‘I will send you out in the first group to the Air Corps and I hope to God you’re not lying to me.’
‘I swear I’m not lying.’
Here comes the fun and games. They send me out to the Air Corps without any of my permanent service records, my hospitalization stuff was lost, and I don’t even remember if I went through the second series of needles, I didn’t care at that point. I was with men who were 38 up to 42 years old; they were going to be the laborers in the Air Corps—they were going to build the barracks, grade the roads, and do the menial things. Remember I was eighteen at the time. Every time I fell out, an officer would come by and say, ‘What are you doing with these people?’ I said, ‘You don’t want to know, unless you have my service records.’ I would talk to everybody, anytime a captain, a major, anybody, came by, I’d plead with them, ‘Find my records, I’m supposed to be on the other side of the field taking air cadet training!’ I wrote letters for these men, I listened to them cry at night. They had never been away from home. One man had a funny story, he and his son both went down to the draft board—his son was rejected and he went in.
Finally the major called me in and said, ‘I’ve got some good news for you and some bad news for you, private.’ I said, ‘Let’s hear the good news, sir.’ ‘We’ve got your service records and you are an air cadet trainee.’ I said, ‘That’s wonderful!’ I was in seventh heaven; I’d already gone through basic training. The bad news was I think it was 47,000 cadets were now washed out, summarily; zap, gone, finished! They weren’t killing enough of us, so they cut the program down. I said, ‘What does it mean?’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got a problem. We don’t know what to do with you.’ These air trainees were being sent back to their old units. They had transferred from the infantry or the ski troops or God-knows-what. ‘But you’ve never been in a unit other than the Air Corps. How would you like to get back [in line] as a flyer? If you volunteer to be an aerial gunner, when you finish your missions and you come back, you can get to be a flyer. I will personally see to it.’ I’m listening to this guy and I’m saying to myself, ‘Who the hell is he kidding?’, although I did know a navigator who finished his missions, came back into training and became a pilot. It wasn’t such a bad deal.
‘Malfunction’
So I’m now going to fly. They sent me to the place to become an aerial gunner. You have to understand, I really did want to fly, wanted to see what it was like, wanted a taste of this. Because of my height, they said I’d become ball turret gunner. They told me later that the tail gunners wouldn’t go down in the ball. I had to gain a little proficiency, mechanical ability. If you recall, I said I can’t add 2+2, that is, I don’t like to. They made me learn the machine gun, which was the basic thing. There was a group of two flight engineers, two radio operators, an armorer/gunner, and myself. I was the only career gunner, I think it’s called a ‘612’ or something like that.[7] You had to learn how to field strip the machine gun, you had to be able to take the machine gun apart and put it together, and we were supposed to be able to do it blindfolded. I was always very rebellious and always liked to make a joke. I would put the machine gun together and there would be a couple of parts left over and the sergeant didn’t like that. I said, ‘It looks OK to me’, because it’s flipped in the case. ‘Why do I have to do it blindfolded?’ He said, ‘If you’re flying a night mission and you burn out a barrel—we had extra barrels on the plane, we could put them in—you have to be able to do that.’ I said, ‘If it’s night time and [whoever is trying to kill me] can’t see me and I can’t see him, why do I have to do this?’ My concept was if we just keep the lights off in the plane, he’ll go away. [Laughs] The gunner on a bomber is not supposed to be looking for trouble; he’s supposed to make the trouble go away. [I had to keep doing it]; I went at night on my own time and they gave me the nickname ‘Malfunction’ because I couldn’t get the thing together. It’s important that you know that I understand how things work, I just don’t seem to have the ability to hold on to a screw without dropping it six times. I don’t know the nomenclature of the tools that most men know, certain screwdrivers and certain bits. I just have no interest in that.
