tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54822300459128446182024-03-13T20:14:07.973-07:00The Kassel Mission Air BattleAaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-26298265579803286642015-07-29T15:29:00.001-07:002015-07-29T15:29:24.898-07:00Now available, The Kassel Cassettes on MP3 CDs<div align="center">
<img alt="Kassel Cassettes" height="525" src="http://www.tankbooks.com/ebaylabels/kasselcover.jpg" width="525" /></div>
<div align="center">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: x-large;">The Kassel Cassettes</span></b></div>
<div align="center">
<i><b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;">an audiobook on
CD</span></b></i></div>
<div align="justify">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: medium;"> On Sept. 27,
1944, thirty-five B-24 bombers flew off course and were ambushed by more than
100 German fighter planes.</span></b></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1"> The bombers had lost their fighter
protection, and were easy targets for the swarming Fokke-Wulf 190s and
Messerschmitt 109s.</span></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1">Not that they
were defenseless. Each B-24 Liberator was heavily armed with .50-caliber machine
guns, which were blazing away.</span></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1">The battle lasted,
according to most accounts, no more than six minutes, by which time the cries of
"Mayday" over the radio drew the cavalry in the form of the P-51s of the 361st
Fighter Squadron.</span></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1">By the time it was all
over, 25 bombers were shot out of the sky. Many of the German fighters were shot
down and one American fighter pilot was killed. Of the ten remaining Liberators,
three crash-landed in Allied-occupied Europe, two reached an emergency landing
base in Manston, England, one overflew the group's base and crash-landed five
miles away, and only four made it back to the base at Tibenham, England.</span></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1">Aaron Elson began interviewing survivors
of the battle after visiting a monument in Germany with the names of every
American and every German killed in the battle. The monument, built by the
Kassel Mission Memorial Association with the help of German historian Walter
Hassenpflug, is a rare and powerful testament to closure between former enemies.</span></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1">"The Kassel Cassettes" on MP3
CDs includes more than 20 hours of interviews with pilots, tail gunners,
bombardiers, navigators, prisoners of war, and a widow and two sisters of fliers
killed in the battle.</span></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1"> These are MP3 CDs and will not play
on most CD players or in older vehicles. Many newer cars have CD players that
also play MP3 files, and they will also play on computers and CD players that
specifically say they play MP3s. There are four MP3 CDs in the set. The
interviews are also available in a set of regular discs that will play on any CD
player, but the set contains more than 20 CDs and is considerably more
expensive.</span></div>
<div align="justify">
<span class="style1">The following a sampling of tracks
from the set which will provide an overview of the battle.</span></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track01(PaulSwofford).mp3">
Track 1 (Paul Swofford)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track02(RegMiner).mp3">
Track 2 (Reg Miner)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track03(FrankBertram).mp3">
Track 3 (Frank Bertram)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track04(HenryDobek).mp3">
Track 4 (Henry Dobek)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track05(GeorgeNoorigian).mp3">
Track 5 (George Noorigian)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track06(WebUebelhoer).mp3">
Track 6 (Web Uebelhoer)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track07(MalcolmMcGregor).mp3">
Track 7 (Malcolm McGregor)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track08(CharlesGraham).mp3">
Track 8 (Charles Graham)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track09(GeorgeCollar).mp3">
Track 9 (George Collar)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track10(IraWeinstein).mp3">
Track 10 (Ira Weinstein)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track11(CormanBean).mp3">
Track 11 (Corman Bean)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track12(SarahNaugher).mp3">
Track 12 Sarah Schaen Naugher)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track13(JohnCadden).mp3">
Track 13 (John Cadden)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track14(PaulSwofford).mp3">
Track 14 (Paul Swofford)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/kasselsampler/track15(ErlynJensen).mp3">
Track 15 (Erlyn Jensen)</a></div>
<div class="style2">
<img alt="Kassel Cassettes 1" height="525" src="http://www.tankbooks.com/ebaylabels/kassel1.jpg" width="525" /></div>
<div class="style2">
<img alt="kassel cassettes 2" height="525" src="http://www.tankbooks.com/ebaylabels/kassel2.jpg" width="525" /></div>
<div class="style3">
<img alt="kassel cassettes 3" height="525" src="http://www.tankbooks.com/ebaylabels/kassel3.jpg" width="525" /></div>
<div class="style3">
<img alt="kassel cassettes 4" height="525" src="http://www.tankbooks.com/ebaylabels/kassel4.jpg" width="525" /></div>
Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-68921210912650281852014-09-27T11:38:00.000-07:002014-09-27T11:38:32.003-07:00On the 70th Anniversary of the Kassel Mission<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Paul Swofford being awarded the Silver Star</td></tr>
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<br />
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;"> </span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">On the 70th Anniversary of the Kassel
Mission</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .2in;">
Aaron Elson</div>
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President, Kassel Mission
Historical Society</div>
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<br /></div>
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Hard as it is to believe, today is
the 70th anniversary of the Kassel Mission. Paul Swofford, one of a handful of
pilots who brought his badly damaged B-24 back to England that day in 1944,
left a message on my answering machine the other day. I could tell from the
wavering in his voice how shaken he was by the memories, and yet he stressed
how thankful he was that he had the opportunity to tell his story so that it
would not be forgotten.</div>
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Every veteran of the Kassel Mission,
every widow or sibling of a flier killed in the battle, has his or her own
personal thoughts as the 70th anniversary of the battle approaches. Some family
members of Kassel Mission veterans are in Germany where the annual wreath
laying ceremony carries extra significance because of the 70th anniversary.</div>
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Thanks to the efforts of people
like George Collar and Bill Dewey and Frank Bertram and Walter Hassenpflug, and
the energy of the members of the Kassel Mission Historical Society, including
Kassel survivors John Ray Lemons and Ira Weinstein, the sacrifice of the men
lost on the Kassel Mission will be honored not only by the "next
generation," but by the generation after that, as exemplified by social
media wiz J.P. Bertram, and generations yet to come.</div>
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As for me, I don't have a familial
connection to the mission. It was while visiting the village of Heimboldshausen
where a buddy of my father's was killed in World War II, that I met Walter and
became fascinated by the history of the mission, some of which I've helped to
preserve through a series of informal oral history interviews.</div>
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So today I'm going to watch at
least the beginning, and maybe a few scenes, of "12 O'Clock High,"
which to the survivors of the Kassel Mission is like "Patton" was to
the veterans of my father's tank battalion, and I'll get all choked up when
Dean Jagger sees that silly figure in the store window, and I'll listen for the
drone of the returning B-24s. And I'll read the poem "High Flight,"
by John Gillespie Magee, a young Spitfire pilot who died in a training crash in
1941 at age 19, and and I'll remember George Collar telling me how disappointed
he was as a youth because that was the War to End All Wars, and he feared he
would never get the chance to be like his boyhood heroes.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">High
Flight</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="color: black; font-size: 13.5pt;">Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth<br />
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;<br />
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, – and
done a hundred things<br />
You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung<br />
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,<br />
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung<br />
My eager craft through footless falls of air...<br />
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue<br />
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace<br />
Where never lark, nor e'er eagle flew – <br />
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod<br />
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,<br />
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.</span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-82585131452266828992014-05-26T14:47:00.002-07:002014-05-26T14:52:18.032-07:00Memorial Day 2014<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUh7PyLtxhbMSoKmO5OYQBgoMGDKg9yVIhkWToM_IlSqWFfwEvabGciS17j-COWzkSxsQIfHhI1TYaorfxjs6z7MG0feOsL1ZHfxCfd3mCvoZvulxQzOFh_PYFfXUDOVNm2df7ITekyvsLW6A/s1600/olga+warfield.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUh7PyLtxhbMSoKmO5OYQBgoMGDKg9yVIhkWToM_IlSqWFfwEvabGciS17j-COWzkSxsQIfHhI1TYaorfxjs6z7MG0feOsL1ZHfxCfd3mCvoZvulxQzOFh_PYFfXUDOVNm2df7ITekyvsLW6A/s1600/olga+warfield.jpg" height="400" width="341" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Olga (pronounced Ahl-ga) Warfield</td></tr>
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Many years ago I interviewed Olga Warfield, whose husband,
Marshall T. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warfield, an officer in my
father's tank battalion, was killed in September of 1944 while leading a reconnaissance
patrol on the east bank of the Moselle River.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I asked Olga what the T in Marshall T. Warfield stood for,
and she opened a scrapbook to his obituary. His name was Marshall Turenne
Warfield.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Turenne, what an odd name, I thought.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I got home, I visited my old friend the Internet and
discovered that Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne was one of the
great marshals of France, a marshal being a general, and that even Napoleon
studied the battles of Marshal Turenne closely. The next thing I learned was
that Turenne played a significant role in the 30 Years War. I mention that on
this Memorial Day because while the War on Terror hasn't approached 30 years,
it's well into its 13th year with no end in sight. And now on National Public
Radio, on television and in America's newspapers, Memorial Day pieces on men
and women who've fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken over the space once
reserved for the fallen of World War II, Vietnam and, to a lesser extent,
Korea.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Olga never remarried, although I read in a book ironically
titled "Thanks for the Memories: Love, Sex and World War II" by Jane
Mersky Leder published in 2006 that she had many boyfriends and almost
remarried once. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I began researching the Kassel Mission, Frank Bertram
sent me a tape on which he recorded his memories of that fateful day of Sept.
27, 1944. He spoke of two members of pilot Reg Miner's crew, Virgil Chima and
Joe Gilfoil, who were killed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Chima was "19 years old" ... "There were four
boys [in his family] and three of them were in the Air Corps and Virgil was the
only one who didn't make it. And his mother never did get over it. He was the
baby of the family. The same thing happened with our radio operator, Joe
Gilfoil. ... He was the only child of an Irish mother and father right outside
of Boston. I guess his mother and father were at that time in their late
forties or early fifties. Joe was 19."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On Memorial Day we remember the fallen, but we often don't
think about the effect their deaths in battle -- and on National Public Radio
today a soldier serving his third tour in Iraq said that one unit he was in
didn't lose anyone in battle, but that two of his fellow soldiers killed
themselves after returning home; those deaths are also related to serving our
country -- but we sometimes fail to think about the effect on the loved ones
left behind, the kid sisters like Erlyn Jensen, the widows like Sarah Schaen
Naugher, the unborn children like Jima Schaen Sparks and Sheila McCoy, and how
those lives are changed forever when a life is lost to war.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I thought about that today at the Avon, Connecticut,
Memorial Day Parade, where my friend John Caruso was the guest speaker. John's
brother Matt Caruso died saving a chaplain's life during the breakout from the
Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War. Six days after he was killed, Matt's wife
back in Hartford gave birth to a son, Daniel Caruso. His widow remarried, to a
veteran of Matt's unit. Cornelius Griffin, the chaplain whose life Matt saved,
became a Monsignor in the Tucson Diocese.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While I was at the parade I looked around -- at the sea of
Cub Scouts and members of the Avon High School Marching Band, at the families
in lawn chairs, the little kids tossing frisbees, the fathers walking dogs, the
classic cars and vintage fire engines that paraded through the town, a scene
repeated on Memorial Day Weekend in thousands of communities across America,
and I thought of a letter the widow of a member of my father's tank battalion
read to me when I visited her in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, earlier this month.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Lieutenant Wallace Lippincott Jr. was killed on Jan. 14,
1945, during the Battle of the Bulge. A collector found a canteen in the woods
in Belgium with his name etched onto it and enlisted the help of a veteran in
California to try and locate his family. That veteran told me about the canteen
and I was able to locate first Lieutenant Lippincott's great-nephew, and with
the help of an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, his widow.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I drove to Canonsburg, Pa., to meet Lieutenant Lippincott's
widow the day after she received the canteen. Toward the end of my visit, she
pulled out a stack of letters and read a few of them to me. I thought of one of
those letters today.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"It is a good feeling to know that we are building up a
little nest egg in the bank for after the war," he wrote on Jan. 6, 1945.
"I can think of no greater pleasure than that of buying a place of our own
and going round furnishing the house. Dreams such as these make this mess seem
worthwhile. If I didn't have something to come home to, this war would seem
pointless to me. I suppose that is a selfish attitude to take but I almost
consider it a personal fight against those who have deprived me of doing the
things a man deserves most: having a home and a family to provide for ..."</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay, so maybe values and attitudes have changed over the
years and the "home and family to provide for" thing is from a
different era, but as I looked around at the parade today I thought that this
is what Wally Lippincott, and Marshall Warfield, and Virgil Chima and Joe
Gilfoil and Don McCoy and the many young men -- both American and German -- who
perished on the Kassel Mission sacrificed when they sacrificed their lives.</div>
Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-16399877934735584372013-10-21T19:11:00.000-07:002013-10-21T19:11:45.469-07:00The Watch That Went to War Part 1<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZaXLaBsGihhlkXUKKr77oNQpncmlxROdCCY7lW_0jPFqy3e4C4ZXgRd5HYKGFyrydHreopGF5OpD6PBJUhcvtcR-M6FnsnysSV-snEJDKqp8yhOyfTeQHp55P5BJ3XkmQDIRgo2Yo7xich4/s1600/irabookcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWZaXLaBsGihhlkXUKKr77oNQpncmlxROdCCY7lW_0jPFqy3e4C4ZXgRd5HYKGFyrydHreopGF5OpD6PBJUhcvtcR-M6FnsnysSV-snEJDKqp8yhOyfTeQHp55P5BJ3XkmQDIRgo2Yo7xich4/s400/irabookcover.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Available soon at Amazon.com and for Kindle</td></tr>
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<i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> </b><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">(My 1999 interview with Kassel Mission veteran Ira Weinstein will be available soon in a Kindle edition, with a print version available from Amazon.)</span></i></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Navigator/bombardier,
445th Bomb Group</b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Kassel Mission
survivor, ex-POW</b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">April 17, 1999</b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Palm Beach,
Fla.</b></div>
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</span></i><br />
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Aaron Elson:</b> You grew up in
Chicago?</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> Yes.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Was there a
Jewish community in Chicago?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> Oh, a
tremendous Jewish community. My grandfather was the first Jewish undertaker in
Chicago.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> And where was
your family from originally?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> My father and
mother were born in America. My grandfather came from Russia.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Did you enlist or
were you drafted?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> I enlisted.
Since I was ten years old more or less, I was an aviation buff. I loved
airplanes, so here, 70 years later, I’m still building model airplanes.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> You had started
studying the World War I aces?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> Yes. And when
the war was imminent, and I was working, I enlisted. I filed an application to
be an Aviation Cadet. In those days, you had to have either two years’ college education
to get an appointment as an Aviation Cadet, or you had to take an exam. I
didn’t go to college. My father went broke during the Depression. As soon as I
got out of high school I went to work.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I took the exam, and out of 600 guys mine was the fourth highest grade,
so I got an appointment. Then the war started, and they were processing so many
guys, I quit my job. I thought they were going to take me right away. They
didn’t take me for six months, because they were waiting to process people.
Then I got my appointment as a cadet, and went through all the usual basic
training and the pre-flight.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Did you want to
be a fighter pilot?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> Every guy
wanted to be a pilot. I went to primary school and I was doing really good. I
was way up in the class in the ground school, but every time I got in an
airplane they had to readjust the airplane. First of all, you were supposed to
be 5-foot-4 to go to pilot training. I’m only 5 feet tall. So one day I’m
standing in a line naked, waiting to get a shot, and a flight surgeon comes by.
He says, “Mister, how tall are you?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I said, “I’m 5-foot-2.” I wasn’t 5-foot-2. I was 5 feet tall. Next day I
was in the commandant’s office, and he says, “Look. You’re through in primary
training.” But I had a real high number in the draft, so I could have gotten
out, because I volunteered to go in. He said, “Do you want out? I can let you
out. But if you want to stay in, I’ll see that you go wherever you want to go.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I didn’t want to get out. He said, “I could send you right away to
bombardier school.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; page-break-after: avoid; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
That’s fine. As long as I’m in an airplane, that’s
it. So I went to bombardier school. I went to <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Ellington Field in Texas, and then I went to Childress, Texas, and then
they picked a whole bunch of guys and sent us to navigation school. So I had a
dual rating. Before I went overseas I was already a first lieutenant; before <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was even assigned to a crew. I know that
sounds like nothing, but in the service, that was big-time stuff, to be a first
lieutenant instead of a second lieutenant.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I was assigned to a crew, and we went for training as a crew at Peterson
Field in Colorado. I got married there, and then we went a bunch of other
places to do this and that, and then finally we went overseas.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Did you marry
somebody you met there or somebody from Chicago?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> This was a
girlfriend that I had from Chicago. Even though the war was on, they were still
treating us like cadets, it was unbelievable. The clothes we had, and the food
we were getting, they treated us like kings. The invitations for our
graduation, to get our commission, were on leather. Genuine leather
invitations. Stamped! I sent one to my girlfriend. Next thing I know, she says,
“I’ll come to the graduation.” She came. Next thing, we got married.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Anyhow, let me bring you up to the day of the battle, and then later you
can go back if you want.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Okay. The Kassel mission out of Tibenham was on September 27, and you may
not know it, but that was Yom Kippur. I was not supposed to fly that day. I
don’t know why I went to the briefing, but I was on a lead crew. And I guess, I
don’t remember, but I think maybe we had to go to every briefing, even though
we weren’t going to fly that day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I go to the briefing, and I see the mission, and I see we’re going to
have fighter cover all the way. It wasn’t that far into Germany. And by that
time we had pretty good fighter cover. My wife’s birthday was Christmas, and I
had one more mission to fly, so I thought I’d try and go on this mission and
I’d be home in time for Christmas.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I went to the colonel and I said, “Let me fly today. See if there’s an
opening on a crew.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
And he said, “What are you, stupid? You don’t volunteer. It’s a Jewish
holiday. You’ve got a three-day pass. Go to London. Have some fun.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I said, “No, I want to go.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
And he really didn’t want me to go. He said, “You’re not supposed to do
anything today.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I finally talked him into it, and I was home for my wife’s birthday – a
year later.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
On the other hand, I’m here and I’m alive, so even though maybe God
punished me for flying on Yom Kippur, he also saved me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
On the mission, I was assigned to a crew that I’d never flown with. I
flew with the Donald crew. I didn’t know one person on it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Early on the mission – once we turned off the initial point, I saw
fighters. And everybody was on the radio, saying there were fighters and so
forth, and in that ship that day we had a nose turret but it was not manned. So
I got up in the nose turret, on the guns. I had never gone to gunnery school,
but I’d flown enough missions I knew what that was all about.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
The battle was quick. I don’t know how many minutes they say the whole
thing lasted, but it was minutes, not hours. I’m firing the guns, and the next
thing I know, I feel somebody tumble me over backwards out of the turret, and
it was the navigator, a guy by the name of Eric Smith. I thought, “What’s going
on?” And I turn around and he’s bailing out the nose hatch. He saved my life.
That was the first I knew that our ship was in trouble, on fire, and we were
going down. I didn’t know it. I was busy firing the guns. So I bailed out.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Now another interesting thing is – God’s will – I always wore a chest
chute, and I never wore it on, because when I had to lean over the bomb sight,
I couldn’t have that on me, so the chest chute was always by my side. That day,
when I finally got permission to fly, I didn’t have a parachute because my
parachute was being repacked. I went to the parachute room and they gave me a
back pack. I had never worn a back pack except in the cadets. If it would have
been a different mission, I wouldn’t be here today because I’d have never found
that chest pack.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
So I bailed out with a back pack, and when I bailed out, the straps of
the parachute caught on the bomb sight. By this time the plane was going down.
It was in a flat spin with a lot of centrifugal force. I could hardly get out.
I chinned myself back up into the airplane, undid the strap, and bailed out a
second time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
By the time I bailed out, I figure I was at the most maybe at 2,500 feet.
I popped my chute and I was on the ground. That was it. I never had time enough
to enjoy what it was really like being in the parachute.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I landed up in the hills, where a bunch of kids were picnicking. I got
rid of my chute and ran, I was up in the hills, and I hid under some trees. My
pilot – this guy Donald – must have bailed out the top hatch. When he bailed
out, I’m presuming, he must have hit his feet on the rudders. I saw him come
down in the valley, and I saw he couldn’t get up. And pretty soon some farmers
came along and they pitchforked him to death. When night came, I went down and
I got his dogtags, and they had stripped him of everything but his underpants.
His shoes, everything but his underpants.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
When I came back, I reported that to the War Crimes Commission, and they
sent two guys down from Washington, D.C., to Chicago to interview me about it.
And then maybe two or three years ago, I got a call – actually, Bill Dewey got
the call – a guy was trying to find out if anybody knew anything about his
brother-in-law. Dewey said, “Call Ira Weinstein. He knows all about it.” So the
guy called me, and told me who he was, but I didn’t know who he was, so I asked
him a bunch of questions, and I realized it was legitimate. Then I told him the
whole story. I told him, “You may not even want to tell your sister about
this,” because why should she know the terrible details?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know what he did, but we corresponded
a couple of times. I sent him copies of all the stuff from the War Crimes
Commission. That was a horrible incident.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> What did you do
with his dogtags?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> When I finally
got to American hands a year later, I still had the dogtags. So I turned them
in.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Where did you
hide them?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> In my pocket
most of the time. That night I hid under trees up in the forest. It was a pine
forest. And the pine needles under the trees were inches thick, so I buried
myself under those pine needles, and then during the day I wouldn’t move. I’d
only move at night. I thought, ‘I’ll make my way to Switzerland.’ Well, I don’t
swim, and every time I came to a body of water I couldn’t get across. I hid out
for a couple of days, but by that time I realized that they were shooting and
looking for guys. I realized I’m never going to get out of this.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I was scared, but I wasn’t hungry because at night I’d go down in the
valley, I’d get some potatoes or whatever they’re growing, and that’s what I’d
eat. I came to a little town, and I don’t know, Walter Hassenpflug thinks it
was a town called Nesselrode [Nesselroden] or something, and there must have
been 20 churches in that town. So I thought, “If I’m ever going to get a fair
shake, it’ll be in a place where they had so many churches.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I walked down into the town, and I looked like Murder Incorporated, because
our plane was on fire, I was covered with soot, and I hadn’t shaved for maybe a
week. And I’m walking through the center of town and a kid about 17 years old
sidles up alongside of me and he said, “You’re one of the American fliers
they’re looking for, aren’t you?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I said, “Yeah.” Then I said, “How come you speak such good English?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
“Oh,” he said, “I went to high school in Milwaukee.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I said to him,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“What’s going to
happen to me?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
He said, “I’ll take you to the burgomeister.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Sure enough, he took me to the burgomeister’s house, and the
burgomeister’s wife gave me a bowl of potato soup. And I remember, that was the
best thing I ever ate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
There was an SS battalion in that area, and the burgomeister said, “If I
turn you over to them, you’re going to be dead. So if you behave yourself, and
you don’t try and run away, I’ll call the Luftwaffe and they can come and get
you. There you’ll be safe.” And about two hours later, two guys in beautiful
Luftwaffe uniforms showed up with a car, and they took me to a little garrison.
