Year 1942

__________ 

“Is the kind of America I know worth defending?” 

James G. Thompson

__________

 

MORE THAN 40,000 men are classified as conscientious objectors during World War II. Most accept noncombatant duty in the armed forces. Approximately 12,000 are assigned to Civilian Public Service camps. “The remaining 6,000, most of whom were Jehovah’s Witnesses, went to prison.” (1127-103)

 

* 

ELIZABETH “BETTY” CATLETT, the first African American woman to ever earn an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa, moves to New York City. There, in the quiet heroism of the people around her, she finds inspiration for her sculpting and painting.

Some of Catlett's work.

* 

WITH FEAR AND ANGER RISING, in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, Fletcher Bowron, mayor of Los Angeles, supports the call to send all Japanese and Japanese Americans living in along the coast to “relocation camps.” 

    He explains: 

    The Japanese, because they are unassimilable, because the aliens have been denied the right to own real property in California, because of [immigration discrimination against them], because of the marked differences in appearance between Japanese and Caucasians, because of the generations of training and philosophy that makes them Japanese and nothing else – all of these contributing factors set the Japanese apart as a race, regardless of how many generations have been born in America. Undoubtedly many of them intend to be loyal, but only each individual can know his own intentions, and when the final test comes, who can say but that “blood will tell”?  104/61

 

    The historian Roger Daniels will later explain how unreasoning fear of Japanese Americans justified their imprisonment.  “[W]hat men believe to be true is more important than the truth itself because the mistaken belief becomes a basis for action.”

* 

May 6: Lt. Mildred Dalton, a U.S. Army nurse, and 65 others, are taken prisoner when the Japanese force the last American and allied troops defending Corregidor to surrender. Having grown up poor in Georgia, she had attended nursing school during the Depression, and then enlisted in 1939. “I joined the Army to see the world,” she told a reporter decades later. “And what I saw was a prison camp.” 

    As The New York Times explained in her obituary, the captured nurses spent most of the war at Japan’s Santo Tomas internment camp for foreign nationals in Manila, “where they faced near-starvation and were ravaged by disease and malnutrition while treating nearly 4,000 men, women and children.” 

    In the last stages of the war, Mildred “and her fellow nurses subsisted on one or two bowls of rice a day…She lost all her teeth to lack of nutrition.” 

“I have been asked many times if we were mistreated or tortured,” she wrote in a remembrance … “Physically, no. A few people might get their face slapped if they failed to bow to a Japanese guard. Humiliated, yes. We would be awakened at 2 in the morning for head count or searched for contraband.”

 

    “From time to time they would round up a number of men and take them out of camp and they were never heard from again,” she continued. “Our internment was nothing compared to the Bataan Death March and imprisonment our soldiers went through. They were tortured and starved.”

 

    The 66 nurses, and 11 from the U.S. Navy, kept at another camp, were liberated in the winter of 1945. Dalton and the other army nurses were awarded Bronze Stars. 

    Mildred went on to meet Arthur Brewster Manning, at a war bonds rally, and they were married on her thirty-first birthday. They had two children, a son and a daughter, and five grandchildren. 

    Mrs. Manning told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2001 that she continued to experience trauma from her war experiences. She feared dark places long after those grim days and nights in the tunnels of Corregidor, she said, and she built extra shelves in her home to store staples out of fear that she would run out of food.

 

    “But I came out so much better than many of my friends,” she said. “I have never been bitter, and I have always known that if I could survive that, I could survive anything.”

* 

The “Texas Tornado” takes the crown. 

September 12: Jo-Carroll Dennison wins the Miss America contest, including a win in the “talent contest,” where she gave a spirited rendition of “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” while dressed in a cowgirl outfit. 

The press labeled the 18-year-old the “Texas tornado.” 

Miss Dennison also won the swimsuit contest, but in some ways came to regret her victory. The New York Times explains. She was happy to entertain the troops, to sing and dance as she had been doing in shows since she was a child, but, she didn’t like being a sex symbol. 

In addition to entertaining the troops, her reign as Miss America called for her to appear in her swimsuit. She felt this would be demeaning, she wrote, especially in some of the low-rent venues where she was sent; she refused to do it and even cut her tour short, though this received little public notice. …

 

While Ms. Dennison loved certain aspects of being Miss America, she also felt the title gave people the impression that she was an empty-headed sex object. At parties, she wrote, it “was more a stigma than an accolade.” She still smarted years later when she recalled Groucho Marx telling her, “You’re almost articulate — for a bathing beauty.”

 

When she had toured military bases as Miss America, she raised morale but knew that the soldiers were cheering her as a symbol, not for anything she had done. “But when working directly with hospice [which she did when she was older],” she wrote, “I felt that I was fulfilling that purpose and using the Miss America title in a far better way.”

 

Later, Dennison talked about being sexually assaulted when she was 12, and the pain she felt at age seven, when her father left her and her mother. 

Dennison is at right on stage.

*

Spring: Joe DiMaggio is coming off a season in 1941 where he hit .357, had a hitting streak of 56 consecutive games, drilled 30 home runs, and drove in 125 runs. Ed Barrow, the Yankees general manager offers him a salary of $35,000 for 1942, a cut of $2,500. “There’s a war going on,” he explains. 

In those days, players were not unionized, and owners had the whip hand. Even some former players were not sympathetic to complaints. 

    Paul Waner explained around this time, “Guilds have no place in baseball. I was in the big leagues for 20 years and never once figured I was being underpaid or mistreated. Baseball is very generous and has kept quite a number of fellows from pushing plows for a living.” (The Ol’ Ball Game, p. 106)

 

* 

DR. ROBERT N. HALL was working in a G.E. Lab in 1942, developing a magnetron to jam enemy radar. One day an engineer at Raytheon noticed that a candy bar in his pocket had melted near the magnetron. Raytheon then used this “discovery” to develop the microwave oven. (NYT obituary, 5/10/18)

Hall first became interested in science after his uncle, Sydney Hall, an early aircraft-engine designer, took him to a science fair. Dr. Hall would later talk about his love for science: “You see there is a problem to be solved and you think about it, and you solve it, and it’s a thrill.” 

In 1962 he built the first solid-state laser; it also allows fiber optics to carry data; he spent his entire career with G. E.

 

* 

“Moldy Mary” aids in the hunt for penicillin. 

Two scientists, Howard Florey and Norman Heatley, fly from England to the U.S. to discuss ways to boost production of penicillin.

In America, the team was quickly set up with a lab at the Department of Agriculture’s Northern Regional Research Laboratory in Peoria, Ill. The project quickly gained the support of U.S. military officials, who were eager to find a drug that would protect the troops from deadly infections — and of several American drug companies, including Merck and Pfizer. 

It might seem strange that Florey and Heatley were set up in an agricultural lab when they were working on a medical drug. But Peoria turned out to be the perfect spot for them. The agricultural scientists had extensive experience with molds and other soil-based organisms. And the heartland location had one meaningful advantage: its proximity to corn. The mold turned out to thrive in vats of corn steep liquor, which was a waste product created by making cornstarch.

 

While the scientists experimented with creating larger yields in the corn steep liquors, they also suspected that there might be other strains of penicillin out in the wild that would be more amenable to rapid growth. At the same time, U.S. soldiers and sailors collected soil samples around the globe — Eastern Europe, North Africa, South America — to be shipped back to the American labs for investigation. An earlier soil search in the United States had brought back an organism that would become the basis for streptomycin, now one of the most widely used antibiotics in the world. In the years immediately after the end of the war, Pfizer and other drug companies would go on to conduct major exploratory missions seeking out soil samples everywhere, from the bottoms of mine shafts to wind-borne samples gathered with the aid of balloons. In the end Pfizer collected a staggering 135,000 distinct samples.

 

The search for promising molds took place closer to home as well. During the summer months of 1942, shoppers in Peoria grocery stores began to notice a strange presence in the fresh produce aisles, a young woman intently examining the fruit on display, picking out and purchasing the ones with visible rot. Her name was Mary Hunt, and she was a bacteriologist from the Peoria lab, assigned the task of locating promising molds that might replace the existing strains that were being used. (Her unusual shopping habits ultimately gave her the nickname Moldy Mary.) One of Hunt’s molds — growing in a particularly unappetizing cantaloupe — turned out to be far more productive than the original strains that Florey and Chain’s team had tested. Nearly every strain of penicillin in use today descends from the colony Hunt found in that cantaloupe.

 

Aided by the advanced production techniques of the drug companies, the United States was soon producing a stable penicillin in quantities sufficient to be distributed to military hospitals around the world. …

 

Penicillin, alongside the other antibiotics developed soon after the war ended, triggered a revolution in human health. Mass killers like tuberculosis were almost entirely eliminated. People stopped getting severe infections from simple cuts and scrapes, like the rose-thorn scratch that killed Albert Alexander [the first English patient to get treatment with penicillin, till doctors ran out]. The magical power of antibiotics to ward off infection also opened the door to new treatments. Radical surgical procedures like organ transplants became mainstream.

  

*

“The beginnings of gender equality.” 

May 29: “Rosie the Riveter” (NYT; 4/25/15): Mary Keefe modeled for Norman Rockwell in 1942; she was 19, weighed 110; had never handled a rivet gun, was a Vermont telephone operator and red-headed. “Her picture,” greatly altered, appeared on the Memorial Day cover of the Saturday Evening Post. 

Penny Coleman, author of a book about women working in WWII, says the picture is “iconic because it portrays a rarity – an image of a powerful woman with a don’t-mess-with-me attitude.” Chris Coleman, a museum curator says the work “is emblematic of a sea change in American culture.” “Importantly, the artist’s depiction celebrates, even helps to invent, due to mass distribution as a War Bond poster and a magazine cover, the beginnings of gender equality.” 

Rockwell added lipstick, rouge, and polished nails to emphasize the femininity of the worker aiding the war effort. 

He did 300 + covers for Post. A story about Rosaline P. Walter, a 19-year-old high school graduate who had gone to work for an aircraft factory sparked the idea. First came a song: 

All the day long, whether rain

Or shine

She’s a part of the assembly line

She’s making history, working

For victory

Rosie [sound of rat-a-tat-tat]

The riveter.

 

Rockwell picked it up there, paying Keefe $5 each for two sessions, $5 then is equal to about $144 today. In the finished work her right shoe is placed on a copy of Mein Kampf. She’s holding a ham sandwich and her lunchbox has her name. Rockwell felt bad because Mary took kidding about her “size” when he bulked her up. 

He said, “I really thought you were the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”

 

* 

June 23: A Japanese submarine surfaces at night and fires 21 shells at Fort Lewis, a U.S. military base. 

Little damage is done and this marks the only time a military target is hit on the mainland in four years of war.

 

* 

“I had to fight like hell for the right to fight for my country.” 

Japanese Americans in WWII: (NYT book review, 4-26-15): Theodore Seuss Geisel did a cartoon showing Japanese lined up all along the West Coast, getting packs of dynamite. The caption: “Waiting for the signal from home.” 

    Eleanor Roosevelt warned the American people not to be hasty in locking everyone up, but her voice was drowned out. 

    Examples:

Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy: “If it is a question of the safety of the country and the Constitution…why, the Constitution is just a scrap of paper to me.” 

General John DeWitt: “A Jap is a Jap…You can’t tell one Jap from another.” 

Governor Chase Clark of Idaho: “The Japs live like rats, breed like rats and act like rats.” 

