Combat Crew (39 page)

“Navigator to Pilot — Cahow has about got it made.”

The formation droned placidly along with no opposition. I kept alert for another fighter group to come screaming up, because we were vulnerable with our loose erratic formation. This time, the 533rd Squadron was throttle-jockeying like the rest because Gleichauf was guessing at his airspeed.

“Navigator to Pilot — ten minutes to the coast. Now I know Cahow has it made.”

I knew his men were happy for him and so was I. He was one of the best. The coast slid by and the North Sea was a welcome sight, like the causeway when I was coming back to Corpus Christi by way of Aransas Pass. We were almost home again.

I relaxed and began removing some of the equipment, especially that uncomfortable oxygen mask. After five or six hours, my face was raw from the pressure of the mask and the low temperature. I found out early in the game that a mask was worse when the whiskers needed shaving. If I thought a mission was likely, I often shaved at night to lessen the discomfort. The realization came over me that I was tired. It was not the usual exhaustion of the early missions; I had become acclimated to the routine. It was a built-up weariness of months of altitude and combat tension. For the first time I understood why twenty-five missions was set as the completion point of a combat tour. It was the time when crews would begin to lose mental and physical effectiveness. I suspected the accumulated fatigue was due more to mental strain than to physical weariness.

As we approached Ridgewell, Kels punched me and pointed down. “Cahow is buzzing the field.” Indeed he was. At the 381st it was customary to permit a pilot returning from his twenty-fifth mission to buzz the field in celebration of a job well done.

That day we lost seventeen Forts to German fighters. To my thinking the loss was excessive. It was the familiar pattern of late: loose, erratic formations inviting Jerry to attack. The accumulated losses in men and aircraft during the summer and fall of 1943 were staggering and beyond expectations. The replacement crews were put through speeded-up training procedures, by no means as thorough as the original 381st received. The predictable result was that inexperienced pilots and crews predominated, and the price we paid was higher casualties than should have been necessary. In the air as on the ground, raw troops rarely fare well against seasoned battle-hardened forces. But an attrition factor was working for us: we were thinning out the experienced pilots of the Luftwaffe. When a veteran German pilot with eight or ten years of training plus experience in numerous campaigns was lost, they could not replace him any faster than we could create his counterpart in the U.S. or England. The advantage in attrition gradually shifted to the side with the largest manpower and industrial facilities. Fortunately, that was the combined might of the Allied Forces.

Lieutenant Cahow had finished his twenty-five missions! The dangers were all in the past. He had nothing more to worry about now except getting back to the States. However, Operations assigned him, along with Pitts (Engineer), Parsons (Copilot), and Dubois (Navigator) to take a B-17 to a Modification Base thirty or forty miles away. They were to return another B-17 that had been modified back to Ridgewell. There was a solid overcast at five hundred feet but no problem. The navigator gave Cahow a heading of one hundred and ninety degrees going over. Coming back, the navigator gave him another heading of one hundred and ninety-five degrees. The pilot should have recognized that to be an error, but it was a fun flight and they were all joking on the intercom, not paying too much attention to what they were doing. All of a sudden Cahow began getting interference on his headset. It got worse and worse. Something was definitely wrong with the radio — the noise became increasingly louder. Suddenly Cahow saw that he was flying between heavy steel cables that would have sawed the wing right off an aircraft that hit one of them. To his horror he realized he was in the middle of a balloon barrage near London! He could not see the balloons because they were hidden in the overcast above. That loud noise was his IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) sending out a warning signal of the balloons and cables, and the flak guns down below, ready to blast any unidentified aircraft from the skies. Lieutenant Cahow turned that big Fortress around like it was a fighter plane and carefully dodged those cables until he was back in the clear.

