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My name is Charles Harrell and I am interviewing Ernest
Cornwell. I was born July the fifth, 1919. My current address is Mr. Cornwell is a fill in pastor at I served in the Army Air Corp. We didn’t have the Air Force that we have now and the academy and so on, it was all under the army. And what was your rank when you went in at the beginning and finally when you got out? I was a private when I went in and I was a tech sergeant when I got out. And where did you serve? I served in Europe out of Before you went in, when you were a younger man, were you interested in mechanics like that? In mechanics but not of that nature, yes. Where were you born and raised? I was born in Sperryville. You probably never heard of it but I worked in a garage quite a little bit in those days before the war and I had an appreciation for mechanical items. Who gave you that appreciation? The person who I worked for. I worked at the garage and I picked up what he told me. I didn’t have any training at that point, didn’t have any technical training at that point. But I was able to pick up what he told me pretty easily. He would move me from one position to the other. Was he a local friend? He was the owner of the garage, not necessarily a local friend. Just someone I knew. Why did you decide to join or enter service? I didn’t decide. I was drafted. I had to go. But I had no resentment towards going. I wasn’t a conscientious objector or any that type of thing. Once I got the final notice to report, I kind of looked forward to it because I saw in it, I thought I did, and I was right. I thought I saw some opportunities for me that I hadn’t had before. And I already made my mind up that I would take advantage of all of it. And I did. Were you given a option on what branch to join? No, I wasn’t. But I was given an option to turn down the air force’s training if I wanted to. Did you have to go through any types of tests? Oh yes, yes sir. I can’t anymore describe the tests, but you had to go through various types of tests and of course the oxygen, I will just call it the Oxygen test, they make you pass out, almost pass out for the lack of oxygen so you will know what to experience, what you would experience you got up too far and didn’t get the proper oxygen. They put you through the tank in other words. The pressure tank they called it. They put you through the pressure tank. So when you got your draft notice and you went to the induction center… Went to Before you got to Yes I did. Yes I did. Can you explain some of your feelings? I felt very strongly in August 40, 40? I believe it was
40. When Hitler marched through And you were about 21 when you finally got to…. About 20, 21, I don’t remember exactly. I could count it up but. When you got to The first experience when we got off of the bus that took us there. A corporal with a harsh voice said “Fall in men, and pick up every cigarette butt that you see on the ground!” All of us did, like crazy, but one. One person, he just stood there. And the corporal ran up to him right up in his face, asked him why he didn’t obey his command, and he said, “Corporal,” he leaned toward him like I did to you, he said “Corporal, you have no control over me. I just got off the bus. I haven’t taken any oath and until you swear me in, I don’t have to do anything you tell me. And I am not picking up any cigarette butts. These people are doing it because they don’t know any better.” And the corporal dropped his head and walked away. He knew better. He knew that guy was right. I learned later he had served in the army. See, he knew the score, I didn’t. What else do you remember about your instructors boot camp? We got along quite well with the instructor. In all of it. Even in the fight tests, but in the basic, I’ll call it basic, when you had to go to the firing range, and when they set up machine gun. And they didn’t do this immediately though, you had quite a bit of training before they did this. They set this machine gun up a certain height off the ground and you had your pack and you had your gun. And this machine gun would be firing over you, but you had better not raise up, because is was set to fire, and your raising up didn’t get anybody’s attention. You were told about this, what to expect. And you got down. They were trying to teach you to lay on your stomach, let’s say on your belly. And not raise your head or your hands because you might get it shot off. Did you make any lasting friendships while you were in boot camp during those first months? Yes. I thought they
were lasting. Of course, most of them
now are gone. I called one some time, its been a while ago.
I called this person and it was What memories do you have of him and you getting along? Well, we, we were in the same barracks. We walked back and
forth to the mess hall together. And we
talked a lot about different things. He
was a good friend of mine. Another one was,
I can call him by name, he is gone too, Thomas Kohlor. I don’t want to embarrass anyone but he was
a, he was from How long was your experience at boot camp? Okay, from, the entire training now, I’m talking about the advanced
to going to Well tell us about Well Any particular airplane or just airplanes? That was airplanes.