Young opera star, Fumiko Yaba, packed a bathing suit when she heard she was heading for Tule Lake. 

Ben Kuroki was born in Nebraska and grew up in Hershey, Nebraska. He had trouble getting accepted in the U.S. Army. “I had to fight like hell for the right to fight for my country,” he said long after the war. Fight like hell he did. His local draft board gave him the chance – and he enlisted with brother Fred. Ben was soon flying in the U.S. Army Air Force. 

“When you live with men under combat conditions for fifteen months, you begin to understand what brotherhood is all about, what equality and tolerance really mean.” 

His nickname, given by a fellow crew member, was: “Most Honorable Son.” He flew the required 25 missions in Europe, volunteered for five more, and then flew 28 over Japan. “I have the face of a Japanese but my heart is American,” he said when given approval to fly missions over Japan. Near the end of the war, a drunken serviceman stabbed Kuroki in the head. 

Bill Mauldin said of him: “It is the story of a little guy who went through the war, made his buddies proud to wear the same uniform he did and will make you proud to be his countryman.” (Intro to a 1946 book about his life; NYT obit; 9/6/15). 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I tried to teach my students ever year that using dehumanizing language (like referring to Japanese Americans as “rats,” above), was the easiest path to cruelty aimed at others. I taught seventh graders, and we had great discussions on this topic every year. See my post: “Two ‘N’ Words and a ‘D’ Word.”

* 

TIME MAGAZINE did a brief article on George Takei, who spent part of his childhood in an internment camp. “Gaman,” Time wrote, is a word often heard in the movie about his life, To Be Takei. He translates it, the critic notes, as “to endure with dignity or fortitude.”

Gaman got his family through time spent in internment camps for Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor, to which Takei, born in Los Angeles, was sent at age 5. He was nearly 9 when the Takeis were released, only to endure life on L.A.’s Skid Row. When he became an actor, his fortitude still proved valuable as he was relegated to stereotypical Asian roles.

 

In 2005, after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s veto of California’s gay-marriage bill, Takei revealed that he and his longtime manager, Brad Altman, had been partners for nearly twenty years.  

They married in 2008.

 

*

Young Japanese Americans in a camp.

A STORY in The New York Times (12/2/15), “Diary Paints Life as an Internee,” has interesting details about life in the internment camps. Yonekazu Satoda did his writing in the laundry building, the only private place he could find inside the camp. 

Satoda was 22 when he and his family were forced to leave their home in San Francisco and head for a relocation camp in Arkansas. “Today was supposed to be my graduation at Cal,” he wrote on May 13, 1942. “Got hell from Mom for fooling around with women,” he noted on May 19. “Hot as hell,” he said on May 20. His diary is now part of an exhibit, “Out of the Desert: Resilience and Memory in Japanese American Internment,” now being shown at Yale. 

In 1945 he was released from the camp and promptly drafted into the U.S. Army and hadn’t seen his diary or thought about it since. 

Journalists often called the prisoners “evacuees.” George Takei was also imprisoned at Rohwer, not far from Jerome, Arkansas. Satoda was born and raised in California and kept his diary under a pillow so his mother wouldn’t see it. He worked making furniture in the camp and also did some teaching. 

Satoda spent two years in Japan after the war, serving as an intelligence officer, and twenty years in the army, retiring as a major in the Army Reserve. 

His wife Daisy had been interned at Topaz, she being one of ten siblings. “I look back at the injustice, but when you’re young, you’re not saddled with those responsibilities. It was my parents’ burden,” she says. 

He adds: “You know how you go on vacation and have a flat tire? Fifty years later, you don’t remember the flat tire.” He remembers the bonds of friendship he made during those years.

 

* 

“Treated worse in Southern towns than German prisoners of war.” 

“A Most Dangerous Newspaper” (NYT book review; 1/10/16): Black recruits were turned away in some localities because there weren’t enough segregated units to take them, or confined to units that built roads, loaded ships and dug latrines. 

Men who were eager to prove themselves in battle grew demoralized marking time on bases that gave them ramshackle housing and confined them to Jim Crow buses and even ‘colored only’ sections of movie theaters. The Pentagon made matters worse (if such a thing were possible) by intentionally placing black soldiers under the command of white Southern officers – on the premise that Southerners better “understood” black people.

 

As Brent Staples notes in his book review:  

The Negro press warned black men against Navy recruiters who would promise them training as radiomen, technicians or mechanics – then put them to work serving food to white men. It made its readers understand that black men and women in uniform were treated worse in Southern towns than German prisoners of war and sometimes went hungry on troop trains because segregationists declined to feed them.

 

The Pittsburgh Courier came up with the Double V campaign, victory over fascism abroad, victory over racism at home. 

That campaign, by the way, was sparked by a letter a young African American wrote to the paper. James G. Thompson, 26, from Wichita, Kansas, wondered:

Should I sacrifice my life to live half American? Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow? Would it be demanding too much to demand full citizenship rights in exchange for the sacrificing of my life? Is the kind of America I know worth defending?”

 

Other black-oriented newspapers questioned the conduct of the U.S. government during the war. Military units were still segregated; and Jim Crow laws, and more subtle racism in the North, made life difficult for all African Americans – at a time we claimed to be fighting evil around the world. Attorney General Francis Biddle called the publisher of the Chicago Defender to his office in 1942. Biddle told John H. Sengstacke that the black newspapers were flirting with sedition. He would “shut them all up,” if necessary. 

Sengstacke responded: “You have the power to close us down. So if you want to close us, go ahead and attempt it.”

 

* 

HEINZ, a refugee from Germany, is drafted by the U.S. Army. Better known as “Henry,” young Henry Kissinger will soon be sent to Europe, where his knowledge of German will often pay off.

 

* 

November 13: A Japanese submarine torpedoes and sinks the USS Juneau, in fighting off Guadalcanal. 

Five brothers, the Sullivans, serving onboard are lost: George, Francis, Joseph, Madison, and Albert. This marks the greatest loss of life by any American family during World War II.

 

* 

November 28: A fire breaks out at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub in Boston. Patrons panic and rush for the exits, many of which are locked. The New York Times reported that “the chief loss of life resulted from the screaming, clawing crowds that were wedged in the entrances of the club.” 

By the time firefighters extinguished the blaze 492 people were dead.

 

* 

November 30: This blogger had never heard of USS New Orleans, or the Battle of Tassafaronga, in the Solomon Islands, until July 2025. It was at that point that scientists announced they had found an important piece of history, 2,000 feet below the waves, related to that combat. 

    Wikipedia has all the details required. In a battle with a Japanese destroyer-transport force, ten U.S. warships, four cruisers and six destroyers went into action.  

When the flagship Minneapolis was struck by two torpedoes, New Orleans, next astern, was forced to sheer away to avoid collision, and ran into the track of a torpedo, which detonated the ship's forward magazines and gasoline tanks. This explosion severed 150 ft (46 m) of her bow just forward of turret No. 2. The severed bow, including Turret No. 1, swung around the port side and punched several holes in the length of New Orleans’ hull before sinking at the stern and damaging the port inboard propeller. With one quarter of her length gone, [she was] slowed to two knots (2.3 mph; 3.7 km/h), and on fire. Everyone in turrets one and two perished, a total of 183 men killed. Herbert Brown, a seaman in the ship’s plotting room, described the scene after the torpedo hit:

 

    I had to see. I walked alongside the silent turret two and was stopped by a lifeline stretched from the outboard port lifeline to the side of the turret. Thank God it was there, for one more step and I would have pitched head first into the dark water thirty feet below. The bow was gone. One hundred and twenty five feet of ship and number one main battery turret with three 8 inch guns were gone. Eighteen hundred tons of ship were gone. Oh my God, all those guys I went through boot camp with – all gone[.]”

 

    Damage control parties managed to repair the ship enough to sail to Tulagi Harbor near daybreak on 1 December

 

    The crew camouflaged their ship from air attack, jury-rigged a bow of coconut logs, and worked clearing away wreckage.

 

    The cruiser limped back to Australia, sailing stern first to avoid sinking. The damaged propellor was replace, and a temporary stub bow installed. On 7 March 1943, the New Orleans left Sydney for Puget Sound Navy Yard, “sailing backward the entire voyage, where a new bow was fitted with the use of Minneapolis’ No. 2 Turret.” New radar systems were added, and all battle damage repaired. Numerous 20mm and 40mm Bofors anti-aircraft guns, after the British model, were added. 

    The New Orleans took part in the defense of Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941, in the battles of the Coral Sea, and Midway, and in fights at Wake Island, Truk, the Philippine Sea, Iwo Jima, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. Her guns helped sink several Japanese warships during the war, including the light carrier Chiyoda, exacting revenge for her own losses. 

    There are many ways to die in combat. In one battle, a disabled plane from Yorktown “flew into New Orleans’ mainmast, hitting gun mounts as it fell into the sea. The ship was sprayed with gas as the plane exploded on hitting the water, one crew member was lost, another badly injured[.]” 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: If I was still teaching, it would probably work to have students do research on the New Orleans – or other ships – and then write up, or act out “their experiences” during World War II.

 

* 

A radio operator and gunner on the B-17 nicknamed “Umbragio,” after a Jimmy Durante catch phrase, watches bombs rain down on a German city. “Screw ’em,” he thinks. Then he has second thoughts. “I remember thinking, imagining a table of family, of Germans, sitting around the table as the bombs dropped.” 

That man is Norman Lear, a Jew himself, later a famous TV producer, who, one writer explains, will later fight “for his country in his sitcoms,” showing the same kind of empathy for complex characters he felt that day over Germany. (The most famous: “All in the Family,” will lead TV ratings for much of the 70s.)

Year 1943

__________ 

“I smell the stench of those bodies rotting in the sun. It still comes back to me.”

Leon Cooper

__________

American forces wade ashore at Tarawa.

 

Having returned from a 31,000 mile trip around the world, Wendell Willkie rushes a book, One World, into print, explaining what the war is really all about. 

Willkie’s simple message was that the United States’ view of the rest of the world had for too long been childishly parochial. There are “no distant points in the world any longer,” said Wilkie; “our thinking in the future must be world-wide.” He forecast the postwar drive for freedom in underdeveloped parts of the world: “Men and women all over the world are on the march, physically, intellectually and spiritually. … They are resolved, as we must be, that there is no more place for imperialism. … The big house on the hill surrounded by mud huts has lost its awesome charm.” (1127-154)

*

January 28: President Roosevelt issues the following statement, marking a dramatic shift in policy, regarding Japanese Americans: 

The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of the mind and the heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry. A good American is one who is loyal to this country and to our creed of liberty and democracy. Every loyal citizen should be given the opportunity to serve this country wherever his skills will make the greatest contribution – whether it be in the ranks of the armed forces, war production, agriculture, government service, or other work essential to the war effort. 104/113

* 

February 5: Howard Hughes’ film, “The Outlaw,” debuts, after a long battle with censors, who insist that too much of Jane Russell’s breasts are showing. The sultry Ms. Russell, only 19, when the film is first made, goes on to stardom. But after a brief run, “The Outlaw” is banned again, briefly released again in 1946, banned once more, and finally shown extensively in 1946. It finally gained national release only in 1950, despite complaints by various church groups, the Legion of Decency, and others. 

    Even posters for the film were sometimes banned. 

    By 1943, Russell has married her high school sweetheart, Bob Waterfield, a U.C.L.A. football star; but a botched abortion, before her marriage leaves her unable to have children. She and her husband later adopt a daughter, Tracy, and Russell goes on to be a foe of abortion and an advocate for adoption, instead.