It was walled in, and they threw me in this room. I think there were maybe 20
other guys in it. George Collar was one of them. There were two badly wounded
enlisted men, and I was the ranking officer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .3in;">
I looked around – these
two guys had had no medical attention, they’d been there two or three days
already, and don’t ask me why I did this or how I did it, but I was always
cocky. I got hold of the guard, and I told him I want to see the commanding
officer. So he took me in to see the commanding officer. And it</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyGDv_gvbmkeoYRuRgUaugrcskKotgEtVAGvpt-fFJJ0_rUTikw-2fyXvuSVkY3FrIUxJn2PdMyz64VG8OaOWUoeEX7ei-d1vKWo7D2tXSo9SCKJ196UHEnhIO2RFQ-kUyZREznTyOZ6k5Evk/s1600/vonstroheim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyGDv_gvbmkeoYRuRgUaugrcskKotgEtVAGvpt-fFJJ0_rUTikw-2fyXvuSVkY3FrIUxJn2PdMyz64VG8OaOWUoeEX7ei-d1vKWo7D2tXSo9SCKJ196UHEnhIO2RFQ-kUyZREznTyOZ6k5Evk/s200/vonstroheim.jpg" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Erich Von Stroheim</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
would have been
a joke if I wasn’t so scared, but that guy looked just like Erich Von Stroheim,
remember him? First I saluted him, and I gave my name, my rank and my serial
number, and I said, “Sir, according to the Geneva Convention, we have two very
badly wounded men, they’re entitled to some medical care.”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 9.0pt;">Erich Von Stroheim</span></b></div>
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He came out from behind his desk with a riding crop, and he
hit me across the cheek. He split my cheek open, and he said, “I’ll tell you
about the Geneva Convention. You’re bombing our schools and our churches and
you’re killing our people and blah blah blah blah.” Then he told the guard to
take me away. So I went back to the room, and about two hours later they came
and took the two injured men away.
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
After you flew enough missions you thought you knew all the tricks, and
one of them was that the electric shoes in the planes hardly ever worked
properly. What I used to do is I’d put on two or three pairs of heavy woolen
socks, and then I’d put my flying boots over them. That way my feet were pretty
warm. When I bailed out, my flying boots came off,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>because they were loose. I was running around
in the forest for a couple of days with no shoes. But I cut a piece out of my
flying suit and I made a pair of moccasins. I used the electrical wires that
were in the flying suit to tie them on. So now I’m in this little room they had
us in. Pretty soon the guard comes, he says, “Kommen Sie mit mir,” and he takes
me back to the commandant’s office.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
My parents never spoke Yiddish, but my grandparents did when they didn’t
want us to know what was going on. So I knew a little bit. But a little bit of
knowledge is dangerous. This is what I think I hear the commandant say to the
guard: “Take him out and schissen him.” That means “Take him out and shoot
him.” What he said was “schussen,” or “Give him a pair of shoes.” But I didn’t
hear shoes. I heard shoot. So this guy marches me out of the little barracks we
were in into the compound, and about 50 yards ahead of me there’s a gate. I
thought if this asshole’s gonna shoot me, he’s gonna shoot me in the back,
because I’m gonna make a run for it when I get to that gate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Maybe 25 yards from the gate was another little room. He took me in there
and got me a pair of shoes. That’s how close I came to being killed that time,
let alone getting out of the airplane or in the battle.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Then they took the guys from that barrack – George and I especially – who
were in good shape, around to all the airplanes, getting the guns off of them
and burying the bodies. And one of the ships I came across was my own ship. I
knew it was mine because I knew the insignia on it, but I didn’t know any of
the kids who were in the plane. I knew the pilot got killed. I didn’t know
where the navigator was but I knew he had bailed out, and there was another guy
– I forget who he was – on the ship. The other five guys were all burned to a
crisp in the ship. And I had to take them out and bury them, right there. When
I got back to the States I said to my wife, “You know, those parents must wonder
what happened. All they get is a KIA notice, nothing else, no explanation from
the government. I think I’m going to go visit all those parents.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I got the addresses and the names, and I went and visited all those
parents. I didn’t tell them the gory details, but I told them that their kids
were in a battle and it was terrible and they were probably shot during the
battle, and that I buried their bodies and this is where it is, and so forth.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Now we go back to this little hut, and they’re going to march us to the
railroad station to go to the interrogation center. And these are stories that
George told me that I didn’t even remember.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
They put two guys on a stretcher, and George and I were going to carry
them to the railroad station. I remembered that, but I didn’t remember this
part until George told it to me, then it came back to me, like when you see an
old movie on television. It was real hot, and these goddamn guys have got their
guns in our backs. “Raus! Schnell! Schnell!” They wanted us to walk faster. How
can we walk faster? Finally, they let us sit down, and George says we sat down
on the curb of the street and a lady came out and gave us a drink. When George
told me that, I said, “No German lady ever gave me a drink of water, forget it,
you don’t know what you’re talking about.” The more I thought about it, all of
a sudden it all started to come back to me. Then when we got to the railroad
station, I don’t know if George told you this story, they lined everybody up in
the railroad station and they made us all stand at attention, and some SS guys
took control then, and they were calling out the roll. When they came to my
name, Weinstein, they made me step up in front of the group, and George says he
was sure they were going to shoot me right then and there. Then they put
everybody else at rest, and they left me standing at attention. I think it was
about two hours till that train came, I stood at attention, and finally we got
on the train.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> George said that somebody
said “Jude.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> Yeah, “Judish.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> And he said he
thought, “They’re gonna shoot<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Weinstein.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ira Weinstein:</b> He told me
that. And then it came back to me. You know, you’re so young, I think you’re
too stupid to know what’s going on. You’re not afraid like you should be. As
you look back in retrospect, how did I get the chutzpah to go to the commandant
and tell him about those two men who needed medical attention? But I thought I
was a hero in those days. Nothing bothered me, I was crazy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Anyhow, we finally get to the interrogation center, and I have to tell
you a great story. I’m writing this story up for the Eighth Air Force Bulletin
now.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Before I left, I had a cousin who was older than I was, who was already
flying his own plane, and he was my hero. His father and mother invited me to
dinner, and he gave me a watch. It was a Longines Weems watch, which was the
watch that all the commercial and other aviators wore. And he said, “Here’s a
watch. I want you to take this, it’s a great watch for you, and you bring it
back safe.” That’s the watch I wore on all my missions. So when we got to the
interrogation center – I’m jumping ahead a little bit; well, I’ll tell you the
watch story first. No, I can’t. They threw us all in cells, and first they’d
run the temperature way up, then they’d turn it off, but I was only there two
days as I remember, maybe overnight or two nights. And then they brought me in
to a guy to interrogate me. We had seen a movie that showed just what to expect
when you were going to be interrogated, and it would be laughable because it
was just like that if you weren’t so scared. They told us, you just give your
name, rank and serial number. Don’t try and outsmart them or get in a
conversation with them.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I stood my ground. Finally, he brings in a guy, and he says to me,
“Lieutenant, you don’t have to tell me anything. I know all about you. Your
mother is Lillian Seligman. She lives in Rochester, New York, with your sister.
She lives at 47 Rutledge Drive. You were born and raised in Chicago. You worked
for Goldblatt’s.” They had a dossier on me that was better than the Americans
had; they knew everything about me. “You were with the 445th Bomb Group. Your
mission was to Kassel. You were in the 702nd Squadron. Your squadron commander
was Lieutenant Colonel Jones.” So I didn’t have to answer anything, I just kept
giving them my name. “Now, all you have to tell us is, where were you flying
that mission and what was your target?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I’d say, “Name, Ira P. Weinstein, first lieutenant, 0694482.” So finally
he got pissed off. Then he says to me, “You are not an American. You’re a
German. Your name is Weinstein. You were my neighbor in Frankfurt. You’re a
shpy.” If you’re a "shpy," you’re gonna get shot. I didn’t give.
Finally, he calls in a guy. A guy comes in, about six feet tall, in a black
body suit with a rubber hose. Then the interrogator’s asking me questions and
this guy’s slapping that hose. But we saw that in the movie. I was plenty
scared, believe me, I wasn’t gonna laugh like I can now. And he finally says to
me, “Well, if you don’t want to tell us what we want to know I’m going to have
to turn you over to this guy.” I stuck with it, and finally he says to the guy,
“Take him out of here,” and I went back to my room.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
The next day I was out of there. However, when I went back to my room –
oh, and then they sent in a German officer in a flying suit with a lot of
ribbons, he came in and he said, “Cigarette, Lieutenant?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I said, “No, I don’t smoke.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
So he sits down on the couch. He says, “You know, you’re a flying
officer. I’m a flying officer. I’d just like to talk to you about what it was
like. Can we discuss it?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I said, “No.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
“You know, we’re compatriots.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
“Sorry.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
So he left. Then they took all our clothes,
and they gave us a shower and a delousing. I was marching up the hall to the
shower, a group was coming out of the showers, and there was a guy there from
New Zealand. He says to me, “Hey, Yank. If you’ve got anything you don’t want
them to take, get rid of it now because they’re confiscating everything.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I still had this watch on. I took the watch off – it was on an expansion
band – and I threw it to him. I said, “Here, you keep the watch.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
“Okay.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
Two days later I’m in a boxcar in Frankfurt, in the marshaling yards, and
the RAF comes to bomb the marshaling yards. It’s night, and the Germans lock us
in the cars and they go to the air raid shelters. On the next track is another
set of boxcars with POWs. There’s the New Zealand guy. He sees me. He says,
“Hey, Yank, you want your watch back?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I said, “Yeah.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
So he threw the watch through the slats – and I caught it. And I kept
that watch all during the time that I was a POW and I brought it back. That
story is in Roger Freeman’s book. But now I’m going to elaborate it on it and
write it up for the Eighth Air Force newsletter, “The Watch that Went to War.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b>(Part 2 coming soon)</b> </div>
</div>
Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-83635470440321585902013-10-01T06:31:00.001-07:002013-10-01T06:31:33.137-07:00John Cadden, radio operator, Krivik crew<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FFFMGN4/ref=worldwariioralhi" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkiCaEnW4heWWJL4LMlJHjy9FzBG7rhCFnjeHO8_CrQFiadDmq3j8r-P8QOGijHRcY6fQFdgT7N7fm97iWzChOysStv8onyPBeAZuNSU-cNZ-wZ2NxRm2VSnpmbB0VE8P3wAwmr6dSb5tkUps/s320/cadden+cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></td></tr>
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</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">(John Cadden was the radio operator
on pilot Stanley Krivik’s B-24 on the ill-fated Kassel Mission of Sept. 27,
1944. The 35 Liberators of the 445th Bomb Group flew off course that day, lost
their fighter protection, and were ambushed by as many as 120 German fighter
planes. Twenty-five bombers were shot down in the initial battle. Of the
remaining ten, only four landed at their home base of Tibenham, England. Upon
seeing construction equipment on the runway, Krivik overshot the airfield and
crash-landed five miles away. I interviewed Cadden at his home in Avalon, N.J., in 1999. Audio of the interview is available in the audiobook "Chaos at 23,000 Feet")</i><br />
<i style="text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;"><br /></i></div>
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<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Oct. 24, 1999<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; text-indent: 0px;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14pt;">Avalon, N.J.</span></div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> You know, so much
time has gone by. But some things stick out in my mind. Especially on that
mission, one thing that I remember – from all I’ve read about it so far, nobody
has pointed out the fact that at our briefing that morning, they announced that
they had captured Brussels, and they had captured it with the runways intact,
so if anybody had mechanical problems or battle damage, instead of heading for
Switzerland or Sweden, which was the practice up until then, we should try to
make it to Brussels. It’s never been brought out but it’s influential in the
story of our crew because after the battle damage we were all set to bail out.
We didn’t think we could get back to England, so we headed for Brussels.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
You asked about my first indication of the battle. As a radio operator I
was not in the top turret at that time. Over the target and for a while
afterwards the engineer took over the top turret and the radio operator
operated the bomb bay doors. After the all-clear we would close the bomb bay
doors and come back and monitor the radio for any messages that might come in.
I had done all that after we dropped our bombs, and the first indication that
we were being hit by fighters was from the waist gunners on the intercom, and
you could feel the bullets whizzing through the fuselage. They both reported
the Focke-Wulf 190s attacking, and our tail gunner, Henry Puto, was hit.
Apparently he was hit right from the very start and knocked out of his turret.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
He’s only one of the two other members of our crew that’s alive to my
knowledge. He had wounds to his face and to his legs. We didn’t know where, we
just knew he was wounded at that time.</div>
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We had lost one engine, and Stanley Krivik, the pilot, managed to get it
feathered, but we had low oil pressure in another engine. I think it was the
outboard engine on our right. It could have been the inboard, I forget which,
one on the right, and the other on the left hand side of the plane had low oil
pressure and we couldn’t get enough power. So he alerted me to go down and open
the bomb bay doors. He didn’t say we’re going to bail out but I knew that’s the
reason he wanted them open. I went down, and I was about halfway through
opening the bomb bay doors when bullets started to whiz around the bomb bay.
And that’s the last I remember. I got knocked out. I don’t know how long I was
out, because I woke up by the nose wheel, which is farther away from where I
should have been.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
When I woke up, I was off my oxygen tank. I had the portable oxygen tank
with me. I was off that, and I’d lost my helmet and my head was buzzing. I
didn’t know what was going on. I gathered my senses. The first thing I went for
was the bottle of oxygen, and I got back on the oxygen. Then I started to look
around for my helmet. I picked up my helmet, and it had been hit. It’s a steel
helmet with the hinges on either side for the earflaps because of the earphones
we wore, and it apparently hit just about where the hinge was and took the
hinge off and made a big crease right through the helmet, by my right ear. That
explained why my head was buzzing. But I wasn’t bleeding.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
The bomb bay doors were half-open at that point so I went back to them.
The firing had ended by that time. I went back to open them up again, and
they’re halfway open but there was no power. We’d lost all of our hydraulic
fluid. So I cranked them open manually, which takes a little bit longer. But I
got them open. I went back up to the pilot and told him I had the bomb bay
doors open. He was in conference with the navigator at that time, his name was
[Daniel] Dale. And they were deciding where to go and what to do. They thought
they couldn’t maintain altitude but at the rate we were losing altitude we
thought we could make Brussels, so he told me to go back down and close the
bomb bay doors, we were going to head for Brussels, and get the wounded up on
the flight deck where they’d be warm. By that time the tail gunner and both
waist gunners were wounded.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
When I first came up on the flight deck to report to Krivik that I had
the bomb bay doors open, he looked like he saw a ghost. His eyes opened wide
and his jaw dropped. I don’t remember much about the reaction from Dale. About
a week later in the hospital Krivik came over to see me; he was in the same
hospital. I said, “You had the funniest look on your face.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
He said, “You were covered with hydraulic fluid, and I thought it was
blood. I couldn’t imagine somebody losing that much blood.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
After I closed the bomb bay doors again, I’d say maybe we flew almost an
hour, but gradually losing altitude. We were still heading towards Brussels.
And when we thought we were close enough, we thought we’d drop down below the
ceiling and look on the ground. You could pick up rivers or something like
that. And when we came through the overcast, there was nothing below us but
water. We were about, oh, I’d say 2,000 feet, no higher, and nothing below us
but water. Everybody was surprised at that point.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
In the meantime, as the radio operator I was the medical fellow on board.
I had the first aid kit and I was supposed to administer whatever first aid I
could.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
All the time we were flying towards Brussels we had the wounded up on the
flight deck and I had broken out the first aid kit. Bob Paul, one waist gunner,
was wounded, but he was able to treat himself. He helped himself to the sulfa
drugs and bandaged himself up, and the same thing with Bill Rand, the other
waist gunner, he was able to take care of himself. Henry Puto was hit a little
more seriously. He was in a lot more pain. I tended to his wounds as best I
could. I gave him a shot of morphine. I remember giving him the shot because at
those high altitudes you couldn’t pull his pants down and give it to him in the
leg, you had to go right through his flying suit. Heated suit and all. I gave
him a shot of morphine, and it quieted him down.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
And then, really, I had nothing to do until we discovered we were over
the water, and of course Dale and Krivik, the pilot, had a hasty conference.
They assumed that we were over the North Sea, which was a correct assumption,
and if we just keep heading west we’d hit England. Which we did. But in the
meantime, we stripped the plane of anything that could be stripped out of it.
The guns. Ammo. Anything we had was stripped and dumped in the ocean.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I was in constant touch with air-sea rescue. I’d give them an SOS and a
signal and they’d plot our course in case we did go down, they’d come out and
get us. And I remember it so clearly because while I was in touch with air-sea
rescue, the rest of the crew was trying to throw the radio out and I had to
fight them off. If you’re going to go down in the water I’d like to have
somebody coming after me so I thought it was important, anyway.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
When we got down around 1,200 or 1,000 feet, not much higher, we came
over England. And immediately Krivik noted where we were. It wasn’t far from
where we’d normally come in.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
He then headed for the air base, with his course set on the runway. Of
course, at the sight of land everybody cheered. And I guess Krivik thought he
could get it down on the runway. We didn’t have any hydraulic fluid or brakes
so we’d probably run off the end of the runway but that was better than bailing
out. We didn’t have much altitude left, 800 or 1,000 feet or so.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
The big thing then was to get the wheels cranked down, and we had no
problem with the main landing gear. It came down and locked in place. But we
couldn’t get the nose wheel locked in place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
At that time, everybody who didn’t belong on the flight deck went back to
the waist to get ready for a crash landing, including the navigator. The radio
operator and the engineer stayed up with the pilot and co-pilot. We all had
positions we’d take to brace ourselves for the crash. Mine was behind the
co-pilot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
I don’t think we were much more than 500 feet off the runway when
[Donald] Bugalecki finally got the nose wheel locked and he came up, and I
thought – everybody thought, I guess – I thought he was liable to be down there
when we landed and he’d get crushed.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Bugalecki was the
engineer?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. I would say
we didn’t have much more than 500 feet when he finally got up out of there and
let the pilot know that they were locked in place.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
So we felt pretty good. Braced for the crash. We knew it would crash.
And, next – there’s a little window by the radio set. When you’re back behind
the co-pilot on the left hand side of the fuselage there’s a window down by
your knee and I was looking at whatever scenery you could see going by, and all
I could see were trees. I had never noticed trees on our approaches to the
runway before. All I could see was trees, and the next thing I knew, Krivik was
pulling me out of the wreckage. And that’s about all there is to my tale of the
Kassel mission.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> So you didn’t see
what it was on the runway that made him divert?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> No, I didn’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> But he talked
about it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> In the hospital,
he came over to see how I was doing. Probably the same day that he told me that
when he saw me covered with the hydraulic fluid he thought it was blood. He
said when he got down to the runway, he could see it was covered with lorries
[trucks] and British wreckers. He didn’t say how many. He said “lorries,”
though, not just one, it was several. And he said he didn’t want to kill
everybody on the runway so he had to overshoot it. He couldn’t get back up and
go around. He had to keep going, and he overshot the runway and crashed. He
crashed in a farm. And when I was in the hospital, when Krivik came over and we
were talking, I asked him, “Gee, I thought we were gonna at least hit the
runway before anything happened.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
He said, “I couldn’t put it down on the runway because it was shut down
for maintenance.”<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> When you crashed,
you passed out?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. I remember
seeing the trees, but I don’t remember anything beyond that. And the next thing
I knew I was in the wreckage. I could see the sky, but there was stuff all on
top of me, on my legs. Everything was on fire. I don’t think we had much gas
but there had to be some gas, and there’s still .50-caliber bullets, I’d
thought we threw them all out but they were going off all over the place from
the heat. Plus I was in one of these fur-lined suits, I think I would have had
a lot of severe burns if I wasn’t. I was hot, but it protected me from being
burned. I didn’t inhale any fumes because it was wide open; I was looking at
the sky.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> How did Krivik
get everybody out of the plane?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> I was conscious
at that time, and I heard him pulling [co-pilot Leonard] Trotta out. I think he
took him out seat and all. Krivik was probably the strongest person I ever saw.