*
Now I’ll tell you about people. When you fire a machine gun, it’s not like a pistol or a rifle. It jumps all over the place and a lot of guys would be quite frightened of it. Everybody had to fire this weapon. They had them fix mounted on a tripod and they had a track that [a target] would go around towed by a Jeep with a governor on it to make the Jeep go around without anybody in it. It would go around and around and when it would come by, you would shoot the machine gun. It was a .30 caliber gun and the first time I went out to this range, it came by, I went ‘bang-bang’ and a cartridge exploded in the barrel, in the breech! I had no glasses on and I was hit in the face with the cordite and it caused little blood spots; some of it was indented in my face and when it kicked back like that, I went right down to the ground. The sergeant came over—if I ever met him today, I’d kill that son-of-a-bitch. I mean it, because he said to me, ‘What are you, a coward? Get up, clear it, and do it again.’ I knew later what was wrong with the weapon, but I didn’t know at that time. Naturally, everybody’s looking at you, peer pressure, and I want to do this thing, so I started again, and it blew up again! This time when I’m on the ground I saw a pair of saddle shoes and pinks.[8] The only ones that wear pinks are officers and this officer said to me, ‘Are you alright?’ There were little specks of blood on my face and I said, ‘Yes, sir, I’m fine, it happens all the time.’ He said, ‘What happens all the time?’ I said, ‘The thing opens up, it explodes, the bullet comes out all over your face.’ He said, ‘This happened more than once?’ Well, he dressed that sergeant down. The sergeant came over and whispered in my ear, ‘I’ll kill you if you ever come back here.’ I could have lost an eye, could have lost both eyes! I didn’t realize until later that [he knew] the gun wasn’t put together properly. What possesses somebody to be that callous? I couldn’t put my finger on it; I didn’t know why this guy would do this, at the risk of having some kid lose an eye. He had a cushy job, not being shot at, some place in the States, Florida, Texas, wherever the hell we were. Why did he do that? I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure out a lot of things.
*
Cute story. I was still in gunnery school at the time but we’re sitting around not doing anything, not going anyplace. They said that they needed some volunteers—that’s a bad word by the way, as everybody knows. The deal was that if you pulled guard duty for a week, you’d get a pass to go to New Orleans. I said, ‘OK fine, I’ll do it.’ They gave me a carbine, I checked it out. I was very good with weapons now and I now got live ammo. I’m marching back and forth, back and forth, in the heat. There were some tents there, not too far away, about 100 feet and there were some guys who had been flying Catalinas, they were doing submarine patrol down in New Orleans. I’m going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, sweating like a pig. I can’t see this nonsense about marching because to me, all you had to do was stand in one place and you could turn your head and look back and forth, but that was what the Army wanted you to do. So I noticed a kitten, and the kitten was spitting at something. I got closer to it and it was one of the biggest rattlesnakes I have ever seen, it was a doozey! The kitten is going to get bitten and die, so I’m calling the kitten, but the kitten won’t come over. I figured I never missed anything in my life when I shot, so I pulled back the slide on the carbine, took aim at the snake. This guy in the tent sees me and he’s calling me a son-of-a-bitch because he thinks I’m shooting at the kitten! I pulled the trigger, nothing happens. I eject the bullet, do it again, and nothing happens. They’re lying to me again! I then yelled for the sergeant of the guard. This snake is a god-damned big snake. I figured that if the snake gets into the tent area, they’re going to have a hell of a hard time. The sergeant comes over in a Jeep and I’m trying to figure how I can hit the snake, move the kitten off to the side, I’m beside
myself. He pulled out his .45, but this guy couldn’t hit a god-damned barn if he was sitting next to it. He pointed it at the snake and missed, shot three times. ‘Sergeant,’ I yell, ‘let me have the gun, I can hit the snake.’ I could hit anything; I hit the target all the time. He got pissed, managed to kill the snake. Now I’m now complaining about why my carbine wouldn’t go off. I found out they had filed the firing pin so it wouldn’t strike. What the hell was I doing with a gun that couldn’t work? He got mad at me and he made me stay in the barracks. He said he was going to have me up on charges, and I didn’t know what kind of charges he was referring to, I didn’t do anything wrong, I tried to kill the snake. He couldn’t shoot worth a damn. Maybe I said something, but now I’m in trouble and I don’t know what it is.