Jane Russell.

Too much skin showing in 1943.

 

*

What is Fate?

March 13: Disgruntled German officers manage to place a bomb successfully on Hitler’s plane, disguised as a present of two bottles of brandy. Inside, a small bottle of acid was broken by the press of a button. The acid would eat through a wire that held a spring – and the eventual release would trigger the blast. 

The plotters waited anxiously for word that Hitler’s plane had been blown out of the sky. Twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour passed. No word of an explosion came. The bomb had malfunctioned. The plotters managed to retrieve the “present” later and substitute two better bottles of brandy. 

On disassembling the device, all was found to have worked, but the striker had not caused the detonator to explode. 

 

* 

April 7: Lt. James Swett, a Marine fighter pilot, and three other Wildcat pilots are notified that 150 Japanese bombers and escorts are approaching Guadalcanal. This will be Swett’s first taste of combat – and he will shoot down three bombers – then be separated from the other Wildcats – and shoot down four more. 

By then his left wing had been hit, evidently by friendly antiaircraft fire. He attacked an eighth Japanese bomber, but its tail gunner fired on Lieutenant Swett’s plane, shattering his windshield and damaging his engine.

 

“It was all over in about 15 minutes,” he would recall.

 

Lieutenant Swett ditched in the sea, and then came another harrowing experience.

 

“I was cut up around the face by flying glass,” he told The Oregonian, the newspaper in Portland, in 1991. “I made a good water landing, but my shoulder straps were too loose and I hit my head on the instrument panel and broke my nose. I struggled to get out of the cockpit as the plane sank, but my parachute straps got caught and dragged me under. I don’t know how deep I was before my life raft inflated and popped me to the surface.”

 

A Coast Guard boat approached.

 

As Edward H. Sims told it in “Greatest Fighter Missions,” one of the crewmen shouted, “Are you an American?”

 

Lieutenant Swett replied, “Damn right I am.”

 

He was taken to a nearby harbor, and given Scotch and morphine to ease his pain.

 

   He would get shot down a second time, in July 1943, near the island of New Georgia, but be rescued by two natives in a canoe. In October he was awarded the Medal of Honor for his mission near Guadalcanal. Swett ended the war with 16 known kills, and part of another, and a possible nine more. 

   Swett would also insist that he shot down that eighth bomber, the one that got him, but the Marine Corps could not verify that win.

 

* 

Ohio University enrollment drops to 1,306, as 17% of faculty and many male students enlist. Women outnumber men 5-1. 

Enrollment in 1940 had been 3,501.

 

* 

On a beach in Sicily General Patton spies a man gibbering in fear (Atkinson, p. 139; Army at Dawn). In his personal diary, Patton describes what happened next: “I kicked him in the arse with all my might…Some way to boost morale. As a whole the men were poor, the officers worse. It is very sad.”

 

* 

What is Fate? 

Bill Bryson’s English father-in-law grew up poor, in “a decrepit cottage with his poor widowed mother and elder sister at the end of a wooded lane a quarter of a mile or so from the village center.” The place had no electricity or running water, and his father-in-law would walk miles to Staines and back on a Sunday “to get a bag of stale buns for their supper.” 

In 1943 a German bomber blew the place to bits, probably dropping its bomb by mistake, or dumping it after a failed raid. 

Chance. No one was home at the time. His father-in-law had to live under “changed circumstances” and 

met a girl whom he would not otherwise have met, and in the fullness of time they married and produced two children, one of whom grew up and married me. So the direction of my life, not to mention the very existence of my children and grandchildren and whomever else follows, is directly consequent upon a German bomb that fell randomly on Wraysbury on a summer’s evening long ago.

 

* 

Baseball season: With so many men away at war, major league baseball owners are worried fans will lose interest in the sport. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is created to help fill the void. The league will survive for eleven years, and 600 young women will suit up and play. (The story of the league is told in the 1992 movie, “A League of Their Own.”)

 

* 

June 14: The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnett (rendered appropriately on Flag Day) upholds the right of children of Jehovah’s Witnesses to be excused from saluting the flag or saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school, on religious grounds. 

Justice Robert Jackson, writing for the six-vote majority, explains: “The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy. … One’s right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly.” 

Children who had refused to participate had been suspended; but members of the Witnesses refuse to swear oaths of allegiance, except to God.

 

* 

“Lessons from the ku klux klan.” 

June 15-June 17: A race riot erupts in Beaumont, Texas. With the U.S. locked in war with Germany and Japan, African Americans were serving in increasing numbers under the flag. 

The great African American poet, Langston Hughes, captures the anger of his people during an era when racism still thrived.  Hughes noted riots that had occurred that year in places like Detroit and Beaumont.

 

“Beaumont to Detroit” by Langston Hughes 

Looky here, America
What you done done –
Let things drift
Until the riots come 

Now your policemen
Let the mobs run free.
I reckon you don’t care
Nothing about me. 

You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man.
I guess he took lessons
From the ku klux klan. 

You tell me mussolini’s
Got an evil heart.
Well, it mus-a been in Beaumont
That he had his start – 

Cause everything that hitler
And mussolini do
Negroes get the same
Treatment from you 

You jim crowed me
Before hitler rose to power –
And you’re still jim crowing me
Right now, this very hour. 

Yet you say we’re fightin
For democracy.
Then why don’t democracy
Include me? 

I ask you this question
Cause I want to know
How long I got to fight
BOTH HITLER – AND JIM CROW. 

*

August 2: The future writer, James Baldwin turns 19, during a riot in Harlem, fueled by anger at how the U.S. military was treating black soldiers. “The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War,” Baldwin would later explain, marked a turning point in black attitudes. “To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded.” * 

August 2: The future writer, James Baldwin turns 19, during a riot in Harlem, fueled by anger at how the U.S. military was treating black soldiers. “The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War,” Baldwin would later explain, marked a turning point in black attitudes. “To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded.” 

*

September 27: 36 B-24 bombers from the Eighth Air Force planes head for the German city of Kassel, on a bombing mission. For reasons unknown today, they went off course, bombed the wrong city, and then turned for home, where they were based at Tibenham, England. German fighters soon caught up with them, and the slaughter began. Twenty-five American aircraft were shot down. Several others, badly damaged, crash landed later, including three that limped back to England.

 

Only four planes returned safely to base.

 

Staff Sgt. John A. Tabert was a waist gunner on the crew of a B-24 nicknamed the Mairzy Doats. The co-pilot, Lt. Carroll G. Snidow later described what happened when the enemy started shooting up their plane. The order to bail out soon came and Snidow and five others survived – to spend the remainder of the war in a German prison camp. Tabert and two other crewmen went missing.

 

(Snidow’s story follows, below.)

 

At least 117 U.S. airmen were killed during the raid, 121 more were taken prisoner, and only 98 returned to duty; but for 79 years, Tabert’s fate remained unknown. In October, his wife, Jenevieve (Judd), received a telegram, informing her that her husband was unaccounted for after his plane was shot down. That same day, she gave birth to her son, John.

 

Having never met his father, many years later young John would begin a search for information. Online he found a website for the Kassel Mission Historical Society, and then contacted government agencies that might help. Eventually, he learned that remains from a wreck at the crash site in German had been sent to the North Africa American Cemetery and Memorial. A request for disinterment was filed, and DNA evidence later confirmed. The remains of one his father had finally been found. His son also poured over documents he had long ignored in his attic.

 

As The New York Times explains,

 

Sargeant Tarbert had attended Jacob Tome Institute in Maryland, a prep school for boys that is now the co-educational Tome School, and enjoyed football, journalism and art. He enlisted in June 1939 and met Ms. Judd while in the Air Corps at Fort Lowry. They were married on Nov. 4, 1943.

 

*

 

A little more reading lead the blogger to the story of Lt. Porter M. Pile, who ended his studies at Texas A&I University and joined the U.S. Navy. For reasons now unknown, he was transferred to the Army Air Corps – possibly because of his training in higher mathematics. We know the young man married (his wife’s first name was Barbara), finished his stateside training, and was sent to England.

 

By September 27, he had completed 23 missions – just two short of the number required of aircrews before they could stand down. But on that day, his B-24 Liberator bomber was destroyed, and he was killed.

 

For years, his family wondered what had happened; but his remains were eventually found at the crash site in Germany, identified in 2022, and in October 2023, he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington D.C.

 

*

 

The account from Lt. Snidow now follows. He wrote it down in a notebook provided by the Red Cross, and told the story of the Hautman crew. The blogger has divided it into paragraphs for easier reading.

 

Lt. Edward F. Hautman was the pilot. (I also learn that on a mission in April 1944, the Mairzy Doats had been heavily damaged, and the two waist gunners bailed out, thinking it was going down. One was listed as KIA, the other as MIA.

 

The crew for the Kassel mission, besides Hautman, Snidow, and Tabert,  included:

 

Lt. Maynard L. Jones, navigator

 

Lt. John A. Friese, bombardier

(not on the mission that day)

 

Harold Giesler, radio operator

Dale C. Maupin, nose turret gunner

Thomas V. Land, top turret gunner

Orvel G. Howe, waist gunner

Gordon F. Waldron, tail gunner

 

*

 

Now for Lt. Snidow’s story:

 

They woke us up very early on the morning of September 27, 1944. The briefing was to be held at three thirty, which was about an hour earlier than usual. “Jonesy” and myself, walking to the mess hall in the darkness of night, figured it must be “Big B”. It was a cool morning and you could tell fall was fast approaching. We had a very good breakfast – although we had powdered eggs. They tasted very good. All the crews in my barracks were scheduled for the mission. Johnny Friese, my bombardier, was not on the mission that day. The “Runt”, navigator on “The Commander’s” crew, was not sure whether he was scheduled or not, so he went with us to briefing. We ate our breakfast slowly as we had plenty of time.  

 

We arrived at briefing on time (4:30 am). The “Runt” found he was not scheduled so back to bed he went. Before going back, he came to me and told me “to give them hell, Snidow”, an expression both of us gave to the other if he wasn’t flying that day … it was a joke between the two of us.

 

Briefing was as interesting as usual. “Jonesy” and myself were greatly relieved to find our target was to be Kassell (sic), Germany instead of “Big B” (Berlin). We were in good spirits because we were to be back at the base by 12:30 which is very early to return from a mission.  

 

We had a normal take-off and climb to assembly altitude. We were flying number two ship in the “slot” of the lead squadron, assembling at a low altitude crossing the Channel and part of France. Flying was hard because we were flying directly into the sun.  There were about four aborts with a 10/10 cloud cover at 8,000 feet. We dropped our bombs OK that day but our whole group missed the target. (N.B. see further below for an explanation.) We did not get any flak when we should be getting plenty of it.  

 

After dropping our bombs, we though[t] we had made a “milk run”. Everything was coming off according to plan.  Then, all of a sudden, all Hell broke loose. I was listening to the VHF radio channel so I didn’t get the warning. I looked out of my co-pilot window and saw what I first thought was small flak. It was heavy and close…than (sic) I found the truth. Looking at the ship ahead of us, I saw their waist guns firing. FIGHTERS!!! I don’t know how many there were, but it was “beaucoup”. I saw the ship in front of us go down with its rudder on fire. I imagine it blew up. Just then a FW 190 [Folke-Wulf 190] came along side of us and seemed to be flying in formation with our lead ship … I believe if I’d had a gun I could have blown him to bits. The shells were busting around us everywhere. I saw a FW 190 about twenty feet above the ship on our right wing … it dropped about twenty or thirty small fire bombs right on top of the poor B-24. I saw a waist gunner bail out of the ship before it went down in flames.  