He was a bull. Matter of fact, I don’t think many pilots could have kept that
plane in the air, because he had no hydraulic fluid, and you had to be pretty
strong to handle that thing without hydraulic fluid, and he flew it all the way
back that way.</div>
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He pulled out Trotta, and then I heard somebody yelling that “Cadden and
Bugalecki are still in there!” So he came back in and grabbed me and yanked me
out and got me away from the plane. And I took about two steps and fell. Then
he went back for Bugalecki. I think at this time that Bugalecki was half out
but he wasn’t out yet, and he pulled Bugalecki out. So I was very happy I was
flying with Krivik that day.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> And who pulled
the gunners out?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> They just landed
up all over the field. I guess what happened is, the waist gunners and the tail
gunner and the navigator and the nose turret gunner, they set up a net in back
of the fuselage, across the fuselage, and they lean into that so when the crash
comes they’re braced by the net, they won’t go flying up into the wreckage. And
I guess everybody but Dale took advantage of that during the crash. He just
acted as though it was going to be a normal landing, and he just sat down on
the floor of the plane, and I guess when the plane crashed it broke in the
middle and they all flew clear of the plane, and ended up scattered on the
field with no injuries, really. But he ended up going into the bomb bay, I
guess, and he got killed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What was his
position?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> He was a
navigator. He was new, too, he had only flown around two or three missions with
us. We trained with a fellow by the name of [Charles] Jackson. He had gone to
Reg Miner’s crew. He never hit it off well with Krivik. As enlisted men we were
not aware of the friction between the officers. I knew there was some friction,
but most of the enlisted men loved Krivik, because he took care of us and
looked after us. So I guess Jackson managed to get off the crew, and we got
Dale as his replacement.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Explain again
about the net.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> There was a net
they rig up across the back of the fuselage; the plane is like a big tube. I
was always up in the front, I wasn’t back there, but this net gets rigged up
before a crash landing, and they all lean into the net so when the initial jar
comes, instead of being thrown forward into the bomb bay, you get caught by the
net.</div>
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Of course I was never back there, I was always up in the front. But that
was our second experience with a crash.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> It was?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. The first
plane – I flew 19 missions and I’d say the first 11 or 12 were on a plane
called Fearless Fosdick. And we used to have all kinds of trouble with the
gasoline tank readings on that plane. We thought we were running out of
gasoline over the Channel on one of our missions. So as soon as we hit the
English coast there was an air base [at Manston] that had extra long runways,
and we put into that. And it turned out, we thought we were just about out of
gas, it was reading empty, and we had 200 gallons left. I think Krivik got in
hot water for that. So they recalibrated the gasoline gauge, and it was shortly
after that, maybe the next mission, that we thought we had a lot of gas and we
ran out. We were over England at the time, and we’re flying about 1,500 feet,
and all the engines conked out. Fortunately we were in a farming area and we
crashed into a cornfield. They call them cornfields, it was like a wheat field.
Nobody got hurt, but the plane was totaled. After that mission, that’s when we
started flying Percy. That was the name of the plane we were on on the Kassel
mission.</div>
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That had been one of the original planes, I understand, that came over
from where the 445th started out. That’s the one we were on the day of the
Kassel raid because after the crash of Fearless Fosdick, that’s the plane that
was assigned to us.</div>
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I got in hot water because of the crash of Fearless Fosdick, because up
until then intelligence gave me this camera and I was supposed to take pictures
of the bomb hits out the bomb bay doors. It’s a great big thing that you hang
out the bomb bay doors. And I did a good job of it so they kept letting me take
pictures, but after that crash I took that aerial camera and I took pictures of
ourselves all over the plane, waving, and when I got back, it never dawned on
me, I forgot that this thing would be developed, and they got mad. They didn’t
say anything to me, but they raised the devil with Krivik over it. And after
that they never assigned me the camera again. I didn’t enjoy hanging out the
bomb bay anyway.</div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> After that first
crash-landing, were you antsy? Did that make people extra nervous?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> I think it gave
us confidence that we could crash without the thing blowing up, because I
always thought if a B-24 crashed you’d get a ball of flame and that would be about
it.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Had you seen any
like that?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> No. I’ve seen
them from a distance. As I remember two planes collided, but it was maybe five
miles away from the base and all I could see was the smoke coming up. Some of
the people had seen it. I didn’t see the accident but I did see the smoke
coming up from one of the wreckages. But I hadn’t witnessed any crashes on the
air base at all, because if we weren’t flying I wasn’t even paying much
attention to what else was going on.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Where was your
crew formed?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> We were formed up
in Westover Field, Massachu-setts. I went through gunnery school in Laredo,
Texas, and we graduated from gunnery school. It was after Christmas, between
Christmas and early January.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Had you enlisted
or were you drafted?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> I enlisted in
1942. In December. I was in Morris Junior College, and I knew my number would
be coming up soon, so I figured I didn’t want to end up in the infantry, for
obvious reasons, sleeping in trenches; my idea of the infantry was World War I.</div>
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I said, “I’ll probably be going in,” so I initially tried to get in the
Air Corps, their pilot program. I was trying to get a college education in
those days. My family couldn’t afford to send me to college so if I got in a
program like that I’d get some college in. But I was colorblind. I couldn’t
even get into the Marines or the Navy. But I could join the enlisted reserve. I
joined in December and I got called up on April Fool’s Day, April 1st of ’43.</div>
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When I joined the enlisted reserve, I joined the artillery. I figured,
that’s far enough away from the front lines, the living conditions are better
anyway. But they put me on a train to Fort Dix. I got down in Fort Dix – there
was a whole group of about 25 of us from Morris Junior College and there were
about 30 from Seton Hall, or Seton Hall Prep.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Where was Morris
Junior College?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> In Morristown.
That’s where I was born and raised. When I got off the train in Fort Dix, we
went through the usual procedures of getting transferred from being civilians
into the Army and being measured and getting clothing issues that didn’t fit
and all that. I don’t think we took any tests. I don’t know what we did down
there except get lectures and get clothing, get shots and that sort of thing.
And the next thing I knew we were shipped off. I think they shipped us off a
little prematurely because somebody in our barracks came down with meningitis
or one of those very contagious diseases and died, so I guess they didn’t want
us on the base. All of a sudden we got shipped out and I ended up on a train
that was going south to the Air Corps. We were going down to basic training in
Miami Beach. The train was full of GIs. I don’t think we had much of a kitchen
because all we had for three days, I guess we had corn flakes in the morning
and the other two meals were boiled hot dogs, and that’s it. It took us about
six days to get from Fort Dix down to Miami, because they’d sidetrack us for
more important things. I guess we weren’t that essential to the war effort at
that point. So we’d get sidetracked and spend the night on the railroad. The
next morning you start up again, go forward, get sidetracked again, so it took
a long time to get down there. I’d never been as far south as Philadelphia. I
guess Fort Dix was the farthest south I’d ever been to that point.</div>
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We got assigned to a hotel in Miami Beach, and they gave us all kinds of
IQ tests and decided what we’d be best at. They rated me as a radio operator.
And I guess at that time they needed gunners, because being colorblind didn’t
seem to make much of a difference. They had some balls of yarn and they asked
you to pick out the red ball, and if you picked out the wrong one they’d say,
“You know it’s not that.”</div>
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I went to Scott Field for radio school. I did well in Scott Field. I
enjoyed that. Then gunnery school, which I enjoyed. I couldn’t shoot worth a
darn with the Thompson or a rifle or a pistol, but with the aerial gunnery I
was good. I was told down there I was No. 2 out of 500 in aerial gunnery. And I
was pretty good with the clay pigeons, too; we had to shoot those. But I
couldn’t shoot anything that was standing still. So I guess from my shooting
ability I was better off where I was than anyplace else. But after we got to
combat, the radio operators didn’t spend that much time in the turret. Before
we got to the target I’d spend some time. Then over the target the engineer
would take over, and when we got off the target again then I would go and spell
him until we got out of enemy territory.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Now, we were
getting to where the crew was formed.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> Oh, the crew was
formed up in Westover. I left around New Year’s and took a train – they gave us
a week to get there so we could take the train up and have a few days at home
and then take the train up to Westover. And out of a class of 500 there were
only two of us who were assigned to Westover. We were both from that neck of
the woods. The other fellow was named Bobby Beckwith. We rode up together on
the train. The train wrecked on the way up – it got sideswiped just before we
got to Buffalo, in a town called Ashtabula, and it went off the tracks. Maybe
some people got hurt, but we didn’t get hurt. We were sound asleep when it
happened, it was around 2 in the morning. After a while they took us off the
train and bused us into a hotel in Ashtabula and we spent the night in the
hotel, and the next morning they put us on another train, we got off in Grand
Central Station, he went his way and I went mine.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you ever find
out what happened to him?</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> Never did. His
family were in the jewelry business in Beacon, New York, and were the nicest
people I knew. I remember he had a beat up little radio, he used to have it in
the barracks, and he loaned it to me when I was going to my home and I had that
there, I could listen to the radio in my room. That was a big deal then, I
didn’t have to go down and listen with the rest of the family if I didn’t want
to.</div>
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We were together there in Westover, but I fractured my ankle chasing a
bus up there, and it laid me up for a month in the hospital. In the meantime,
he went on with the crew so I ended up four weeks behind him in training and
naturally he was gone four weeks before I was finished, so I have no idea where
he ever ended up.</div>
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I don’t know when I found out I was going to the European Theater. I know
that when we finished our training we were given a leave of about five or six
days.</div>
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On the crew I trained with, we had a waist gunner and I forget his name
now, but he never showed up when we were supposed to leave from Mitchel Field
on Long Island. He had been an instructor up at Westover Field and I don’t
think he had any ambitions to be in combat, but they assigned him to our crew
as a waist gunner, and I don’t think he was too happy about it. But on that
leave we had before we picked up our plane at Mitchel Field, he never showed
up. And the last I heard of him, he ended up in Leavenworth because once you
get your orders, it’s desertion. But he was older than we were, married, with a
newly born child, so I guess he figured it wasn’t for him. The last I heard he
was in Leavenworth, but somebody told me he got released.</div>
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We flew over without him, and we flew up to Gander. Initially we landed
in Maine and refueled, and there they issued the watch. I’d never had a
wristwatch before but they gave me an Elgin watch because the radio operator
had to keep track of the time messages came in and so forth. I still have the
watch, by the way.</div>
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From there we flew up to Newfoundland. We spent the night there. This was
in June. It was after D-Day. The last day of my leave was D-Day. The next day I
went over to Mitchel Field.</div>
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An interesting thing about Mitchel Field is a fireman in Hempstead, New
York, threw a beer party for us. I don’t know how many crews, there were about
30 or 40 of us, and they had us all over, you know, young guys, happy, drinking
beer, all this free beer at the firehouse, and oh, about 1:30 in the morning
they packed us all in the fire engine and drove us back to Mitchel Field with
the lights flashing, the siren going. It was great stuff. I don’t know if they
did that for everybody or what.</div>
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From Newfoundland we flew over to Ireland. It may have been a 10- or
11-hour flight. After about five hours, all we could do was look for land. We
weren’t even near land yet.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> That must have
been spooky, flying over the ocean for the first time.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes, you’re all
by yourself, and all new, green, even the navigator, and we were depending on
him. But sure enough, after about ten hours we sighted land in Ireland, and
then we landed and left the plane. They spent two weeks in Ireland
indoctrinating us. Telling us what to do if we’re captured, and issuing us all
fake identifications and things like that. Shaving our heads. The whole idea I
guess was so we wouldn’t look like aviators but more like civilians if we got
shot down.</div>
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After about two weeks in Ireland, they didn’t fly us so we took a train
to England.</div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> As an enlisted man,
did you have any contact socially with Krivik?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. He
encouraged doing things together as a crew. We used to go horseback riding
together, the whole crew. And he was sort of a nut. He played football.
Anything physical was right up his alley. He played for Fordham before World
War II. And before that he played for Bloomfield High. He probably was
All-State. He was one of the strongest men I ever saw, not tall, but was he
strong. We’d go horseback riding together as a crew. We’d go from the base, and
a farmer would rent us the horses. We’d get ten horses and go riding. It was
like playing cowboys and Indians. He’d lead the charge, charging into the
woods. With the low branches you’d get knocked off a horse pretty quick. It was
crazy.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did anybody get knocked off?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. I forget
who. I don’t think I did because as a child I rode horses a little bit, but
some of them would have a hard time staying on. I used to ride horses bareback
as a child, not horses, ponies. But I grew up in the country, so horseback
riding was nothing new to me. But to a lot of them it was.</div>
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And I don’t think Krivik had been on a horse much, either. He’d always
want the wildest horse, and he was gonna show us how fast this horse would go,
and he opened it up, we were all watching, and he ended up under the horse,
with his arms and his legs around the horse, the horse couldn’t get rid of him.
Finally the horse gave up and just stopped, and he climbed back up. He was
something else.</div>
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Of course as an enlisted man I wasn’t privy to what went on with the
officers. But I think probably a guy like Krivik rubbed a lot of them the wrong
way. I had that suspicion. I always thought the planes we got to fly in were
probably the oldest planes that were on the base, that sort of thing. But he
was a good friend with Miner. And there was another fellow he was close to, who
had been a pilot before the war, but he got shot down on the third or fourth
mission. All I know is his radio operator – usually you got close to the
fellows on the plane who did the same job you do and I was close to this fellow
Beggs, and he was on this crew. His pilot was probably the best pilot in our
whole group, and he got shot down over one of the north Germany targets and he
just went up in a ball of flames. Nobody ever got out of it.</div>
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.</div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> On your first
mission, you flew to Gotha?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
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<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aaron Elson:</b> When you did
that, had anybody talked about that disastrous Gotha mission?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> I think we heard
about it, yes, because that was still being talked about when we got there.
There was a lot of flak but I expected a lot of flak. We were pretty well
prepared on what to expect, so even though you’re green, nothing came as too
big a surprise.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Does anything
stand out? Usually the first mission is something that’s just engraved in
people’s minds.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> No, the flak, you
can hear it, the spent flak you can hear hitting, the flak that’s going to do
damage you don’t hear.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> You went to Gotha
on July 20, 1944, that was your first mission. You also flew on July 23, 24 and
25?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Some of those
were milk runs. Tactical. Probably one of those was with the breakout of St.
Lo, that would be one of those tactical missions. We bombed on one mission I
remember, it was probably this one on August 1st, the biggest bombs I’d ever
seen. I don’t think the B-17 could carry them. We could only carry one or two.
They were big things. We were dropping them on St. Malo, that island that’s off
the coast of France, it’s like a shrine there or something. The Germans had a
lot of guns on there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What was the St.
Lo raid like?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> It was like
flying at night when we got to the target. We went in at 5,000 feet, which is
low for us. And I don’t know where we stood in the parade of planes that went
over that day, but it was like flying into midnight. Approaching it would be
like broad daylight. And all of a sudden it would get darker and darker and
darker. These are from the bombs and the smoke. And then over the target you
could see the flashes on the ground. You couldn’t see a lot of movement because
everybody was hunkered down. But you could see the flashes and the gunfire. We
just dropped our bombs, and as we pulled out of there, it was back into
daylight again. An interesting thing about that: On that raid a B-24 tried to
get in formation with us. It wasn’t from the 445th, he had different tail
markings. He tried to get in formation with us and our tail gunner opened up on
him. It had a different tail marker and he shot at it. And they had to just
about pull him out of the turret. And he got reprimanded, they told him he
shouldn’t have shot at a B-24. About two weeks later, intelligence came back
and said that was Germans in a B-24 trying to get in your formation</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you fly again
after the Kassel mission?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> No. I had a bunch
of injuries, including a fractured back. When the ambulances got there and
carted us off I was just about out of it. They brought us into the hospital –
that was the 65th General Hospital in Diss – and they cut off our clothes. They
didn’t undress you, they just cut you right out of your clothes. And they knew
we hadn’t been to the bathroom in a long time, so they gave me a catheter, I
guess I couldn’t use a bedpan. And everything that came out was bright red. So
I guess I got pretty well jarred up.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
It cleared up in about two days. And then it was just a matter of
recuperation. In the middle of getting better I got pneumonia. They had put me in
a body cast and I got pneumonia in the body cast, so they cut me out of that.
But I got through the pneumonia; that was the most dangerous part of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did they have
penicillin then?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. I had never
heard of penicillin before, and it looked like something you’d give a horse.
The needle was about an inch around, and about ten inches long. And to preserve
it they used to keep it refrigerated so it was ice cold. And they gave you that
in the rump. That hurt. But it did the trick.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did Krivik fly
again?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> I don’t know if
he flew. He was in the psychiatric section of the hospital, but I guess all his
concern about his crew and all that got to him. But the psychiatrist got him.
And Puto. But Krivik used to come over and visit me in the hospital, that’s
where I found out why we crashed. I couldn’t figure out, you know, everything
had gone according to the textbook up to that point. That’s when I found out
why we crashed. And in all the books I’ve read, the official reports say “other
aircraft on the runway.” But that’s not the case. [Colonel William] Jones, I
just read in the latest newsletter, he died recently, I blame Jones, but maybe
he reported what really happened and they changed it up at headquarters, so you
never know. But there must have been a lot of people watching, especially when
so few of us got back, watching that landing and who knows exactly what
happened.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
They shouldn’t have tied up the runway with the planes out on the
mission. As far as I’m concerned if it was Jones’ fault he should have peeled
potatoes for the rest of the war. I’ve always said, if it was Jones’ fault, he
has to take responsibility. He should have gotten the German Iron Cross. He
took care of us for the rest of the war. Otherwise we’d have been flying more
missions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
But maybe as I say, he reported it but everybody there in the tower, if
you watch the famous movie “12 O’Clock High,” I wouldn’t say they’re that
concerned, but a lot of people are very concerned. A lot of the ground crews
should have been concerned watching for the planes to get back.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Was Krivik
married at the time?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. I don’t know
what shape his marriage was in, we really didn’t talk about that.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> From what I
understand, his marriage broke up after the war.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> It did. I met him
several times after the war. Morristown and Bloomfield aren’t that far apart.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did he have any
children?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> I don’t know
whether he had a child or not. I didn’t pay much attention. I knew he was
married, and he was 22 I guess. I figured he was an old man. I wouldn’t be
surprised if there was something about him having a baby or something. I forget
now. I saw him, as I said, several times after the war. I was working in New
York.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What kind of work
did you do?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> I was an
electrical engineer and I was in sales. And I was working down on what’s the
World Trade Center now but it used to be 30 Broad Street. I started working
there in 1949, when I got out of college.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> That’s when I was
born.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> That’s when I got
out of college.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Where did you go
to college?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Villanova.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Where would you
meet Krivik?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> He stopped by at
4 o’clock in the afternoon one day and offered me a ride home. And we had a
chat. My boss was happy to meet him. And he had a woman who he introduced as
his fiancee. The last I knew Krivik was married, so I didn’t say anything. He
drove me home, and then he was playing semi-pro ball in North Jersey, and he
used to play a lot down in Madison, New Jersey, and I’d go down and watch him
play and we’d go out and have a few beers after the game and chat about old
times. But I never got into his personal life because I knew he probably
wouldn’t want to talk about it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Had he recovered
mentally from the strain?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Oh, I think so
because we’d be talking about it, there was no apparent strain on him, and he
reenlisted. He was doing roofing work at one time, and the next thing I know he
had reenlisted in the Army and was flying, made it his career, stayed in as a
pilot.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did he go to
Korea?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-indent: .3in;">
<b>John Cadden:</b> Yes. That’s when
he reenlisted, during the Korean War. And he retired from the military around
1970, because it was around 1975 I called the VA trying to track him down,
because I hadn’t heard boo. I stayed in touch with a few of the crew members
but nobody had heard anything. I called the VA and they were reluctant to give
any information out about him, and I told them why I was calling. I said, “He
saved my life in World War II, I’d just like to get ahold of him.” The woman I
was talking to was very sympathetic, so she said, “I’ll tell you this much.”
She apparently had pulled his records or something like that on the computer.