Then overseas, when we got overseas it was B-24 and B-17. But in When you were in Not. I was pretty sure, yes. Yes, I was pretty sure I was going. See I go up in plane. Most of my training though in in the plane was overseas, because when we got overseas we found that people like me were needed. People who knew something about the plane, something about the structure of the bomb group, squadron and what it was expected to do when it got there and I was pushed forward quite a bit. When did you finally leave training here in the states? 14:45 After April, after May the 3rd. We left The travel across the ocean, can you describe your feelings then? Yes sir. If you never
been sea sick, you never been sick. You
have just been feeling bad. Unpleasant. Maybe
discomfort, but you haven’t been sick. I
can say that very, very, without any hesitation what so ever. And I disappointed a friend of mine. He showed it, he didn’t say anything. But he was a few years younger than I, not
much, a little bit, and I noticed, I noticed that at Did your ship come under enemy fire on the way across? No, No indeed. They just test fired the guns out over the water to make sure that they worked. When you landed on the other side of the ocean, where did you get off and what did you do? Yes. Is this too much detail? No, this is great. We got off the train at Highwickum, England, which was a few mile away from the headquarters building of General Doolittle, who was commander of the 8th Air Force. And the officers, we had a lot of officers because a lot of them were pilots but we, they saw person sitting there in a G.I. truck, G.I. comes from Government Issue of course, and…I will talk to them later, and all the officers in including Major Steelie, who was our commanding officer, they got on this truck and told the driver where to go I guess and left. About 4 o’clock in the morning we were still standing outside of the station and the train stopped and a major got off. And I won’t use his language, but he said in effect, “What are you all doing here?” And we answered almost simultaneously “we don’t know.” “Where is your commanding officer?” “We don’t know.” “When did you get off the train?” “About 6 o’clock this evening.” Something like that. And he said, “Fall in formation.” And we did. This was about 4 o’clock in the morning, and we marched until about 8 o’clock and when we turned into this camp, it was the 8th Air Force Headquarters. And we stayed there for, I stayed there for a good little while, I don’t know, two weeks, maybe a month until they caught up with me and got my records straight and see what I was capable of to some degree. And I mean, I emphasize, to some degree. And then I was shipped out to Cheddington Airdrome, English term. Airdrome, English term. Did you ever find out what happened to you major? Only thing I saw of him walking down the street, a long time after that, several months after that. All alone, walking down the street and I “high major” but he never recognized me. And from there on, now I have gotten to the Air Force Base and I had begun to go up with, in a Piper Cub to get the feel of the air movement of the plane in the air and not too long after that I was assigned to a B-24. And this is a training situation. And all I’m doing is flying, the guns are there, but I don’t have any ammunition because I’m on friendly soil. When you were on the B-24 were you at the top turret position? Oh, I was at that position but I didn’t have to, all I had to do was to take care of the major things might go wrong with the plane. I remember the first thing that happened. We got way up in the air and we had been flying a good while and this is coming on close to Christmas 43 and the pilot called me and he said, well, their answer, the way they would call me on the intercom “pilot to engineer, pilot to engineer, if you’re on the beam, come in please.” Meaning if you are on the radio beam he was calling on, come in please. And when I answered he said “The left wing, I just can’t keep it up. I can pull it up, but it just keeps going down. And I will pull it back up, but it keeps going down.” And I said, “Sir, for what ever the reason we have too much fuel in the left tank on the left side. I’ll transfer it back for you on the right side and I will transfer it back to the left.” And I was supposed to know how to do that, which I did, no problem. And when I got it leveled off, I could look at the gauge and it was a gas… glass tube. Had four of them, one, two, three, four, for each one each engine. And I could see over here that this one was way down and this one was up. So I just turned the gauges and turned the valves, turned the pumps on, I knew how to do that, and pretty soon they began to do like this. And I called him back and I said, “Is the right wing any easier to stay up?” He said, “It stays up on its own. Thank you very much.” Then another thing, talking about knowing the plane, the pilot called one time and he was, he was coming in for a landing. He was approaching the field for landing and he said, “The nose gear won’t go down. What are we going to do about it? We will tear the nose all to pieces, it will crash, it will be a crash landing if we can’t get that nose gear down.” “Give me a few minutes, sir. I’ll get it down.” I went down under the flight deck. Flight deck, flight deck is down here that’s where I sat most of the time unless there was something going on. And the nose gear was almost directly under the flight deck. And I went down and I saw what was wrong. It wasn’t going down. Somebody had to know how to put it down by hand. And that’s where I came in. I put it down and locked it in position and called him back. I called him from down there and told him, “Your nose gear is down. It’s locked into position. Don’t worry about crashing. It’ll hold you.” And he said, “Are you sure that you have it in position?” I said, “Yes! I am sure.” He said, “Are you sure you have it locked?” I said, “I’m sure its locked.” And I remember him saying, “That’s the kind of answers I like. We’re going in now and land.” And we did. That’s the kind of thing the engineer had to know how to do in addition to firing the guns when necessary. 26.46 Well, after your training experiences and you finally got to combat, can you describe some of your missions?