 

About that time something hit my window and put a hole in it…a piece scratched my knuckle in two places. The enemy fighters knocked out our tail gun and turret on their first pass. Waldron, our tail gunner, was injured in the leg. My oxygen system was also damaged. Just before the fighters left, our number four engine propeller “ran away”. We started to “feather” it but it (was) too late as our oil pressure was gone.  Land, our top turret man, was really firing that gun … a FW 190 was coming in on top of us, evidently to drop fire bombs on us but Land blew him out of the sky … he did a good job that day.  

 

Then I looked at our number four engine. he whole prop. and engine was coming out of the wing. What a sight. The propeller, whirling in its full velocity, made a 90 degree turn and come (sic) toward me. I thought that I had “bought the farm” then.  The prop. (No. 4) came over into the number three prop. and engine and knocked it out of the wing. Prop. and pieces of props were going everywhere.  Luckly (sic), none hit the ship. There we were, in the middle of Germany in a B-24 with two holes in the right wing where the engines had been, no tail turret, radio almost out and one of our tail rudders mostly shot off. The bandits (enemy fighters) had left us.  

 

We saw four fighters way out in the distance at twelve o’clock. We didn’t know whether they were friendly or enemy…they turned into us so I thought again that we had “bought the farm”. It was an anxious few minutes until they came close enough to find they were P-51s. A few minutes later two P-38s came and flew on our wing.  We were out of formation now. Only three out of thirty-six made up the formation and we saw them gradually leave us, homeward bound.

 

We started losing altitude so we threw everything out that we could including our flak suits, guns, auxilary (sic) power units, etc. At that time we were flying at 27,000 feet altitude. We got in contact with the P-38s on our wing to give as a radio fix to our nearest friendly airport. They gave us a heading to a field in France and told us it was about 30 miles away or about fifteen minutes away. We kep (sic) losing altitude at a rate of 300 feet per minute. It was going to be close … but we thought we had a chance.  Evidently the P-38s gave us the wrong information. We kept losing altitude for about forty minutes … until we were down to approximately 7,000 feet, coming out from over the cloud overcast. We were flying at 120 mph which is almost stalling speed for a B-24. Our P-38s were still with us. We still figured we had a good chance of getting home.  

 

Then more big trouble. They opened up on us with flak. We were so low and going so slow that we were a perfect target. None of us had flak suits for protection as we had thrown them overboard to lighten the load. The flak was so close that it was rocking the ship and the concussion had blown out our waist gun windows … there wasn’t anything to do but leave the ship. We gave the order to bail out.  Land went first from the flight deck followed by Giesler, Jones, myself, and then Hautman.  

 

Before jumping, I went back to my seat to get my handerchief (sic) and hat. I don’t know why I did but all I can say is I did. I couldn’t reach then so I went without them. I did get my shoes which were tied together under my seat. I remember my jump.  I can honestly say I wasn’t afraid because I trusted my chute. I just took a step out of the bomb bay and then I started floating. You have complete presence of mind when you are sailing through space. Just as soon as I left the ship, I started falling head over heels. I tried to fall straight but I couldn’t until I remembered something S-2 had told us once … STIFFEN UP … that I did and sure enough, it worked.  My next thought was to pull the rip cord. I started to pull it but I again remembered the S-2 (Intelligence Officer) … delay your jump. I did this for a couple seconds and then I pulled her. She really opened up nicely without scarcely a jerk. When I opened my chute, I dropped my shoes but caught them with my feet. While floating down, I was trying to get my shoes but when I reached down for them they slipped away. I then looked around me.

 

I saw our ship, now without anyone on board in a steep bank to the right and very low. It hit the ground and I am glad I wasn’t in it. It looked as if the B-24 was spread out on all of Germany. Black smoke came up from the few remains of the airplane. I then looked below me … I saw that I was going to land in an open field near some woods and right beside a railroad. There were approximately twenty people working in the field so I knew that I wouldn’t have a chance of excaping (sic). I then looked above me and I could see Hautman’s chute. About that time, I hit the ground. I was finally on the ground without a scratch. Ed Hautman hollered at me before he hit the woods over a hill. I haven’t seen him since.

 

I got out of my chute and awaited my captors. They soon came upon me and thus the war was over for me. I was surprised to have one of the women in the group to speak to me in good English. She wanted to know if I was hurt, if I was American or British and then she told me she had a husband in West Virginia and that he liked it over there. I assume he was a prisoner in America. She told me everything would be OK with me and I would be treated fine. They took me to a nearby road and there we waited for about an hour. In the meantime they bought (sic) Land and Giesler up. They had also been captured. They took us in an automobile to a nearby town. We waited about three hours where they searched us. They than (sic) brought in another crew that had been captured.

 

We then had a short ride in a charcoal burning truck to a railroad station. It took us the entire night, after changing trains many times, to get to Oberselle (Oberursel) near Frankfort (sic). That was the morning of September 28th. At Oberselle (Oberursel) they interrogated me and left me in solitary confinement until October 3rd at which time I was sent to my permanent camp, Stalag Luft I, Barth, Germany on the Baltic Sea.

 

*

 

Another excellent account comes from Lt. Frank J. Bertram, a navigator, whose plane (piloted by Lt. Reginald R. Miner) was also shot down. We pick up here, where Bertram realizes, as the flight approaches what is supposed to be the target, that the flight is already off course.

 

PICTURE OF CREW – KASSEL MISSION

 

 

“Sheer terror for a while, panic for a while, and then anger.”

 

We did our usual deal till we came to what they called the initial point. The initial point in a bomb run is where control of the bomber is turned over to the bombardier. And from the initial point to the point of impact, which could be anywhere from 10 to 30 miles, the pilot has no control whatsoever. You’re on a straight heading, no matter what comes through the formation, what kind of flak you get, you’ve just got to rough it out, straight ahead. As all the planes in back of you do.

 

This day we had to make a little left turn to hit the initial point. As we made the left turn, we went further left than we were supposed to. I immediately called the pilot, Reg Miner, and said, “Hey! We’re going the wrong way! We’re going too far left. Call the lead plane and find out what’s going on.”

 

And he came back and said, “They said, ‘Hold it in. Hold it in.’” We kept turning farther left, and I thought, “We’re going to miss the target completely.”

 

The target was not visible from the air, but with the radar scope we had the target picked up, and with the little that we did see from the air to the ground, and the paperwork I was doing, we knew where we were exactly.

 

We were not the only one that caught the mistake. I think almost every plane in the formation that had a halfway good navigator called immediately and saw what was going on. You could actually look out the pilot’s window and see the flak off to the right, which we were supposed to be going through. Why we kept going to the left we’ll never know. We never did find out.

 

We released the bombs near the town of Goettingen. As it happened it was in an open field; probably killed a couple of cows. Then we followed our regular method to come out of the bomb run and head for home. That was a left turn off the target; a right turn, which took us on a southeast heading; another right turn, which took us on a southwest heading; then another turn to the right, which took us on a northwest heading.

 

While we were just getting back together after the fourth turn, someone in our plane called out, “There’s a dogfight!” And all the time I’m thinking, “Oh boy, are we gonna catch it from headquarters when we get home,” because we dropped the bombs uselessly.

 

Then our radio operator, Joe Gilfoil – who was mortally wounded that day – said, “There’s a fire in the bomb bay!”

 

Right after he said that, all hell broke loose. I’m looking out my little window – I sat in back of the pilot and had a window about one foot square – and here’s this flak, maybe three feet around when it explodes, a sort of a grayish black. And I’m thinking, “What the hell is this? We’re at 22,000 feet, and these guys are shooting through the clouds and hitting us like this?” I couldn’t believe the accuracy. And then someone called out, “Here comes our fighter escort!” I looked out my little window, and there’s a hell of a lot of commotion, and I saw these radial engine planes. I thought, “Those are our P-47s.” All of a sudden they peeled off and there was the Swastika. And about that instant, they start flying through the ships. There were shells, explosions and guns chattering, you puckered up immediately and the lead hit the stomach, words just cannot describe your feeling. It’s absolute sheer terror for a while, panic for a while, and then anger.

 

At that point, all I saw was four planes. Apparently they were ten abreast, but I just saw the right side of our plane, and these planes shooting at us. And all of a sudden a big explosion hit the ship and the top turret gunner, who was right opposite me, came crashing to the ground. The turret got a direct hit from one of these planes, and it blew the Plexiglas out and smashed it right in this guy’s face and he fell down right at my feet. His name was Mac Thornton. I looked down and I knew he was dead. His face was just frozen; the blood was solid. At that point in September it was very cold, I think it was 20 or 30 below zero at that altitude, so everything freezes instantly. And I panicked at that point. I could see explosions going through the ship into the bomb bay. The interphone was out. We knew we were going to have to bail out. So I went to the bomb bay door and I almost fell over poor Thornton; got my foot caught in his arm and almost panicked to get out of his way. Then I couldn’t open the bomb bay; it was stuck. There were holes, and there was gasoline pouring in the bomb bay. To this day I swear the fact that the Germans blew that turret off saved us from exploding, because I think that sucked all the gasoline fumes from the bomb bay right out through the top. Otherwise I’m sure we’d have blown up, as many of our ships did that day.

 

I was wearing a chest pack chute. I crawled up to the nose wheel to check that and see how the guys up there were doing. The nose turret gunner was firing at the planes as they went by, because the attacks were from the rear. As they’d go by, the gunners up front would shoot at them.

 

I tried to open the nose wheel door and it was frozen shut. I thought, “Now we’re doomed. We’re trapped.” So I thought, “I’ll see if can kick it open.”

 

All this time I’m nervous, I’m scared. I expect the ship to explode at any moment.

 

I kicked and kicked, and I got the nose wheel doors open. I damn near fell out because I kicked so hard. I pull myself back up and one leg is dangling. Now I’m sitting on the edge of the nose wheel looking down at nothing but clouds and once in a while they would clear a little bit but the clouds were pretty dense. I’m looking down, dangling in space, and the plane is starting to yaw – that is, going from side to side, and up and down a little bit. As I learned later the engine was on fire, and there were all kinds of things I didn’t see because I’m inside the plane. I back up to get back in the plane, and I look behind me – all the guys are lined up with their parachutes ready and they’re pointing to me to go out.

 

I went out feet first. I didn’t free fall, like you’re supposed to do – I probably counted to 10 or 15 and pulled the chute. The chest pack has a little pilot parachute which comes out first and grabs the air, and then that pulls the main chute out. There’s always the possibility that wouldn’t work and you’d have to claw your way through getting the main chute open, so the more time you’ve got the better it is. As it happened, mine took off and popped, and boy, it was a jolt. I thought my legs would fly off. We were lucky – we had brand new parachutes, brand new harnesses, brand new electric flying suits that day – it was the first time we wore them. A beautiful gabardine flying suit. And I went out with just my electric boots. I didn’t have my shoes with me. Other fellows jumped out with shoes, they were luckier. I had grabbed my good luck charm, which was a little baseball mitt that my wife had given me, and I put that in my pocket. I had my prayer book, which I kept in my shirt pocket all the time. And we had an escape kit which I grabbed, and shoved that in one of my pockets before I went out. And I had a gun, too. We had .45s and we weren’t supposed to take them, but some guys took them. I had taken the clip out, but I had the gun with me for some reason, which I got rid of on the ground.