I went into the latrine and guess who’s sitting there? The latrines have no stalls back then, and there he was, sitting there on the throne. He glared at me; I didn’t say anything to him. He got up and left. I relieved myself and I looked over to where he had been sitting, and he had taken off his heavy canvas belt that had his .45 on it. I was delighted because you can’t lose your weapon, you cannot lose your weapon. I picked up the .45 and I said to myself, ‘Richard, heave it into the jungle, no one will see you. Let him sweat to figure out where his .45 is.’ Then another voice went off in my head which said, Just because he’s a son-of-a-bitch, you don’t have to be one.’ I went over to where his office was, knocked on the door, and he snarled at me, ‘What do you want?’ I said, ‘I want to give you this.’ [Extends hands] He went like this [Moves hands to sides] and realized his cannon was missing, his .45. I said, ‘You left it in the latrine.’ He realized that I wasn’t such a bad guy and he said, ‘Forget about the charges, you’re free to go back to your unit.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, how about my pass to New Orleans?’ He said, ‘You kids from New York—he was a Southerner—you have a pair of balls on you that I can’t believe.’ He gave me a pass to go to New Orleans, he laughed, I laughed. He would have been in a lot of trouble not to have had his weapon. I went to New Orleans and had a very good time; I went with another guy who was a gunner, it was fun; we had a fun time.
*
After learning how to strip and fix a machine gun and all that, I had to learn how to work the ball turret. The ball turret was an instrument of death, torture, the most ridiculous thing they thought of. It was self-contained, it was held on by a big ring, and on the B-17 it was permanently out of the plane. On the B-24 there was a shaft and hydraulically you’d drop it and then you’d get in it. It was exceptionally tight—you could not wear a parachute in it; you could wear your harness but you couldn’t wear the parachute. When I had to get in it, I always had to turn my face sideways and put my face down on the gunsight and then signal the guy above to slam the door, and invariably I’d get hit on the head with the door. It was not very comfortable.
Let me digress again. If you recall, I desperately wanted to fly. I’d been with men that were 38, 40 years old and our training was nothing and I’d gotten fatter and fatter and lazier and lazier because I wasn’t really doing anything; I was so badly out of shape that I was a good twenty pounds overweight. I was about 185 at the time. When we got to gunnery school and I’m taking the machine guns apart and all that, I had to play catch up with the physical part. I was never much of an athlete when I was young, but I would run with everybody and do everything they did except I just couldn’t get over the wall. I’d hit the wall and my nails would scrape on the wall. I’d always get just my fingers up there. I’m short, some of these guys were six foot and they could just bounce up and grab it and pull themselves up.
There was an officer who thought I was horsing around. I said, ‘I’m trying,’ and I hit that wall. He did catch me once going around it. When I was in high school the coach always yelled at me because they used to make me go around the track and I used to go around, then cut across and then go in the back and read a book. I was the kid who liked to read and I didn’t want to play any of their games.
On my own I went out at night after we did everything we were supposed to damn-well do and I ran, losing weight. I even put crap in a knapsack to try to lose weight. I think I got over the wall. The officer was going to wash me out, but it got to the point where he realized that nobody in their right mind would hit the wall like I hit that wall, I would have gone through the god-damned wall if I could have. I couldn’t get my hands up there! Forget about going up the rope, I could not go up the rope but I did build my chest up, my arms were pretty strong. Anyway, he passed me on that.
*
I wanted to fly and now we had to get into a plane, a B-17, and do our stuff that we were taught on the ground. Underneath the seat of the ball turret was an oxygen tube. We wore an oxygen mask with a certain length of tubing to connect to the oxygen supply. We went up in a B-17 and they outfitted it with long benches. My last name begins with an ‘A’ and I was always first, which was lots of fun, because it would have been nice to learn by watching the other fellow go first for a change. [We’re in the air] and I’m supposed to go down into the turret, hook up to the oxygen, and I’m supposed to stay down there and then they’ll tell me come on up. We’re flying above the level at which you could breathe on your own well; you could get anoxia, get brain damage, and die. You get silly, too. I went down into the turret, put my head down, [had the hatch] slammed shut, but I was not breathing the oxygen, just breathing the air that was in there, pretty thin. I reached for the tube and I got it in my hand, and I can’t make contact. I was breathing heavily and I’m nervous and I don’t know how many minutes went by, but I do know that I can’t stay there because I’ll pass out and frankly, I didn’t know how they would then get me out from above. The sergeant’s was saying to me on the radio, ‘Aren’t you going to get it going?’ I said, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t connect.’ He called me a coward. I was mortified, I was really very upset. I heard the pilot saying, ‘Get him the hell out of the turret.’ I got out and I hooked up to oxygen in the plane and guys are looking at me kind of funny. The pilot orders the sergeant who’s training us to go down and see if what I said was true. He said it was true. Nobody else went down in the turret, we landed and the sergeant was a very good kid, he made all the men stand there and he apologized to me. It seems that some schmuck idiot jerk cut the tube too short. It had frayed and no one was even thinking that the oxygen mask won’t connect; some of these guys just didn’t think these things through. That was the reason and the sergeant apologized and I felt pretty good.
