Bridgebusters — WW2 Tales of My Hero, My Father

(Installment №3: Please start with the August 4, 2020, “Introduction” for orientation to the entire series.)

– THIS IS IT

THIS IS IT

The rather tall, very slender and pretty young woman with doe eyes sat between two of her girlfriends, the three occasionally giggling, all three fanning themselves and each other with the programs that had just been passed around, dabbing the ample perspiration from their girlish faces with white hankies, taking care not to smear their bright lipstick, looking this way, then that way, eyes squinting, straining like other young ladies in the audience to make out their uniformed husbands and boyfriends out in the line of troops standing at parade rest. The ladies were all smartly dressed, in new Woolworth skirts and pretty blouses, their hair freshly curled, but not faring well in the morning, late July, 1944, South Carolina sunshine and humidity. They were scrunched in the middle of a bleachers that had been set up for friends and family to watch the current B-25J pilot class graduate, and looking forward to the flyover of B-25’s, the principle aircraft based at Greenville Army Airfield, South Carolina, the 12th Air Force’s ‘finishing school’ for its war-bound warriors.

Doris, my mother — a doe eyed young brunette — had quickly been able to locate her new husband, Joe — a handsome young Texan of ranching bloodline- because she worked as a stenographer in his commander’s office, and she had seen the document indicating the arrangement of the ceremonial formation. The squadrons had already marched around the field and had passed in review, saluting the brass in attendance. She felt her heart beat and could not help but grin and punch her roommate on the arm as Joe marched by with “eyes right,” looking so handsome, lean and serious. They had been married the previous Saint Patrick’s Day. Her new husband had not been her first beau while working at the base. Her first was apparently with the 23rd Fighter Group, the AAF group named the Flying Tigers, and had been killed in the Pacific just a year or so before she met our father.

Faintly now they could hear the drone of the first flight of 25’s approaching, dropping out of the morning sun, dark dots in the clear blue sky, correcting, the leads slaloming to give the rear a little time to catch up and tuck in, pulling onto a bull’s eye for a fly-by down the center of the field. The syncopation of the Wright Cyclone radials created a disturbance in the air resembling a dozen Whirlpool washing machines all running in the same room, set on uneven flooring. Doris and her friends caught their breath, as they had never seen such a large formation of bombers, even though everyday they watched singles and small flights taking off, shooting touch and goes, and passing over in formations, sometimes not as tight as their instructors expected. During her time on the base, Mama had seen a crash right on the base.

The cacophony was suddenly interrupted by a sickening ‘splat’ sound very near their stand, causing Doris to jump and look to her left. The source of the sound was the poor officer who had fainted, lying face down on the tarmac, the “splat” had been his body and face, belly-flopping right onto the concrete. Medics were rushing to collect him, a victim of the day’s beating sun. He forgot not to lock his knees.

Joe shifted and winced as he too heard the sound, knowing what had happened, and he bent his knees very slightly even more to allow more circulation to flow to his head, past the starched tight collar.

I also wonder if his mind might have harkened to almost one year before, when two dash-25’s collided in mid-air four miles NW of Spartanburg, likely in formation training. One of the planes went down killing all five crewmen, while the other made it back to land safely. More likely, he may have thought about the belly-landing a few months earlier that he and the rest of the crew walked away from (ran is more like it! It is unknown how he and the other crew escaped: the cockpit of the Mitchell has an escape hatch in its “roof,” the bombardier compartment has one on the side, the mid-section has one on the side, and the tail gunner has an escape in the top.) Fortunately their plane had been carrying “water bombs” (bomb casings filled with water for practice bombing), and not the real things. Likely Joe was aware of a few other crashes that had occurred in B-25 training, but these would have been no more than passing thoughts at his age, when he was focused on his owning training and immediate future. However, training accidents during the few years of the war actually were horrific. During the period 1942–1945, B-25 transition training crashes alone accounted for 993 fatalities, which averaged some 25 deaths a month! When other aircraft are accounted for, the fatalities were many times more.

