Last to Die

by Stephen Harding

  It was as a high school junior that Tony discovered another creative outlet. An average student in most subjects, he excelled in drafting and mechanical drawing. Having designed a built-in bookshelf for the family home as part of a school assignment, Tony went on to a considerably more ambitious project: he drew up the complete plans for opening up an enclosed stairway in the King Street house by taking out most of a non-load-bearing wall and replacing it with a mahogany handrail and white balusters.

  Tony’s skill with the drafting pen apparently grew from some innate creative ability, for he was also something of an artist. He occasionally worked with watercolors but his preferred medium was simple graphite. His pencil sketches of people, objects, and landscapes decorated his school workbooks and were pinned to the walls of his bedroom. The understanding of scale and perspective that he’d acquired in his drafting classes stood him in good stead in his drawing, as it did when he became interested in photography during his senior year. Tony characteristically immersed himself in all aspects of the art form, including the technical: he was fascinated by cameras and their mechanical components.

  Tony graduated from high school in June 1943, some two months shy of his eighteenth birthday. While he had hopes of ultimately becoming a professional musician, he knew—as did every young and healthy male leaving high school that summer—that his personal plans would have to wait. The United States had been at war for sixteen months and Tony was certain to be drafted after he turned eighteen. Rather than attempt to launch himself into further schooling or a career that would certainly be interrupted before it had truly begun, Tony took a full-time job at the Pottstown factory of the Doehler-Jarvis Corporation. The metal-castings manufacturer produced shell casings and other military matériel, and offered decent wages for workers willing to undertake twelve-hour shifts.

  Tony stayed on the assembly line as summer turned to fall, waiting for the letter that would change his life. But as he waited he also considered his options. He knew that as a draftee he would have no say in the type of duty, or even the branch of service, to which he’d be assigned. Although he was happy to serve his country, he had no great desire to undertake that service as an infantryman or sailor, and he knew that the only way of avoiding either of those possibilities was to enlist before his draft notice arrived. He’d always been fascinated by airplanes and the technical aspects of aviation, so on November 20, 1943, he did what must have seemed the logical thing: he joined the U.S. Army Air Forces.

  RALPH AND EMELIA MARCHIONE were understandably devastated by their only son’s decision to enlist, but they understood his motivations. His sisters were proud and supportive, and when it came time for Tony to report for induction the whole family saw him off at the Pottstown railway station.

  Tony’s first stop was New Cumberland Army Air Field, some sixty miles west of Pottstown and just south of Harrisburg. It was a brief stay, however, for after only a few days of initial processing—which included a basic physical, a host of inoculations, and the assignment of Army serial number 33834700—he and several hundred other young men left the snow-covered post aboard a train bound for a much warmer location, Miami Beach, Florida. Their ultimate destination was officially known as USAAF Technical Training Command Basic Training Center Number 4, and upon his arrival Tony was assigned to Flight X-202 of the 409th Training Group. Over the following four months he and his fellow trainees were introduced to the Army way of doing things, from how to march in formation to how to field strip and fire the standard M1 Garand rifle. This first taste of military life was probably as jarring and as challenging for Tony as it is for most everyone who goes through basic training, but the few records that survive from this period in his life indicate that the young man from Pottstown adapted quickly and did well.

  Tony may have harbored hopes of becoming a pilot, but for reasons that are now lost to history the USAAF apparently had other plans for him. Upon completion of his training in Miami Beach he was transferred to the 569th Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion at Drew Army Air Field near Tampa. As its designation indicates, the 569th’s mission was to locate and identify enemy aircraft in combat zones using mobile ground-based radar systems. The unit had been established just a few months before Tony joined it, and the logical assumption is that he had been tapped for training as either a radar operator or some sort of technician. The surviving records don’t clearly indicate the nature of his assignment with the 569th, yet we can be certain that Tony wasn’t pleased with it. For some reason—most probably because watching aircraft on a radar screen was not his idea of aviation—just weeks after arriving at Drew Field Tony volunteered for a job that would definitely allow him to fly: he signed up to be an aerial gunner.