 

After my chute popped open I looked around. Our plane was gone. I didn’t see anybody else. I couldn’t spot any other chutes in the area, but they all went out right after me; as a matter of fact, those in the waist undoubtedly went out first.

 

The pilot came through okay. He took the plane as far as he could, then bailed out. The co-pilot, we didn’t know what happened to him but we presume he got killed. And it turned out that he was not found until the middle of November, which was almost two months later. Up on a hill in a big beech forest they found his body, what was left of him. So we never knew truly what happened.

 

The bombardier went out and broke his leg when he landed. Our radar operator, Branch Henard, went out and landed okay. I thought Mac Thornton was dead. As it turns out he was right in back of me going out, which I couldn’t see; you had goggles on, you had an oxygen mask. I couldn’t tell who was in back of me.

 

Our plane had three navigators because it was leading the squadron. One them was a fellow named Jackson, he was the pilot’s navigator. He went out okay. He landed okay and walked around for a couple of days before he got captured. Our engineer got out okay, and he didn’t get injured. He was actually free for ten days, and he was probably the most nervous man on the ship. He was a very nervous individual; his name is Bob Ault, from Texas.

 

The radio operator, Joe Gilfoil, lost his leg – a shell just about ripped it off when it hit the ship. The two waist gunners threw him out, hoping that the blood would coagulate, but I understand that his leg just about snapped off, and when they found him on the ground he was dead.

 

Of the men in the waist, Alvis Kitchens – Cotton was his nickname – had a good section of his rear end taken off with some flak; not flak but the 35-millimeter. He got hit in the butt, and so did Larry Bowers, although not as bad as Kitchens.

 

The tail gunner, J.G. Weddle, broke his ankle when he bailed out.

 

We really received no training for parachuting that I can recall. I tried to manipulate the chute when I was coming down; on the way down I saw a fighter plane in the distance coming closer. It turns out it was an FW-190 [Folke-Wulf 190] and he went by me – I couldn’t judge the distance, but maybe a couple of hundred yards – and he waved to me. I could see his hand waving. I presume it was a wave. Maybe he was out of ammunition. But he didn’t circle me; he just kept right on going east.

 

I was going east too, because the wind was very strong, west to east. I probably drifted four or five miles farther than if I’d held my pull string another five or six minutes, as some of the guys did.

 

As I came down I could see there was a lot of beautiful green and I saw some little villages, and I could see these woods. I thought, “I’m going to hit those trees just sure as hell.” And I did. I tried to manipulate into a little meadow nearby, but I couldn’t budge that chute. And I hit the trees. I would say they were 60 to 80 feet high. I tumbled straight down, right through the trees. And right now I can hear those branches snapping as I hit them. I hit the ground with such force that it knocked me out. I broke my wristwatch. And when I came to I couldn’t move my legs or my back. Now I’m panicked again; here I am and there’s branches all around me, the chutes around me, my feet are killing me, and then all of a sudden the feeling is starting to come back. I start moving and pretty soon I could feel everything and I thought, “I’ll see if I can roll over and get up,” which I did, and oh, my feet are sore. My knees are sore. My back hurts. But particularly the ankles and feet.

 

Fortunately, all the branches and stuff on the ground had probably saved me from bad damage.

 

I gathered up the chute as best I could; it was a struggle. I could hardly move my feet. I threw branches over the chute and I took off for the west. I hadn’t gone 150 yards when I heard the damnedest noise. It sounded like a V-1 rocket, putt-putt-putt-putt, or a motorcycle. I could hear German voices real loud. I was walking down a forest road, and I ducked off the road and all of a sudden this old truck came by and it was blowing smoke; I think they had a coal burner running it. [Short on supplies of oil, the Germans converted some vehicles to burn coal – which created methane gas] I dove behind something where they couldn’t see me. There were a bunch of German soldiers and civilians in the truck. After they passed, I resumed marching, and I was just dragging. One time I heard a very guttural sound, like a sergeant directing troops, and I picked my way over through some trees and down in a little valley I saw an airplane. I couldn’t tell if it was a Messerschmitt or a Focke-Wulf, and then further away there was a guy with horses plowing the ground, and he was yelling at the horses. I ignored that and went my merry way through the woods.

 

I came to a point where there was a big, broad autobahn. It was getting dark so it was probably around 4 or 4:30 in the evening. I had walked about three and a half hours at that point. Our combat was about 11 o’clock.

 

Now I’m really hurting. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m scared. I’m tired. In Germany they have these towers where hunters go up and they sit up there and they shoot the deer. I slept under one of those towers that night. I put a lot of branches over me and damn near froze to death.

 

I got up the next morning and started hiking. I found some pieces of our airplanes that I recognized. I found a motor embedded in the ground, the propeller all bent up. I wondered what happened to all the guys who were in that plane. And I’m going from forest to forest – some were birch, some were beech and some were aspen; they’re beautiful forests over there – and I’m thirsty. All of a sudden I come across a pool of water and it’s dirty, but I had this escape kit that had this little deal with the pills you mix with the water to make it drinkable. So I’m down there on my knees, and all of a sudden I hear a noise. At this point that I still have my gun, and I think, “Oh, Jesus Christ, I’m caught with this,” so I threw it away. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, since I had no bullets. I’m frozen. And I hear this noise getting closer and closer, and I’d just gotten the water in this little tube where you put the pills in – all of a sudden out of the woods comes the biggest stag I’ve ever seen. He had a big rack on him. He took one look at me and he split and I split. We both got out of each other’s way!

 

I kept on walking. Some of the trees were so big and close together I had to go sideways to get through them. They weren’t big in circumference, but they were close together. I’m going along, and as it turns out, I’m headed toward the Werra River.

 

As I go there, first I hear an airplane, then I hear an explosion. The whole ground shook, and I thought, “My God, what happened?” I figured that a B-17 got its bombs hung up after a mission and came by and just dropped them on the other side of the river. I thought, “My God, this is the most terrifying thing,” although it was a mile away from me. I could have been over there. How can these people even survive a thing like this?

 

I’m near the river so I’m staying in the woods, still being able to look out and see the river. I continue to follow this river to see where it goes. I’m going through the woods and here’s a field; a farmer had just plowed and it’s full of potatoes, so I go out when nobody’s looking and I grab a whole bunch of potatoes. I must have had between 15 and 20 potatoes in my pants pockets. Then I’m going along a little further, and I see what looks like men with pickaxes hitting something and my first thought is, “My God, they’ve got one of our men up there and they’re beating him to death.” It was actually our lead ship that went down right in that area, that blew up; this is the plane that led us to this debacle. I walked right by them. I presume that motor I found was off their ship. And I guess they were just chopping up the pieces that were left there. I went by the area and I went a little further and then I came to a beautiful valley. I’m looking down this valley and the river’s over to my right, but a little creek comes off the river and goes to the left and there’s a railroad track up there, and up the hill there’s more woods. So I thought I’ll lay low and go up through those woods, because I knew there was a town nearby.

 

While I’m looking out at this valley, I hear another airplane and I hear explosions, and I look up in the air and see all these pieces flying down. I thought, “My God, a bomber blew up!” And as these pieces floated down, I noticed they’re a funny shape. It turned out they were propaganda letters sent in German. And counterfeit money. Great Britain and the United States decided if they couldn’t ruin Germany with bombs they’d ruin their economy with phony money. So I laid low for a while before I went across this little meadow, and then I decided, well, I’d better do it. I went across. And I couldn’t move very fast. Then out of the corner of my eye – I’m about two-thirds of the way across – I see a movement. All of a sudden here’s a bunch of kids. There was a little bridge across the creek I was headed for and I knew I couldn’t make that because I’d be out in the open, so I turned and went straight to the creek. And I got down behind a tree. Because of the injury to my leg, I had to have one leg straightened out, and it was hanging in the water.

 

I’m laying there the best I can behind this tree, and all of a sudden I look up and I see this one little kid. As it turns out it’s Walter Hassenpflug [Bertram and Hassenpflug make contact again, many years after the war].  He looks down at me, and he doesn’t know that I see him because I’ve got my eyes half-closed. He jumps up and runs back and he comes back with another kid, who turns out to be Willie Schmidt, who worked with Walter years later. Then they both split and they came back and there was a bunch of them; there were a couple of real cute girls. As a matter of fact, years later I met one of them; her name was Rose Marie Neuman. The girls were 15 and 16 at the time and most of the boys were younger. And there was a tall, thin fellow who came over and looked at me and said, “Sir, are you hurt?”

 

I didn’t answer. I thought, “This is it. I’m dead.”

 

He kept repeating, “Sir, are you hurt? May I help you?” In broken English. And I finally said “Yes. I’m hurt.”

 

He said, “Let me help you up.” He came down, stuck out his hand and I grabbed it and he helped me up.

 

Now all this time, all these kids are running around there, and they’re oohing and aahing because they’ve probably never seen a guy with a four-day beard and hair standing straight up, beat up like I was. I hadn’t shaved in a couple of days at that time. And all this time, I learned years later that up on the hill a little further on, I looked at and saw an SS man who was in charge of all these Hitler Youths, who were out picking up the pamphlets and the phony money. Apparently this SS man could have caused a lot of trouble, but he just let them go on and do what they did and kept his nose out of it. Fortunately for me.

 

This young gentleman that had helped me said, “I’ll have to take you to the authorities.”

 

I said, “I understand that.”

 

We walked across this little bridge and onto the railroad track, and maybe after 15 minutes walking, two fellows came toward us, and they had uniforms on that looked like major domos. I thought, “Holy mackerel! Is that Heinrich Himmler or Hitler himself coming to see me?” So I asked this guy, “What is this, Gestapo?” And he laughed.

 

He said, “No, no. Police.” And these two, as they got there I could see they were older gentlemen, not quite my age today, but they were in their late sixties or early seventies. And very nice. They didn’t speak any English. But they took me to a two-story house, and the lady of the house had a little baby and she fled, because the propaganda had it that Americans beat little children, or something to that effect. I met that guy 40 years later, the little baby. He’s not little any more, believe me. Bigger than I was. But they took me in and they interrogated me, and right across the street there was a house, and I heard them say a Dr. Blom is over there.

 

Pretty soon this fellow comes over, well-dressed, wearing a vest. He had been eating; he had a napkin tucked under his chin, and he was still chewing a sandwich he had finished. He introduced himself. He spoke English perfectly, and he explained the situation, that he’d have to question me.

 

I gave him my name, rank and serial number, and that was it. Then we talked for a while. It was very pleasant. Up to that point, it was more of a party, really, with these kids and everything. But they left, and these two policemen then said, “We have to take you into town.” And I don’t remember how I even got into the town of Bad Hersfeld. This was two or three miles down the road, near Friedlos. So they took me into this little town. I remember going into this jail, and there was a woman there, probably in her late twenties.

 

They shoved me in a solitary cell with just a board with some straw on it. My back was killing me. They stripped me and took all my stuff away, emptied all my pockets, my shoes, everything. Down to my underwear. Then they let me put my things back on and dress up. I had a prayer book. And as we had intended that night to go out, I still had my navigator wings on, and my first lieutenant bars. I had my nice green shirt on. I was hot to trot once we got back. So if they had any brains at all they knew I was a navigator.

 

After 10 or 15 minutes in this cell I hear, “Pssst. Hey, Yank.”

