Page 91 - Anthology

The bomb group was attached to the Seething, Norfolk, England airfield under the command of Col.
James M. Thomson 1 May 1943 to 1 April 1944 (MIA). There were 10 members in the squad. I was the
right waist gunner and was also responsible for pulling the pins on the bombs. When I got over there,
everybody cleaned their own guns, took care of the gun he was going to use the next day. You would
take them in and clean them and make sure they worked. That way you were not depending on anyone
else to clean your gun.

I can’t remember what we did till we started flying, time just went by. See we were replacements and
when we got to the field, we had been in London longer than the field had been. Most of my missions
were flown in March. We didn’t fly two days in a row. I went on 10 missions. First day of April was our
last mission. We would go into Norwich. Doolittle took over in the middle of March. I thought he was
there, but I found out he was in charge of the whole thing. Doolittle didn’t cancel any missions. We flew to
18,000 feet to get above the fog. Planes would run into each other.

There was one story where an 88 went through the plane. They had to bail out and it went through this
guy’s parachute. He didn’t have a parachute, so I checked out two. The one I was going to use was here
and the other over there. And I had a pair of shoes tied to my parachute. They had two kinds of
parachutes; chest parachutes and back parachutes. The backs were made all together, the front ones
snapped on and you didn’t wear them all the time. If you were going into where there was flack, then you
put them on. Over Berlin, the air was full of flak. The word was that “They got ‘em” meaning the
Germans had more anti-aircraft guns over Berlin than any place else.

Most of my missions were 7 hours, I went to Berlin twice. Most of our missions were ball bearing factories
except the last one. I flew a total of ten combat missions. I was a member of the crew of a B-24 on 1
April 1944. We ran into trouble 40 miles across the English Channel on the return flight. We were short
on gas by 300 pounds from the start to allow for additional bombs. We were loaded with sufficient fuel for
our assigned mission, but we unexpectedly joined a squadron from Italy, our target location changed. It
was a lot deeper than we should have went. We were not fueled for a longer mission. The navigator
keeps telling the pilot we were off course, but he was under orders from Commander of the squadron, so
he had no choice. On the return trip, we ran short of fuel.

The engineer was the top turret gunner. By the time he came down to see what was going on, it was too
late to do anything. We lost power in all but one engine, three motors had gone quiet. It finally quit too.
Our pilot had to turn back to get us over land before ordering us to bail-out. We jumped out the Camera
Hatch. We didn’t bail out until we felt the pilot turn loose of the steering wheel and we knew it was time to
jump. Dickey was injured and therefore unable to open his chute. He was killed; the remaining nine were
captured and became prisoners of war. I got my Purple Heart because I scraped my leg as I jumped.

We had to bail-out over enemy territory; we were about a mile inside France off the English Channel.
Remember, we did not have any actual experience jumping. We had received classroom training only.
Some of the crew said they saw several chutes with holes in them from the Germans shooting at them. I
don’t remember being shot at. I was off to one side and behind. I do remember looking down and seeing
a power line. I did not know when I hit the ground; the last thing I remember seeing was power lines. I
passed out for a short time. They were only about fifty feet away from where I hit the ground. He looked
down on me and in perfect English, he said: “For you the war is over.” I could hear other German soldiers
repeating the same thing to my fellow crew members. I wasn’t worried; my chances of surviving the war
had just increased 100%.

We had invasion money and the Germans knew it. While they were searching my parachute, I changed
into a new pair of shoes I had attached to my chute. They removed our money and searched each of us
for a pistol. We didn’t carry a pistol. We were told that was a bad idea. We were told: “We don’t
encourage you to carry it; there is no need to start a one-man war.” Besides, the thing would freeze up in
that thirty below zero cold, and it would sweat on the way down.