She said, “He retired from the military in San Diego or Seattle or Los
Angeles,” and that was about 1970, “and he was admitted to a hospital a few
days later and died within 24 hours.” What it was all about her records didn’t
show, but he was admitted to a hospital and he died within 24 hours. So she
said it must have been some sort of an accident that he had. I guess he went to
the VA hospital. And that’s the last I heard.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FFFMGN4/ref=worldwariioralhi" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi97saZVVKpGmfC_satjGIbnlyK7jwkG9ptC7FRMQxtAVqa9i37WRUzQldM-8MefIWgrreqbmBbl2y7nTv-z46tzIsJ0t_R7o3pqCW-N6myUFn960ssd-86enqat2tTeKT-aB78ya66jzHkEBs/s320/cadden+cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FFFMGN4/ref=worldwariioralhi" target="_blank">Available on Kindle for $1.99</a><br />
<a href="https://www.createspace.com/4444076" target="_blank">Print version at CreateSpace for $6.95</a><br />
<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-80063081355777505172013-08-30T20:30:00.000-07:002013-09-06T09:35:01.587-07:00Two Foxes and a Pocket Bible <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZVuoQn8uolxf8-fdUIuG2462rMvhXKfpwHhbeGTUmLEZrXI3yt8HzEpWoDW7543MkgIYzrXVf6f0OzOWaJKyPnceYcTggaF_uVXnbvTIr39SSraXS0xneAdcqVzrQXbu6BSxqPmZzXSwRMYc/s1600/eugene+george+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZVuoQn8uolxf8-fdUIuG2462rMvhXKfpwHhbeGTUmLEZrXI3yt8HzEpWoDW7543MkgIYzrXVf6f0OzOWaJKyPnceYcTggaF_uVXnbvTIr39SSraXS0xneAdcqVzrQXbu6BSxqPmZzXSwRMYc/s400/eugene+george+3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eugene George tells his story during a trip to Germany. Photo by Linda Dewey.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Walter Eugene George was the co-pilot on Donald Brent's crew on the Kassel Mission. I interviewed him over lunch in a Mexican restaurant in San Antonio. I don't remember the name of the restaurant, but it must have been a good one because he drove all the way from Austin to meet me. Because of the background noise in the restaurant, I did not make an audio CD of our conversation.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
His is one of many dramatic accounts of the Kassel Mission I've been fortunate to have chronicled.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
Eugene George died on Jan. 16 of this year. He was 90 years old.</div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 3.25in; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: center 3.25in; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>San
Antonio, Texas, Aug. 29, 2001</b></div>
<span style="mso-tab-count: 8;"> </span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> How old were you when you
went into the service?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> I was called to active
duty in February of ’43. I’d been on a standby reserve before that. In February
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>’43 I would have been 20, 19 or 20.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Had been you been to the
university yet?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Yes, I’d gone to the
university about two years.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Of Texas?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Yes.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Were you called into the
Army?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> No. I joined the Air
Force to go into cadet pilot training and was on standby for that.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> So you were in the Army
Air Force?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Yes.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> And what position did you
wind up in?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> I ended up in pilot
training. There were three groups, a pilot, navigator and bombardier.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> You were a co-pilot or a navigator?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> I was a co-pilot, but my wings were a pilot. I mean
I graduated as a pilot. I flew with Brent as a co-pilot but I qualified as a
pilot and logged pilot time in addition to co-pilot time.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> How many missions did you fly?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> I flew 17 missions and aborted one. We had an engine
shot out, so that one didn’t count. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> So the Kassel was your 18th mission?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> 17th.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Which missions were your most memorable?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> My first mission was to Paris. We bombed Orly
Airport. The Germans were using it as a backup field, and there were some
dirigible hangars, very famous ones built in <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>1918, and I really hated to bomb these. But
the thing that was most amazing was you couldn’t see the ground because of such
low fog in Paris, but the Eiffel Tower stuck straight out of that fog.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Another one was Nancy. We bombed a
fuel dump there, and as we left the target, the tail gunner called me and said,
“Lieutenant, you’ve got to see this.” I got up in the top turret and looked
back, and this big black smoke came up through the clouds. I remember those.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
One mission took us over the island
of Helgoland. I never knew why they routed us over Helgoland because the
reputation was that that’s where they retired the best flak gunners in the
German artillery. I was flying on the wing of the lead airplane, and I saw a
flak burst come up. It was 88 millimeter flak, you could tell the difference
between that and 105, and there were two that bracketed right on that lead
aircraft. I saw the two bursts and I knew the third burst would get him, and
the fourth burst would get us, so I racked the plane out of formation, and the third
burst got him and the fourth burst missed us.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
On the mission we aborted, we came
home on three engines. When we got on the ground, there was a fragment of
something in the engine that was shot out. The crew chief said “Don’t touch
that thing!” It was a nose fuse. We’d had a direct hit on that engine, and the
nose fuse was still active. It hadn’t exploded. The shell had broken off before
it exploded.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> What happened the morning of the Kassel mission?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> We had a briefing, of course. One was awakened, oh,
as early as 3 a.m., and we went in for breakfast. We had a flying officers’
mess and we had a ground officers’ mess and we had an enlisted men’s mess. The
flying officers’ mess was considered the worst of the three, and the ground
officers’ mess was the best. We would take our wings off and go in there at
times, and the food was better. This upset us somewhat, but on that mission,
the food was so bad that morning. They did have some canned peaches, and that’s
all I ate for breakfast. I had not started drinking coffee yet. I learned to
drink ersatz coffee when I was imprisoned in Germany because that was the hot
beverage during the cold winter.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
We went into the briefing, and
there would be a chart on the wall, and the target would be located. There
would be possible areas of flak listed, and as I recall where our IP would be
located, there’d be some possible alternatives. We would get a weather report,
and be told what to expect. We would be told about fighter protection, if it
was English or American and what it would be. On the long missions we would
link up with P-38s which were very easily identified, and the Mustang with that
big cowling was easily identified, and we could identify German aircraft. But
generally we would then get our parachutes and check out an escape kit, and go
out and wait under the airplane until the control tower fired a flare, then
start up the engines.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
As I recall the run to Kassel was at
23,500 feet. I was not aware of any mishap in navigation until I heard a
discussion over the intercom among the navigators. What upset me was that they
were discussing over the radio that we were off course, and of course the
Germans could hear this. Now, I say the navigators, I think this was two
navigators that were discussing over the lead navigator. And as part of this
discussion I heard the lead pilot say “Stay in close and follow me.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
We also knew we were without
fighter protection, and there was some communication to try to get to our
fighters. I also remember our tail gunner saying “There are fighters coming in
from the rear.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I said, “That’s great.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And he said, “They’re not ours.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
So I knew they were approaching
from the rear. Of course I didn’t see any of this.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I was very much aware of the fact
that we were under fire, and what made me aware of it was our own guns started
firing. And also, the German artillery was sort of like patters of rain on the
cockpit, but our own guns were making much more noise. My concentration was
right on that wing. I was totally locked in to keeping the aircraft in
formation. I knew we were being hit, but the first, see, I was flying the
airplane and I was aware that we were dangerously hit when I was watching
engine instruments and I thought the engine was burning, which it was, and I
could see <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the engine right next to me
was burning. I didn’t know if I should put the fire extinguisher or not. I
didn’t, and Brent was still just sitting there. So I pushed the bailout button,
and I gave the crew time enough where I thought they would bail out and go
through the procedures that we had learned when leaving the aircraft.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I tried to raise
the rear of the airplane and the front of the airplane on the intercom, and I
couldn’t get anything from either direction. I knew we’d been hit, but I didn’t
know whether something had happened to them. I could see flak coming on the
nose of the airplane because it was in front of me, and the Germans were
approaching from the rear, coming up, rolling over and doing a split S and down,
coming out. I saw one of them do this when I was getting the top turret gunner
out.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
After I gave
him enough time to get out, I could see, in the cockpit area, the radio
operator and the engineer, the top turret gunner, were supposed to leave on the
sound of the alarm, open the bomb bays, and we would keep on flying the
airplane until they got clear. Then we would go out. I went out and the top
turret gunner was, whose name was Constant S. Galuszewski, he was from East
Tonawanda, New York, and the radio operator was named Sam Weiner, who was from
the Los Angeles area. But he was still in his turret, and I had to crawl up
there and jerk him by the seat of the pants. Weiner didn’t even have his
parachute harness on. So I jerked Galuszewski out of the turret, but in doing
that I saw the German plane turning and splitting S. After having made his run,
a beautiful airplane, very close, as close as to the other end of, well,
three-quarters of the way to the other end of this room. And I got Weiner’s
harness and shoved it at him, and opened the door into the bomb bay, and it was
just a mass of flame. The fuel gauges, which were on the left, were spitting
like blowtorches, and the bomb bay doors were closed and we would have been
trapped if they had remained closed. They operated hydraulically. There were
fires all over the place in the bomb bay. It’s amazing, I’d see areas of flame
chasing up pipes and pipework. And the switch to open the bomb bay doors was
right between those two blowtorches which were the fuel gauges. I thought I
could hit that switch and if we had hydraulic power, I could open the bomb bay
doors. If we didn’t, I’d have to wind it, and I didn’t think I could survive in
the flames. But I could jump through all of this flame on the catwalk to get
there, and I hit the switch on the way over to it, and I jumped through and got
there. And the bomb bay doors opened.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
But I still had
the responsibility of these two enlisted men. So I went back through those
blowtorches. Galuszewski was just sort of standing there in a daze. I started
snapping Weiner’s harness on him. Everybody had chest packs. I had a back pack.
I’d been off oxygen for a while to do all of this, and I didn’t know if my
parachute was burned when I walked through the fire. I’d walked through the
fire and I walked back through the fire.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
While I was standing
over Weiner and getting him put back together, Brent came by and told Weiner to
hurry up and he went ahead and bailed out. He went through the door into the
flaming area. I never knew whether he went back to check on people in the waist
or whether he went on out or what happened. Or whether he was injured in going
out, because the fire obstructed vision. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was concerned about that. But he went on
out. I still got Weiner put together, ready to go, and and Galuszewski, and
they were behind me, so I went on out. And they went out too, as the aircraft
broke up. It broke up. They told me later. The three of us were the only ones
who survived of the crew.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I never knew
what happened to Brent. During the reunion at Bad Hersfeld I heard what the
Germans did and things like that, but the Brent story is another story which
I’ll fill you in on down the line. Now, do you want the account of my fall, of
my jump?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Aaron Elson:</b> Oh yes! I’m spellbound.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Eugene George:</b> I came out of the
airplane. I used to swim a lot, and I came out, I was afraid I would hit some
obstruction and my safest bet would be to get into a cannonball position. I
didn’t know whether I had a parachute or not. And there were three things. One,
I’d been off of oxygen for quite a while, and I was concerned about this. I
wanted to get lower. Two, I knew there were a lot of German fighters in the
area and chances are they wouldn’t shoot someone in a parachute, but I was
afraid of even getting rammed, or run into, by a fighter. We had been briefed
on the fact that the Polish fighters in the RAF would have no hesitation
shooting a German in a parachute, and we knew that when this had happened the
Germans would retaliate. That’s what we’d been told. The other thing was, in
training films, we had a Navy character named Dilbert. Did you ever hear of
Dilbert?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Aaron Elson:</b> Just the cartoon.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Eugene George:</b> He was a cartoon. He was
a cadet, or a pilot, who goofed every possible way. One of these cartoons
showed Dilbert in a parachute with a target painted on his chest and a duck
sitting on his head and a Japanese aircraft lining up his sights, and I had
that vision, of Dilbert. Those three things. And I was tumbling. I was in the
cannonball position. I thought I’d better get out of that, and I didn’t know
quite how to do that, and I stretched out into a swan dive. I reached for my
ripcord to see if everything was still there, and I started spinning, so I got
back in the swan dive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOjL18zvh3Ww7B7OVOvwqmnCRnMxZ2PzvQ4qalZFnygEsk1DxEHYE7BUQukH4YoUFRoHSFB1Sri9vm9BSIJvxrpkPvf-lcfwUq8dIHXrngQZxtGc9duFH3aZyWQrg5NibjhfL9xqWrxdH7n-s/s1600/dilbert+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOjL18zvh3Ww7B7OVOvwqmnCRnMxZ2PzvQ4qalZFnygEsk1DxEHYE7BUQukH4YoUFRoHSFB1Sri9vm9BSIJvxrpkPvf-lcfwUq8dIHXrngQZxtGc9duFH3aZyWQrg5NibjhfL9xqWrxdH7n-s/s400/dilbert+2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Robert Osborn's Dilbert the Pilot</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<strong> </strong>There was a
solid cloud cover underneath us. I thought when I get into those clouds, I will
pull my ripcord.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<strong> </strong>I went right
through the clouds, and I could see the ground. But I was still in a freefall
situation. And I was curious as to whether I had a parachute or not, but
actually, the swan dive situation, it’s almost exhilarating. It was fun!</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
So I fell most
of the 23,000 feet, and I pulled my ripcord, and I was jerked up into the
proper parachute position. My parachute worked. That was the great news. And I
was coming down on some trees, which I later found were beech trees. My canopy
covered the top of a tree, and I was swinging in the tree.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<strong> </strong>I was kind of
reconnoitering, I could hear an air raid siren, and I could hear impacts of
aircraft crashing. And as part of this I could hear a lot of small explosions
which I think were ammunition on the aircraft.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; mso-pagination: none; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I was able to
swing over to the trunk of the tree and I discovered that my boots had snapped
off when the parachute opened.<br />
<br />
I got over to the trunk of
the tree and could climb up so I could reduce my parachute, which I left in the
tree. While I was in the tree I looked down and there were two foxes, they were
beautiful, red foxes with white tips on their tails. And they were obviously
frightened by all of this activity. I thought, they would know where to hide, I
mean they would go to a dense place. So I watched their direction. I never saw
them again, but I got on the ground and headed in that direction, and I did get
into a very dense undergrowth. I could see the sky but I was pretty well
concealed, and sort of took stock of things.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I opened my escape kit, and it had
been rifled. The stuff that mostly there was some hard candies, some halizone
tablets for water purification, someone had been through it and turned it in,
and the map was not there, which was really the one thing I wanted.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Waitress:</b> Coffee?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Yes. I would like a cup of decaf, black.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Regular.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> I had a little pocket Bible, and with it a New
Testament with psalms, and I <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>opened it
up, it was about ten o’clock in the morning, and it fell open to the 91st
Psalm.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Is that “May ten thousand fall to your left...”?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Yes, that’s the one. So, that was very reassuring.
That was a miracle. I mean, the foxes and the psalm. I waited for quite a
while. I did see three, they could not see me, but ME-109s flying low over. They
were in formation, probably returning to base. Also, there was a path not too
far away and I heard some people talking. There were three men, all senior
citizens, and they had a little fox terrier with them. I was really worried
about that, but I was downwind from them. I was enough of a Boy Scout to know
about this sort of thing, and the dog never caught me, but they were sort of
talking to the dog, the dog was looking up at them, they went right on by.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
My plan was to head for
Switzerland, walk all night and sleep all day, and before the sun came up I
would find a place to dig in.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I ran into Corman Bean, and we were
together on that first night, or maybe the second night, I don’t remember. It
was the 27th of September or the 28<sup><span style="font-size: x-small;">th. </span></sup>It was pretty chilly, and he
slept all morning and he kept talking in his sleep about Millie, his wife. He
would talk about her and it was quite a touching encounter. And then somehow,
he decided to take off and we got separated. I don’t know how it happened.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I think we would have been together
for a day or so. We didn’t have any food. We both had these little plastic
water bottles that folded up and we purified our water, we had plenty of water.
We tried eating raw potatoes. You’d go into a little farm, it was the fall and
there was fruit on the trees, but the German dogs were really friendly, but they
would start barking, and we didn’t want to risk that. So we didn’t eat.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Now, Corman’s stories may match up
here some, but I think most of what I’m going to tell you was solo on my part.
Somehow we got separated. We didn’t dare make a fire, or even if we had I don’t
think we had any matches, but the raw potatoes were just not possible. At any
rate, I found myself alone, still headed south. I was out about six days before
I was picked up. I lost count. I knew it was into October some.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
There were about three or four
encounters that would be interesting. One is that, it’s amazing how your senses
sharpen up under these circumstances, and I realized walking in the dark that I
was not alone, and, you freeze. I had made shoes for myself out of part of my
heated flying suit, I had a very sharp pocket knife and I used the wires in the
heated suit to tie them, so I could move very quietly. So I just froze and
there were two lovers, and I was very close to them. They never knew I was
there, they were focused on each other.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrm94BrwSM-7eDZbOcK8MjqxeBNeB6ueWPtFSJZOvUfz8XLtKvVh_N6VyHUMMfxsUoSrdAwLlmXN4830kGp1WwrSPy6BsQWO7TEUepFuloJdla-YOecw-Aa0JXSzWzBvYbgbn7y6Uhtr1TJVk/s1600/brent+crew.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrm94BrwSM-7eDZbOcK8MjqxeBNeB6ueWPtFSJZOvUfz8XLtKvVh_N6VyHUMMfxsUoSrdAwLlmXN4830kGp1WwrSPy6BsQWO7TEUepFuloJdla-YOecw-Aa0JXSzWzBvYbgbn7y6Uhtr1TJVk/s400/brent+crew.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Brent crew</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
Another time I found an autobahn,
the main autobahn south, and headed toward Switzerland. Everything was blacked
out but when you know a large, concentrated area, even though it’s blacked out,
you get a feeling for the place. I could hear a railroad train. I was very
concerned about bridges, because I didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a
bridge. There was practically no traffic, and any traffic there was would have
been military traffic, but I would often instead of walking on the bridge I’d
go down and try to cross over the creek, not to get caught on the bridge. So I
would walk all night and hide out all day. There was one time when I
encountered a railroad going the same way as the autobahn, and the train was moving
very slowly. I thought, if I can get onto this train I can hitch a ride for a
while if it’s going in the right direction. It was going north. I was in
timber, and I was on the edge of this forest by the railroad track, and I was
secure behind a tree, it’s pretty dark, but I could make out, it was hauling
something, and I could see cigarettes on these flat cars. It was an armored
division, and it had tanks on this train and the crews were riding on the
flatcars, now this was in the dark of night, so I thought, it was going in the
wrong direction so I didn’t take that train. But those were two of the
situations that I ran into.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
One thing, the German forests were
planted, and the trees were not at random. You could look down rows and rows of
trees, and I think they could see you, so you really had to be cautious. But I
was doing this at night.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
About the sixth day, I ran out of
cover. What happened was I was down in a valley, there were no trees, an
agricultural area, and there was bridge. I thought if I could get under that
bridge I could stay there all day. And so I did get under the bridge in some
high stuff, but I didn’t reconnoiter at all. There was a path under the bridge
also on the other side of the stream, and the Germans went to bed fairly early
but they got up very early, and there were agricultural workers walking on this
path. I knew they’d see me. I knew I was burned about the face and looked
horrible, but I didn’t have a mirror, I didn’t know what I looked like, so I
thought, well, my best plan is to just get up on the road, act boldly, and if I
can find a bunch of bushes somewhere I’ll go in there, but surely they’ve seen
me. I think they were so-called slave labor, I don’t know that they would have
said anything, they were strange looking people. But I got up on the road and
walked. A couple of military cars went by, didn’t stop. And I was getting into
central Germany. I’d been walking like crazy. I put myself down as four miles
per hour, because I’d conditioned myself to that pace. But I ran into an
overseer of these laborers, and he saw me and he looked very stern and said
“Englishman!”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I said, “Nein, nein,
Amerikanische.” I was pretty hungry and tired by this time. My right eye was
really hurting and I was afraid I might lose it from the burn. I could feel my
face, and part of my oxygen mask had melted on my face. And he looked at me and
looked horror stricken.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
We had been told that the SS were
dangerous, to never give up to them, that the Hitlerjugend were kids and they
were dangerous, but to give up to the Wehrmacht. So I asked if he could take me
to the Wehrmacht. He said yes, he would. He took me into this little town, I
don’t know where it was, or what it was, I really would like to know the name
of that town. He took me into what would be the equivalent of the
administrative office. I had an o.d. uniform with insignia and stuff under my
flying suit which had been burned in places. I took off my flying suit to show
that I was in uniform. Finally they sent for someone who spoke English. So he
came up and he said, “Are you from Chicago?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And I said, “No, I’ve never been to
Chicago.” And I told him I had walked for six days without food, did he have
anything to eat?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
He said, “Oh, you’ll get food.”
They never did.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
When he asked this question about
Chicago I thought he was thinking about gangsters, American flyers were
gangsters. So I told him name, rank and serial number, that I was a student, an
architectural student, and they were amazed at how old I was. They thought I
would have been much older. And I was from Texas. Now you’re just supposed to
tell name, rank and serial number, but, he said, “Well, I lived in Chicago.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And I said, “Well, you must not
have liked it because you’re here in Germany.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
“Oh yes,” he said. “I’m going to go
back there as fast as I can when this war is over.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
So they put me in their hoosegow,
which was the top of their church, a little room in the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>belfry. And I was so exhausted. And they sent
for a Wehrmacht guard and a truck to take me to the railroad station.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And that little room was so filthy,
I slept on the floor. But I was dead to the world, I was so tired. So I got on
the train in the baggage car headed for Frankfurt. I didn’t know where it was
going. And they had a guard in the baggage compartment. It had bicycles and
baggage and things, and he was a Wehrmacht guard. Do you remember the Milton
Caniff cartoons? He was very accurate in his drawings, and he would show
Germans with Mauser rifles and actually in training, his drawings of Japanese
landing craft were so accurate that those were used as training aids. But one
of the things he was very accurate with was his weapons, and the Mauser, the
German Mauser, was one of them. And this guard was a young guy, I looked at
him, he was very curious about me, and I think the word had gotten through to
him that I was from Texas and that I had been without food for six days and had
walked all this distance. I did ask him how far I was from Switzerland. He said
about 50 kilometers. And I went back and checked that distance after from Bad
Hersfeld to see if it was possible, and it was plausible at a four mile per
hour pace. Now I don’t know whether I’m exaggerating, but at any rate, that’s
what I believe I heard him say. Another two nights I could have done it. And
Switzerland wasn’t blacked out, so you knew when you were over the border.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
My plan had been to get a boat and
go to Lake Constance and go across there, if I could get a sailboat. I used to
sail sailboats and I was thinking to do that. I didn’t know what sort of
patrols they would have but I didn’t think they would be very severe because
that was not a war zone. But anyway, I saw his rifle and I said, “Mauser?” And
I looked at it, not trying to get too close, and he handed it to me. And I
looked out the window, and I lifted his rifle and very carefully handed it back
to him, and he realized what he had done, and then he was a little uptight. I
was whistling which I think just passed the time, and I was whistling the
Marseillaise. He asked me not to do it. He didn’t speak English, and he asked
me not to do that, so I tried Lili Marlene and asked him to sing Lili Marlene.
So we got into Frankfurt eventually. I still hadn’t eaten.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> You must have been starved.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Well, actually with water you can last a long time.
But those peaches I had back several days before had to last a long time. At
any rate, I was taken into a place where there were a lot of German enlisted
men, and they all knew that I had walked this distance and had been without
food, and that I was from Texas. And being from Texas, it really turned them
on. And I said, “No, my great-grandfather did. Not my father.” And that I grew
up on horseback, and with cows and oil wells. So we talked about things like
that. The big question on their minds was, “When is the war going to be over?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And I said, “We think it’ll be done
by Christmas.” And they were overjoyed at that. Everyone was sick and tired of
war.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I was taken into the hospital for
my burns. I had very good medical care. I asked the doctor if he went to school
in Heidelberg. He said he did, and he said, “When is the war going to be over?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And I said, “That’s one of the best
medical schools in the world. Some of our best physicians went there before the
war.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And always, I think, because I was
in a hospital bed, and because I behaved like an officer, these orderlies would
come in, I did get some potato soup finally, and they would salute before they
would ask a question, and I think this really paid off.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
We went to a place called Dulag
Luft, which you’ve heard about. I was there a couple of weeks and put on a
train with one other person, an Australian radio operator in a Lancaster, and
we headed for Stetin.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> At Dulag Luft, were you interrogated?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Not much. You see, I looked like Frankenstein. I was
all bandaged up. I was not much interrogated. The Australian and I were locked
up in a compartment of a passenger car. We went through Berlin on the way, and
we were locked in the car and there was an air raid on Berlin. The German
officer said that the Geneva Convention says I’m supposed to warn you that I
will shoot you if you try to escape and I’m now warning you, and he went to the
bomb shelter. We stayed locked up in the train, and the bombs didn’t fall near
us. I looked the Australian up in Australia when I went there later on, his
name is Johnny Murray and he went to the College of England after the war, he
studied dentistry, and we had a little correspondence.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
We would go through places and
there would be P-51s in the area, they would stop the train, they’d leave,
running, and all the passengers would go to the woods. We would stay locked up.
And we eventually got to Barth. Stetin, then to Barth, and we did do some
walking with a large group of prisoners. There were very vicious dogs and
guards, and we got into Stalag Luft 1 near Barth.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> How did you learn what happened to Brent?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> I never knew really what happened to Brent. To me,
he was MIA, and I thought probably he was killed in the jump or he got caught
by civilians who shot him and killed him on the spot or something. I never
knew. He was just straight MIA.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I had a telephone call one day, he said
he was from Oregon and he asked if I was Walter E. George who had been a pilot
in the Air Force. And I said yes. And he said, “Did you fly with Donald E.