  As America’s participation in World War II progressed, the Army Air Forces fielded thousands of light, medium, and heavy bombers of various types, and all of them carried defensive machine guns. These weapons were mounted in power-operated, manned turrets (except on the B-29, which used remotely operated turrets) and on flexible, hand-held mounts. The AAF had opened its first flexible gunnery school in 1941 at Las Vegas Army Airfield, and by 1944 it and six other installations were turning out a collective average of 3,000 gunners a month. Because gun turrets were of necessity small and cramped spaces, enlisted gunners could be no more than six feet tall and weigh no more than 180 pounds. Prospective gunners also had to possess excellent eye-hand coordination and have a high level of mechanical aptitude in order to care for their guns and the turret systems.3 At five feet six inches and 125 pounds, Tony Marchione certainly met the physical requirements, and we can assume that his scores on the standard mechanical-aptitude tests were equally sufficient because he was accepted for instruction and transferred to the 38th Flexible Gunnery Training Group at Tyndall Army Airfield in Panama City, Florida.

  Tyndall’s location on the Florida panhandle made it an ideal aerial gunnery training installation, in that the Gulf of Mexico afforded vast stretches of open water that could be used as machine-gun ranges. The first class of students began training in February 1942, and by the time of Tony’s arrival in mid-1944 the process for producing qualified and capable aerial gunners had evolved into a six-week, 290-hour mix of academic and practical instruction.

  Every day that the prospective gunners spent at Tyndall, except Sundays, began in the same way—with an hour of physical training meant to ensure that the young men were fit enough to handle the rigors of aerial combat. Early on in their training they were also tested for their ability to work at high altitudes, an evaluation that was carried out in Tyndall’s low-pressure chamber. The men filed into the air-tight enclosure in small groups, put on demand-flow oxygen masks,4 and then sat, unmoving, until the pressure within the chamber replicated the conditions they would experience at 35,000 to 38,000 feet. They were then told to take off their masks in order to familiarize themselves with the first signs of hypoxia, or oxygen starvation; within minutes they would be unable to perform even simple tasks, and instructors often had to help them put their masks back on. Any man who had obvious difficulty dealing with the altitude—whether it was severe sinus, ear, or vision problems, or an inability to come to grips with the sensations involved—was immediately dropped from the gunner-training program and transferred to other, nonflying duties.

  Those men who passed the altitude tests—including Tony Marchione—went on to learn the nuts and bolts of their new profession, beginning with in-depth study of what would soon be the primary tool of their trade: the Browning M2 .50-caliber heavy machine gun. Over the course of forty-one hours of classroom instruction the trainees studied every aspect of the M2’s design and construction, memorizing the nomenclature, location, and function of every one of the machine gun’s parts. They learned the different types of ammunition the weapon could fire—including ball, tracer, armor-piercing, and incendiary—and how to clean and maintain the eighty-three-pound gun. Most important, the would-be gunners repeatedly practiced how to tear the weapon down and reassembl
e it, a process known as “stripping.” There were two methods the men had to master. The first, detail stripping, involved the disassembly of every removable piece of the weapon and would normally be done only when the “.50-cal” was to be thoroughly cleaned. In the second method, field stripping, the trainees removed only the parts required to discover the source of a given malfunction.5 Given that the latter operation might have to be done in the dark and at altitudes that would require the gunner to wear cold-weather gear, the trainees had to learn to field strip and reassemble the M2 while wearing a blindfold and heavy flying gloves.6

  Though learning the mechanics of the machine gun was important, of course, being able to put the weapon to effective use against the enemy was ultimately the only reason for a gunner’s presence on an aircraft. Tony and his fellow trainees at Tyndall were therefore taught the science of air-to-air gunnery in a series of cumulative steps, beginning with classroom instruction in the physics of projectiles. This covered such topics as how a bullet’s trajectory is affected by gravity and air density, by the speed and orientation of the aircraft from which it is fired, and by the relative speed and position of the target aircraft. The trainees learned how to estimate a target’s speed, range, and direction of flight, and learned to hit a target by using the techniques of deflection shooting—the way in which the gunner must “lead” the target by firing at a point ahead of, below, or above it, depending on circumstances. To aid them in the sighting process the gunners-to-be also learned how to use and maintain a variety of optical and mechanical gunsights.