Yes, I can. It is now 0800 hours. It is now 0800 hours. The briefing has just ended. And the weather officer has just told us we were going to experience clouds over the target. And the squadron commander, Major Potowaski, squadron commander, Lieutenant Lorence was the pilot except first lieutenant and I was standing right behind him when the plane lifted off. And where we went exactly, I don’t know. But we went out over the North Sea, flew over water quite a ways, that’s how I knew it was the North Sea, and when the shooting started people say well I am not afraid of anything, what’s going to happen is going to happen. That’s probably the biggest false statement I’ve ever heard, when the shooting starts around you and you hear the sides of your plane breaking up by being hit by the German shells, you’ll be scared to death, I don’t care who you are. I wasn’t afraid of anything either until I could tell what was happening around me. When was this very first combat? The very first one. Now after the first one, its not too bad. Its not too bad after the first one. When the general in charge, would be given, that was Major, Colonel Stingline, was Major then went to Colonel, Colonel Stingline. When he was given an assignment, for example we were bombing the oil fields today, I got a picture in there of that somewhere, we’re bombing the oil fields tomorrow really, he’d get the order today to bomb tomorrow, first thing he would say “How many seasoned men do I have?” And what he meant by seasoned men was how many men will I have tomorrow on that mission that had been tested under enemy fire? Because you do things under enemy fire that you do any other time. There’s just something about it. For example, one time, the person, I can’t call his name, I wouldn’t want to anyway, when he grabbed the gun controls, his hands around the handles of the guns and solenoid of those guns, its in the handle, the solenoid when you pulled the handled, press the solenoid, its electric, it fires. And when he grabbed that thing for the first time, his hand froze and he couldn’t turn it loose and the pilot knocked him out. Hit him. So things happen under enemy fire that they don’t happen otherwise. Was this man in your airplane? He was in the airplane. But he was, he had never been tested under enemy fire. Makes a difference. I’m telling you things I’ve never told her. I haven’t talk much about my experiences. They were never that exciting I never thought. Did you ever see any of your squadron’s airplanes shot down? No, I think, I knew, I knew it had happened because it was no longer in the formation but I didn’t actually see it happen. A feeling you get that, I’m going to explain this when I show you two of them when I explain it, if I can find it. I’m trying to find a picture and there is something written there too. Pauline, see if you can find that 8th Air Force picture in there for me, B-17, its in. For example, when the mission’s over, and the planes have come back, when I first went over there in ’43, the flak and German fighters were so effective that a squadron of seventeen, that’s what made up a squadron seventeen bombers, they had escort a lot of times, the bomber squadron is what really counted, when they came back. When they would park them on the hardstand, some of the, well out of a squadron of seventeen, sometimes five would return, sometimes maybe ten, and sometimes none. And those that did return, when they would park on the hardstand, the name of the place where they would park the planes when they did not fly them, the medics would first come out and they would pick up the larger parts of the bodies of the gunners and then they would call the fire department to bring the water up there and wash the rest of it down. They’d wash hands out. Pieces of the bodies that they just didn’t pick up. But anything like an arm or leg, large parts of the body, medics pick that up. There’s blue sky all around it. And, I’ll tell you, its laying on my desk, a picture is laying on my desk if you want to get that. Anyway, then they would call the clean up crew and they would clean that hardstand up until there was nothing as though it had never happened. And they did this because they didn’t want to influence the crew when they came out the next morning or some of them would come out the evening before the flight and they didn’t want them to see what had happened to the previous mission. That was kind, and the tail gunner was the one that really got that. My position was really pretty, pretty good. My position really didn’t get shot up too much. It could get shot up though, because sometimes German fighter would come in, that’s it. Sometimes the German fighter would come in over top of the coming down. This is what I wanted to see. Read what it says there. Emptiness haunted