The beat was strong and irresistible. So were the marching songs, which made long hikes about the base almost pleasant. We had become a unit, and actually enjoyed it at times. We struck up a steady rhythm as we swung along, singing ‘I've Been Working on the Railroad,’ ‘Into the Air, Army Air Corps,’ and ‘Around Her Neck, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon’ (for her airman who was ‘far, far away.’) The second verse was quickly corrupted to ’around the block, she wheels a baby carriage.’ Singing, marching, chanting, joking and griping made our lives much more tolerable.
The sergeant was an Army career man who shaped batches of clumsy civilians into fairly respectable soldiers. He taught us to run through the manual of arms smartly with our carbines, to salute properly, and to don a gas mask in minutes. When we failed to measure up, he chewed us out unmercifully.
‘What a piss poor excuse for soldiers y'all are,’ he told us early one morning for some good reason. ‘Y'all don't fall out on time, ya don't get the drill raht, ya don't salute raht, ya don't do nothing’ raht. We're gonna lose this goddamn war sure as hell if it's up to the likes a y'all.’
‘That's a double negative, Sarge,’ someone offered.
‘What? What'n hell do you mean?’
‘That we don't do nothing right—that means we do something right.’
‘You do like hell. This is the saddest lookin' bunch that's ever come through here. I swear to hell we're gettin' to the bottom of the goddamn barrel. The krauts must be lickin' their chops to get at the likes a you sad bastards.’
A member of our squad was standing in the darkness in the back row. With his lips pursed and unmoving, he muttered—‘Blow it out your ass.’
‘What? WHAT? Who said that? Who said that?’ the sergeant demanded, glaring into the formation. He paced in front of us, staring at each man.
‘Somebody's buckin' for a year a KP, and he's gonna get it. Who's the smartass? Who's the smartass?’ There was no answer.
‘All right, you guys—twenty five push-ups, ev'ry goddamn one of ya, raht nahw.’
We dropped to the ground to do as he said, but we were smiling among ourselves. Even a touch of revenge felt good.
A Greensboro boy would come into the barracks at night to sell newspapers. He was often met by a chorus of cries.
‘Here comes another rebel,’ someone called out. ‘Nail everything down!’
‘Grab your wallets, men.’
‘Don't let him outta sight.’
The boy strode down the long aisle between the double bunks, looking straight ahead. ‘Fuck-in' Yan-kees,’ he said, drawing out the words with a marvelous drawl.
Our turn came for KP. [5] Innocent as a babe, I showed up at the mess hall on my assigned morning. The older hands on the base disappeared magically into jobs that lasted only through each meal, ladling out oatmeal or scrambled eggs. I ended up at a huge sink, washing pots and pans by hand. The sun rose on the far side of the building as I stood there, and it set behind me as I scoured. I was at the sink most of the day. Just when I thought those of us who remained were finished, an officer came into the kitchen, tested the silverware with a glove, and ruled that it was so greasy that it had to be washed again with vinegar.
Mail call was the high point of each day. We went down to the mail room and waited to hear our names, or renditions of them, called out. ‘Yo,’ we shouted, and picked up our letters. There often was one from Bake, for we had begun to write frequently. I saved her letter for last and looked for some sign that she cared for me. She generally signed them ‘Love.’ Later, it was ‘All my love’ or ‘Much love.’ ‘SWAK’—Sealed With a Kiss—began to appear on the back of the envelopes, along with a lipstick imprint. I was pleased by that show of affection. After a while, she sent me a photo of herself, auburn hair failing to her shoulders. I kept it in my box of writing materials and studied it often.
Pay day saw long lines of airmen waiting in front of a table. An officer sat with a log book containing our names and serial numbers. As we stood there, a soldier glanced at the sky.
‘Looks like it might cloud up and rain,’ he said.
A big, black sergeant stood behind me. ‘I don't care if it cloud up and shits,’ he said, ‘Ah'm gonna stay here and get my money.’
That night men gathered in a corner of the barracks to shoot dice. Some walked away with fistfuls of bills. Others had lost all, or most, of their monthly earnings, and soon were borrowing from their friends. I did not understand how they could be so foolish.