There were few signs of Christmas on the base at Ridgewell Airdrome. Some cards and a few packages had arrived, and some scattered decorations were hung here and there. It was a half-hearted effort to do lip service to the Prince of Peace while we went about the grim task of killing and destruction. I had a good idea of how I would spend Christmas Eve, no doubt in dropping off a Christmas package for Uncle Adolf. Our gift would be twelve giant firecrackers a bit larger than the ones I used to explode Christmas mornings. Peace on earth and good will toward men would have to wait until the killing was finished.

It was extremely cold and it had been weeks since the last distribution of coal to our area. During the morning we tramped the nearby woods searching for small trees that might be sneaked out for firewood without attracting attention. There was a risk if caught, but weighed against no heat in the middle of winter, it was a slight deterrent. Most of the woodcutting with our crosscut saw was done at night to lessen the chance of getting into trouble. Two hours after dark we had a sizable stack stashed away for the next two weeks. With the fire going again that night, it was cozy in the hut. Balmore asked, “John, you are down to three missions?”

“That is correct — three and I got it made.”

“How many does Purus need?”

“Two I think — not sure.”

“I noticed he's been nervous the last week. That's not like Johnny.”

“They all go through that emotion. Gleichauf will finish one raid ahead of me so I will have to fly my last one as a spare — and I don't like to think about the possibility of having to do the last raid with a new crew,” I added.

George continued, “I wish I was up there with you. I need so many missions, I'm bound to draw some lousy crews.”

Watching others approaching twenty-five missions, I had seen the tension building up, but I did not expect it to happen to me. I was older than most of the men flying combat missions and I thought that I had more disciplinary control over my mental processes. I resolved that I would not let it happen to me.

When I heard the Jeep coming some distance away, I got up and started dressing, because the signs were clear the night before that we would go out today if the weather cooperated.

“You would think we could do without raids on Christmas Eve,” growled Balmore. “What we do today isn't going to change the war much.”

“But Mars is more powerful than Jesus — I don't think the burghers are goin' to like the presents we have for them today,” I answered.

We waited outside the Briefing Room after drawing equipment. A loud cheer echoed through the closed door.

“It must be a super milk run,” George said.

“That's fine with me. I hope my last three runs are milk runs.”

An hour later Kels arrived with a grin on his face.

“All right! Let's have it. Where are we goin' today?”

“Maybe I should wait an' let Gleichauf tell you,” he toyed.

“Come on! Where we goin'?”

“Today we raid Calais!” he answered.

“Calais! I can't believe it.”

“It is Calais — we will go over in small nine-plane formations to try to destroy some construction sites the Allied Command thinks the Germans are building to launch long-range rockets across the Channel. There can be a lot of fighters but Spitfires and P-47s will fly low cover to keep them from getting up to us. Major Fitzgerald will be flying as Copilot and I will go along as Observer.”

“I've heard about observers but you are the first live one I've ever seen. What the hell are you supposed to do?”

“Try to see what the bombs hit an' how much damage they do.”

“We already got a whole squadron of tails and balls who can see the bomb drop a lot better than you can see it from the cockpit.”

At one P.M. the Squadron cleared the English coast and turned toward the Continent. It was a beautiful day for wintertime Europe and the altitude was only twenty thousand feet.

“Bombardier to crew — stay alert — don't get cocky an' think we can't get hit over Calais — test fire guns.”

“Navigator to crew — heavy flak ahead.”

Calais had a large number of flak guns and I dreaded the barrage at our lower altitude, because all of their antiaircraft guns could reach twenty thousand feet with accuracy. The squadron circled to the right slightly in an effort to go around the main field of fire. All at once the bursts caught us dead center. With perfect visibility and the low height, the Jerry gunners were at their best. Burst after burst exploded in the middle of the Squadron. It was incredible that with so much accuracy and so many shells thrown at us, no direct hits were made. The fuse timing was perfect: Every burst was exactly at our level. It was the best example of the art of antiaircraft fire I ever saw. At times the other planes in our small formation were obscured by the smoke of the bursting shells. Only pure luck prevented one or more of the Squadron aircraft from taking a direct hit. At times I cringed down behind the Sperry Computing Sight as if that would do any good. There was no way to guess which way the lethal fragments were coming from.

