Combat Crew (10 page)

By ten P.M. the favorite bars of the soldiers were crowded and getting wound up. The noise was deafening but no one minded. There was camaraderie and loud talk, but seldom any brawls. Soldiers swapped favorite tales and enjoyed a few hours away from military confinement. Then someone with a commanding voice would get up and pound for attention, and start singing:

“Roll me over, in the clover,

Roll me over, lay me down,

And do it again.”

And the favorite barroom song of wartime England would roll on and on. There were endless stanzas, and each participant could make up his own. The singing would go on until the singers grew tired.

During the war years drinking establishments in England were rigidly regulated. At the nighttime closing hour, soldiers were just getting started. To circumvent the restrictive hours, private clubs opened up. One of those was the Bazooka Club, near the Strand and patronized mainly by the R.A.F. An English friend sponsored Jim, George, and me and I do not recall any other American members. That place became a favorite and convenient hang-out for us when we were in London. The club was a lively place. The members were mainly connected with Allied Air Forces. There were Australians, South Africans, Canadians, and a small number of men from the Free French and Free Polish Air Forces. Those nationalities mixed surprisingly well, and many pleasant evenings were spent swapping tales with the men who manned the Lancaster Bombers or flew the Spitfires. One night I was with three R.A.F. men at the Club. One of them asked me, “You Yanks really think you tagged out two hundred and eighty-eight Jerries on your ball-bearing raid?”

“No,” I replied. “We probably got a hundred, maybe a few more. The claims get duplicated.”

“Those Jerry chaps don't scratch out easy, ya know.”

“You're damned right they don't! All that armor plate! Say, what's it like up there all alone over a German city at night? I think it would scare the hell out of me.”

“Some nights it's a piece of cake — some nights it's a rough show!” said one.

“The worst time is when we get caught in those searchlights! We are stone blind until we get clear of those bloody lights.”

One man turned to a handsome young chap, with blond hair and a curling mustache. “Bill, tell him about that night you fell out of the open hatch.” Bill wasn't eager to talk about it, but after some persuasion, he began: “We were in a Wellington Bomber, ya know. The rear entry hatch cover becomes part of the walkway through the waist. I was operating the wireless when we flew through some flak and took a bit of a hit mid-ship. I banged the craft around, ya know, and the pilot called me to take my torch and see if the control cables were OK back there. I picked up my torch, but the thing wouldn't light up. I stepped back into waist, flicking the switch, and dropped out into bloody space. The flak had knocked off the hatch cover! I grabbed the rim of the hatch with one hand and hung on — no parachute, you know.”

“You mean you were hanging out in space with one hand?”

“I couldn't get a good grip with my other hand, and I knew I couldn't hang on very long. The wind blast was terrific. My mic was still snapped on 'cause we have a long cord, but I couldn't talk, just gurgled and made choking sounds. The pilot heard those funny noises and rushed someone back to see what was wrong. He followed my mic cord back to the hatch, and grabbed me just before I was slipping off. It took two blokes to pull me back into the aircraft. A bit of a show, ya know!”

The temperature in the room that night was about fifty degrees, but Bill's forehead was dotted with big beads of perspiration as he recounted, for my benefit, his frightening experience. I never heard a more hair-raising tale throughout the war.

The last night of our four-day pass was a real bash! It must have been four A.M. when we hit the sack. By the time we got up the next morning it was too late to find any place open that served breakfast.

“Why don't we go back to the club?” George asked. “Maybe they'll have some doughnuts or pastries left over.”

There was no intention to start drinking so early in the day, especially on an empty stomach, but one round wouldn't hurt. That was how it began and before long we were off on a super bender until it was time to leave for Waterloo Station and get a train back to Ridgewell. I did not recognize my condition until I took a few steps, and everything went blank. George and Jim had matched me drink for drink all day, but those were the only men I have ever known who never showed any visible signs of intoxication. Big George picked me up and staggered down the stairs and got us into a cab. At the huge Waterloo Station, he managed to get me through the crowd and aboard the train, avoiding the Military Police.