ramps of Airplanes that never returned. That is how you would feel. When your buddy was on the plane when it didn’t come back. The plane didn’t get back. It was just an empty feeling all around. Very, I can not explain what that felt like exactly. Do you know any buddies that didn’t return? Oh, yea. A lot of them did not return. Yea. Out of 120 in the 20th Bomb Wing, we got together the best we could after the war was over, and out of the 120, this was all that was left. Whether they all got killed or not, I don’t know. They didn’t show tell me. We thought that more than five would. We didn’t find but five. Did any one particular one affect you the most that you are willing to talk about today? Well, I guess perhaps that one fellow affected me more than any because I had gone a lot of places with him. I was standing up for to get married in that picture in my book, and he, he just, I don’t know what happened for exactly, but I didn’t see him. And the thing about the bombing mission, if you got through the flak, of course there was no escort in flak, when you get through the flak, the fighters can pick you up coming back and they can escort you, which the P-51 was such a wonderful plane for that. They were fastest one we had. And they were, they, that, that plane, I don’t know who was flying it, that plane drove off a German plane that would have shot us down I do believe, this P-51. Can you describe that incident and when it took place? To some degree I can describe it. The P-51, the B-17 is just up there, just going some place and this Folkwolf, this German plane, saw him, pilot saw him and he headed right for him. Well we were out here but he, he, this B-17 was pretty far, I’m going to say to 9 o’clock. That’s the way I’m going to describe it. Nine, twelve, three, six. And this plane was about 9 o’clock, B-17 was about 9 o’clock, and the Folkwolf was coming in at 12 noon, right over top of him, coming down like this. And he hit him, he hit him hard. But this B, P-51 he came, he came in behind this Folkwolf and he did this to him and he never stopped shooting. The gun was still firing. But he made a circle around him. He had a faster plane than the Germans did. That plane, before the jets now, P-51 Mustang and he gave up and disappeared. What was the name, or did you have a name for the airplane you served on? One of them that I like to think of, to think of, tried to
make my computer password that but they didn’t accept it, Sun Boy. Sun Boy was the name of it. I remember the pilot when we were landing one
time he said, “Rador 6-6, Rador
6-6.” That’s edicott,
I can’t pronounce the work right now, The…You were based in Yes I was, but not at the same place the entire time. We moved, now the flying I’m talking to you
about now was done out of Watton Air Force Base, not Cheddington. We had
transferred to Watton at that time. One thing I remember happening at Watton, disappointed me a little bit in a way. I went to breakfast, and came back from
breakfast that morning, and when I came in the barracks, the radio, somebody
had turned the radio on. And Mildred Gillards, Axis Sally, was broadcasting, and she was saying,
“Actung, actung, actung,” attention, “This is radio Was the food okay or horrible? Well, it was pretty good, most of the time. I remember on Christmas Eve, I went up with a plane. They were having problems with it. Well I was having with it. It had an oil leak I couldn’t find on one of the engines. And we went up for a good while and when we came back the mess hall wasn’t closed. But I went down to the mess hall and I had stewed turnips for my Christmas Eve dinner. That’s all I had. But a lot of us was like that too. Did you get to know any of the civilians near these airbases? I did in a couple of places but I can not think of their
names any more. I really can’t. The only one that I can tell you anything
about was in Did you have any friends shot down and captured and released later on? Probably, but I don’t know of any. Several of them were shot down, but probably, I don’t know. Did you ever go to Yes, but that was a different story there too. It was a different situation. I was assigned for a while, a very very brief time, with, to a special plane with a colonel that was stationed at our base. And he was flying missions and they put me on his plane and I had to maintain the plane and fly it with him. And I remember one morning the weather was terrible, after we crossed the channel, he told me, he said, “I can’t see where I’m at.” The visibility is not over 100 to 300 feet, that’s all it is. “So I want you to stand on a box.” He told me where the box was in the back of the plane. And look out, it is a Plexiglas bubble, that is what it is. I could get my head in it, but that was all. And he said, “I want you to keep your head in that bubble