 

Up above my bed is a little window, and I hear a voice coming through: “Hey, Yank. Come up to the window.”

 

I thought, “They’re not gonna get anything out of me; they’re just trying to give me this phony stuff.”

 

Earlier, two civilians came and interviewed me, and they were downright nasty. Those are the guys that made me strip – of course the girl was out of the room – and they kept telling me that I was a sergeant, not a lieutenant. I would say, “Nein. Nein, Oberleutnant, Oberleutnant.” They were very solemn-faced, not at all like the two police officers, who were very nice. These guys were strictly business. I called one Mr. Moto. He looked like Peter Lorre [the actor]. And the other one I called Sidney Greenstreet [another actor’. One was big and fat and the other was short and thin. Finally they left after getting all the information they could from me, which was nothing. That’s when I heard these voices, and it was these two Englishmen. One said, “Hey, Yank, wait till those two civilians go. We’ll cook you up some hot cocoa and cookies.”

 

I thought, “What the hell is this?”

 

By God, about a half-hour later the door flies open and here’s one of these police officers and these two other guys. It turns out they were two British officers who had escaped from their prison camp. One of them had been captured at Dunkirk. That means he was in his fourth year as a POW already, and the other one, as I recall, was captured in Norway, which is about the same time. And they were jolly fellows even though they were a little as we say around the bend.

 

They said that they had been free for three or four days and got captured and were just waiting for their guards to come get them and bring them back to their camp. Everything was done on the up and up in those days. The Germans had a certain system and that was it.

 

Sure enough, they hold out cocoa and start to make hot cocoa, and we ate some cookies that they had. They had all kinds of food which they had saved up for their escape, which was confiscated but given back to them, and they in turn gave it to me. They said, “Our guards will be here tomorrow, they’ll take this stuff away anyhow, so you take it.” In the meantime, everybody laughed because when they had examined me, I had all those potatoes in my pockets, and they took my potatoes away from me.

 

The two British guys gave me their names and addresses, but when they wrote them down they said, “Don’t let anybody see it. If anyone comes in, they’ll confiscate it.” And I ended up chewing on it and swallowing the paper when that young lady came into my cell. I woke up in the middle of the night, and the door flew open and she threw something on my chest, and here was my little baseball mitt. This young girl must have known it was a good luck charm and wanted to see that I got it back, probably with the approval of the police officers. But they had it turned inside out. All the stuffing was hanging loose and I had to shove it back together. I still have it, hanging on the wall.

 

A few hours later, in the wee hours of the morning, the door opened and a sergeant from the Luftwaffe came in. Tall, thin guy. He talked to the British officers because they could speak German. And they explained to me that I would be taken to another place, and from there I’d go to a camp.

 

I remember walking down this cobblestone street with this sergeant, across an old stone bridge over the Werra River. There was a full moon and I can still see it reflecting off the water. On the other side, we hopped into a car or a truck and drove off, and he took me to a Luftwaffe camp. Guys were Heil Hitlering all over the place; everybody’s saluting everybody. He took me down to a barracks and I came into like a dungeon, and as I walked in and went down this hallway, lo and behold, coming toward me and being led by a guard was the navigator who was in Jim Schaen’s ship, Corman Bean. We just looked at each other, never said a word. Didn’t even blink an eye, like we had never seen each other before. And here we had breakfasted that morning [of the mission to bomb Kassel] together. He got shoved in a cell and I got shoved in a cell. I have no recollection of how long it was before they came and they got me out, but pretty soon they took me outside and Corman Bean’s there along with ten or fifteen others from the group.

 

We all were taken from there to a railroad station, and when we were standing at the railroad station we heard these guys talking-marching, in German, eins, zvei, drei, vier, and here comes a whole bunch, maybe 35 guys, American, assorted sizes and shapes and guys beat up. I recognized some right away. George Collar was right in front. His face was swollen. His nose was broken. He had black eyes. They had beaten him up.

 

Now we sat down and we were taken from this railroad station and put in railroad cars. I remember one fellow, [Jerry Cathol] – he had been a football player; we thought he had a broken back, but I guess he just had some broken bones, and he was in such misery. We’re in this railroad car and it was moving, and boy, were these guys surprised – they were all pretty hungry – when I opened up my pockets and pulled out this food. It didn’t last very long, but the little bit that there was was most welcome. There was some cheese, butter, powdered cocoa, crackers, probably Spam too; I never could remember the names of those British boys.

 

The train took us to an interrogation center for all airmen in Oberrussel. It was called Dulag Luft. You would go in one at a time to these inquisitors and they would ask you, “What group are you with?” I just gave them my name, rank and serial number, and then they said to me – and probably to every other one – “Until you give us some more information you’re just going to stay here in solitary.” And you just shrug your shoulders and think, “They’re not going to keep us in solitary too long; there’s too many of us because a lot of planes went down.” Twenty-five planes over the target. Also, at the same time the Kassel mission was taking place, the battle for the bridge at Arnhem was going on. A complete Polish parachute regiment had been captured by the Germans and they were in Dulag Luft with us, but they were on the other side of the fence, and the Germans were meaner than hell with them. They didn’t bother us too much, but they were using bayonets on these guys’ fannies if they didn’t double time. I’d hate to have been a German when those Poles got loose because they were the toughest looking guys I’ve ever seen.

 

After about a day there, we were sent to Stalag Luft 1. We were shoved into a train that had compartments, six seats on each side and a luggage rack, so they put ten of us in each compartment and they gave us a Red Cross parcel each, which contained a week’s rations.

 

It took six days to go 350 miles to our camp. We went through air raids. We’d pull off at sidings. They were strafing and bombing ahead and [we] had the heck scared out of us in Frankfurt. When we went through Frankfurt an air raid was coming on and they abandoned us and let us sit there at the siding.

 

We had a German guard on each end on the railroad car. I don’t know how many cars we had but we did have a commanding officer. He was Lieutenant Colonel McArdle, a British paratrooper, who was in charge of the operation at Arnhem. He had finally surrendered, because they were running out of ammunition and out of men. So consequently, there were a lot of paratroopers, and these were all officers – we were all officers headed for Stalag Luft 1 – so there’s quite a few British officers from the paratroop regiments. And then us, plus others who had been shot down. One of the fellows in my compartment was from the 15th Air Force; he was shot down in Italy on a B-25. His name was Richardson. He had been burned; the top half of one ear was burned and his hair was burned off, but he was jolly. He had a big bandage wrapped around his head. He had a few cuts and scabs from when he bailed out. Talk about walking wounded, we looked like a fife and drum corps. Everybody in different clothes, some with shoes, some without shoes.

 

On the train, three guys would sleep sitting, two guys on the floor, and then the next night we would switch off. It was very uncomfortable. You didn’t get much sleep. It’s very demeaning. You’re a prisoner of war. You’ve got two guys with guns at each end of the car glaring at you. You can’t describe it unless you’re there. And you never think about this when you’re home until suddenly, Bingo! You think of what happened. And the hard part is worrying about what happened to the other fellows. We didn’t know what happened to Virgil Chima, the co-pilot, or Omick, or the enlisted men at that point other than Joe Gilfoil. We knew he was hit; they announced that when they threw him out of the plane, hoping his parachute would open and he would be treated on the ground. And we were misinformed by someone that he was okay. One of the enlisted men came up to us right after we were captured and said they managed to get a doctor which they didn’t. George Collar ended up picking up his body.

 

On our way from Oberrussel up to Stalag Luft 1, we were scared to death because of the bombings and things that were taking place, and then some guy came along and said, “Hey, we’re safe, you don’t have to worry, they’re not gonna strafe us. It’s all marked on top of each car, POW.”

 

And some wise guy said, “Yeah, but suppose they come in from the other side?” And everybody just howled.

 

One night, we pulled over from the main railroad to a little siding, and it’s probably 10 or 11 at night. Jackson and myself couldn’t sleep. We were up shooting the breeze and all of a sudden we heard THUD! You could just feel the stuff hit the ground. I think we had been dozing, and that woke us up. And we wanted to know what was going on. We went and looked out the window, and we could see in the distance searchlights, explosions, you could feel them. The RAF was raiding this town. And the town was Berlin. We were on our way to Barth, which was 100 miles north of Berlin, and we’re probably right now 25 or 50 miles south of Berlin. And we’re sitting there watching them bomb Berlin. And we see explosions, we know an RAF plane’s been hit, and these big blockbusters kept hitting, and all of a sudden the German guard comes up to Jackson and me and says something, and Jackson says, “He said something about an apple for some cigarettes.”

 

I said, “An apple? Wow! Let’s do it!”

 

We had cigarettes; they gave us five packs of cigarettes on that Red Cross parcel. We gave this German guard three or four American cigarettes, and the guard gave us each an apple. Holy mackerel! Next thing we know he comes back again and Jackson says, “He said he can get us some beer.”

 

About 100 yards from the train were a couple of very dim lights, and I presume it was a gasthaus, because the German guard pointed to it. We gave him the cigarettes, and he came back with a German canteen full of beer. A German canteen was about twice the size of an American canteen. It must have been a liter. And we’re sitting there chewing apples, drinking German beer, and watching them bomb Berlin.

 

I had to remind Jackson about that the last time I saw him. He completely forgot about it.

 

A day and a half later we ended up in our camp. When we got to Barth they dropped us off at the station and we started marching. It was in the evening. We had these guards with these monstrous German shepherds and Doberman pinschers. They were big and they were mean. Three or four hundred of us marched about three and a half miles, and some of us were in bad shape.

 

I had received a little medical attention at Oberrussel; I got to see a German doctor there in this hospital. There were a lot of German men there who were going into the service, and I felt sorry for those guys because they were in their fifties and they were being taken in the service. Some of them were in worse shape than I am now. When I got into this room, this German doctor took one look at my back, and he said, “Not much we can do,” and then he just bandaged my feet. He said, “Your back is pretty bad. Do you want to see what it looks like?”

 

I said, “What do you mean?”

 

He said, “Take a look.” And he had two mirrors there. That’s the closest I came to fainting up to that point. My back was just the color of tar, all the way across the lower back, where I had been injured. The doctor had his aides give me a heat treatment which made me feel a lot better. I thanked him very much. At that same time, I remember them saying an American nurse was in the hospital there. She wasn’t actually injured but she was taken there with some of the injured; she was flying in a plane that was shot down outside of Aachen. It was a hospital plane carrying troops out, and she was captured as a POW. About three years ago there was an article in the paper about this nurse up in Sacramento who had just passed away, and it was her. The only Army nurse that was ever captured over there. And I thought, “My God, here I am 40 miles away!” I never saw her over there but just the thought of all that was going on, what very brave young ladies they were.

 

(When I look it up, her name is Lt. Reba Whittle, who had enlisted in 1941, even before the war began. She flew more than 40 missions on Douglas C-47 Skytrains, ferrying some of the most badly injured troops back to England for care. She was on a plane that strayed off course, near Aachen, Germany, also on September 27, and was shot down. Whittle herself was wounded. She was a prisoner until January 1945, went home, and married after the war, and died in 1981.)

 

Back to Lt. Bertram:

 

Now I get to Stalag Luft 1. We were there for eight or nine months and it was hell. You’re feeling just rotten, and when you’re injured you feel worse. And your mental condition isn’t the greatest. The winter was miserable. The food was poor. We lost a lot of weight. I lost 30 or 35 pounds. All of us were pretty skinny. And one thing about it: When you’re hungry you don’t think about anything else. It’s always food, food, food. You dream day and night of food. And escape was not advisable. They said, “You know, it’s not a game anymore, you’re going to get shot if you get caught.” And at one point, Hitler issued orders to take the American Jewish boys and separate them, and there actually was an order out to shoot them. Common sense at least prevailed and they realized that if anything like that took place there would be an interaction in the United States and we were holding a lot more of their prisoners than they were of ours. That’s the general thought, anyway.