When one is standing at attention for a long while in the sun, the mind can wander to such things, but knowing my father, any such thoughts were quickly dismissed, and only served to sharpen his focus when he flew off to the war.

There were cherry Coke ice cream floats that afternoon, and Joe and Doris laughing under the big, lazily moving Hunter fans at the corner drug store. Afterward they went to a park, both wanting to find solace in each other, for now both knew first-hand the dangers awaiting Joe. They walked, both perspiring profusely in the steamy South Carolina heat, the back of Joe’s khaki shirt soaked, but the heat not keeping his bride from clinging to him. The next few weeks would be their last together, before he would be off to the war. D-day, June 6th, had been just several weeks previous, and almost daily they heard news of the 57th’s activities, so both carried the unspoken notion of the severity of the battle that Joe was soon to be in the midst of. Until then, they made the most of their time together, a trip with friends to Myrtle Beach, downing plenty of iced beers and well, just enjoying each other’s company. Around July 30th they boarded the train west to visit Joe’s parents in Camp Wood, Texas. Their next few weeks together would be lightly lived, radically different from the following months until being reunited following V-E.

At the break of light on a quickly warming, mid-September morning, under Secret Orders dated September 8th, 2nd Lieutenant Leno Miron, designated pilot for the trip and Joe completed the take-off checklist (Daddy was a 2nd Lieutenant co-pilot for this Atlantic crossing), and then Miron taxied into Number 1 for take-off position. Then, hearing ground control give the “cleared for take-off”, Miron turned the Mitchell onto the runway, stood on the brakes, pushed the throttles to take-off power setting, double-checked props with Joe double-checking engine gauges, then released the brakes on the shiny new B-25J (43–36230) that the crew would take to the war. The two big engines were roaring, and in an amazingly short distance, the bomber attained substantial speed. Feeling the might of 3400 horsepower vibrating through his Texas hill country bones, Joe’s mind was in the moment, knowing no fear as only a self-confident twenty-four year old could, and once again marveling at how ‘fighter-ish’ this machine was. As Lt. Miron eased back on the yoke, the nose gaining buoyancy, the herculean wings beginning to feel lift across their 68 foot span, Joe grinned, thinking, “this sure beats flying those damn gliders, and sure as hell beats chasing cattle through cactus and cedar brakes on horseback”!

Joe was all business tending to his right seat duties as Miron banked the Mitchell, climbing. Joe could not have seen Doris, standing outside the Op’s building, waving her white handkerchief, in tears. She watched him gaining altitude, then banking to the southeast. She turned, dabbing her eyes dry and went inside, sat down at the Remington and began to type the dictation she had taken earlier, trying to be strong (as she always was). That night she buried her face in the pillows of their bed, taking in his scent, and wept.

Earlier in August she and her husband had taken the long trip back to meet his family in Camp Wood. They loved her, and apparently she felt like she had found a new, future home in the great state of Texas. In time, she would find life not as easy as it might have appeared in those brief, happy days, but she never, ever doubted her decision to leave South Carolina for good.

For a moment Joe was lost in a make-believe world, remembering all the fun he and Doris and their gang had so care-freely enjoyed down on the beachfront at Myrtle Beach. The airfield there was the site where crews got ready for the “real thing,” precision bombing and low-level strafing. (The base also contained a POW camp for Germans, who no doubt were treated much better than what captured American men faced in Europe.) Then, catching himself he snapped back, and into the mic, in his even Texas drawl, said, “Ok, boys, co-pilot to crew….everyone check in.” On this long trip he and the pilot would share time at the yoke, not yet willing to fully trust the auto-pilot. It would be a long flight for the crew and those in the other planes of the flight.

Over the eight months that Daddy was away blasting the Nazis, Doris stayed on at her executive secretarial job at Greenville Base. She took at room in a nice rooming house at 906 Augusta Street in Greenville, and tried to stay busy so she would not be constantly worrying, and occasionally having fun with friends.

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