and we’re looking for landing strip that they were supposed to have made behind German lines and we got to land on it. I’ve got very important things to do it in this briefcase. They’re very important. But I can’t see and I want you to look for that landing strip.” I stood on that box hour after hour and finally the colonel said, “Come on back and sit down in the co-pilot seat. We’re going home.” I said, “What about our papers we’re supposed to deliver?” He said, “We just can’t do it. We just can’t, we can’t find the place, and pretty soon we will be crashing for the lack of oil…or gas. And we just can’t do it. I’ve got enough gas to get back to the base and I’m going to take it. I’m going to save you and I’m going to save me.” Do you recall when that was? Yes sir, I certainly do. That was in the fall, in the winter, just the early, early stages of the winter of late ’44, early ’45. I think it was after Christmas in ’45, before, you see we were really pressing the Germans at that time. They were one the, they were retreating. Very early in ’45. They surrendered on May the 8th. While you were in service, did you keep touch with your family and how did you do that? Well, yes. I did it though, what type of mail did they call that? Special mail you had to, you just wrote, just had a page you wrote on, Victory Mail, it wasn’t Victory Mail, I don’t know. Well anyway you turned it in to the postage people office. And an officer had to read it and he’d sign it, seal it, and send it to you. There was a special name for that. And did you get mail from you family? Yes, I got mail from my family. Did you have any brothers or sisters? I had a brother, but he got out of the army pretty soon after I got in. He was in service for a while. Was there anytime when your base, your airplane, or you personally were lacking in supplies? In what? In supplies. Oh, yes. We were limited to 150 rounds of ammunition per gun. Lots of times because we just didn’t have the ammunition to supply. Yes, indeed. Was your job to make sure the guns worked? My set. You see, two, two guns to a turret. My two, I had to make sure they were working. And the tail gunner, the ball turret gunner and the side gunners, there was just one gun on the side, on each side, and the, we called it the nose turret and then they put one under that called the chin turret. While you were in the service, did you feel a huge amount of stress and what would cause that? You’re always under stress. At least I was always under stress of some kind. To get something, to make sure something was right, everything that was right that I was responsible for. You know, the master sergeant isn’t going to take the responsibility for anything as long as the techs are around. If the tech sergeant is around, he’s going to put it on him. Did you find out the differences in rank really made an impression on you? Yes, I did. Of course I did. But I managed to get along pretty good. I remember a plane landing one evening and the pilot, or I didn’t know the pilot, he was stranger to me, and he saw my stripes, of course. He said, “Number three engine has to be changed, and has to be changed tonight. I want you to put an engine on that plane for me.” Well I tried to round up a crew of mechanics to do that but I couldn’t find anybody that, that didn’t have a good excuse for not doing it. But you see, I, there again, I had to be able to do that too. I worked all night long, all night long in that hanger and not a soul in that hanger but me. But before daylight, that new engine was on, it was checked out, it was running, and it was full power before daylight. But the thing about it was when the man came to pick it up, the pilot came to pick it up, I got a picture of that plane by the way. I don’t know where it is, but I got a picture of that plane. The pilot that came to pick it up was Colonel Elliot Roosevelt, son of the President. And he’s the one that picked up that plane. He’s the one. I didn’t know him at the time. He was the one that told me that it had to be changed. Now I was under an extremely stressful situation of course. Because the colonel has told me you got to have that plane running, that engine has got to be running, a new one on there and running by tomorrow morning. So as a flight engineer, you not only replaced things while it was flying, you also worked on them while they were on the ground? If the situation demanded. If the situation demanded is what I’m saying. I don’t know if everyone had to do that but I, I had that training too. I had the ground, I had the ground training as well as the flight training, and that was the reasons, one of the reasons I was chosen flight engineer instructor. I flew and instructed the quite a bit too. Can you tell me some of the experiences of the people you taught? No, not so much as