George had a good friend, a radio operator named Feigenbaum, who came from New York, not far from where the Balmores lived. “Feig” spent a lot of time in our hut because of Balmore. He had a companion we called Brooklyn, and the two were always together. They paired off well: Feig was the comic, and Brooklyn was his straight man. Together, those two could entertain a barracks for hours, with just normal conversation. Feig had an unusually husky voice with an inclination to stammer. He loved to stumble in at two in the morning and wake up the entire hut to tell about his date. Anyone else would have had practically everything in the hut thrown at him, but Feig was in a class by himself.

The day after our last sortie, Balmore came back from Operations, visibly shaken.

“What's wrong, George?”

“I can't believe it — I just can't believe …”

“What can't you believe? What is it?”

“They say Feig got a direct hit in the chest with a twenty-millimeter — gone instantly!”

“Oh, my God! Not Feig! His first mission?”

“Yep, his first lousy mission! John, I can't believe a man like Feig will never be around any more. Just last night he was here in the hut with us!”

George was low for several days and we all had Feig on our minds, for he was an unforgettable man.

That morning Gleichauf and Carqueville came by our hut shortly before noon and gave us the latest news. “We've been assigned 765. It's not too bad as B-17s go,” Carqueville said.

“For an E model, it's OK. It's about as good as we can expect,” I answered.

“That's right. New crews don't get the choice aircraft, John,” Gleichauf added.

Herb suggested that we take a good, hard look at the aircraft and see what we could do to improve it.

“OK, Jim and I'll get to work on it right away.”

The E models held only seventeen hundred and fifty gallons of fuel, while the newer planes could take on nine hundred more gallons with the addition of the Tokyo tanks added at the far ends of each wing. On long missions we would have to sweat out the fuel consumption, knowing that the leaders would have another nine hundred gallons to play with and might forget about us jokers dragging up the rear.

That damp night at the hut we were talking about combat crews and how they got together at the various training centers in the States.

Tedesco asked, “You and Jim been together since gunnery school?”

“Longer than that,” Counce answered. “We first met at the Boeing Aircraft Engineering school at Seattle.”

“But how did you get assigned to the same crew? That's a hundred to one chance,” Tedesco insisted.

Jim said, “It wasn't chance. It was an unusual situation. We were at Gowen Field at Boise, Idaho, for assignment to combat crews. One day Comer and I got to wondering if they had made up crew lists yet and we decided to find the chief clerk and see what he would tell us. The chief was a decent guy, so I asked him, ‘How do they go about assigning engineers to combat crews?'

“‘Oh, the Head Engineering Instructor does that — two of you to a crew.'

“‘You mean there will be two engineers on every crew?'

“‘That's right — a first engineer and a second engineer.'

“‘What's the difference?'

“‘The first fires the top turret and gets another stripe. The second fires a waist gun.'

“‘When will they start assigning us?'

“‘Maybe the engineers are already paired off. What are your names?'

“‘Comer and Counce.'

“He looked through the pile of papers and pulled out a sheet.

“‘All right, here you are. Both of you are on this list. Go ahead and look at it.'

“John and I were both listed as first engineers.

“‘Well, what do you think about your second engineer?' I asked John.

“He said, ‘He won't be worth a damn. I don't want to be on any crew with him — what about you?'

“‘Look who they put with me! The lousiest gunner in the class at Vegas, and a screw-up along with it!'

“I turned to the chief clerk. ‘Could you — uh — accidentally switch names and put both of us on the same crew?'

“‘I guess I could — I doubt if anyone would notice it — but if I did …'

“‘If anyone did notice, it was only a typing error — right?' I cut in, and we both took out a five-dollar bill.

“‘Sure. Just a typing error. These new clerks we got here are always goofing things up. Which one of you is going to be first engineer?'