  All of this theoretical instruction was put into practice on Tyndall’s ground gunnery ranges. After being introduced to and mastering stationary skeet shooting with shotguns (in order to hone their eye-hand coordination), the trainees progressed to shooting at clay pigeons launched from the backs of moving trucks. They then moved on to firing BB guns at carnival-type moving target enclosures, and used electronic “guns” to fire at motion picture images of attacking aircraft projected on a screen. During the third week of training they graduated from “peashooters” to the real thing, firing .50-caliber machine guns first at standing paper targets, then at aircraft-shaped targets moving across the width of the range atop poles attached to pulleys or vehicles. During this phase they fired both from flexible mounts and from a variety of aircraft gun turrets mounted on wooden platforms—turrets that they also had to learn to maintain and repair. In their last week at Tyndall Tony and the other trainee gunners finally got to take to the air, firing from the rear seats of AT-6 Texan dual-place trainers at target sleeves pulled—usually at a safe distance—behind other aircraft. Then, after passing a series of comprehensive examinations that evaluated not only their weapon knowledge and skill but also such other vital abilities as aircraft recognition and combat first aid, the trainees became full-fledged MOS (Military Occupational Skill) 611 aerial gunners, their new incarnation denoted by the silver wings awarded to each man at the graduation ceremony.

  That ceremony was a hugely important waypoint in Tony’s young life, of course, and he marked it by buying a postcard he intended to send to his parents. Purchased at Tyndall’s small post exchange, the card carried a bit of rhyme that expressed the pride and esprit de corps that Tony and his fellow newly minted gunners felt. Titled “A Gunner’s Vow,” it read:

  I wished to be a pilot,

  And you along with me.

  But if we all were pilots

  Where would the Air Force be?

  It takes GUTS to be a GUNNER,

  To sit out in the tail

  When the Messerschmitts are coming

  And the slugs begin to wail.

  The pilot’s just a chauffeur,

  It’s his job to fly the plane,

  But it’s WE who do the fighting,

  Though we may not get the fame.

  If we all must be Gunners

  Then let us make this bet:

  We’ll be the best damn Gunners

  That have left this station yet.

  As it turned out, Tony was able to deliver the card in person, for he was granted “leave en route” to his next assignment and was able to spend a few days at home in Pottstown. He was welcomed joyously by his parents and sisters, and spent most of the precious few days with his family. He taught Gerry the Army Air Forces song and how to jitterbug, the latter a skill he’d apparently picked up during his off-duty hours at Tyndall. His leave ended all too quickly, and at the end of the week Ralph left sixteen-year-old Terry in charge of the shoe shop and he and Emelia boarded the local train to Philadelphia with Tony. At the city’s main terminal they bade farewell to their son, who then boarded a train bound for a place none of the Marchiones had ever been: Arizona.

  Like all newly minted aerial gunners, Tony’s next assignment was to a combat crew training school where he would integrate his skills with those of other airmen before they all shipped out for overseas duty. In his case the school was located at Davis-Monthan Army Air Field, just outside Tucson. Run by the 233rd Army Air Forces Base Unit, part of the 16th Bombardment Operational Training Wing, the 223rd was dedicated exclusively to forming and training ten-man replacement crews for the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber. The pilot, copilot, navigator, and bombardier were officers whereas the others—the flight engineer/top turret gunner; the nose, tail, and ball (belly) turret gunners; and two waist gunners—were enlisted men. All members of the crew had already qualified in their respective skills, and it was during the ninety-day combat crew training that they learned to work and fight as a team.