Brent?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I said, “Yes, he was my pilot.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And he said, “I’m his
great-nephew.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And I said, “If you want to know
what happened to him I don’t know. I think I was the last one to see him alive,
he went out of the airplane before I did, but I don’t know what happened to him
after that.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
He said, “He was killed and he was
buried in Germany and reburied in an American cemetery.” And he said, “I really
would like to talk with you. My family would like to talk ... my grandmother
would like to talk with you.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And I said, “Well, I’d like to talk
with you.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
I’d always wanted to see Oregon, so
I said, “I’ll come to Oregon.” So my wife and I went. I was not sure where
Brent was from, but I knew he was associated with Eugene, Oregon, and he had a
wife in Bellevue, Washington. So we went to Eugene. I’d been in most of the
states but never Washington or Oregon, and I wanted to see the trees and other
things. So it was like going to a funeral. All the relatives, two of them
military, high up, colonels, who came from the Washington, D.C., area. There
was another retired Air Force person. There was the family. His former wife, of
course, was remarried, his sister, the grandmother of this nephew, and her
daughter, and these people really rolled out the carpet but I told them all I
could.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
Brent was a good pilot. He was
well-coordinated. He thought ahead of the airplane, and he was interested in
railroads. He wanted to be a railroad engineer and he’d worked on the railroads
for a while, and he was mechanically inclined.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
We were in harmony as a team, as
pilots. I knew what he was thinking before he said it, and he knew what I was
thinking, and the way we worked, reacting on the airplane. But he was a good
pilot, and I’ve flown with pilots who are dangerous. In fact, I refused to fly
with two pilots because they just weren’t with it. And they were trying to be
macho.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
So we had a good visit. I gave
Brent’s sister’s daughter the Bible that I’d had in my pocket when I bailed
out, and she broke into tears. I said, “This rode next to Brent on 17
missions.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
So that’s about it. I stayed in the
Reserve. I never flew a B-24 again. When we were evacuated from prison, for a
lot of prisoners, B-17s came in and picked us up, and I was up near the pilot
and I said, “Can I fly your airplane?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
He said, “Sure.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
So I flew back to an airfield in
France at very low altitude in Germany, the low altitude being, oh, 1,500 feet,
just looking at the countryside.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> What was it like in Stalag Luft 1?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> We were very crowded. We had 16 to 20 men in a room.
We were stacked up in berths that were too short or worked well for Italians.
We had Italian blankets which were too short. And remember, this was wintertime
in Germany. We had two or three briquets of coal and a little heater, but
actually our best warmth was from the fact that we had 20 people and we had
body heat. But we had Red Cross parcels. We didn’t have a lot to eat, we were
on very small rations, but when we got off Red Cross parcels it was pretty
rough. We lost a lot of weight. I really got angry with these television
programs about Air Force prisoners, all of these healthy guys who obviously ...</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Hogan’s Heroes?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Hogan’s Heroes. To me this is the biggest farce I
ever saw. It’s ridiculing the situation. I mean, these people, for what they
did they would have been shot. And we had a fellow shot for chasing a baseball
under the warning wire, and another fellow shot when he opened a window during
an air raid. The German guards varied greatly. We had cigarettes in the Red
Cross parcels and these were trade goods.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
One thing that had happened, we
were so out of shape if you got a scratch, it took so long healing. And then we
walked around kind of bent over. In Hogan’s Heroes, these people are straight
and doing things, it wasn’t like that. The Germans kept their civilian group
late in the war pretty well informed about where the Russians were. We knew the
Russians were coming, but we didn’t know what form this would take. And we
didn’t know what the Germans would do. We would hear explosions and the Germans
were blowing up motorcycles and things like this they didn’t want to fall into
Russian hands. And we knew there was an airport nearby, there was an airport
very close to us, and I think our prison was put close to that airport to
protect the airport. And we, as pilots, were watching these Germans fly. They
were flying JU-88s mostly, and they were so uncoordinated. And we thought they
were throwing inexperienced pilots with very low flying time into hot airplanes,
and they’ll kill themselves in these planes let alone do anything to the
Russians.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
But the Germans grabbed a lot of Red
Cross parcels and pulled out. We heard they were headed for the English lines,
and the German civilian population was very agitated. The first Russians I
believe we had was a boy and a girl on horseback just sort of scouting out the
territory, and they came into the area and left. And we knew the Russians were
coming. And the Russians came in the form of a lot of drunk Mongolians and
Orientals. I don’t know where they were from but some of them were driving very
skinny horses and pulling a cart full of loot. They were dressed in parts of
German uniforms and they all had German machine pistols, and they were drunk.
And mostly they came in wearing black armbands and we said, “Why are you
wearing black armbands?”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
And they said, “Why aren’t you
wearing black armbands? Roosevelt is dead.” The Russian army was wearing black
armbands to honor Roosevelt. And so they got us some black cloth and that was
our identification.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Had you not heard about Roosevelt?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> We had not heard about Roosevelt being dead. But at
any rate, we had numerous incidents in the camp. One of them was there were
prisoners, I suppose they were officers but they were painting a stripe down
the street, have you heard this story?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> No.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> And they painted right on up to the guard opening,
they painted their own way out. They painted as long as their paint would last,
and they were out of prison. But the Orientals just had a reign of terror. And
they were very fond of German children. You’d see one with a little blond kid
on his lap and just as happy as could be, they treasured these children. And
you’d see children holding onto the harness of a trained German shepherd. Then
there were civilian suicides in places, and the Russians didn’t bury anything.
This was a problem. But finally, more regular, disciplined troops came in
behind them.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Did they do anything to the children?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Oh no, they didn’t harm the children at all. The
parents I’m sure were terrified. I don’t know that they would have harmed the
parents if they were the parents of the children. The German children were
extremely well fed, they were healthy. The Russians drove in, and we told them
we hadn’t had beef for quite a while. And their ration was alcohol and they had
little tins of sardines. They lived off the land. We told them we hadn’t had
beef, and they drove in a very fine herd of Holstein cattle, and you know, to
get a cow from a cow to a steak takes some in-between work, and that was
attempted but it didn’t work, and we were trying to get the cows back to the
owners. But their troops came in and they were a crack outfit. We had seen
their reconnaissance planes, which were like 1930s biplanes coming over. Their
vehicles were all worn out, their land vehicles, on the units we saw. They
encountered SS and the SS had a unit somewhere around there, they went down to
a little town called Zingst and made a last stand and I think the Russians
killed them all. The Russians were fishing with hand grenades and things like
that, they were kind of dangerous to be around. When the first ones came in
they were line troops and they wanted us to tear down our barbed wire
enclosures. We didn’t have any techniques to do this, and we didn’t have any
tools to do it with. They sent a lot of them over with, I don’t know how, maybe
a hundred vehicles, and they wanted us to demonstrate things. And they sat in
squads or patrols and a lot of individual cars. I was worried about their fires
because I was thinking any German reconnaissance would pick them up, but they
were doing their dances and they had their little squeeze box, they were very
musical, and they wanted us to join in, and they wanted us to join with them
and go on and keep chasing the Germans.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
They also brought in a USO, the
equivalent of a USO show, and they brought in a lot of banners commemorating
dead soldiers, large photographic banners. We heard they said “We’ll take you
out to the Ukraine” or Georgia, and we said, “We’ll stay right here, our people
will come and get us.” They couldn’t believe that.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
We waited there on the ground for I
don’t know, two or three weeks, and things got settled down and B-17s came into
this little airport. It had been mined. We had gone over there, I was curious
about the time I got shot at. I learned that you hear the whine of the bullet
before you hear the report. So I went back in and stayed pretty much put. There
were corpses, which was very unpleasant.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Were you married at the time?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> Yes. I was married for about two years. I was
married just before I went in. When I got my wings I got married. She was about
the equivalent of Hedy Lamar in appearance, she was a beautiful young woman.
She was a graduate student in nutrition. To be an architect with a lot of time
in front of me, our marriage just wasn’t in place. I finished up at Texas and
then later got my graduate degree. I got divorced early on, while I was a
student at Texas. And I didn’t get married again for quite a while. My current
wife is my third wife, and we’ve been married for 21 years.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
The question of flying in the
military and all of that never goes away. When we met these Germans (in 1991),
we were right at home. I mean, there’s a lot of camaraderie and a fraternity,
nationality is of no consequence.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson:</b> Even though the two sides, you were trying to kill
each other?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Eugene George:</b> And I’ve read, of course I’ve read a lot about
aviation and aviation history, I’ve read that during World War I the French
pilots and the German pilots used to be at air shows together before they were
enemies, and developed great friendship during this time.</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
- - -<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcrrihBY9Ox3x3CB7Tmb0nHiQGNm5JPWguuK1r1xm1H80ITc1WZBFHnBEGJmocAlhMC7CEMXD95nRvovzlPO12yOwW_3PPhzMmkiV9uQDV4lVX8FCJxURTxAuIqy94xyvO_0OcoH9x2vYt5g/s1600/memorial.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAcrrihBY9Ox3x3CB7Tmb0nHiQGNm5JPWguuK1r1xm1H80ITc1WZBFHnBEGJmocAlhMC7CEMXD95nRvovzlPO12yOwW_3PPhzMmkiV9uQDV4lVX8FCJxURTxAuIqy94xyvO_0OcoH9x2vYt5g/s400/memorial.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Kassel Mission Memorial in Friedlos, Germany</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-6116972364664441422013-08-09T16:21:00.001-07:002013-08-09T16:21:24.365-07:00Five Acres of Bombs and a Drunken Angel<div style="text-align: center;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhClL0K5Qmdiz4W-Pz_PtiTdiaRg9Zs5HnB364GyJfln_inVMuGkahNtEMhXjGvZdu8f5RolCXYbpmPniQDaqi0ike_J_Beg18Gt5ann3dTAaqt-ws63AojDC5RR5mK6dySzMKIdmJ70fVjIFY/s1600/tibenham+marker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhClL0K5Qmdiz4W-Pz_PtiTdiaRg9Zs5HnB364GyJfln_inVMuGkahNtEMhXjGvZdu8f5RolCXYbpmPniQDaqi0ike_J_Beg18Gt5ann3dTAaqt-ws63AojDC5RR5mK6dySzMKIdmJ70fVjIFY/s320/tibenham+marker.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<b></b><br />
<b></b><br />
<b>(Part 3 of my conversation with Gene Crandall and Floyd Ogilvy, except Ogilvy just left, so this is really just with Crandall)</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-jimmy-stewart-story-or-two.html" target="_blank">Part 1: A Jimmy Stewart Story (or Two)</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/08/two-guys-talking-b24s.html" target="_blank">Part 2:Two Guys Talking B-24s</a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
Part 3 </div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
(this conversation took place in 1998 in a Cracker Barrel in Battle Creek, Mich.)</div>
<br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> There really is tremendous interest in the war. I get questions from high school kids. "I need to find a veteran to interview for school." And I hook them up and they do it by computer.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, I suppose this "Saving Private Ryan" really ... But you know, I watch a lot of these periodicals and things, newsreels and all that, and I’ve learned more about the Second World War, what I was telling you about bombing Switzerland...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Oh yes. Tell me again.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, you know this never has come to light, and I knew we bombed Switzerland. But until the Swiss got accused of hoarding the gold for the Germans and even the gold teeth out of the Holocaust victims, I never heard this until about three months ago, and they finally admitted it. But one day I was talking to these guys and I said, "Where are you going?"<br />
And they said, "We’re going to go to Switzerland."<br />
And I said, "You can’t bomb Switzerland, they’re neutral." But they came back again, and I said, "Well, where’d you go?"<br />
And they said, "We went over and bombed Switzerland." I said, "What the hell did you do that for?"<br />
And they said, "Because they were making ball bearings," and I heard that it was seven miles inside the border. They bombed the hell out of it. And then we apologized to the Swiss and gave them seven million dollars for destroying the building. But this same guy told me one day, he said, "I’ve got 24 missions." And he’s from up here, not too far, I won’t tell you. And he said, "I’ll see you after the war."<br />
And I said, "What do you mean you’ll see me after the war?" And he said, "Well, we’ve got 24 missions in and we’ve got to fly 25, so we’re gonna abort when we get close to Switzerland."<br />
And I said, "That’s a hell of a note." And he said, "Oh no, because if we go back we’ll have to go to the South Pacific." So he never came back. They aborted and went to Switzerland. And I saw newsreels, film, of about 30 bombers over there in Switzerland. And the Swiss were very upset that the Americans were over there. But this guy told me, boy, he says, "They’ve got a lot of beautiful women over there, and a lot of booze." And he says, "Since we put in our 25 missions, by god, we’re gonna enjoy the rest of the war."<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> I’ll be darned.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> You didn’t never know about that?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> John Robinson in his book "A Reason to Live," have you read that?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> No.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> He was one of the originals, he went over, he kept a diary.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Did they know he kept a diary?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> I don’t know if they knew, but he kept it and when he retired he went back to it and he wrote just a day by day account, what type of bombs he carried, the things that he witnessed, you couldn’t dispute. And he said one day that there was a bombing mission near Switzerland, and he saw two perfectly good B-24s peel off and head to Switzerland.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> You know, at one time, the generals were very upset that they were aborting so much into Switzerland, and into Sweden, and they were gonna court-martial and so forth. But if they aborted and went to Switzerland and they had 25 missions, and boy, let me tell you those missions were stacked up so they had 100 percent chance of getting killed, you sometimes wonder if they were smart to do it.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> How can you blame them?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, I guess a B-24 cost about a half-million in those days. But if they put in 25 missions they had a hundred percent chance of getting killed, like this guy [Floyd Ogilvy] put in 30, he had a hundred percent chance of getting killed. He’s a pretty nice old guy. He’s getting old. I met him about 20 years ago one time down at an Irish pub. He’s aged quite a bit since then.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> How old are you now?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> 77. Oh yeah, in fact I’m gonna start another business selling air purifiers.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> How many kids do you have?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Four. Well, I’ve got four and I’ve got an adopted daughter, I’ve got five, really. And you talked to Tim. He’s a preacher.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Oh, is he?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yeah. He and I totally disagree on that, you know, because I think it’s a con artist, there’s so many damn preachers taking people’s money, I’ve always been dead against that. But he’s got a black belt in karate.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Really.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yeah, he was in the military too. He asked me to be sure and tell you when you came here, but I called him twice and he’s got, you know, when you call in and you get that bebop from the computer.<br />
<br />
<div align="CENTER">
* * * </div>
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> I think the 445th got three presidential unit citations, is that right?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> I don’t know.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Because they gave me one one time with a couple of stars. And I’ve got so many battle stars, the Ardennes and Europe, and I was just in a ground crew. About the only flying I did was test flying.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> But did you get credit if your planes took part in those?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh yeah. You’re part of the group. That’s how come I got these battle stars. <br />
we were only there for about 19 or 20 months, but I was with the outfit from the time it was organized in Wendover.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Do you remember the bomb dump explosion?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, hell yes.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What happened then?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Uhh, the bomb dump, there’s another base, about, I don’t know, it must have been three, four miles away, maybe five miles. And they had these super sensitive British bombs that didn’t need a fuse. They’d just go off, and they were big. And these guys, now this is what I heard, I wasn’t there, these bombs, they kicked them off a ramp and they had 6-by-6s, you know, with those V-figure that they load bombs in on with a hoist. And they kicked these bombs off, and I heard there were ten or twelve trucks there, and all the bombs went off. And the damn bombs went off for three days.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Three days?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yes. As they blow up, then it would heat up the next, and go on and on. And it ruined all the airplanes on the base, because we went over and got the parts off them.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> It ruined the planes on the base?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh yeah. Because the blast ruined the tail sections and all, blew them apart, see. Yeah, that thing went off for three days. And our base had like five acres of bombs, and they were like six feet high. Boy, the civilians really kept us supplied. I think the civilians won the war.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Five acres of bombs?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, boy, that’s a big operation. And the bombs all came in wooden boxes, then they’d stack them up. Well, we dropped, man, we flew 350 missions. Three hundred and fifty times about 20 airplanes, that’s a lot of, nowadays they don’t call them missions ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Sorties.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Sorties, yeah. That’s each airplane. But the B-24 was a very dangerous airplane. Not only did it leak gas to beat hell, it wasn’t constructed in such a way that you could crash land it with any success. In fact, one time, three airplanes, when LeMay took over and they were flying close formation, and three of them collided right over my head. The two B-24s just came apart, disintegrated. And a 17 came over and the tail was cut off, and it went into the woods right by the base there. And then a lady that lived in the woods went over there to try to help them and it blew up and killed her. And we took up a collection for her children. But damn, I was standing there and watching and seeing all this orange-black fire, and I’m thinking, "My God, this can’t be real." And then the parts started flying, dropping. But we had a lot of wrecks around our base. In fact, one time I was working on a pathfinder. I was working right off the end of the runway to a parking stand, and this is the time when the Bulge was going on and they needed air support desperately. And I’m working on this airplane and I’d just changed the governor and ran it up, and I got out of it, and our line chief came up. He was an old military guy, the only time you ever saw him, they said he was a drunk, but he’s my drunken angel if you will, and he said, "Crandall, get the hell in this weapons carrier."<br />
And I jumped in there and threw the bike in the back, because I had a bike, I had to, to go from airplane to airplane with. And we took off down the perimeter, and one came -- this was when they were taking off in a dead fog -- one came right out of the fog and clobbered the one I’d just been at, and the damn explosion hit us in the back, and it felt like our kidneys were floating. So we lost twenty guys right there. We lost a lot of airplanes. We lost about 150 bombers.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What was the pathfinder?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> A pathfinder is a radar ship. When they first had radar, they could discern from the radar some things, and a pathfinder had a radar they could look down and see, like through the fog and so forth, and see cities and all. And they had about two or three pathfinders to every mission, and the best navigators and the best bombardiers flew in the pathfinder. And at the end of the war, the pathfinders, they would all clue in on this pathfinder, and he had a tail light, and as he would signal, they’d drop bombs. And that’s usually a major or colonel or something that was the navigator or the guy who was controlling, as they got better and better. I’ve seen pictures of bombardments where they’re trying to hit a bridge and they dropped 200 goddamn bombs and never hit the bridge. You know, these new smart bombs are pretty neat. Boy, they dropped a lot of bombs over in Germany. They used to say, they used to come back across the English Channel and salvo their bombs. And they said you should be able to walk across the damn English Channel with all the bombs that are in there. Because they couldn’t land with their bombs.<br />
That was a very thrilling time. Not only that, it was great teamwork. Jesus, you had 5,000 guys in a bomb group.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What an experience that must be.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I went to college, and I started a business, and I had a hell of an exciting life, and got a couple of divorces, the whole thing.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What had you done before?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> I grew up in Pontiac, and I ended up working in Detroit making anti-aircraft guns, just before the war, and that’s where I got a background in gears and all that crap. And I tried to get in the Navy as a pilot. I passed everything, but every time they’d check me, my pulse was too great. So then I went in the military over here, and they gave me tests for two days, the next thing I know I’m in Biloxi, Mississippi, and it says "Through these portals pass the finest airmen in the world." They never told you anything during the war. Then I went through the B-24 school, see. That, and we had the same training pilots did, like 4 o’clock in the morning through obstacle courses and all that crap. Then they had to eventually stop that because too many guys were having a nervous breakdown. And then they sent me over to Illinois, what’s the name of that, Champaign, Illinois, and sent me to advanced specialist school, where I got engines and propellers and all that.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> And you enlisted or were you drafted?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> I enlisted in the Navy, and they turned me down because I’d get too excited, and then they drafted me. And my wife’s uncle was the head of the draft board. He wanted to be sure nobody thought he was partial. He was a judge. But I learned more in the Air Force than I ever learned in my life. Well, you know, when you’re in a combat outfit, for instance, these pilots used to want to abort an airplane, or ruin it. So they’d start the starter, and you had to nurse the starter, it’d go rrrrrrrr, so they’d start the starter and get it up to speed, and then they’d mesh it, push a button, so they’d take their hand off the starter, and then they’d remix it again. And the second time they did it tore all the dogs out. So they’d say, "Well, we don’t have to go today," because the airplane won’t fly. So these guys, we got a big long spun G cord, I don’t know if you know what that is, but it’s a big long rubber cord, and we got leather and we made a pocket and we put it around the propeller and we took this damn 50-foot spun G cord and put it on the back of a jeep, put the top up on the jeep so when we pulled it and the damn thing let go, it wouldn’t hit us in the head. Then they drove off sideways to the airplane and boy, when that spun G cord got stretched out there about 100 feet, and then kicked that engine, boy, that started. These guys invented it. And the crew chief, or the flight chief, would get in there and set the controls, so nobody could say the damn thing wouldn’t run. And by god, we’d get ’em up there.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Now you mentioned the term dogs...you said dogs ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Dogs, they’re catch gears. In other words, they fit in a slot and so forth, and when the clutch is engaged they grab hold of another gear and turn the engine, see. Oh, those guys invented a lot of stuff. See, these were a bunch of farmboys, or guys, like I grew up pretty much out in the country but not really on a farm, but, yeah, before I did, I worked in a farm too. Mostly we were just boys out of the Depression, and when I went to college, the professors in college said there’ll never be another group like the guys in the Second World War, and I said, "Aw, you’re crazy. Hell, there are good men all over."<br />
They said, "Yeah, but just think about it. These guys grew up in the Depression. If they didn’t work, they didn’t eat. And they knew when they went to war they may never come back." Like I sold everything I owned when I went to war.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Really?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, hell yeah. I was sure I was gonna get killed. Actually, when I went in was when Rommel chased the American army 120 miles through that Kasserine Pass or whatever the hell it was. So I thought, boy, the chances of getting, they didn’t call anything R&R in those days. You know, you went to war, and if the war was over you went home. So I got rid of what I had. But it was a wonderful experience.<br />
Where are you gonna stay tonight?<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> My next stop is in Knoxville. I’m gonna drive a couple hours, that way I won’t have as far to go tomorrow.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> When I retired I went out to California. I cruised all the way out there, out through Nevada, and I got nailed for driving under the influence in Nevada, and Jesus Christ, it took me a month to get out of there. Then I went down through California and Arizona. I don’t drink anymore, but I, it used to be a part of that masculine mystique, you know. Yeah, you’re, aren’t you Jewish?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Yes.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> We had a Jewish guy in our outfit that was a real scream. He was a corporal. And I came in the barracks one night and he was just having a damn fit, and I said to him, "Well what the hell’s the matter with you?"<br />
And he said, "Somebody sold one of my stores."<br />
I said, "What the hell are you talking about?"<br />
And he said, "I own shoe stores all the way from Maine to Florida."<br />
And I said, "No shit." Boy, he must be a multi-millionaire. And he never said a word about anything like that. He used to get neurotic once in a while. He was just a corporal. But we had all kinds of weird guys in the service. A real interesting time, though, I’ll tell you. I loved it. I never learned more in my life. And of course, when you go through an experience like that, and you watch the American will, might, conquer the world all the way from Germany to Japan and God knows every other place, you know in your mind that anything that you want to do bad enough you can do. And you know at that time that anything in this world is possible if you are determined. But that gave me confidence all my life."<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
- - -</div>