I heard a loud crashing noise on the right wing. A heavy fragment struck it under a main fuel tank.

“Turret to Ball — do you see any serious damage like a fuel leak?”

“No — nothing that amounts to anything.”

Flak struck the armor plate that Balmore was standing on and knocked him to one side. A few seconds later a fragment caromed off the rim of the radio hatch a few inches from his head.

“Radio to Copilot — they're dustin' me off from two sides — that last one missed my head by two inches.”

Four pieces of large shrapnel smashed through the cockpit to my rear with a fearsome noise. I turned around to look for damage and another piece whistled by my ear; it slammed up from below, went through the turret, and out the top, sounding like a cannon exploding when it pulverized the plastic glass above me. Fortunately, I had on sunglasses. One lens was broken and the other scarred by the flying glass fragments.

“Copilot to Turret — are you OK.”

“I'm OK.”

Bam!
A huge chunk struck where number-two main tank was located. I held my breath for several seconds waiting for the telltale signs of fire.

“Copilot to Ball — can you see sign of a fuel leak?”

“No — I guess we are lucky.”

“Sometimes they self-seal an' sometimes not.”

Wineski was on his twenty-fifth mission and it was almost his last day again. Big hunks of flak tore by him so close they damaged his clothes.

“Bombardier to Pilot — we're not going to drop — a small cloud has the target covered — we'll have to do a one-eighty and come back over it.”

“I wish that we could get out of this damned flak,” Gleichauf muttered.

The second bomb run was better, although I did not know what the target was. My concern was that fighters would arrive if we stayed around too long. But once the bombs were released, we were quickly over the Channel on the way home and raid number twenty-three was tucked away.

The remnants of Cahow's crew were with Schultz on our right. They picked up two hundred holes. We had only fifty-five, but many of ours were exceptionally large for flak shrapnel and in vulnerable spots.

Bill Kettner and Ray Bechtel finished their twenty-five that day. What a great Christmas present for them! No question but that tension was mounting more than I expected. How could I suppress it knowing that so many good men had failed at the finish line? The question kept coming back: Was it purely coincidence? No doubt it was, but at the time imagination, frustration, and superstition allowed phobias to build up.

Recently two men were reputed to have predicted their own deaths with accuracy. What mental processes were involved that defy rational understanding? There must be undiscovered capacities of the brain that perhaps someday we will understand. But how did they know what was coming for them? It is possible that many men made such predictions in error. When one of them turned out to be correct, it attracted intense interest. But such instances were bewildering and unsettling. They were shocking and the mind groped for a reasonable explanation. The recognitive phenomenon confused and fascinated at the same time.

My experience was in the opposite direction. I had tried to psyche myself to help provide a basis for courage that might otherwise have been lacking. I just somehow knew — or made myself think I knew — that I would make it through the war. I felt that if I had to jump, I knew parachutes well enough to make it down safely. I was confident that if I could avoid capture upon landing I could make it back to Allied territory because I had some familiarity with European customs.

Christmas Day! It turned out wet and foggy, so no missions were planned. All day the station loudspeaker resounded with Christmas music, but the best thing for me was the return of Jim Counce. His hand turned out to be better than first expected. Jim was depressed because the rest of the crew was getting ahead of him and would be breaking up after one more raid by Gleichauf.

My wife, Anne, had sent a full-sized fruitcake loaded with nuts in a tin container with the lid soldered. There was no other way a cake could have made the trip. Whatever food goodies came from home were shared with the others in the hut. That cake was the big event of the day.

While we were opening packages I heard some unusually loud profanity from Woodrow Pitts's corner. When it died down he sputtered in a rage, “Look what my aunt sent me — a five-pound can of Spam!”