting to slam Don with too many g’s in his cramped position. I also didn’t want him to park his breakfast on my shoulder!

  I headed east and kept my eye on the clock as we did more gentle maneuvers. When I estimated we had crossed the North Sea I hollered, “I’m going down through the cloud deck. We should be just south of the Wash by now.”

  Don peered over my left shoulder as we descended. I knew he hadn’t the slightest idea where we were.

  As we broke out of the clouds, I made a couple of quick turns to get my bearings. Yep, we were over Holland all right. I turned away from the marshaling yards near Amsterdam before Don could see the city, then followed a canal running in a northwesterly direction. He paid rapt attention as I pointed out the canals and windmills. A truck convoy baited me as it barreled down a highway, and I was tempted. Targets like that don’t happen every day. The Jerries probably had a flak truck or two mixed in the convoy, and that wouldn’t do just now.

  “Looks just like Holland, Don,” I shouted.

  He nodded and craned his neck as far as the canopy would allow as he took in the sights. “Just like I knew it would look,” he yelled. “Wow, windmills in England, too.”

  We stooged around for a while, letting him soak in the sights. I was keeping my eyes peeled for any airfields or flak sites. Getting shot up wasn’t part of the planned scenario.

  Finally I spotted what I had been looking for and yelled to Don, “See that train down there at nine o’clock? Let me show you how we set up a strafe pass.”

  He didn’t respond as I turned and dove at the locomotive. I had switched on the sight and guns a long time ago, so everything was in readiness. I pulled the sight up through the freight cars, and as it went forward of the engineer’s cab, I pulled the trigger.

  Four .50 caliber guns and a stream of 20 mm went roaring into the target. It was a good clean hit. The boiler blew with a huge plume of smoke and steam.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Don screamed. “What are you doing?”

  “Strafing that train,” I hollered back.

  “But … but … that’s not … but it’s … holy shit!… YOU CAN’T!” Poor Don was choking on his words. A glance over my shoulder and I swear his eyeballs were about to pop out of his head.

  Just at that moment a stream of tracers arced over the canopy, and I jerked the bird around violently in an evasive maneuver. More flak came at us from my right, and I rolled and yanked the nose down to get on the deck. We flashed across Rotterdam and really took some heavy stuff. This is no longer funny, I thought, and headed west just a few feet above the ground as fast as I could go. Fortunately, we didn’t take any hits. I was damned glad to make it to the coast and head for home. I was soaked with sweat and breathing deep sighs of relief.

  Don didn’t speak to me all the way back across the North Sea to England. Of course he realized by then what I had done. It was reasonable to assume he was not amused. I felt a bit guilty and wondered if it had been worth it. I had to do something to make it come out all right with our esteemed squadron intel officer. Besides, he outranked me and had it in his power to make me darned remorseful. We landed, taxied in, and shut down without another word.

  Don’s expression was grim as we rode the jeep back to the 434th Squadron dispersal. After entering the door and dumping our flight gear, I turned to him and said, “OK, time for debriefing.” That got his attention. Maybe he hadn’t forgotten how we griped when he asked those scores of questions every day after our missions.

  We entered his office. I grabbed the notepad he always used when grilling us and sat down in his chair behind his desk. I began, “OK, Don, let’s get started. What was our takeoff time? Where did we cross out? At what time and where did we go feet dry on the Continent?”

  Don shifted uneasily on the chair we pilots normally occupied when being debriefed.

  “How many trucks were in that convoy we passed? Which way were they headed? What road were they on? Here, show me on the map. How many trains in that marshaling yard outside Amsterdam? Did we only get that locomotive or did we make a second pass on the supply cars?” I kept on as Don grew increasingly annoyed.

  “Where did we pick up that flak? What kind was it? Did you count the guns? Was—”

  He stopped me. “OK, Robin, you’ve made your point. I don’t know any of that and probably never will. Now, thanks for the lesson. Get off my back and get the hell out of here!”

  Believe me, I was damned glad to see him crack a smile as I hurried out. It occurred to me that this story might be better left untold for the time being. Damned shame. I thought it would go over well in the mess or at the pub. Maybe later when Don simmered down a bit and had a couple of beers. I realized I couldn’t claim a locomotive, or even a mission, as I biked over to the officers’ club for a pint of bitter. It turned out I couldn’t tell anyone about this adventure without getting in more hot water with my squadron CO. I knew he wouldn’t see any value in my prank, and I hoped Don would keep his own mouth shut. He did.

  It occurred to me that I needed a break. It did seem a long damned time after arriving in May before I finally got a three-day pass in July. To be honest, up to then, I hadn’t wanted one. I was afraid I might miss some of the action and couldn’t bear the thought of anyone in the squadron getting into a hassle with some Jerry fighters while I was off gallivanting around England. It was past time for a couple of days off.

  Guys had started going off to London in mid-June, but the most popular entertainment came in the form of a C-47 that landed once a week to drop off and pick up six pilots to head to Scotland for a six-day “rest cure.” Judging by the way the returnees would stumble off the plane with wild tales of beautiful
women, single malts, and Drambuie, then head straight for bed, it might as well have been a ten-day rest cure because it took them four more days to recover.

  While Scotland was tempting, London was my first target. Exploring that great city had been a dream since boyhood. The possibility of maybe meeting up with one of the Red Cross girls from an O club party made it an easy choice. With my request for a pass approved, I threw a more-or-less clean shirt, pair of socks, two pairs of shorts, three oranges I had saved, and two fists full of pound notes into my musette bag, then caught the shuttle truck to the Ipswich train station.

  I sat up front with the driver, a corporal who seemed about nineteen years old but acted remarkably knowledgeable in the ways of the British. He announced he’d been in the United Kingdom for almost a year, and it was apparent he thought that gave him seniority over any and all lieutenants, especially pilots. On our way to Ipswich I was subjected to a steady stream of yak about pubs, English chicks and how to catch one, pubs, girls, pubs, girls, and pubs. An occasional reference to “Limeys” made me uncomfortable, but I figured that word was supposed to reflect a certain “old-timer” status that was more of a put-on attitude than something actually felt.

  In his way, the corporal represented the majority of the very young and brash American GIs in England. His attitude interested me as part of my own learning curve. Some might have resented him, but I enjoyed every minute of the ride. To my mind, the farms and small villages were like the illustrations in the wonderful ten-volume set of Journeys Through Bookland my father had given to me. The books, which proceeded from volume 1 nursery rhymes to the sophisticated essays of Pope and the letters of Chesterfield in volume 10, were old friends and had implanted an imagery that now matched reality.