<a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-jimmy-stewart-story-or-two.html"></a><br />Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-90795924023977592532013-08-08T07:51:00.001-07:002013-08-09T16:24:41.199-07:00Two Guys Talking B-24s<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMrrQ5hZGM_G2w0ifzODv_HVIq7-kHr4lIwUxDy4w_Wpsoi7nGEd3w9e6fDGDiI-EPN2h-rRSAhIbQ5aoAMnp9RLTPAjsFg3iZvD6m3nrowjRuiJpjrHIQTW29Nci0feCvF3iSCHGsWjCp-cw/s1600/b24+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMrrQ5hZGM_G2w0ifzODv_HVIq7-kHr4lIwUxDy4w_Wpsoi7nGEd3w9e6fDGDiI-EPN2h-rRSAhIbQ5aoAMnp9RLTPAjsFg3iZvD6m3nrowjRuiJpjrHIQTW29Nci0feCvF3iSCHGsWjCp-cw/s1600/b24+copy.jpg" /></a></div>
<b></b><br />
<b>Part 2 of my conversation with Gene Crandall and Floyd Ogilvy</b><br />
<em>(Crandall was a propeller specialist and mechanical troubleshooter, and Ogilvy was a gunner in the 445th Bomb Group)</em><br />
<strong></strong><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<strong><a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-jimmy-stewart-story-or-two.html" target="_blank">(Go to Part 1)</a></strong></div>
<b></b><br />
<b>G</b><b>ene Crandall:</b> Did you ever see an airplane that was captured by the Germans and rebuilt?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yes, a B-24? I never had seen one but I heard they had them.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> They used to, when they had crashes, they fixed them up and they’d get right up there in the same formation with our guys and radio down the altitude and the speed and all that, and then dive out of the formation and then you’d get the flak. Right?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Well, yeah, I never saw one of those, but I knew ... What is your interest in this?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> I’ve written a couple of books about my father’s tank battalion, and I was over in Europe, in Germany, doing some research, and I met Walter Hassenpflug.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy: </b>He was one of the people that got shot down?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> No, he was a 12-year-old kid, German, and he captured Frank Bertram.<br />
He told me the story, showed me the monument, and I was hooked. I went to a reunion of my father’s tank battalion after he passed away, and I’d hear these veterans telling stories, and I was just riveted. So I went back the next year with a tape recorder. Historically it’s good that I’m doing this, but to me, these are just great stories.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> There’s a lot more interest now in the Second World War, 50 years later.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> I just came back from Pennsylvania, Penn State University, they had the National Collegiate Wrestling Tournament there, and I’m an ex-college wrestler so my wife and I go every year.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Reg Miner was a wrestler in high school.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> I don’t know that name. Is he 445th?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> He was the pilot of Frank Bertram’s plane. I think Kassel was his 19th mission. When did you finish your missions?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> August 11 and that was September 27 as I recall.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> So he would have come in shortly before you finished up. What missions did you go on besides Berlin?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Munich. Strasbourg. Saarbrucken.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Oh, Saarbrucken. I don’t know if it was the same one, but his plane was badly damaged on a Saarbrucken raid and he landed in a field.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> In England?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Yes. But he didn’t make it back to Tibenham. He came in over a clump of trees and they were scraping the bottom of the plane. It was just a miracle, but that was a Saarbrucken raid.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> There was more than one Saarbrucken mission. But I did go there once.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> You were not on the Gotha raid?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> No, that was before I got over there.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> But you had heard about that?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yep, I sure did. I was scared to pieces. That was a tough one.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you ever go to Gotha?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> No. It happened before I got there, where they lost several planes from the 445th.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Do you recall the plane that, when they sent four planes up to Ireland and they brought one back and the plane blew up in midair with the four crews on it?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> My navigator got killed in that. John Hennessy.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> What were they going to Ireland for, to pick up another airplane?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yes. They had 24 guys on it, and the plane blew up. And my navigator, after I finished my tour, my navigator stayed in.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> You know, after this raid that you were talking about, the Kassel mission, the next day we had 31 brand new airplanes. Because they had them in a staging area. And I thought to myself, thank God for the civilians that are building this stuff. And I guess Ford built them so fast that they had to slow him down because he was making one an hour. After I got through college I went to law school and so forth, I went broke, so I went over to Kaiser, they had Willow Run then, and I was a division superintendent building C-119 cargo airplanes in the same place that all those B-24s were built. And as far as I know about B-24s, any airplane built by Ford we could take the tail section off of any Ford plane and put it right on there and they built them all with pictures and everything so that they always were a perfect fit. But the Consolidated airplanes are lousy, you know, they were almost hand made in a different way.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> So both Ford and Consolidated made B-24?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, a lot more than that made them. I don’t know how many plants made them. I think they made them, didn’t they make B-24s in Texas?<br />
<br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> In Oklahoma.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> In Oklahoma? Consolidated, I don’t know if they built them in Wichita or not. They had an awful lot of components being built and shipping to the assembly place. But I know they slowed Ford down because he was making one an hour, and boy, I think the civilians did as much to win the war as we did. Because one time we had a bunch of construction guys screwing around with our runway and they spilled crushed rock all over the ground, were you there then?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> uh-huh.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> We had to ground all our airplanes because they were running over these damn crushed rocks. And within 36 hours, airplanes were arriving with loads of tires. And the people in the United States were really getting it together. I guess we could thank Marshall for that. Marshall was the brain behind the whole damn war.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you encounter any signs of sabotage on any of the planes?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> No, I never saw any signs of sabotage. I know that one day a little black car pulled up and snapped up about three Englishmen that were working on the runway. I don’t know what exactly they were, but it was the CID, and they had spies there, I know that. Because they knew when we were taking off and every other damn thing. But this little black car came up there and plainclothes guys got out and snapped a couple of these Limeys off of the runway and took them away. But I told you, two days after we got there Lord Haw Haw said "Welcome the 445th." They had spies, but I never saw any sabotage. We had enough wrecks due to our own stupidity. I was much more frightened by our own people than I was the Germans, because we had some gunnery officer that was trying to sight in the rear turret and he didn’t have the interruptor on, the fire interruptor, and he was spraying bullets all over the base. In fact, I went over to my washerwoman one day and asked her, she used to wash my clothes, and I went over there and she says, "Come along in here now," and I went in there, and she had holes in her parlor. And I said, "My god, where’s that from?"<br />
She said it was from those machine guns.<br />
The worst problem we had, because I used to go down there in the dark, in the morning, and the armament guys would be fiddling around with the turret, and every once in a while a blast with those incendiary bullets would go right out over the base, because the guys hit that foot pedal you guys had in there.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> They had them in the tail turret, a manual thing to fire the guns in case the hydraulic system or something was out. I can remember, in one of the bases where I was located, I’m not really sure where it was, but a guy got in the back in the turret while he was on the ground and stepped in the turret and hit that, and it sprayed bullets all over the place.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yeah, and I was riding down the perimeter, dragging a propeller, or an engine, I forget which one I was dragging in a jeep, and that guy was still practicing over there and the damn bullets hit the trailer, or the dolly that was hauling the engine. I was with the guy, and we heard that pinging going on, I said, "For Christ sakes, stop!" And we jumped out of there, we looked, and there was a hole in that damn, well, those were armor piercing bullets. I walked by a turret one time, a tail turret, and I told the armament guy, the guy who took care of the machine guns, I said, "There’s a jammed cartridge in that gun. Now be careful." I walk by the gun, and this guy got in there, and it went off. And it just missed the back of my head. It hit the ground, ricocheted right through an engine, and out through the wing. And I couldn’t hear for a week. So my assistant, I said to him, and this guy had his fingers, you know, where the air cool slots are, in a .50-caliber, he had his fingers in there, and they nipped off the end of his fingers, and he came out of there screaming and we grabbed him and put him in a jeep and took him over to the hospital. But it was very, very dangerous. Those old bombers were very, very dangerous. I don’t know how many of them had gas leaks, and if a B-24 ever cracked up it rolled up. Very few of them stayed whole when they came to rest, did they? The 17 was a good, tough airplane to crack up in.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> We don’t talk about 17s. We’re 24 people.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Some 17 pilots used to come over to our base and they’d look at our engines, and our engines were real clean ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Because the 17s were Wright engines and ours were Pratt-Whitney and they ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> The Wright engine had a lousy seal where the front bearing is, you know, where the propeller shaft is. And they were always dirty, and the pilots would come over there and they’d say, "How do you keep that propeller clean?"<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> You didn’t have to. Did you ever hear of a guy by the name of Tony Marks?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> No.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Well, he’s a guy that I have been in touch with, and the plane that we flew most of our missions on was called the Silver Streak, and I didn’t realize that it had been shot down before we left, and we flew our last four missions on a plane called Thumper. So I got hold of him and I told him, no, I said my plane was, I thought it got shot down on the Kassel raid. He wrote me back this letter and he said ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> (reading) "Dear Floyd, Nice to hear from you. Again I thank you for the confirmation of my info re the Silver Streak. Memory is a funny thing and you’re not the first vet by any means to tell me something which conflicted with the facts that I had. When you do this type of research, you just have to have open mind about things and not be too dogmatic. It’s odd, though, that Brsic’s book records no losses on July 25 whereas Freeman’s Mighty Eighth War Diary does, just one 445th. I’m familiar with the other plane you mention, Thumper ..."<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> My plane got shot down on July 25, and then we flew on the Thumper and he talks about that there too.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> (reading) "...In fact, I have a couple of photos of it, one with the nose turret knocked off after a midair collision during a mission to Mainz on 9 September '44. After you finished your tour, I should think. Thumper was finally lost on a mission to Hanau on 11 December '44." Oh, he’s in England, this ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yeah, he’s an English person, and he was just really very interested in ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> You were in the Normandy invasion?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yes. I flew two missions on D-Day.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yeah.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> I think the group flew three missions that day. Because I know we put up everything we had, even War Weary airplanes, with a big WW on the tail. War Weary, you ever see them?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> No.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, when they get all worn out they put WW on the tail, they call it War Weary. And they sent everything they could get up. And one of these planes came back with the propeller not feathering, just turning, and I went over and grabbed hold of the blade, twisted it like that, and the damn thing went back and forth six inches. And somehow the hydraulic reservoir got shot out of there, and that airplane was in such bad shape that if anybody flew in that plane they were taking their life in their own hands. Well hell, they just junked them all, didn’t they? Like, when I was down to Ipswich where this one airplane came in that we picked up, I was telling him there was a runway five miles long, and one mile was blacktop and the rest of it was gravel, and they had pipes this big around all the way down each side of that runway when they dumped gasoline. And then start it on fire, and then that would dissipate the fog. There was a lot of night work going on, you know, from the RAF and all that. And the reason they did that was to dissipate the fog and then them guys knew where the runway was, see. And they had, it seemed to me hundreds of airplanes there, night fighters, all black, painted jet black. And they had all kinds of British airplanes there, and they were all piled up. It must have been billions of dollars worth of airplanes. Ipswich is right on the coast, so they’d come out of Germany and that’s what they hit. But they had an interesting system. When these guys would come back at night, they’d have one searchlight, did you ever do that? Okay, when they got to the coast, you see the RAF, or the British had this searchlight system, and they’d have one searchlight right up and you could see that thing from 10,000 feet. And then the guy would fly to that searchlight, and they’d turn it off, and they’d light another one down there about ten miles, and he’d fly to that one. And then when they were through, they could tell by the sound of the engine where it was, when he got down there far enough, why they’d let him land. Well, one morning I went down to the line and there were about twenty of those great big Halifax bombers sitting there that had gotten weathered in at their own base and they landed at our base, because they flew at night. And we used to listen to them at night going over, you could hear them at night, one right after the other.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> No formation, they just ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> These guys flew every day, all day long, in formation. At the end of the war there were thousand plane formations, and when they’re flying up there you could see, you remember when they were all aluminum, they stopped camouflaging them, because they’d go seven miles an hour faster if they were aluminum. So these parts would come tricking down like chaff, like you were talking about like Christmas tree chaff, and you could see it come down from 15, 20,000 feet. Very interesting time.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What was the mood on the base on Sept. 27, after the Kassel raid?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> We took it as a terrible, terrible loss. I mean, when you lose 31 airplanes, you know, everybody said "Oh my God." Well, there was a time, you know, when they almost stopped the daytime bombings, the losses were so terrible. But in that raid you’re talking about, we heard that the German Goering’s Yellow Nose Squadron jumped the whole formation, and to get into Hermann Goering’s Yellow Nose Squadron, you had to have a hundred kills or something, although a kill for them was an engine, in other words if you shot down one bomber, that was four kills. But that’s what we heard. That was an awful sad day, Jesus, you lose 310 men, we thought we lost that many all in one crack. That’s why we didn’t get to be too friendly with guys like this [Ogilvy]. And at the end of the war, as we grew older and the crews grew younger, they were like little kids. It was a lot of, like, almost like cannon fodder.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> You must have had buddies who were crew chiefs of planes, how did they take it when their plane ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, they’d get sick when they’d lose their plane, because it’s like part of them, a lot of crew chiefs went on missions with them.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Really?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yeah, they did. I know half a dozen guys went on missions. I’ve been on missions. But they were milk runs. Never go along to Berlin. But hell, the crew chief got to be very close to the people, his crew. One crew bought a silver B-24 carved by a jeweler and gave it to the crew chief. And they always went to London and always brought him back a bottle of booze. The pilots were very nice to the ground crew, because their life was hanging on every thing.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> I can’t get over, you know, reading the amount of damage to some of those planes...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, gosh, you don’t know. They’d come back with a half a tail gone, and wings all shot to hell. In fact, one time one came back and he had a .20-millimeter right through the propeller blades, and we learned in engineering school if that ever happened it would really throw it off balance. I said to the pilot, "Did you know you had a bullet through the propeller?" He said, "Hell, no." He said, "I was so interested in getting back it didn’t bother me."<br />
Well hell, I don’t know how many times they’d get shot on the deck, you know, down low, and the Germans would be after them and they’d call for 60 inches of manifold pressure on there and come back out of there and burn up their engines almost, and we’d have to change the engines. Hell, I’ve seen them come back and they actually sucked the duct business out of the intake manifold, and I’d say to them, "Jesus, you know you burned the engines out?" And they’d say, "We don’t give a damn ..."<br />
Well, they were sitting ducks, that’s why they got down on the lower level, just to get back across that damn Channel. That Zuider Zee has still got thousands of airplanes, and they still dig ’em out of there once in a while, and that water’s so cold that they find the guys’ dog tags and all that. Which is right where the windmills and all that is.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Was Dewey a POW?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> No, Dewey made it back. And, let’s see, I think that was only his eighth mission, so he continued to fly. What led Hennessy to stay in?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> I don’t know, if it was promotion or what. Anyway, he stayed over there and I came back home, and I didn’t know until way after the war that he was killed. A handsome young guy. Nice kid.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> He got killed?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yeah, he got killed in that thing that he was talking about, those 24 people, they were going to Ireland.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> They were delivering three old B-24s ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Then they picked up new airplanes, didn’t they?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> No, the fourth plane went with them and brought the crews back, I guess there were six man crews on each. And over Liverpool it just exploded in midair. This fellow George Noorigian, he was a bombardier, but he believes, he said it was his theory, but nobody ever knew exactly what happened, but with 24 people on a plane he thought a lot of them would be smoking, crammed in like that, and he thought that there must have been a leak in the gas ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, the way the wind blew through there I don’t know if that would have made any difference or not. Boy, if that wind blew through there it was cold. I’ve seen, the B-24 was notorious for leaking, and the wing was built like this, right in the bomb bay, and the leak would run right down to that V and drip down into the bomb bay. I’ve seen guys when the plane would spring a leak, they’d get so damn mad they’d get out there and kick the airplane. We had some crazy fellows. One guy used to come back from a mission, and he’d have the co-pilot fly, and he’d get down there about ten feet off of the English Channel and take his .45 and shoot it down into the water. Well, that pilot, you know, wartime pilots are a little crazy. Especially fighter pilots. One guy was from Clear Point, North Carolina, and he owned a tavern or what they call a roadhouse, and he knew this guy that was either the first or second ace in the British Isles. So the guy came over there and he said, and he’s flying a jug, you know, a Thunderbolt, a P-37, and he said, "Show us a little performance, will you?" And this young kid, he was nuts, he was maybe 25, he looked like he was 30. And he took that damn jug aloft and he made a pass at that field upside down, and you’d swear that that canopy was gonna drag the ground.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> You had mentioned earlier governors. Did the engines have governors?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Sure as hell did. Hydraulic governors.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Was that to control the speed or to limit it?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> To control the blade angle of the propeller. When you got up to 2,850 RPM if it ever got that high, the blade angle would take a bigger bite of the air so that the engine wouldn’t run right, and if it got up to 3,500 it would burn the engine up.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Let me ask you, one of the pilots on the Kassel Mission who made it to the emergency field at Manston said that he had an almost a panoramic view because he was in the lower left element, I think, but he could look out and see all that was going on, and he said one memory that would always stay with him, one of the weirdest things he’d ever seen, two B-24s, he said their propellers, all four propellers corkscrewed away from the plane and flew in formation until they tilted downward.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> I’ve never heard of anything like that. I used to put propellers and engines on there, and it was my job to run em up to full 60 inches of manifold pressure, and the damn propellers were turning right by my head, and it was my job to run em up and check em out, and I never saw a propeller leave an airplane. But, if he said he saw it he saw it. But it must have been some kind of engineering fluke.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> That was on the Kassel raid?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> On the Kassel raid. He felt that it was an inexperienced pilot in both planes that had given it full throttle, now I don’t quite understand ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> That wouldn’t make sense. <br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> It would if they feathered something and shouldn’t have.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> If they feathered it, that still wouldn’t make them break loose.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Is it possible that it was at the same time as they were being hit by shells.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well to do that, you’d probably have to take the whole nose section off the airplane, and that nose section is made out of magnesium so it’s lighter. But I never saw that happen. I saw one airplane once that had a rebuilt engine on it so that a nose section came off it, but I never saw ... We had the best airplanes they could build, the best they could give us. I never saw anything like that.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Well, anything is possible.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, in wartime, you know, they, like Ford built one an hour. If there was a defect it’s possible. But I never saw anything like that. ... Where are you from?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> New Jersey<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> What part of New Jersey?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Hackensack, northern New Jersey.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> I was in Trenton for a while. Fort Dix there. Till we got redeployed. I liked Trenton. George Washington slept there.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Now you became a lawyer after the war?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> No, I went to law school. Oh, hell, I can’t stand lawyers. I went broke in law school.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> How did you do that?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, I had a bunch of kids. Then I decided I didn’t like lawyers anyhow. So I went to work at Kaiser. And 18 months later they were in a big aircraft program and I went over there and ended up a division superintendent building airplanes.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Guys, I’ve got to get home, it’s 9:30. It was nice talking with you.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Let me just get the name of this, "Fields of Little America, Martin W. Bowman."<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Where did you get that?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> I bought it in England when I went over, after I retired. Saw it on the shelf and said, ooh, that looks interesting.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> He’s the mayor of Battle Creek.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Not anymore.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> How long were you the mayor?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Three years.<br />
<b></b><br />
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<a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/08/five-acres-of-bombs-and-drunken-angel.html" target="_blank">Part 3: Five Acres of Bombs and a Drunken Angel</a><br />
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<a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-jimmy-stewart-story-or-two.html" target="_blank">Part 1: A Jimmy Stewart Story (or two)</a></div>
Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-27205824160612877372013-08-05T17:45:00.000-07:002013-08-08T16:37:22.487-07:00A Jimmy Stewart story (or two)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One of the first things I discovered about the Kassel Mission after meeting Walter Hassenpflug in Germany in 1998 was the connection between the great actor Jimmy Stewart and the 445th Bomb Group. Stewart was an original squadron commander in the 445th and flew most of his combat missions with the group, and although he was not with the 445th that fateful day of Sept. 27, 1944, he was very shaken up by the disaster and took part in the debriefing of some of the returning crews.<br />
After returning from Europe in the fall of 1998 I immediately turned to the Internet for information on the Kassel Mission. I discovered a reference to John Harold Robinson's book "A Reason to Live," which I immediately ordered. Although "Robby" finished his missions before the Kassel Mission, the book gave me an understanding of the mental and physical stresses of flying combat missions. (The book went through I think six printings and is a collector's item, but I loaned my copy to someone and haven't seen it since). Interestingly, I met Robinson at an 8th Air Force reunion and said his book would make an excellent movie, and he said he refused to option the movie rights because he thought "Memphis Belle" was so inaccurate. I say that because when I saw "Memphis Belle" I thought wow, how authentic. Shows how much I knew!<br />
I also found an entry on a B-24 bulletin board made by Tim Crandall, who noted that his father was in the 445th. I contacted Tim, and he put me in touch with his dad, Gene Crandall. I added Gene to my interviewing trip in 1999, and he suggested that we meet at a Cracker Barrel in Battle Creek, Mich. Gene brought along another veteran of the 445th, Floyd Ogilvy, who completed his missions in August of 1944, a few weeks before the Kassel Mission that Sept. 27th. I love Cracker Barrels and have had many a fine breakfast there -- I say there because they all seem the same -- but the background noise made the tape a little difficult to transcribe. Nevertheless, Gene, who was a mechanic, told a couple of stories about Jimmy Stewart.<br />
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<strong>Gene Crandall and Floyd Ogilvy</strong></div>
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<strong>Battle Creek, Mich., April 12, 1999</strong></div>
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<b>Gene Crandall:</b> I don’t know him all that well, but my son wrote him a letter and said that his dad was always talking about Jimmy Stewart, and I was telling him what a great guy he was, and he wrote a letter and told Jimmy Stewart he really enjoyed "It’s a Wonderful Life" and that his dad was always talking about him, so Jimmy Stewart sent me a letter. I didn’t know him all that well. I talked to him about half a dozen times.