 

We had this one Jewish guy, his name was Gerber, and he was very swarthy, almost Arabic looking. He said, “They’re not gonna get me, because I just changed my religion.”

 

And we said, “What did you change to?”

 

He said, “I’m gonna say Hindu.”

 

Everybody just howled. But they got him; they put him in the other barracks.

 

Our commanding officer in Barth was a Colonel Von Mueller. He had come from the States, from Long Beach, Long Island. He was what was called a Long Beach Nazi.

 

Colonel Von Mueller interviewed me when I first went into the camp. When I walked in there he said, “Ahh, Frank Bertram. You’re married. Your wife’s name is Mary. And you went to Commerce High School in San Francisco, graduated in 1938.”

 

He’s telling me this and I’m sitting there thinking, “What is this?” They knew all about me, as they did most everybody else. And he said, “You have no children.”

 

I said, “We didn’t have time.”

 

He said, “Aahh, that’s the trouble. In America, not enough children. In Russia, too many children. But in Germany just right.”

 

Then he said, “You know, I could have you shot as a spy."

 

I said, “What?”

 

He said, “You write down your name as Bertram. But the dogtags you gave me said Burtram.”

 

I said, “What?”

 

He said, “Take a look.”

 

And sure enough, they had misspelled my name on my dogtags and I never knew it.

 

Then he said, “Of course, we wouldn’t do that. We know who you are.”

 

Bertram became interested in veteran’s groups, like the Second Air Division Association until about twenty years after the war. He started thinking about going to Germany – to try to see the area where he was shot down.

 

My wife, Mary, and I took several trips to Germany, but I could never find the location – and me, a good navigator, I didn’t know where the hell I was. I knew the approximate area but I couldn’t pin it down. We came within maybe 10 or 15 miles of the town; we probably passed through the edge of Bad Hersfeld, and we were in the town of Schlitz, where the original Schlitz Brewery was.

 

As I went through life, I kept in contact with a few of the fellows who were on my plane, but never anything personal. Until one time, in February of 1986, I come home from work and my wife doesn’t say hello, she doesn’t give me a kiss, and she says, “What was the number of your plane?”

 

I looked at her - now this is 40 years later - and I said, “What plane? I drove home.”

 

She said, “No, the plane you flew in the war.”

 

I said, “You want to know the number? All I remember is it was a B-24. I don’t know what the number was.”

 

She said, “Wait till you see this package.”

 

Well, this packet was from Walter Hassenpflug. It had letters from the 8th Air Force Historical Society and from the 19th Armored Division, which was in the town of Bad Hersfeld. And it said that Walter was researching what happened on this particular day over the town of Bad Hersfeld.

 

Walter’s letter stated that as a boy of 12, he witnessed an airplane explosion in the air, and then he witnessed some parachutes coming down, and he said two days later they were walking through the forest and they came across this man lying by a creek. And I thought, “My God, that’s me!”

 

His letter stated, “All I remember is that he was a first lieutenant from San Francisco.”

 

Well, when you give your name, rank and serial number, how they ever found out about San Francisco, all I can think of is I had a little prayer book in my pocket that my mother gave me, and it had my address, 118 Delores Street, S.F., California.

 

I immediately wrote to Walter. Then we got to writing back and forth, and I told him I’d be there in April or May, but due to an injury - I fell through a trap door and pulled some ligaments or tendons in my leg, and had to put a cast on, so that postponed it till August. We met Walter, and much to my surprise he did not speak a word of English, other than “Hello.” But he had a fellow named Carl Lepper who interpreted for him.

 

The Kassel mission has been sort of a mystery. When we came out of prison camp we got interviewed by Colonel Stewart, Jimmy Stewart. Colonel – I guess he was a general by that time, Brigadier General Terrill, who was the commanding officer when I was there, and Colonel Jones. And whatever you told them, they just let it go in one ear, wrote it down, and out the other, and they just passed on through the line. There were something like 22 of us in the line. The doctor would say, “How do you feel?” And you’d say “Fine.” He’d say “Okay, pass.” And that was it. They were just as anxious to get home as we were.

 

Something on this mission was screwy. If you talk to 20 guys you’re going to get 20 different stories. The group in back of us, the 453rd, was supposed to follow us. They very wisely went to the target after their commanding officer called our commanding officer to tell him he was going the wrong way. And our man told their man to follow us, that we were on the right course, and I understand really cussed him out when he wouldn’t do it. The 453rd did the right thing by going to the target. You couldn’t see the target on the ground but you could see the group ahead of you going in, and you could see all the flak and the explosions.

 

I have maintained all through the years, mouthed off about it a few times – other people have said no, but I have people other than me that agree with me – that there was a deliberate turnoff to avoid going through that heavy flak. This is my personal opinion and that of several others that I know of. Too many things just don’t add up on that mission. The one lead plane, of course, blew up, and the pilot was killed. The command pilot, Major McKoy, was killed. The lead navigator on that plane did get out before the explosion. He ended up in Stalag Luft 1 months after we did; whether he was injured or held prisoner somewhere I don’t know. But I went up to talk to him about it and he insisted that they went in to the target. And I just don’t understand it, because it was so obvious. But he insisted we hit the target. So I just gave up. The navigator was killed in an automobile crash shortly after he arrived home. So the one guy that really knew is dead.

 

The Luftwaffe were not aiming for us as a target. They were headed for the main body, the other three hundred and some planes that were going into Kassel, and they were a little late, as far as hitting them before the bombs dropped. These particular FW-190s were not made to do battle with the American fighters. They were heavily armored, and the pilots were heavily protected but did not have the maneuverability or speed of the regular FW-190. They were there for one purpose and that was to shoot down bombers. And they were ordered that when they came under attack by American fighters to get the hell out of there, no combat, just go. Which discouraged Ernst Schroeder, who I befriended and I still consider a good friend, if he’s still alive. He said when he shot his second plane down, “In all honesty, Frank, I’ll get the credit, but the damage had already been done” on the wave of planes that went in ahead of him and set these planes on fire. He said, “I put the finishing touches on them.”

 

And he said, “I followed these planes down, and watched to see where they crashed, for confirmation.” He said he was flying over some railroad tracks when he heard thump-thump-thump and he looked behind and there’s a P-51 Mustang right on his tail. He said, “I turned around and came around at him, but I had no ammunition left and I just got the hell out of there.”

 

Some of these German boys that were in those planes that day that were killed were on their first or second mission. Others were oldtimers. And I personally met them: Schroeder, Ossi Rahm, Werner Vorburg, who actually flew in World War I. Werner Vorburg is gone. Ossie Rahm is gone. And the last I heard of Ernst two years ago he was quite ill.

 

At its best, flying combat was nerve-racking. Even in training it was nerve-racking. We’d sweat out every takeoff and every landing and in between we’d pray. Without the fighter escort, we didn’t have a chance. When I think of those poor boys on that Ploesti mission, because 160-some planes went in there and they lost 60 or 62. One of the boys in my room in the first place I stayed at Stalag Luft 1 was on the Ploesti mission. He was a bombardier in Killer Kane’s crew. Which group was that? I think the 93rd. He crash-landed in Turkey and they escaped from Turkey, and then he got shot down a second time and captured.

 

Now that must have been scary, flying 50 feet above the ground going into a monumental flak area. Ploesti probably was one of the most heavily defended targets in all of Europe, because of the value of the oil fields there and the refineries. If you got hit there, you’re dead, there’s nothing you could do. At least when we’re up there at 25,000 feet you could jump out or get blown out, but I’ve seen pictures of these guys at Ploesti, they didn’t have the chance of a snowball in hell once they got hit.

 

You know, that generation - of course I was involved - really did save the world, because Hitler, that German army was something else. They came so close, so very close. If we hadn’t gone in there with all this bombing, we’d all be speaking German. They actually had rockets that could hit the United States, but they never used them because of lack of petrol. They almost took the British to their knees with those V-2s, after what those poor people in Britain went through in the blitz and then the V-1, which was going on when I was there. They were terrifying enough but these V-2s, there was no answer to them. You didn’t know you were dead until 30 seconds after you died.

 

We wouldn’t have that memorial if Walter Hassenpflug hadn’t found me. I tried to tell him in English - and he didn’t understand me - that he owes me a lot of money because since he found me, it’s cost me all this money going back and forth to Germany. And Walter being real German doesn’t have a great sense of humor; it takes him a little while to catch on. The second year we went there, I had brought my pilot, Reg Miner, and his wife, and with Walter we were going to go around to all the sites where these planes crashed and Walter couldn’t show us because he had his hand all wrapped up in a cast.

 

I said, “What happened?”

 

He said he was out hunting and shot himself in the hand and severed some nerves.

I said, “You know, Walter” – he had an interpreter – “that’s why you guys lost the war. You couldn’t shoot straight.” And for about 30 seconds he just looked at me and then he burst out laughing.

 

I talked myself into attending a Luftwaffe reunion with Ernst Schroeder. I got invited to this reunion of the Wild Boar Squadron, which was one of the ones that attacked us that day. I was the only one there that wasn’t a fighter pilot. My wife and I went there. We had a great time. The only thing bad there was every one of them smoked up a storm up and almost choked us to death. But they were nice people. The wives were so nice and so pleasant, and very few of them could speak English, so the communication problem was there, too. There was no chance of getting too friendly because of the lack of communication.

 

When they started their meeting, they had as a gavel at the podium the joystick of an FW-190. They had it all fancied up there with the trigger guard like they used in combat. Of course I didn’t know what they were talking about, and Ernst would tell me once in a while what they said. He was in charge. And I asked, “Could I see that FW-190 joystick?”

 

“Sure.” He gave it to me, and all these guys were looking at me. And I turned it over, and I said, “Oh, made in Japan!”

 

You could have heard a pin drop. It took another thirty seconds before they realized it was a joke. “Nein! Nein! Deutschland! Deutschland!” We had a big laugh on that.

 

I’ve always been a joker. It’s kept me alive, even through prison camp. I won’t tell you what they called me in camp but it was like megaphone mouth or something. But you had to do that or you’d go crazy.

 

Throughout the years I’ve kept in close contact with my pilot, Reg Miner. He’s probably one of the best pilots the Air Force ever had. Man, he could handle that bomber like it was a kite. And he was over there for one reason: that was to win the damn war and get home.

 

I don’t want you to think that I’m pissed off at these dead guys who were in that lead ship. I had a fellow who thought we should court-martial those people. I said, “Hey, they died that day. How are you gonna court-martial them?”

 

“Well, posthumously.”

 

I said, “Aw, come on. That will do no good.” It’s just the idea; you’d like to find out if someone really knew why this happened. It’s too late to do anything about it; once it’s done it’s done. We could have gone in to the target and gotten killed there just as easily, although there wouldn’t have been that heavy a loss.

 

On a previous mission to the Kassel mission – six missions before – we had flown one that was scarier than the Kassel mission, but with not quite the same results. We were shot up very badly over the city of Saarbrucken in Germany; that’s just on the border with France. Our plane took a thumping that you wouldn’t believe from flak; we must have taken five or six damn near direct hits. You could see the red interior of the shell. Our radio operator, J.G. Weddle, had a piece of his foot blown off.