“I said, ‘Want to flip for it?' John won the toss and we slipped the chief the two fives.”

I was awake when I heard the Jeep outside. As usual, it took some effort to get Wilson out of bed, but the others were up quickly. At Operations, the sound from the Briefing Room were mixed, so I had no clear idea what to expect until the pilot arrived.

“Here's the deal for today. We're hittin' an aircraft workshop factory at Villacoublay, which is south of Paris. The altitude will be twenty-five thousand and the temperature forty below. An escort of P-47s will go halfway to the target. You know that Jerry has his best fighter groups protecting the Paris area, so we can expect a hot reception. Keep a sharp lookout and start firing as soon as you can reach 'em — hammer at 'em all the way in — louse up their aim.”

I turned to Jim. “It's gonna be a balmy day in th' waist — only forty below. Imagine that!”

“Damn, I forgot my shorts!”

“I hope those red and yellow nose bastards don't show today.”

“If they do, start prayin',” Nick said.

“They're no meaner than those checker-nose devils,” added Balmore.

No words could adequately express our admiration and appreciation for the American escort pilots. Few of us in the 8th Bomber Command would have escaped either oblivion or a prison camp in 1943 without their help. Bad news about crews we knew at Boise and Casper kept seeping through, which highlighted the fact that we had been lucky so far. So when I saw those escort fighters approaching, I said to myself, “Thanks for your help — I hope I see you at the pub tonight and can buy you a drink.”

George was back with us in the radio room and I felt better, because he was the best I knew at that position. Balmore had two phobias: one, aircraft fires; two, oxygen troubles — some of it purely imaginary. I knew in advance that on every mission he would find something wrong with his oxygen system.

Soon after takeoff Gleichauf went on intercom: “Pilot to crew — I forgot to tell you that we are the spare today. We will trail the formation at high left. If no one aborts before we reach the coast of France, we turn around and come home.”

The bomb load was thousand pounders, which I liked better than the five hundred pounders. They were heavy enough to fall out if the release shackles operated at all. Sometimes during that period bombs remained hung-up in the racks. Bomb-rack malfunctions were common with the E and F models but were rare with the later G models. When there was a hung-up bomb or two it was my signal to go into the high-wire bomb-releasing act on the ten-inch catwalk between the radio room and the rear cockpit door. Two vertical supporting beams halfway between the two doors restricted the walk-through space so severely that it was almost impossible to get through it wearing a parachute. So I had to work on the narrow walk without a chute; it was like a high-wire performer with no safety net. Oxygen supply was from an unreliable walk-around bottle good for four minutes with no bodily exertion or excitement that could double the need for oxygen. An oxygen failure on that open walk, with nothing below but five miles of air, was something I tried not to think about.

The formation came together on time and turned toward the English Channel. We were flying parallel to a higher group that was behind the 381st, so we could spot an abortion quickly. Suddenly I caught a glimpse of something white floating by. I whirled around too late to see what had happened. There was a parachute with no one in it. Pieces of wings, tails, and fuselages littered the sky. Where there had been several aircraft a moment before, there was nothing but empty space and falling debris. I caught a brief glimpse of one ship going down. The fuselage had torn off flush with the trailing edge of the wing. All four engines were still running and the ship was revolving rapidly, like the way a rectangular piece of paper will do when released in the air. It was a nauseating sight. Forty or fifty men were wiped out in a matter of seconds. I saw another ship emerge below in one of those flat, Flying Fortress spins. A B-17 when out of control often went into a shallow circling descent that was neither a dive nor a spin, as we normally use those terms. I saw it so often that I coined the word “flat spin” to describe it. My first reaction was that fighters had slipped across the Channel and jumped us from out of the sun when we weren't expecting them. I searched the sky wildly for some sign of enemy aircraft, and noted other turrets doing the same thing.

“Copilot to Turret — do you see any fighters?”