<br />
<br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> You had mentioned on the phone that he almost crashed.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yes, it was at Sioux City. He was doing practice landings at night and there was a bad thunderstorm and he came in to land. He must have been a couple hundred feet high, and a bolt of lightning went right across the front of the canopy, and he lost it. He dropped it down and snapped off the nose gear, which was the weakest part of the landing equipment, and then the whole airplane went down the runway at like 45 degrees, and the sparks flew out from the landing gear strut, just like a dragging wheel. So I went out there with a couple other guys in a jeep, and Stewart got out of it and he was shaking and trembling, and all shook up, because he just damn near died. And the colonel was there. The colonel says, "You didn’t see anything, did you?"<br />
We said, "No, Sir, we didn’t see a thing."<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> What kind of plane was it?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> A B-24. We were in training at Sioux City, and then we went to Mitchell, South Dakota, to a satellite field after that. And from there we went to New York, Camp Shanks, and then we went over on the Queen Mary.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> And you had mentioned an incident at Thanksgiving?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, with Jimmy Stewart?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Yes.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, I went to, temporarily, before he got there -- like you guys [Ogilvy] went through South America, and I went over to Cambridge, me and the chief inspector -- they told us we were going to school. What we went over there and did was re-work these patrol airplanes that were looking for submarines. And they were all painted blue, they had sea waves on the bottom, and the engines, the sparkplugs hadn’t been changed for 400 hours. That’s a no-no. You should never, never let an airplane like that get more than a hundred hours, and the sparkplugs were snapping off right into the cylinder head, and we had to take little hacksaw blades and cut the shredded part out. Then we took a nail and put a wire around it with a battery and made a magnet and we reached out two sides of the cylinder and got the filings out. But anyhow, I was over there, and this airplane lands, and it’s a B-24. This Ten-uv-us lands, it says T-e-n u-v u-s, and I says, "Damn, that must be some kind of a Latin name." And it struck me eventually that that was "Ten of us" in a crew. And that was Jimmy Stewart’s airplane. And he got out, and I went over to it, and he looked at me and he said, "What the hell are you doing here?"<br />
And I said, "We’re over here, Sir, fixing these patrol bombers. They were using them for the submarines."<br />
And he says, "You won’t be here long." And within two hours, a 6-by-6 came and got us and we went back over to Tibenham. But see, he was awful sharp. He was a hell of a lot smarter than he appears in the movies. He was an architect.<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> I didn’t know that.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yeah, he graduated from college with an architecture degree, out of Yale.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> I think he graduated from Princeton, I’m not sure. [Stewart graduated from Princeton]<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, anyhow, he said, "You won’t be here long," and then we were sent back. And then on Thanksgiving, he came down to the mess hall and he was O.D., officer of the day, and he said, "Sergeant, can I sit with you?"<br />
I said, "Yes, Sir." He was the squadron commander. And he sat down and he said, "How do you like the turkey?"<br />
And I said, "Well, the outside’s all right, but the inside’s all frozen."<br />
And he said, "Oh, my God." And then he got up and he went back, he found the mess captain drunk with a bunch of bottles around. They broke the mess sergeant down to private. Stewart didn’t do that. And they broke the captain down to second lieutenant and put him on the China Clipper, you know, that dishwashing machine. And he had to stay on there for a whole month. So Jimmy Stewart wasn’t exactly soft.<br />
The last time I saw him, he’d been on one of those 12-hour missions, I thought he went to Berlin – [to Ogilvy] were they going to Berlin when you were there? I was checking him out when they hit the ground, because he was flying our airplane, a 700th airplane. I think he flew the 700th Squadron’s airplanes because the Germans were after him, it would have been a great coup if they’d have shot down Jimmy Stewart.<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> So they knew about him?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, hell yeah. The second day we were there Lord Haw Haw said, "Welcome 445th, Colonel Terrell.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> He said that, really?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yeah. Lord Haw Haw was the German propaganda man.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> And did he mention Stewart by name?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> No. But they knew about him.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Now you being a ground crew chief, you were in the 700th Squadron?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Yes.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> You were in charge of one plane?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> No. I was the chief propeller specialist. I was also a B-24 specialist and I did troubleshooting on all airplanes, that kind of thing. Changed engines and propellers and all that. And hydraulics.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> That must have been demanding, especially with all the damage.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, it was very exciting. Hell, that was the greatest adventure of our life. You know, from four o’clock in the morning until ... well, it depends on the day. In the wintertime it used to get daylight at 9 o’clock in the morning, then it’d get dark at 4 o’clock in the afternoon. And then in the summertime it would get daylight about 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning, and it wouldn’t get dark until 11 or 12 o’clock at night, because England’s a long way north. Did you notice that?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> No, I didn’t ...<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> That’s so far north, it’s almost as far north as Hudson Bay. That’s a latitude or whatever it is that’s way up there.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you work overnight?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Oh, yeah.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> How did you work in the dark, with the blackouts?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> Well, I’ve spent a lot of time in a goddamn blackout trying to put parts together that I couldn’t see. One night I was working on an engine and we had a tent that went over the engines. And we got all pissed off, so we turned on a light. And we shouldn’t have done that. A Spitfire buzzed us, and you could actually feel the breeze from that sonofagun, because that was a no-no. The Germans were always looking around there trying to find us. And we had anti-aircraft guns, but we never fired them, because we never wanted to give away where we were. If they came over, I don’t know what kind of airplane it was, I think it was a diesel engine, they’d throttle black and they’d look and look and they’d drop real yellow flares. Their flares are real distinctly yellow and ours were real white, so we knew they were Germans. But they didn’t bother us too much. The worst thing was the buzz bombs. Toward the end of the war they were shooting those buzz bombs one every couple of hours. And when the wind blew just right they’d go right over Tibenham, and then we’d all wait until we heard them go over. If they ever stopped we all hit the deck, because they’d be coming down someplace.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did any of them explode nearby?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> No.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you get attached to any particular plane or crew?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> You tried not to, because these guys came and went at an ungodly rate. We lost, as I understand it, 150 bombers. And I got to really like a couple of guys, like one captain, I don’t know what his name was, but he was a West Point graduate. He used to come down to the line all the time on his day off, and I used to give him lectures about flushing their propellers all the time because the damn oil congealed and the governors wouldn’t work. Did you ever have that problem?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Shoot, I was just a gunner. I didn’t know what was going on.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Gene Crandall:</b> But this guy was a wonderful guy. And of course, he got blown away. And that happened so many times, we just got to the point where we did our job and tried not to be buddy buddy with them. It was for self-protection. And even, one day I saw a picture of the body bags, and all that, that’s 50 years later, I had all that crap down in my subconscious, and I woke up in the middle of the night screaming and yelling and thinking I was back in the damn war. And I’d never had a dream like that before. But that shows you how you, I’m sure that happened to you. Hasn’t that happened to you?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you have flashbacks?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> No. The thing that, most loud noises, I still remember the flak, because that was our major problem. Fighters we didn’t have a problem with. Fortunately when I was there flak was the real problem. And when I go to a military funeral out here at Fort Custer and they shoot those guns off, I know they’re gonna go, I still jump.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Describe the flak.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Describe the flak to you? Well, it came up in different ways. For example, we went to Berlin and they had what we called block flak, where I mean it was like a city block, the guns would all come up.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> A city block?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy:</b> Yeah, it was a block, we called a block flak. They didn’t track you. They knew your altitude. They knew you were gonna fly about 24,000 feet, and they would shoot those up. Of course I’d be chucking that chaff out, trying to screw up their radar. And so it was really a very frightening thing, and there was nothing you can do about it. That was our major problem.<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Aaron Elson:</b> Did you see planes to the left or right of you get hit?<br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Floyd Ogilvy: </b>Yes. I had one off of my right wing, it was shot down over Belgium. It took a direct hit right behind the pilot’s area, and it peeled off. My pilot said "Check and see if there are any chutes." I checked. I didn’t see any chutes. And as it went down, one of the wings came off, it looked like a leaf.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/08/two-guys-talking-b24s.html" target="_blank">(Part 2: Two Guys Talking B-24s)</a></div>
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<br />Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-75014636569060067072013-08-02T10:35:00.000-07:002013-08-06T07:19:27.427-07:00Random thoughts about the Kassel Mission<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="" /></a></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7gnRaPPSKLNHrpgooWrPMLeeEhKCv9xGA8KOkM_m7YEKUTE7PhcCxoS7wlda7Jp7q9_IeEwluxqMMgKoGQSgybEfgQUjtxeFy9GBVT8lvulNsBqo9iRbTT_R_hIDIuaeK1HZrrprHl-IF4Ko/s1600/collar+war+room.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7gnRaPPSKLNHrpgooWrPMLeeEhKCv9xGA8KOkM_m7YEKUTE7PhcCxoS7wlda7Jp7q9_IeEwluxqMMgKoGQSgybEfgQUjtxeFy9GBVT8lvulNsBqo9iRbTT_R_hIDIuaeK1HZrrprHl-IF4Ko/s400/collar+war+room.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Collar in his "war room"</td></tr>
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There's no question that the Kassel Mission was a spectacular battle, one of the most dramatic aerial battles in World War II. But there were many spectacular aerial battles in World War II, some of those -- such as the first daylight raid on Berlin, Ploesti -- involved a lot more planes and a lot more press. Just about anybody who survived even a few missions, much less 25 to 35, could write a book, and multitudes of Air Corps veterans have done just that.<br />
Statistically, the Kassel Mission was the worst one-day beating suffered by a single bomb group in a single day in 8th Air Force history. But those two qualifiers -- single this and single that -- help explain why the battle has been little more than a footnote in the vast continuum of air war stories.<br />
No one asked me, but in emphasizing the drama of the battle -- and don't get me wrong, dramatic it was -- the people trying to elevate the Kassel Mission into its proper place in history have got it wrong.<br />
The Kassel Mission is not about drama. It's not about spectacle. It's not about statistics.<br />
The Kassel Mission is about closure. It's about turning tragedy into triumph. And it's about documentation. Thanks to George Collar and Bill Dewey, who spent the last decades of their lives writing letters, making telephone calls, looking up survivors, putting together notebooks, drawing charts, the Kassel Mission is incredibly well documented. Better than incredibly well documented. The Kassel Mission Historical Society has a treasure trove of accounts, articles, crew pictures, records, etc., for future historians and descendants of those who took part in the battle to access. And thanks to the incredible research and efforts of Walter Hassenpflug and Gunter Lemke, that documentation extends to the German side of the battle as well.<br />
The Kassel Mission was tragic, no doubt about it. But when a monument recognizes the sacrifice of the men on both sides of the battle, when a Jima Schaen Sparks, whose father died on the Kassel Mission shortly before she was born, meets a Martin Brunotte, who was in his mother's womb when his German fighter pilot father was killed in the battle, when a great-nephew or a grandson learns of his ancestor's heroism, when a devastated bomb group rallies and sends ten planes to the same target the following day, these are triumphs.<br />
Ultimately, though, the Kassel Mission is about closure.<br />
I once saw a segment on "60 Minutes" about an American veteran of the Battle of the Bulge who returned to Luxembourg, or maybe it was Belgium, and met a German veteran who was fighting in the same area at about the same time. Maybe they shot at each other. Hel-lo. This is closure? Closure is 600 people, American veterans of the 445th Bomb Group and their grown children, German fighter pilots -- although few of them had their families with them -- converging in the village of Friedlos, Germany, in 1991 for the dedication of a monument with the names of all the Americans and all the Germans killed in the battle.<br />
The Kassel Mission was a mistake, a battle that never should have happened, that's why it's been denied its place in history, some people seem to think. Exercise Tiger was a mistake, a tragedy that never should have happened, when German e-boats infiltrated a practice landing for D-Day and sank two fully-loaded LSTs, and apparently there were also "friendly" live-fire casualties on the beach, another screw-up. That was a mistake, a failure to communicate between the British and American ships that were supposed to be guarding the convoy. And yet Exercise Tiger, or Slapton Sands as it's often called, is celebrated with monuments and ceremonies and documentaries.<br />
As I see it, the Kassel Mission has more in common with Exercise Tiger than it does Ploesti or Schweinfurt or Berlin. That's just my opinion.<br />
<br />
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Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-69946919325241865582013-07-29T15:09:00.000-07:002013-07-29T15:09:47.465-07:00John and DeDe, a Love Story (Part 2)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1BRJuEVYMSgIUnDbEhOu2TfdfjaslINxkAXG6mXHpWju_YUuF8EUNULzItEglR9w0nkvbKdp5rZGE14SxJGPI23ohtFjU_g9lfEvIHKo706evebv7HJOfT5V_6k8t88L1-lO7Y3CNdYlg-WU/s1600/John+and+DeDe+Knox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1BRJuEVYMSgIUnDbEhOu2TfdfjaslINxkAXG6mXHpWju_YUuF8EUNULzItEglR9w0nkvbKdp5rZGE14SxJGPI23ohtFjU_g9lfEvIHKo706evebv7HJOfT5V_6k8t88L1-lO7Y3CNdYlg-WU/s320/John+and+DeDe+Knox.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://kasselmission.blogspot.com/2013/07/john-and-dede-love-story-part-1.html" target="_blank">(See John and DeDe, a Love Story (Part 1)</a></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Where were you when Pearl
Harbor was attacked?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I was sitting at the kitchen
table. We were having a late breakfast, I think it was about 11 o’clock
Sunday morning, and we had a big kitchen. It was shortly after we moved away
from my aunt and my grandma and my two uncles. It was the first place I ever
lived since I was four or five years old where our family was alone now in our
own house, and my brother and I had our own bedroom, and I still remember the
scene sitting at the table and hearing, I guess we were playing
music or something, and they cut in, Roosevelt.<br />
We were dating then. It didn’t affect us. We
just kept on dating. I finished school and went to work for Curtiss-Wright for
a year until I was going to be drafted. I didn’t want to enlist because I was
in love with her, so I just figured, I knew I was A1. And I kind of thought I’d
go in the Air Corps because I was so small, and I worked for Curtiss-Wright. I
just assumed that. Then I made the mistake, they said, "Don’t ever volunteer in
the Army," you’ve heard that expression, and I volunteered to go to gunnery
school. That’s where I made my mistake.</div>
Ray Lemons [a waist gunner on Knox's crew] and I
both went to gunnery school, and then we went to Sheppard Field, Texas, to
become flight engineers on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>B-25 or B-26
medium bombers. We were in the same class but we never knew each other. Then we
got through with that and we thought we were gonna be on a B-25 or a B-26, be a
flight engineer, and that puts you way up to tech sergeant, pretty good rating.
And then they put us on a B-24 and we didn’t know anything about the mechanics,
so Ray became a waist gunner and I became a tail gunner. And he helped me
out when I was shot. I got a direct hit from a 20-millimeter cannon shell,
knocked me for a loop and knocked my turret out of commission. The plane was on
fire. He opened the door and got me out.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> He was operated on his knee
without anesthetic.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> That’s all on the tape [a video interview that was done with the Knoxes].</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Let’s go back to Pearl
Harbor.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> We’re going too fast.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: DeDe, where were you when
you heard about it?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> She probably doesn’t
remember.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> I don’t remember.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Her memory’s slipping a
little.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Did you know immediately
that John was going to be drafted?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Oh, sure, as soon as I was
called in for a physical and rated A-1, we talked about it. We were dating
pretty hot and heavy. We were engaged when I went over.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Before he went overseas, he
was out in Colorado, and the pilot said that’s it, they were ready to go
overseas but they had a delay, and he wanted me to come out, because some of
them were getting married. My mother said you can’t let them get married,
because she wanted a church wedding, and she said, “You can go,” but his mother
chaperoned me. At that age, you never heard of that now. So I did go to
Colorado and spend that week with him before he went overseas. And we were
married after he got back. The Air Force flew him home every weekend so he
could see me, and finally the doctor said “Jack, you go back home and get that
girl and marry her and bring her back so you can stay put long enough for us to
operate on your eye.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I lost an eye. Shrapnel
penetrated the optic nerve, and shrapnel put my knee out of commission. I’ve
had a stiff knee all my life. This has been a terrible thing. You can’t sit
right. You can’t do anything right. That’s why I can’t fly anymore, because I
think when we went to Kansas City, the last 8th Air Force reunion we went to,
my god, I got on the plane, I couldn’t get my leg under the seat in front of
me. And I’m standing there, everybody’s getting on the plane. I told the stewardess,
“I just simply can not sit down, what am I gonna do, get off?” I said “I can
sit in a bulkhead seat,” so she arranged a bulkhead seat. And then when I got
to Atlanta I had to arrange a bulkhead seat, and then coming back. And I said
never again.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> They don’t let you do it
ahead of time.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> The time I flew before that
the plane I was in must have been bigger, probably Delta, but I could squeeze
my leg under the seat in front of me. But this, no matter how I tried, I couldn’t
get all the way down and get my leg. I almost hit the panic button, what am I
gonna stand up the whole way or what?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Because he was supposed to
light one candle, he was supposed to be on the stage and honored in Kansas City
and I said “What are we gonna do?” And he said, “I’ll figure out something.” That was four planes during that trip, and he said this is going to be our
last trip by plane.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> That was five years ago.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Tell me about your crew.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> We all met in Salt Lake
City, that’s where they assembled the crew. That’s where we met Jim Baynham and
the co-pilot Charlie, and the flight engineer was Howard Boldt who just died
recently from Houston. We didn’t have a navigator
and a bombardier. We picked them up later. But that’s when Ray and I found out
we weren’t going to be flight engineers on a medium bomber and we’d probably go
to the South Pacific. And we weren’t too happy about it. After Salt Lake City we went to Colorado Springs to do our training on
B-24s.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Who was in the crew? Who
else joined later on.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Jim Baynham. Charlie Bosquet
was the co-pilot. When we finally got the navigator it was John, he’s from
Kentucky, it’s on the tape. Hector Scala was the bombardier, and Boldt was
the flight engineer. He was shot up worse than I was. He was just getting in
the bomb bay waiting to bail out, and he got shot in the legs. And of course
Bosquet and John, the navigator, they were two that weren’t shot, and the radio
operator was Jim Fields from California, and he was wounded. And then the other
waist gunner, opposite from Ray Lemons, was Olen Byrd. He was kind of a Texas
farmboy, not very well polished, and the last Ray and I saw of him he was
sitting down on the floor of the airplane under the waist gun kind of looking
at us. And the plane was on fire. We don’t know whether he was afraid, and we
had the door open to bail out, that was right there too. And I remember looking
at him and I remember Ray saying “Come on, Bird, come on,” and he said “no, no,
no.” And we don’t know whether he had a bullet in him, or whether
he froze, scared, all we know is we think he went down with the plane. And to
this day, Ray and I were the only ones who saw him, and we don’t know why. He
had a funny look on his face. But he wasn’t dead. But with all that stuff on him
he could have been bleeding interior, and the plane was raked with cannon
shells and shrapnel. The plane was in bad shape, and on fire. So we don’t know
about Bird. He was just a real quiet guy and all he did, he’d just gone to
gunnery school, he hadn’t gone to any mechanic school or anything like that, he
was strictly a gunner. And then we used to have a ball turret when we went
over, and we had a ball turret gunner, his name was Jed Lord. I don’t think we
flew maybe one mission and then they took out the ball turrets because we had
better escorts and the missions were getting easier, and that thing created a
drag, so we could go a little faster. So we rotated. And Lord happened to
be the one that day that didn’t fly. When I didn’t fly he flew the tail turret
and when Ray didn’t fly he flew the waist gun. So he was the one, and he went
ahead and finished all his missions, stayed over there a couple of years I
think, in ordnance.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Which mission was that for
you?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> My eighth. It was different for
some of us. It was my eighth, and I think it was Jim’s tenth. We rotated, like
I say, so I lost one there. And then one time the pilot and co-pilot, the
flight engineer, and I think they took Ray along on that one, a bunch of them
flew gasoline over to France. They got credit for a mission I think for that.
So even on the same crew we had different, but I think eight was the minimum. People
ask me how many missions I went on and I always said “Seven and a half.”</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Was that mission in September
when they flew the gas over to France.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Our first mission was in
August, so it had to be in late August or September. They made one mission doing that and they might have got two missions
in, I’m not sure. But there was no reason for a tail gunner to go because they
were not going over enemy territory, they were just going across the
Channel. And I remember Charlie, the co-pilot, got some cognac while he was
over there. And I think he got drunk on it, too, because I think they stayed
overnight, by the time they unloaded the plane, and
he had a ball. He was a character. Somehow he died, he wrote me a letter about 20 years after
the war. We didn’t know each other too well because I was an enlisted man
and he was the co-pilot. But it was a weird letter, like he was having mental
trouble, all mixed up or something. And I wrote back and told him if there was
anything I can do, let me know. But we weren’t that close. He was closer to
Jim. And about six months later he was dead. And I think he committed suicide.
His family wrote us.</div>
When I was a
prisoner of war my mother got some information from the Army Air
Force, of the addresses of all my crew members, and she wrote to all the wives,
or mothers, to find out how many of them are alive and how many
are dead, because I was the only one that was missing in action. All the others
were accounted for. Either they were dead or they were POWs, but I wasn’t
accounted for until one of my older letters from Germany which I still have,
all those letters, arrived at her house, the following March, after the mail carriers kept telling her “You might as well quit
writing, all of the letters are coming back.”<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> He was probably dead.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> And then when they got that
letter that morning he got in the car and took it right to the house. And she
called up my mother, and that’s the only way she knew that I wasn’t dead. But I’ve
got all the letters my mother wrote to Jim Baynham’s wife and Hector Scala’s
mother. They wrote back. Who was missing, who was a prisoner of war, and who
was KIA.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Tell me about the battle
itself, what you remember, from the first inkling that something was wrong.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Well, that was all weird.