 

We lost one engine over the target, and another one was windmilling. We couldn’t feather it, and we dropped like a wounded bird. The group had us going down in France. They had us down in the English Channel. They had us down in England. They gave up on us. We were badly wounded and we were all by ourself, and we fired off some flares, and within thirty seconds we had an escort of P-51s. They would circle us and talk to us, and no German plane would go near us. We went all the way across the Channel. We ended up throwing stuff out of the plane into the Channel; we even threw our parachutes out to lighten the plane because we were down too low to jump. We threw everything out except the bombardier, he was next. And for one reason or another, we didn’t make it, and we crashed. The pilot again did an inspirational job; how he did it I’ll never know. But we crashed and it was quite an experience; we bounced around, very traumatic. The next day I was so stiff and sore I could hardly move.

 

On that particular mission, George Collar had been taken off our plane, and we had this guy Omick as our bombardier. And in the nose turret we had a first lieutenant, Richard Aylers, and he’d only flown on two missions. Now let me explain what happens; sometimes men get sick and they can’t fly a mission, or the train was late coming from London or they slept in with some babe overnight and forgot to get up or some excuse, and most of them were tolerated, but they may miss a mission or two; whereas the rest of their comrades finished or got shot down or something, and there they sit. That’s what happened to this guy. He had two missions to go, and actually he outranked all of us. He was a first lieutenant. We were still second lieutenants, although our promotion was in but we didn’t know it.

 

He was in the nose turret. And the pilot said to me, “Give me a heading for the closest airport, quick!” I looked out right in front of us and there was a runway, and I said, “Straight ahead!”

 

He said, “Clear the nose and get out of there!”

 

I opened the nose turret door and tapped that guy on the shoulder and tried to pull him out. He got mad at me; he didn’t hear the conversation. He was gonna take a swing at me because I jolted him. I got him out and got him in back, and I didn’t quite make the bomb bay when we hit the ground. I was still in the bomb bay and got thrown out of the bomb bay into the waist. I kept bouncing around like a rubber ball; all the other guys were braced for a crash-landing. And Miner brought us to a safe, healthy conclusion.

 

Years later, the third navigator we picked up - the pilot’s navigator, Jackson - claimed that he was on that mission with us. And I sure couldn’t place him, because he was a pilot’s navigator, and that’s what this Lieutenant Aylers was. But Jackson insisted he was on the mission. He sure knew enough about it, because it was quite a thrill that day. So I found out where you could write to get some records. I wrote to the U.S. Air Force archives and asked if it was possible that on Lieutenant Miner’s crew, flying a certain date which was Aug. 15th, I think, that you could get the crew members. Lo and behold, about three weeks later here it comes with the date, all the crew members - and this is the funny part: They did not have Jackson in there. So I knew I wasn’t losing my mind. Aylers was flying that day, and Jackson wasn’t there at all. But they did not have our tail gunner listed, and now they had me wondering if our tail gunner flew that day or maybe Jackson flew in the tail.

 

I thought, God, these guys are sharp after all these years, that they would have these records, so I wrote them back and asked for the disposition on the Kassel Mission of Sept. 27, 1944, and I never heard a word. Not a word. And someone else, I believe it was Lieutenant Ira Weinstein, had once before tried to find out, and I did too, and they stated that the files have been missing since 1950. Someone took them out. They don’t know who, but there’s not a thing regarding that mission back in their archives. So there’s another reason that this thing should be down in some history book somewhere. Plus it was really a bad day, the worst day our group ever had. Every day was a bad day for some groups, but not like this one. It’s funny how the mind works. I know in my case a lot of these things I don’t even think about but once I get into it, it just keeps coming back and you’re living it over and over.

 

I’m paying for it now. The knees in particular gave me a bad time for years, and the back, the last three years, it’s just been getting worse every day, and all they can find is fused vertebrae at the base. But for many other guys it happened a lot worse. It was a good 40 years before I learned what happened to our co-pilot, Virgil Chima, and he was my best friend at the time. His body was not found until November 15th. Walter Hassenpflug dug this up, and what he found was that some women were looking for beech nuts up in the forest and ran across him, so he must have been laying there for six weeks, and yet, the mystery is, his parachute was missing. The shroud lines were cut. He was laying in the fetal position. But his body had decomposed so much by the time they got to him, I don’t imagine that they ever figured out just what happened to him. But obviously, someone got the parachute, which was silk and was very valuable over there at the time. All you can do is surmise. I know what it was like coming through those trees. He could have made a worse landing than me and maybe broke his back and couldn’t move and just died there. It’s very doubtful that someone had beaten him because it was so far up in the hills where nobody would go for any reason, and no one had gone up there prior to these ladies going hunting for beech nuts for food. So I’m inclined to think he badly injured himself, although why would he be in the fetal position? Of course he could have just drawn into that, knowing he was dying, trying to keep warm. Poor little guy. Nineteen years old. And the most meticulous guy on the crew; man, he checked everything to make sure his parachute and harness and instruments were perfect. He had two brothers. One of them was a major in the 91st, which was the one with the Triangle A, the group that was in “12 O’Clock High.” And then he had another brother who was a bombardier with the Third Group over there. There were four boys and three of them were in the Air Force 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, who lost his leg and bled to death. He was the only child of an Irish family right outside of Boston. I guess his mother and father were at that time in their late forties or early fifties when he got shot down. Joe was 19. Joe and I had gone to communion that morning, as we did before each mission.

 

He was a good Catholic boy. I was a Catholic boy. And we had one other man in our crew, Alvis Kitchens - Cotton was his nickname - a very quiet kid, never said boo. Did his job. He’d go with the guys but he never smoked, he never drank, he was very religious. Very soft-spoken, just a good Christian lad, and do you know, 54 years later, he’s still the same. All these other guys, including me, would go out and just raise all kinds of ruckus, drink and chase women, do all kinds of crazy things. Not him. Never.

 

When I went over and met Walter Hassenpflug in 1986, he introduced me to Ernst Schroeder. The guy shot down two of our planes that day, and I don’t know how many he shot down during the war. He was the father of seven boys. He didn’t speak a word of English, but he’s very well-known in German circles as an expert on military fighters at that time. He was an expert on the FW-190 and the Messerschmitts. He had nothing but the greatest admiration for the Mustang. He said if it wasn’t for the Mustang we’d still be fighting over there. He said that airplane changed the war; after they developed the drop tanks and they could protect the bombers going in. That changed the complete air battle situation. Actually the German production of aircraft was greater in September 1944 than at any point up to that time. The big problem was the lack of manpower and the shortage of petrol. But as far as planes, they had them. And they were good. The Germans were very, very brave people. And what I noticed, they just could not believe how friendly I was, and others were towards them. They acted like we should hate them because of what happened 40 years ago, which I didn’t even think about. I mean, you were just people; they just did their job and we did our job.

 

Walter Hassenpflug is one in a million; the hard work he’s put in and what he’s done. Not just this particular mission but primarily this one and other air battles that took place near his hometown, because he was orphaned by some bombs that dropped on his parents’ home, and raised by his aunts.

 

The first time we were over there, I thought, Jeez, Walter has been investigating this for maybe five or six years now, which would take you back to about 1980, and I thought, why, after all these years, is he all of a sudden looking into this particular mission? This is a personal opinion - and I saw it over there when the newspaper came out on the anniversary of this particular air raid - this had nothing to do with our mission, but I think it’s the one that took place in November 1944 in which his folks were killed, I think that is what set him off on this quest. And when you think of what it took to go back 35 or 40 years and to go to where all these planes had crashed, get all the information on those that survived, those that didn’t. Walter did all this on every plane that went down. He could tell you exactly where it landed, who got out, who didn’t get out, and generally what happened to them. Carl Lepper, his interpreter, told me he’d go back dozens of times, the least bit of a lead he had of anything, he would go there and photograph and talk to people, look it up, and go through records, and he did this for eight or ten years.

 

I can’t think of anything else. I probably got a few things mixed up. You’ll have to dig deep on this one. I don’t know how long you were over there when you met Walter, but didn’t you find that a nice little area? I thought it was great. I really enjoyed Bad Hersfeld, the little park they had there, and that old church, that old ruin there. I just found that area fascinating. The only thing bad about Germany was the driving. Probably if I was younger I wouldn’t mind a bit, but boy, now it’s scary.

 

* 

October 19: Dr. John Caruthers, a Princeton grad and a Presbyterian minister, testifies before the California Senate. “It is our Christian duty to keep the Japanese out of this western world of Christian civilization,” he insists. He added that he would urge “the deportation, if possible, by every means possible, of all the Japanese from the American continent.” 

* 

What is fate? 

In November a young German officer, Axel von dem Bussche, was selected to kill Hitler, by hiding bombs in a new overcoat design the dictator wanted to inspect and wrapping up Hitler in a sudden embrace. The night before, the new coat was destroyed in an Allied air attack and the meeting postponed. 

 

* 

“It still comes back to me.” 

November 20-23 (Battle of Tarawa): Leon Cooper died, in 2017, at age 98. Yet he never forgot other young men who had died around him at 17, 18 and 19. 

    After graduating from the University of Illinois he enlisted in the U.S. Navy. In 1943 he was a landing boat captain and carried Marines to the beach at Betio, part of the Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands. Low tides stranded many of the craft, and survivors remembered 76 hours of hell. The Marines suffered 1,113 killed and 2,290 wounded. “Riddled corpses form a ghastly fringe along the narrow white beaches,” Richard Sherrod, a correspondent for Time magazine wrote, “where men of the Second Marine Division died for every foot of sand.” 

    Cooper took part in six battles, including the invasion of Iwo Jima. Tarawa always stuck in his mind. He had nightmares after the war. In one he was drifting or falling into deep water and finds a young boy sitting on a sunken Sherman tank. “You never really lose the memory of the sounds, the smells and everything, including the blood running down your nose, so you’re smelling blood instead of breathing.” 

    “I smell the stench of those bodies rotting in the sun,” he added. “It still comes back to me.” 

    A visit to the island in 2008, sparked memories, and he began lobbying Congress to clean up the garbage-strewn beach and look for the remains of lost men. In 2015, the remains of 39 Americans were recovered.

 

    Betio itself is only 2.5 miles long; and U.S. planners had expected an easy conquest. Unfortunately, 5,000 enemy soldiers/laborers, a third of them enslaved Koreans were waiting in heavy fortifications.  

    “We have landed against heavy opposition,” the first Marines ashore radioed to commanders, “Casualties severe.” 

    Japanese snipers picked off any Americans who tried to move off the beach. Cannon fire from dug in pillboxes moved men down. “There was no way to get out of the line of fire,” Cooper remembered later. “Every goddamned angle was covered. We bumbled and stumbled into all this slaughter.”   

    If the first day of battle was terrible for the Marines and navy personnel who came ashore, the second day was brutal for the Japanese defenders. U.S. warships pummeled enemy positions with tons and tons of shells. “Strafing planes and dive-bombers raked the island,” Sherrod wrote in a dispatch sent back home. “Light and medium tanks got ashore, rolled up to fire high explosive charges point-blank into the snipers’ slots of enemy forts.” 

    When the last guns fell silent after 76 bloody hours, 4,500 Japanese soldiers and Korean slave laborers were dead. A few hundred Koreans survived the battle. Of the Japanese, only one officer and sixteen soldiers were left.