  Upon his arrival at Davis-Monthan Field Tony was assigned to a crew headed by lanky, twenty-three-year-old Second Lieutenant Robert W. Essig. The Iowa-born pilot had played semipro baseball before entering the service, and his approach to both flying and leadership was professional and competent, but relaxed. Tony eventually wrote home to his parents that Essig was “the best doggone pilot in the country” and a “top-notch leader,” and that “every member of the crew would stick by him till the very end.” Tony also wrote glowingly about three crewmates with whom he became fast friends, fellow gunners Raymond Zech, Rudolph Nudo, and Frank Pallone.7

  It was a good thing that the men of Essig’s crew bonded so well and so quickly, because the training they underwent at Davis-Monthan was intense. Given the nature of the air war in both the European and Pacific theaters, much of that training focused on high-altitude, long-distance formation flying, initially in groups of two to four aircraft and later in twelve-plane “squadron box” formations. The B-24s flew practice missions that lasted eight to ten hours, during which they would drop live bombs on target ranges and undertake formation evasive action against simulated enemy air attack. These flights also offered Tony and the other gunners the opportunity to coordinate their responses to incoming fighters—usually portrayed by war-weary P-40 Warhawks—by alerting each other to the “enemy” plane’s changing position as it zoomed into and through the B-24 formation.

  All of the training that Bob Essig and his men underwent at Davis-Monthan was intended to turn them into a first-rate B-24 bomber crew that could undertake combat missions immediately upon arrival in an overseas theater. Throughout their training Essig and his men had been told that they would ultimately be assigned to a bomb group of Major General Nathan F. Twining’s Italy-based Fifteenth Air Force, a possibility that was especially pleasing to Tony, Rudy Nudo, and Frank Pallone, all of whom still had relatives in the “old country.” But on December 16, 1944, a few days after the crew completed training at Davis-Monthan and while they were awaiting orders for overseas movement to Italy, the plans changed abruptly.8 As Tony later described it:

  It was getting late in the morning and the sun was getting hotter by the minute. The enlisted men of the crew were just getting out of their sacks after a late-morning nap. We didn’t have anything to do now since we were waiting for our final orders to ship out. We all knew that our training here in the U.S. had been completed and that we were headed over
seas for the big fight … we just wanted to get in the fight, for the sooner we got there the sooner this damn war would be over, according to us. One thing each one of us was sweating out was whether we were going to get a furlough to see our families and girl friends before we left.

  Just then Bob [Essig] comes walking in our barracks dressed to kill. He had his pinks [officer’s dress uniform] on and they were as neat as could be, with creases in his pants as sharp as a knife.

  “Well fellows, I have some bad news for you.” As he said this he looked as if he had just lost his best friend. “A special order has just been handed to me stating that five crews have been chosen for advanced training. They want each one of those five crews to report to Will Rogers Field to become a photo-reconnaissance crew. We happen to be one of those five. As to the length of our training, no one knows… . There’s nothing we can do about it. We have until the 25th to report there. Yes, Christmas Day we must be there ready to start school.”9

  This last-minute change of plans was understandably upsetting for Tony and the other members of his crew. They had just completed three months of training to drop bombs on the enemy, not to take his picture. And while they were pleased to learn that they would have nine free days before they had to report to Will Rogers Field in Oklahoma City, they were more than a little dismayed that they wouldn’t be able to actually spend Christmas with their loved ones. Moreover, the young airmen would not be traveling home on official government orders—those would only cover their move from Davis-Monthan directly to their new duty station—so if they chose to go home during the furlough period they would not get any sort of railway priority. In Tony’s case it could therefore take up to three days to make the train journey from Tucson to Pottstown, and at least two days to get from Pennsylvania to Will Rogers.