Our radios, we didn’t back there know we pulled away from the group. We didn’t
know that. And then all of a sudden I saw a plane on my tail. I assumed it
was an American plane, and then I got looking close and I said “No, that’s not
a P-47, that’s an FW-190.” And boy, he was coming in on me. And I’m shooting at
him. There’s nothing over the intercom about planes or bandits or enemy planes
or anything. Nothing. And he’s shooting at me and I’m shooting at him, of
course he’s got 20-millimeter cannons and maybe even a 30, and I’ve got a
couple of little .50-caliber machine guns. And he just, one of them hit my
turret. I never saw all those 130 planes at all. And to this day I can’t figure
that out. It’s weird. We were fairly in the back, and I think the attack
started in the front. But I didn’t see a lot of planes being shot down or a lot
of German planes or engines. I didn’t see anything. But the plane was already
on fire when I got hit, so you know they made some passes at us. There was a fire
in the bomb bay. So I don’t know, it was just dead. I heard nothing. I heard
nothing about a fire. I heard nothing about bailing out. I heard nothing about
bandits in the area. Nothing. I’ll never figure that one out.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Which position were you
in?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Tail gunner.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: No, I mean the plane. Was
it the tail end?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I think we were pretty much.
I’ve got a diagram of that. We all got diagrams in our
Kassel, the black book, this Kassel book [The Kassel Mission Chronicles].</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Once you were hit, did the turret shatter?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Apparently it shattered
because I had shrapnel all over.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> He’s still got 13 pieces in
him.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> But I knew my eye was hit,
and I knew my leg was hit, and I could see the tear in my pants and the blood
coming out. And I just got out of the turret and clipped on my parachute. I was
kind of half in and half out and I bailed out and I counted to ten, I wanted to
clear the rudders, then I pulled the cord right away. Because I was kind of
woozy. And that’s what I shouldn’t have done probably because I passed out,
see, we were at 23, 24,000 feet.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: When this was happening,
did your life flash before your eyes?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> No.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Did the concept of death
occur to you?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> The concept, no, what
occurred to me was, if I wanted to live, I had to get out of that burning
plane. My desire to live overcame any fear of bailing out. So I took the only
escape that I could see. I had enough sensibility to do that.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: At what point did you see Bird?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I saw him while I was
putting my chute on, and Ray had the door open, just that second or two before
I went through the hole there. He was sitting to my left, right under the waist
gun.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: And who was the other
gunner who you said was hurt worse than you?</div>
<o:p></o:p><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Oh, that was the flight
engineer [Howard Boldt]. The flight engineer flew the top turret, and he got out of the
turret, got his parachute on, tried to put out the fire I guess and couldn’t.
And the bomb bay doors were open. I don’t know whether he opened them or
whether they never closed or what, and he was on the catwalk, and that’s where
he and the radio operator were supposed to bail out, just right where the bombs
went through, the doors. And he was standing on that. I’ve got a whole lot of
stuff about him, a whole book about him, because he remembered every detail.
And he was just ready to step off of the catwalk and fall through the bomb bay
doors, and I guess he got raked by, both legs ...</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Machine gun?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I don’t even know whether
those FW-190s had machine guns by that time in the war. They had, according to
my book "The Log of the Liberator," they had 20-millimeter cannons, of course we
knew that, and they might have even had a 30-millimeter cannon, which would be
a pretty big one. But whether he got hit by machine guns or not, or whether
those 20-millimeter things explode, kind of like a cannon shell, and spray
shrapnel.</div>
After Christmas,
I came back from another place where they looked at my eye, as a prisoner of
war, and that’s a funny story. I was put in the bed right next to him. That’s
the first time I saw him. We were side by side. And we both had a cast over our
legs and all the way up our body. And we’d sit there and play cribbage, they
had a little cribbage board. He was in a lower bunk there and I was in a lower
bunk here. We couldn’t get in a higher bunk because we were just
practically on our backs. We couldn’t even sit up because of those casts. But
he was in one of those electric scooters for the last 30 years, I think.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Was that Boldt?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Howard Boldt. He had a
terrible time. And he was a big man. And having a stiff leg, the worst thing
you can do, being big, is fall on your own legs. I think he had a terrible
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he was very, very cheerful. He
was the most upbeat guy. The last 25 years he called me every
five, six weeks. The last time he called me was just about a
month or two before he died. And he would just talk about how they’re taking
care of him, and real upbeat, laughed, and he had nothing to be happy about
because he had everything in the world wrong with him. His arms, finally he
couldn’t use his arms because he’d used them so much to pull himself up, they
went bad.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> We tried to talk him into
coming to a reunion one time.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> He would have loved to have
gone to the reunions, but he said he just couldn’t get around.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Did he have a family? Was
he married?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Of all things, his wife died
young, probably when she was fifty. Where he needed her so badly. She died
early. He had a son and a daughter, but the only one that ever seemed to
help him much, later on, was a grandson, would come around and see him. He had a terrible life. But he was so upbeat. He never complained. Always laughing
and joking.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> He used to cook very well,
too. And I admired him.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Now, when you pulled the
ripcord, you passed out. When did you come to?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Hanging in a tree. A tall
tree. My parachute caught in a tree and I’m dangling. And about that time three
or four German soldiers drove up in a vehicle similar to our jeep,
and cut me down and took me somewhere. I was conscious then. And I came to just
about the time they came, so I don’t know how long I was hanging in the tree.
Boldt was hanging a tree for several hours. And he couldn’t
cut himself down because his leg, well, he did finally cut himself down. He had
a pocket knife. And there’s a long story about that [in Boldt’s account]</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Where did the German soldiers take you?<br />
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I don’t know whether they
took me right to the hospital where I was at, or whether they took me to a
field hospital. They took me somewhere, and the doctor said he was going to
operate on this knee, but he didn’t have any anesthetic. But he said there’s a,
it was either a Catholic nurse or some of those nurses over there in Europe
wear kind of habits, they’re like a nun, so I don’t know really which it was.
He said, “She’ll hold your hand.” He said, “I’ve got to operate on your knee.”
He spoke pretty fair English. And I passed out. And the next thing I knew I was
in this boys’ school which they’d turned into a POW hospital.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: So you passed out and didn’t
feel the operation?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> See, I was pretty woozy from
the time I was hit. I don’t know how much blood I lost. I think they said they
gave me some transfusions. So I might have a little more German blood in me
now.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> When they brought him home
on the hospital ship he was about 65 pounds.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Now Baynham, did he land
the plane or did he bail out?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> No, he took it down to about
12,000 feet as I remember, and then they bailed out and it blew up then. I don’t
know why he took it down so low. I guess he was trying to get back to Allied
territory. But I guess the fire wasn’t all the
way out. Why did it blow up? I never did get that story. Of course he’s the
only one that can tell that. One time we were at Lemons’ house, after the first
Kansas City reunion, that was about ten, twelve years ago. We went down and
spent some time at Ray’s house, and he surprised us and had Baynham there. That’s
the only time I’ve ever seen Baynham since the war.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> And we went out of the way
to see the fellow that didn’t fly that day.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Oh, yeah, Lord. We stopped
in Tampa to see Lord.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> You’d seen all the rest of
the crew and Jack said, I’d like to go there. And his wife says he felt so
guilty.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Oh, we did that on the way
home. We’ve been to Ray’s house twice. The first time he had Jim over for
dinner. He was married to his second wife. Then the next time we went there, we
drove down to Houston and saw Howard Boldt. That’s the only time I’ve seen him
since the war. But Ray Lemons and I went to a lot of the reunions, and his wife
and my wife get along real well. We had a good time at the reunions. The first
reunion we went to was, one day Ray called me up, I lived in Deerfield Beach up
here, DeDe and I did, we had a nice condo. And he said “Hey, Jack, there’s
going to be an Air Force reunion at Hollywood, Florida. Would you be interested
in going?”<br />
And I said “Yeah. Where’s it going to be?”<br />
And he said, “At the Diplomat.”<br />
I said, “That’s kind of expensive, why don’t we just stay here? We had a
three-bedroom condo close to the water right on the Intercoastal. And so he
came down, and his wife Jean, and we went down there, and this was an 8th Air
Force reunion. We’d never heard of the 2nd Air Division. And that was 1989.
1988, something like that. And so we went down there, and came back at night,
for two or three days. And that’s where we heard about the 2nd Air Division,
and the following year they were gonna go to England. Jimmy Stewart was gonna
be there. So we signed up for that. And that’s the year we went over to the Kassel Mission
Memorial.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: That was in 1990?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> We had a week in Norwich for
the reunion, and then we went over for three or four days, for the opening
ceremonies.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: That must have been a very
moving experience for you.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Olen Byrd’s name was on
there, and Hector Scala. And John, I can’t think of John’s last name, he was
going to the University of Kentucky.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> When we left to go on this
trip, we had a neighbor at the condo in Deerfield Beach, she worked for the Sun
Sentinel. She heard about us going over to this reunion, and she came over
and said, “I’d love to interview you.” And I said, “Oh, I don’t know...” And
she said, “This is something good. People like to hear about this.” So she came
and talked to us and got all interested. So we went to Germany, then she called
him over there, at the hotel, and did an interview. It was all over the
newspaper. And then she called him two or three days later again.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> She brought a photographer
and they came out to the condo before we left, and it was on the front page of
the second section of the Sun Sentinel. And a whole article about us going to
Germany and meeting the pilots.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> And then she did a followup
on it and phoned him again to see what his reaction was, and then they had
another article two or three days later. She said people like to read about
good things. And this was a gesture between the two countries, and it was very
nice. And the bands were there. It was special.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: When did you learn the
fate of the three crew members who were murdered?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I don’t think until about
1986. I got a letter from Walter [Hassenpflug]. Walter wrote me a letter. I think he wrote
everybody a letter. He wanted to know more about, and asked me a lot of
questions. That guy got all the serial numbers of every plane that was shot
down, every crew member, everything.</div>
After the war I
had a lot of trouble, mentally and physically. I was in bad shape. And I
went to psychiatrists, I went through shock treatment. And the psychiatrist
wanted to find out what happened, so he asked me to write a letter to Jim
Baynham, and I think that’s when I first knew that we’d even gone off course.
That this whole mission was a disaster. And that’s all I knew about that, I
didn’t know anything about anybody being hit. I think it was 1986 when I found out
about the three fellows being murdered. They started to put this stuff
together, writing back and forth, and we got some information, all through
Walter.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Now, tell me about your
treatment in the hospital.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> It was better than you would
think. It was good. No abuse of any kind. And the whole hospital was run by
Dunkirk and Dieppe English prisoners of war. You know how they were trapped
when France collapsed. They couldn’t get back across the Channel. So there
happened to be among them a medical group. Doctors and enlisted medics and all.
They were all taken prisoners, and Germany utilized them by putting them in
this hospital. The doctor I had was a captain, a young captain, I don’t
think he was 25 years old. He would come around and review the cases with the
English doctors. And the medics, they had to do everything, wipe our butt and
everything else for a while. Howard Boldt and I were in terrible
shape.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Why is it that you lost so
much weight?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> There wasn’t much to eat and
what there was was so bad I couldn’t eat it. The bread had green mold around it
and was real heavy and black and tasted like it was made out of sawdust. And the coffee was the same, ersatz coffee, I don’t know what it was
made out of. It was horrible. Once in a while they’d get cheese, and I
should have eaten more of that than I did, I just can’t stand cheese. So part
of it was my own fault. But most of it was just there just wasn’t much to eat.
Everybody lost a lot of weight. But see, I was small, I only weighed about 128.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Did you smoke at the time?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I might have got a few cigarettes and given them to
Boldt. Boldt smoked, in the next bed. If I got any cigarettes, I would have
given them to him. I’m not sure. We got a couple Red Cross parcels. There weren’t
many.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Did they notify the
government, or the Red Cross, that you were POWs?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Somehow they did Boldt. His
wife was notified that he was a POW. But my mother, see, she [DeDe] wouldn’t
have got the letter because I was not married. She never got a thing. All she
got was letters missing in action. And we never, ever figured that out.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Well, the Red Cross said
that the Germans didn’t notify people until they got well and went to regular
prison camp or till they died, then they notified, but in that interim period
they didn’t notify them while he was in the hospital.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Three things could have
happened to you in that hospital. You could have got better, and put into a
stalag. Or you could have died. Or there was a repatriation list, and one boy
went home a couple months after I got there. I gave him my address, and he
actually wrote a couple of letters. I’ve got the letters even. I
think I was on a repatriation list, but that didn’t come up very often.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Would you like a cup of
coffee?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: No, thank you. DeDe, how
about you during this time?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> I was in school. I was in
college, and then I worked part time. I sold World Book encyclopedias.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> She wrote a letter to my
address in England every day. From September the 27th she kept them going until
...</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> May.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Every day. And eventually
they all came back. But she kept writing.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> I kept writing. The mailman
told my mother, why don’t you tell that poor girl to quit writing, he’s
probably dead. And I said, well, I’m a very religious person, and I said well,
I think he’s alive somewhere, maybe with a nice family. He said, “You’re a
dreamer.” I just knew he was alive.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: You never doubted?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> No.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I’ve got whole albums of
this, all the letters. And no one ever sees it anymore.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: When you learned Jack was
alive, what went through your mind?</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Grateful. Happy and
grateful. His mother and I were very close. She would pick me up and take me
shopping and she took me to church and we were very close. We got to know each
other.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I didn’t say much in the
letters because we weren’t allowed to complain or anything, so I just said that
I’m doing okay, I’ve got some injuries, or something like that, and I’ll never
be quite the same as before, but I miss you and hope to get home soon. I just
couldn’t say much.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> When he got back he was
really cruel. He wanted to leave me off the hook. And I said to him, “I have been writing to you every day all the
time you’ve been gone, and you are not gonna dump me!” The doctors,
psychiatrists, I went to too with him. And he said that it’s better that you
weren’t married because now this way Jack knows that you love him. But he was
always of small stature and he was very self-conscious. But he realized that
there’s more important things in life.</div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
- - -<br />
<br />
audio<br />
(the audio and text will differ slightly due to editing)<br />
<br />
<span id="goog_1190806416"></span><a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track02(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 2<span id="goog_1190806417"></span></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track03(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 3</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track04(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 4</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track05(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 5</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track06(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 6</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track07(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 7</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track08(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 8</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track09(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 9</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track10(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 10</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track11(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 11</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track12(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 12</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track13(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 13</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track14(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">track 14</a><br />
<br />
- - -</div>
Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5482230045912844618.post-36397108545602589462013-07-28T17:31:00.001-07:002013-07-28T17:46:25.180-07:00John and DeDe, a Love Story (Part 1)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikkHEWZyyfAp3XYpD6XF28xdCSb6DzUqBrYYdL-No06ZcLFOtUn4iJdJrneTUtBm-85i7RtgSfVMyZ28C4Dx9gt6OQSFgKen_oIBBlA-3Re4MGTZCdZHlBgOklxpcCYta3jofu-I9qNOeGLh8/s1600/John+and+DeDe+Knox+1996.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikkHEWZyyfAp3XYpD6XF28xdCSb6DzUqBrYYdL-No06ZcLFOtUn4iJdJrneTUtBm-85i7RtgSfVMyZ28C4Dx9gt6OQSFgKen_oIBBlA-3Re4MGTZCdZHlBgOklxpcCYta3jofu-I9qNOeGLh8/s640/John+and+DeDe+Knox+1996.jpg" width="448" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John and DeDe Knox, 1996</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
On a good day I like to compare what I do to the work of the great oral historian Studs Terkel. On a bad day ... well ... I imagine maybe even Studs Terkel pushed the wrong button on the tape recorder once or twice.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
I don't know what went wrong when I interviewed John and DeDe Knox at John Knox Village -- no relation to the Johh Knox I was interviewing -- in Pompano Beach, Fla., in February of 2010. I'd switched to using a digital tape recorder a few months earlier, but it had never failed me. When I transferred the file to my computer, I was unable to open it. I kept getting a "codec error."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
A year and a half later, I decided to try again. This time I visited a sound editing forum and someone suggested I download a certain type of media player and voila! It opened the file.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
John and DeDe Knox are in the opening scene of "Pride of the Nation," the great documentary by the Dzenowagis family about the Kassel Mission, and theirs is a love story reminiscent of Harold Russell (Homer) and Cathy O'Donnell (Wilma) in "The Best Years of Our Lives."</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
John Knox, the tail gunner on Jim Baynham's crew, passed away on July 22 of this year. He and DeDe were married 67 years. Here is the first part of my interview with John and DeDe, conducted in 2010:</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: John and DeDe Knox. The
DeDe, is that for Denise?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Cecilia</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: How did Cecilia become
DeDe?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> I had a brother and sister
who were very young, and I was operated on, I had an ear operation, and the
doctor said I’m going to bring an anesthesiologist and a nurse and I’m going to
do the operation right here at your home. And my brother and sister, they were
downstairs at the gate, and I called down to them, and they called back up, “DeDe.”
And that stuck.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Cecilia is kind of a
mouthful.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> I went through grade school,
high school and college as DeDe. Now there are only two people who used to call
me Cecilia, and they’re both dead. I’m known as DeDe.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> And they call me Jack
because we live in John Knox Village.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Where did you say you were
born?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Columbus, Ohio.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: And you’re from Ohio, too?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> We met in high school.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> High school sweethearts.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> South High School in
Columbus. Columbus is a big city. South High School. North High School. East
High School.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> And we’ve been married 63
years.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Sixty five at the end of
this year.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Was Columbus a good place
to grow up?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I think it was.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Average people.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> It was the capital of Ohio.
Cincinnati and Cleveland are much larger, but it was a pretty good size city,
probably 2 million counting the suburbs. It was a nice, laid back town.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: And were your parents
affected by the Depression?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> Yes, slightly.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> Yours. Your dad had a job.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> My dad had a job.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> My parents had nothing. We
had nothing. We had to move in with my grandma and my two uncles. We lived with
them about six years. My brother and I slept in an attic. We had nothing. As
soon as I was old enough to get a paper route I got a paper route. But we were
really strapped. I remember we didn’t have meat on the table. And my grandma
was awful good at putting things together with no meat.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: What sort of things would
she make?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> German dishes. She did a lot
of chicken, that must have been the cheapest thing. But she made a lot of mush,
and noodles and things like that. When she made noodles she’d take the whites
of the eggs and make angel food cake and the yolk and make noodles, and we had
just basic meals. We always had something on the table. She didn’t have a
refrigerator yet, they were just coming out, in the winter she had a box
hanging out the window to keep everything cold. In the summer you had the ice
man come, put the ice in the ice box.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
My mother did
have a car. My dad wouldn’t drive. My grandfather was a tool and die maker, and
he worked through the Depression. But we rented. We never bought a house until
1941, until I was out of high school, and that was because my grandfather died
and left my mother and father enough money to buy a home. But your father had a
house, way back. It was a modest house, a house with what, six people?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> We lived close to school,
walking distance to the Catholic school.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> I remember the Depression.
Walking to school in the snow and ice, nobody cared.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> We met in French class in
high school.</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: What did you do for fun
during the Depression?</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify; text-indent: 0.3in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> We didn’t do much. We made
our own kites out of newspaper and sticks. Somebody in the neighborhood had a
Monopoly set, and we made a board out of cardboard and put in all the things,
and made paper money, and made the cards out of cardboard, and copied this
Monopoly set. We couldn’t afford to buy one. That’s how poor we were. When I
was about ten years old I wanted a bicycle for Christmas. I got a used bicycle
my uncles paid about five dollars for, and painted it up and fixed it up. I was
disappointed. It wasn’t a very good bicycle. And then we got a paper route. My
brother was a little older and we bought a couple of wood saws, a lathe, and a
circular saw. We made all kinds of things out of wood, got to be real good at
that. But we put a basket up on a telephone pole, shot baskets. A rim of a
bushel basket, something like that. We improvised a lot of things. Oh, I
remember once in a while saying “Mommy, I have nothing to do,” but I had a
brother and sister older than me, and DeDe, you tell him what you did, you tap
danced and things like that.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> I took tap dancing lessons
and I took mandolin lessons, and my sister played the banjo. They had a fair in
the summer and we’d go and play, and dance. I went to a shelter house in the
South End and taught the kids there to tap dance after school.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: A shelter house?</div>
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</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">DeDe Knox:</b> It was for poor people, like
a settlement. They asked me to go down and do that, and it was kind of fun. In
high school my sister played bass fiddle and after she was ready to graduate, I
was going to come in the very next year, so the orchestra leader came to our
home and asked my parents, would they send me to take bass viol lessons at the
university during the summer so I could play in the orchestra when I started
the ninth grade. They said sure, so I learned to play the bass fiddle and I
played in a concert orchestra and the symphony orchestra, and the jazz band. It
was kind of fun. I played for four years then.</div>
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</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: Were you in the same
class, or how did you meet in school?</div>
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</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> In French class. I was a year
older than her, so I learned English and math and all those subjects, but
French was an elective. I think I finished two years of Latin, then I switched
to French, and somehow that put me in her French class, that was my junior
year. At that time I was setting pins in a bowling alley, and that’s how I made
my money to take her out on a date. That was hard work. A lot of nights I’d set
two hours together, and boy, as little as I was, I was real good at it. The
boss liked me. I think I got three cents a line. At the end of the night I’d
make a dollar, a dollar ten or something like that. But that would go a long
ways. A downtown movie, a brand new movie like “Gone With the Wind” was a
quarter I think. We had a good time. I’d even put a quarter’s worth of gas in
the car.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Aaron Elson</b>: What kind of car did your
mother have?</div>
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</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">John Knox:</b> When I first met DeDe she
had a ’35 Ford, and then about a year later, that would have been in 1940, she
got a brand new ’41 Ford. And boy, then I’d take her out in that black Ford
with the whitewall tires. We’d just come out of the Depression, and I was
starting to live after being so damn poor. Boy I loved that.</div>
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</div>
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</div>
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Audio</div>
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</div>
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<a href="http://www.tankbooks.com/blogaudio/JohnKnox/track01(JohnKnox).mp3" target="_blank">John and DeDe Knox (track 1 of 14)</a></div>
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</div>
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(to be continued)</div>
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<br />
<br />Aaron Elsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08765103620316143748noreply@blogger.com0