We set out one day on a twelve mile hike to a rifle range, carrying carbines, packs and gas masks. It was a long, hot trip. As we neared the range, tired and sweaty, a jeep roared past, releasing a cloud of tear gas. Eyes burning, we fumbled for our gas masks and swore vigorously at the disappearing vehicle. It was a good lesson, but we failed to appreciate it.
At the range we lived in tents, ate from mess kits, and spent the days firing rifles and pistols at targets. We were eighteen years old. Stretched out in our cots at night, we could hear far off train whistles and were homesick.
*
Back at the main camp, we took tests to find out if we could enter preflight training. The end of the war in Europe was in sight, so fewer cadets were being chosen for the lengthy program. Only one man from our group was selected. I was so ashamed that for days I could not bring myself to write home that I would be going into gunnery school instead of preflight classes. We packed our gear, shouldered it all, and marched off to the railroad tracks and a waiting train. Our sergeant shook our hands and wished us well.
‘Y'all are going to do okay,’ he said. ‘You shaped up good.’
We boarded a ‘cattle car’ troop train that contained rows of bunk beds. I liked the arrangement; instead of Pullman berths that forced two men to share a wide lower bunk, there were rows of individual bunks on floor to ceiling steel legs. In between the bunks were wide aisles. We could move about freely in the open areas, and nap or read on our bunks during the day. No serviceman will ever forget the smell of the smoke that wafted back from the engine, or the grit that sifted through cracks and covered everything.
Standing patiently in the long chow lines with our mess kits, we were jostled by the movement of the cars. Looking out the windows, we were introduced to the poverty of the rural South. As I watched the shacks and small towns of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana slide by, I realized how fortunate I had been to grow up in our river valley village. The railroad crossing arms would be down as the train sped along the drab main streets, bells ringing as we shot past, the men waving and shouting at the girls as the girls waved back. Sometimes the train would halt in the middle of a town; the most adventuresome men would race to a nearby store and run back with all the beer they could carry before the train moved on.
We were on our way to the air base at Harlingen, Texas. The school was near the Gulf Coast, just above Mexico. We arrived at night, picked up our bedding, and retired. I awoke in the morning to find myself in a world unlike any I had ever seen. Suddenly it was summer—there were palm trees, soft warm breezes, and suntan uniforms. High in the cloudless skies, four engine bombers droned continually on their training flights.
Our six weeks of gunnery school was a fascinating experience. There was no KP or other drudgery; we were a privileged class being readied for war. It was a grand adventure, still unrelated to the deadly aerial battles then taking place over Europe. Our instructors told us about the piercing cold in a bomber at high altitude, about the damage that antiaircraft fire can inflict, and about the way bullets were deflected by the shielding on the front of an attacking Focke Wulf fighter, but it did not really sink in. Much of that was due to the matter of fact way in which the information was presented, without reference to death, wounds, or downed crews. I had a distinct feeling that one of our instructors in particular, a staff sergeant who had flown twenty five missions with the Eighth Air Force over Germany and looked older than his years, was sparing us the worst details. He held himself apart, and
I sensed that he felt sorry for us.
One day at a range where we learned to fire machine guns, I asked an older ground attendant if he had ever flown. ‘Are you crazy? he answered. ‘I've seen them wash too many of you guys out of a crash with a hose.’ It was a sobering statement, but we laughed when I repeated it that night in the barracks. We were seated in an auditorium another time when an officer casually told us that a third of the men in the room would be killed, wounded or taken prisoner. I felt sorry for the others, for surely nothing could happen to me. Youth is optimistic, feels indestructible, and sees life as infinite. Thus young people ride bicycles blindly around comers, drive cars too fast, and fight wars.
I wondered how they would teach me to kill another man. I hated fist fights, never hunted animals, and always tried to be kind to others. What would they do to change my nature? The answer is easy—they simply give you the training, the equipment, some indoctrination, and the opportunity. You can either shoot back, or regret it. And of course you could not let your buddies down, or be seen as cowardly.