I taught, but I as I was for instructor. This fellow bypassed me all the way. And you talk about calling names, you’ve got to have a reason for remembering a person’s name. This person was named Brownie, that was his last name. Sergeant Brownie, he had three stripes. And he got in with Captain Potowatski that I mentioned a while ago. I don’t know how he managed to do that, but he did, he got in with him. And he got assigned to one of the flights as an engineer. But I didn’t training him, I didn’t tell him, he didn’t come around me at all. He pretty much stay with himself. But on a Sunday morning when the mission is on its way now, and for some reason, I don’t know what’s happened, but something’s gone wrong and he can’t correct it. And I get a call to come to the office to talk with so in so, talk with Mr., Sergeant Brownie and see if you can help him out of this situation on the plane. Well, got a call back later that its corrected and everything’s alright and on their way, but they were about to abort the mission because of that. I remember that. Did you ever have a good luck charm that you carried? No sir. Never believed in them. Was there any entertainers or entertainment that was offered to you all while you were on base? Yes indeed. Yes the had good, not too often, but they had pretty good. One time Glen Miller and his band, that was quite a treat. And another one, I used to know that woman’s name quite well, she was there one time with a group. Can’t think of her name now. Marlene Dietrick. She was there. Finally thought of it. Yea, they had people there. I never saw Bing Crosby but I am sure he was over there a lot. Bob Hope, but I didn’t see that. Did you keep a personal diary during the war? Yes, to some degree but I’ve lost it long time ago. But I did have one. I am going to pause the tape a put in another one. Part 2, What was the most humorous incident that you recall in your four years of service? Alright. I still remember this thing. I remember it in detail. The war was over, but we didn’t get away for a while. I stayed several months after the war ended. I was kept there for whatever. The Red Cross. We’re at Alcomberry now, not Watton anymore, were now at Alcomberry. Still Still How did you get promoted from rank to rank? I don’t believe I understand your question. On what basis did I get. About every time that I was promoted I was called in and was told we have noticed, First Sergeant would do this. We would notice what you’ve been doing and we think its time for promotion. I waited a long time at one time from sergeant, from corporal to sergeant, or from sergeant to staff, I don’t know which. But some people went through the whole thing and never got beyond a corporal. So I considered myself pretty fortunate. I always, I always made it when, and the thing that I really, sometimes I regret it. I had put in a transfer to go to another squadron and the squadron I was going to was coming home. That’s the reason I transferred to it, to come home. They were discharging people with sixty, fifty, sixty points. That was the point system then and I had over a hundred. And I transferred to this squadron to come home. And I got put on what they called in-charge-of-quarters. That meant the I was in charge of the whole base. This was the date, for one night. And I was in the headquarters building, and I waited. It was getting pretty close for the promotions to come out. And I hadn’t been there very long. I wondered if I would get Master Sergeant. I wanted to know that so bad. And the reason I wanted to know, this Lieutenant Lorence that I flew my first mission with, he is now all the way to Alcomberry and he’s colonel. He doesn’t have the leaf, he’s got the bird. And he came out to the hanger one day and talked with me. And he, he’s post commander now. He’s in charge of the whole thing. And promotions are about to come out, they were to come out on the 31st of October and this must have been somewhere around the 20, about that. And I was in charge of quarters. I waited. The guards would always come around and check with me, ask if everything is alright. And this guard, he came around about 4 o’clock, and I said, “Are you coming back anymore?” And he said, “No, you’ll be alright. I’m not coming back. Nobody’s going to check on you anymore. If you need anything, you can call us, but we’re not coming back.” And that was just what I was looking for him not to come back. I went into the record room. And the record drawer where the promotions were was unlocked. And I pull that drawer open, and looked all out the windows, you see the blinds were down then, we don’t have them anymore. And looked around and didn’t see anybody moving around outside. I got that folder out that said promotions. And I looked for Master Sergeant and I was on it. But I couldn’t accept it because I was going home. I was leaving. I didn’t get it. But Lieutenant Lorence, now Colonel Lorence, I still say he remembered me from that first mission. Because I was on that list to be Master Sergeant the 31st day of October. And the 31st day of October I was discharged. On this side, discharged. In ’45? In ’45. I saw you had some pictures of the concentration camps in No. No. A friend of mine made those pictures and brought me the roll of film and I developed them. 8:08 I wasn’t. I still