Speaking of anoxia—stay in the middle and never volunteer, right? We go into the pressure tank and they simulate the altitude that you’re going to go up to, and what the pressure is. The sergeant says, ‘We need three volunteers.’ I thought, ‘Boy, this is great, this time I’m in the middle’. He says, ‘You, you, and you’, and I was right in the middle. One guy had to write with a pad and pencil, the other guy had to do something, I forget what, and I had to do exercise, because this will show how a guy will pass out. They started the simulation, you get giddy, you begin to laugh because it’s a great high. The lights got dim in the place, it looked like it was a rheostat, and I’m getting giddy and they slap an oxygen mask on me and give me pure oxygen. The other guy who was writing, his handwriting was going up and down and he finally passed out and they gave him oxygen.
*
The Crew
I met my crew, now the crew is very strange. The pilot was an old man. At that time I was nineteen or twenty, the pilot was 28 or 29, and that was very old. He didn’t take the wire out of his hat, his garrison hat—there was a wire that if you took it out and crunched it, you got that fifty-mission Air Corps look. He had transferred from the infantry, and was he southern, and I don’t think he realized that the Civil War was over.
The second officer was from Kansas, he went to the University of Kansas and he couldn’t fly worth a damn. He was probably the worst pilot in the Air Corps, he was obnoxious. The navigator was a nice guy, he w
as a couple of years older that I am, he was an accountant. He was a flight officer, not an officer, that’s the difference between an enlisted man and an officer; you’re some place in limbo, they gave you a bar with a little color in it, some nonsense like that. We had a bombardier who was afraid. He got us up to 30,000 feet one time and said his bombsight didn’t work and he couldn’t use it. We went back down; it takes a long time to go up to 30,000 feet. It turns out he just didn’t plug it in. We went on a practice mission, supposed to hit a target on an island surrounded by water, surrounded by a federal reserve park. He hit a farm, he was worthless! He didn’t go overseas with us. I thought he was stupid then, later on I realized that he just liked to walk around in an officer’s uniform with a pair of wings. He always wanted everybody to call him ‘Lieutenant.’
The nose gunner was a delight. I don’t know if he had a high school education but he was an engineer, he had mechanical ability. He loved to smoke cigars. The radio operator was a millionaire’s son. They owned a big well known fish cannery. Jimmy was Catholic and he couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted to be a priest or marry a girl. He showed us a picture of the girl and it reminded me of the center for Notre Dame. [Laughs] On the very first mission—and this is one of my anti-Catholic stories—Jimmy took his Saint Christopher’s medal and he hung it in the cockpit and the navigator had a fit because the pilot couldn’t fly the plane correctly because it demagnetized the compass. There was good old Saint Christopher, leading us around in circles. [Laughs] Needless to say, that medal wasn’t used on any more missions. The engineer, his name was Brockmeyer, he looked very young but he was competent at what he was doing. He could fix anything on the plane, did all the magic things. He was a slight kid and he was a wise guy. Once he picked me up in an automobile and said he had hot-wired it. I got out of the car instantly; this kid had stolen the car! The armorer/gunner, Neil, was a nice guy. Neil was from Connecticut and Cornell. Most of the kids on the crew were college men. He was in advanced training and I could have killed him, I hated him for this. He had it! He was in advanced training for flying, he was the cadet officer, and they gave him his orders to go to heavy bombers, to fly multiple engines. He wanted to be a fighter pilot, as we all did; we all wanted to be Eddie Rickenbacker.[9] He got to a guy who wanted to go to bombers; he wanted to make a switch [to fighters]. He must have said it in a loud voice because the Army brass got wind of it and they washed him out. You don’t tell the Army what to do. He ended up in heavy bombers. [Laughs] But when I heard his story, I nearly died because I was just dying to get my hands on the controls of the plane, though I did fly the plane once or twice but just when we were in the air. I liked him; he was a very nice guy. The tail gunner was a ski trooper, they were going to send him back, and he became a tail gunner. He was from the University of Chicago; we had Harvard, we had college men on the crew. The only two non-college kids were the nose gunner and the engineer.
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