Whatever was needed, we worked into gradually. There were slide shows of German, Japanese, American and British aircraft. We called out the names of the Zeros, Spitfires, Me-109s, Lightnings, Nicks, P-47s, P-51s and Focke-Wulfs as they flashed by. As a model builder and an airplane freak for so many years, I found it all very familiar.
Then came a turn with guns that fired a stream of BB pellets at a model airplane that moved on a track across a painted canvas sky. What adventurous boy could resist that game? It was good, clean, harmless fun. We peppered the model as it emerged from behind a ‘cloud’ and sped across an open expanse. Later we went out to a skeet range, where we fired shot guns at circular clay pigeons as they were catapulted in front of us. Leading the black saucers by a radius or two, we shattered them by the hour. There must be a stratum of broken birds several feet thick at that site today. We graduated from the stationary skeet range to the back of an open truck that circled an oval track. Catapult stations were located at various points along the route. We stood in the back of the vehicle and took turns firing our shotguns at the skimming targets as we drove along, compensating for both the movement of the truck and the trajectory of the birds.
One morning we were marched to a large classroom building. Inside was an area that contained several metal topped tables. Mounted on a pedestal at one table was a large, black, lethal looking machine gun. An instructor stood in front of us, his arm resting on the gun.
An armorer working on a .50 M2.
Credit:browningmgs.com.
‘Men, this here is a .50 caliber, Browning M2 machine gun. It is a belt-fed, recoil-operated, air-cooled weapon. It can fire twelve to fourteen rounds a second, maximum, but that would burn out the gun barrel fast if you kept it up for long. So don't ever do it. Instead, we rapid fire forty rounds a minute, in bursts of six to nine rounds, at five to ten second intervals to save the barrel. Before you're done, you're gonna learn this baby inside out and backwards. If you don't, it could be your ass, and I don't mean maybe! So listen careful.’
We did just that in the weeks that followed. The .50 caliber was a brute of a weapon, heavy, accurate, and rapid firing. It weighed eighty pounds, and could shoot half inch diameter bullets more than four miles with a muzzle velocity of 2,900 feet a second. Its most effective range was up to 600 yards.
Day after day, we took the gun apart, learning the name and function of every piece. I removed the rear buffer plate, examined the buffer discs, released the driving spring rod, and withdrew the shiny steel bolt assembly. I could not help but admire the smooth, beautifully machined unit that pulled the rounds steadily into the gun, slammed them into the breech, fired, recoiled, ejected the clips and cartridges, and then repeated the process. We were shown how to keep the gun oiled and in good repair, and how to clear malfunctions. The day finally came when I could put on a blindfold, dismantle the weapon, spread the parts out on the table, then put them all back together. I smiled with satisfaction after the job was completed.
A machine gun firing range was located in the sand dunes near the Gulf Coast. Rows of .50s were mounted on steel pedestals, facing targets half a mile away. Holding a bucking gun by its two handles, I sent a torrent of bullets into a target area, creating geysers of sand and dust. The noise hammered my ears and the brass cases spewed into the air as long belts of ammunition were devoured. I did not let myself think about a similar stream of enemy slugs that someday could come flying back in my direction.
The next step was a visit to a large hangar at Harlingen that contained heavy wooden platforms. Mounted on them were the electrically driven nose, ball and tail turrets that were found in B-24 Liberator bombers. Each turret contained two .50 caliber machine guns. We learned how to operate each of the turrets, swinging the units from side to side, and the guns up and down. The nose and tail turrets were like tiny greenhouses perched out on the edge of nowhere. I felt highly vulnerable sitting in them, surrounded only by thin, clear plastic.
The Sperry ball turret hung below the fuselage of both the B-24 and the B-17 Flying Fortress to protect the underbelly of the bombers. The turret was a metal and Plexiglas ‘goldfish bowl’ about three feet in diameter. It called for smaller men who could curl up inside for long periods of time. The B-24 ball had to be raised from its position beneath the plane so that the gunner could enter. The turret then was lowered into place. We practiced the routine on the platform. The ball would be brought up, secured, and the hatch opened. I would climb in, the hatch would be closed overhead, and the ball would be eased downward. Today, the memory of the practice gives me claustrophobic shivers; at that time, it was simply another command to be obeyed.