didn’t feel free to. That was a free
trip if you went over to, planes go over to What did he talk to you about when he was out there? How have you been? I hadn’t seen him for months. I didn’t even think he would recognize me. How have you been? Is that plane alright? Will it fly alright if I need it? And that sort of thing. It is going to fly. Do you feel like your crew was closer to you, to one another than just strangers flying the same equipment? In the air. Very close. Everybody was close. Forty thousand feet up, everybody was close. But on the ground it was kind of business as usual. I had the pilot put his arms around me, things went a little wrong we’d get them corrected. Were you on a first name basis in the air, or was it still sergeant, captain, whatever? Oh, it was still sergeant, captain. I never got beyond that. They might have called me different if I had, but I was a little bit afraid to do that. I always called him colonel. I went by the rank. Do you recall the very last day of your service? That I was in the service? Right. Yes. I recall two of them. Sunday, was the most, this is, now it’s the 28th, I guess. We landed on the 27th, which was a Saturday and this was the 28th. You flew back? No, I came back on a boat. Okay. And this is Sunday, and I didn’t have one, I said it was the most leisure day I ever spent in my life. Certainly in the army. It seemed like where ever I was, if I was just going to spend the night or something, that five, that fifth stripe always got me to do something. To be responsible for cleaning up the barracks before everybody left or something. But this particular time on Sunday, I made one telephone call and I sat in the comfortable chair in the office there, lounge rather more than an office. And I went to the men’s hall three times and made one telephone call. And that was the most leisure day. I didn’t have any responsibility. Nobody said do this or maybe check on this or what about that. Nobody said to me about anything. And I didn’t do anything at all. And where were you? I was at Did they know you were coming home? Yes, they did. What were their reactions when they first saw you? My brother and his wife were at work and they didn’t, they knew I would be there about 9 o’clock, they got there about 11, they were at work, they didn’t come home for me. My mother was the only one that really recognized me. I say it was a true love experience. And she had dinner for me and I appreciated that. Did you feel like you physically changed in those four years? Not a whole lot. Not a whole lot. Mentally more than physical. Can you describe how you mentally changed? How you saw things different? Not too much. I know one thing. I had some pictures that I had brought back. Don’t know what they were exactly, but they were reminders of the war. I put them up in the bed room after we were married. And this was two years later. I put them up in the bed room after we were married and she had to take them down. Nightmares. After the war, you said you got married in two years. In about two years I said. Did you meet your wife following the war? Or had you known her before? I met my wife on November the 1st, 1945. I just met her,
there was no, any action or anything like that.
I didn’t have any date with her, I just met her. My mother had said that she, when I got home
that night, before I went to bed, my mother said, “There’s a pretty girl next
door that I want you to meet. My
neighbor, she’s from Did you go back to work where you were working before war? No I didn’t. No I
didn’t. I went to Did you get part of the G.I. Bill to do that? I used everything I could get a formal education. That’s the way I used my. And did you live in I lived in Did you. You mentioned before that you had gotten together with the squadron one time and found out that only five people showed up. Had you tried to join any other veterans organizations? Oh, I joined the, it’s not Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Legion. But I’m not in it, active in it any more. I joined the American Legion. So do you feel like the Air Force gave you an impedance to go into any certain career? I feel like the Air Force was very good to me. The Army was good to me. Won’t just talk about the army, but in the
Air Force I got good breaks all the way.