In still another classroom an instructor described the famous Air Force clock system for reporting the positions of attacking aircraft. ‘Twelve o'clock’ was directly ahead of the bomber, ‘three o'clock’ was off the right wing tip, ‘six o'clock’ behind the tail, and so on. Accordingly, a fighter closing in at ‘seven o'clock low’ was to the lower right of the tail gunner, and one at ‘twelve o'clock high’ was approaching the pilots from above.
The instructor held up a model of a German Me 109 fighter. ‘Suppose I'm a German sittin' out here like this at three o'clock, checkin' you out and gettin' ready to come in,’ he said. He positioned the model as if it were flying parallel to the front row of our class, the nose pointing to our left. ‘Here's what to look for. You watch his inner wing tip like a hawk. If the guy is really serious, the wing will tilt up, and he'll come sweeping in and drop back toward the tail of your plane, like this.’ He tipped the wing up and let the plane fall off to our right, the nose pointed steadily at us.
German ground crew pushes Me109 onto tarmac, fall 1943, France. Credit: Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-487-3066-04 via Wikimedia Commons.
‘That's called a pursuit curve. It holds the fighter right on target every inch of the way. If the guy is a little chicken—sometimes they are—he'll dip the inner wing down and cut around behind you, like this.’ He showed us how the fighter would bank sharply down and away to its left.
‘That's a fly through. It means that his fire will be scattered and much less accurate, like a hose sweepin' across a lawn instead of being pointed straight at you all the time. You'll like that. And for God's sake, don't waste your ammunition on a fighter flying alongside you way out here, doing no harm! Hold your fire until he starts coming in. You're going to need every round you've got!’ With those heartening words, we were ready to take to the air.
*
Several AT-6 training planes awaited us on the flight line at Harlingen one morning. They were low wing, single engine aircraft with an open cockpit in the rear. A thirty-caliber machine gun—the ‘little’ brother of the fifty—was mounted behind the cockpit. We were handed leather helmets, goggles, parachute harnesses and parachutes, and told how to use them. A sergeant gathered us around a trainer. He told us we would be flown out to the Gulf, where we would fire at targets as we fl
ew low over the water.
North American AT-6C-NT Texan trainer, 1943. Credit: USAF, public domain.
‘Two things,’ he said, holding up his fingers. ‘One, don't shoot the tail off the airplane. If you do, somebody's going to be mad as hell, including the pilot. Second, remember to space your bursts. If you don't, you'll burn out the barrel, and then I'll be mad.’
Several of my companions flew first. Some returned swallowing hard, or with less color in their faces. When my turn came, I put on my equipment and climbed into the rear seat for my first airplane ride. The bored pilot sped out to the runway, paused as briefly as a bird on a bush, then roared into the air. Looking down at the countryside, I was exhilarated. The houses, barns and cars were small toys far below. We continued toward the Gulf. Suddenly the plane banked, dropped, and swooped across the shallow water. I fired at the floating targets, taking care to do as I had been told. The bullets tore into the water, coming near a Mexican fishing boat that had strayed into the area to pick up stunned fish. A man dove overboard, not knowing that I had no intention of hitting the boat. We repeated the run, then returned to the base. In retrospect, the main objective of the flight may have been to see if we were fit to fly. If we managed to hit the water, did not get sick, missed the tail and spared the gun barrel, we passed.
We began flying in different kinds of bombers as the pilots practiced piloting, the navigators navigating, the bombardiers bombing, and the gunners, gunning. We donned fleece lined helmets, jackets, pants, gloves and boots and clambered into an old B-24 Liberator bomber. It roared down the runway, lifted from the ground and slowly climbed upward. After a time, we put on our oxygen masks and plugged the long hoses into the ship's system.
Standing beside an open waist window some 25,000 feet in the sky, I marveled at the clarity of the air, the brilliance of the sunshine, and the vapor trails that formed long streamers behind our plane. Flight at those altitudes in those days was an adventure requiring heavy clothing and oxygen masks. Today it is commonplace to fly comfortably six miles above the earth in pressurized cabins.
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