I never got a bad break anywhere in the army and when I got out I had
opportunities such as the G.I. Bill that I had nod had before. I said it was a good break for me. After seeing war first hand, and although you were a pilot, a flyer, but you do have strong emotions I could tell on certain issues. Very. What is you general outlook on war today? Unnecessary. Unnecessary all the way. Is there any other stories you can relate to me that I haven’t covered in this interview? You mentioned once about G-2. I didn’t have any real experiences in G-2. I served in it though. Quite a while. I didn’t. I was too involved in, I guess, in my personal life as far as trying do what I was supposed to do on a plane. Flying and so on. I was very, I was really thrilled as far as thinking I was going to fly, was flying, of course we did get a 50% raise in base pay for flying too. Did you ever want to become a pilot? Yes, I did. And did you? I became a pilot, but not a commercial pilot. I wanted to be a commercial pilot and I enrolled in flight school. And I got my pilot’s license, a private license. And I realized pretty soon after I got started in this that I was too old to get anywhere as a commercial pilot. Just couldn’t do it. Was too old. I was twenty, when I enrolled, I was about 26 years old when I enrolled, 25 years old. No, I was 26, 27, 26 years old. And when I was getting down to the real training, I had my license, but beyond that you had, there was a lot of training beyond that. And I realized, a fellow told me at 27 your out. If you can’t make it by 27, you can’t make it. And I knew I couldn’t make it. But she took a ride with me. The first passenger I ever took up was Pauline. Did your career after the army and what you did for the next forty years, did it reflect or did your army experiences give you direction? 20:54 To some degree the army experience would always help a person to see life in a broader perspective. It did me. I think it did. Even though I went into the ministry, and I, we have 48 years we’ve been together in the ministry. We over, well 48 in 2000. I retired in 2000. From the pastoring. Let’s take a look at your medals now. Alright, good conduct, European theater, Air Medal. And down here, this a, I can’t think of the name of the landing, but one of them was, D-day landing, I got two stars on that. Well, that was quite a day. More than just a day. And I believe that St. Lo was one of them. The landing at St. Lo. The other two, I just can’t remember what campaign they were. And this was my qualifying on the range. They gave me a rifleman for that. And what is that top medal? This? That is just wings, for the Air Force wings. Gunner’s wings. I think it said gunner’s wings, I’m not sure. It was just the gunner’s wings, that’s all is. Can you describe to me the way you felt at the day you found out, since we are so close to the anniversary of the D-day landings? What a dreadful thing that is that we have to take the
number of men going into this, and I, I just, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. That why do we have to do it. I know so many us are not. I might be one of them. So many of us are not going
to survive this thing. And I know
the people on the ground are not.
Thousands, I think it’s nine thousand didn’t
survive the first day. And seeing these
people, knowing these people were going to take off in these gliders, and they
are very uncertain. I never liked
them. Didn’t like them
at all. But they used them. And a
lot of our boys we dropped in under big trees, various places. And I knew it had to happen, because of
where, what we were trying to do. And
when I was writing something, I wrote St. Lo.
It was in a church bulliten. I wrote something about St. Lo Major. And the secretary, when she typed it she put How? Well, that can happen pretty easily. You can drop bombs in the wrong place. The best way I think I understood that when we were talking about what had happened on that day. We were given orders to bomb just inside the smoke screen. We’re going to put up the smoke screen. And the wind, they gave us the wind direction. And the wind will be carrying the smoke back this way. We were told it was north I believe. What ever it was. Bomb just inside the smoke screen. Don’t get onto the other side, but bomb just inside the smoke screen. The wind changed. And we, instead of bombing the Germans, we bombed the Americans. You follow me. I know that operation, yea. Now, I think the St. Lo and this major, he was such an
outstanding person anyway, so I had heard, I didn’t see him. I had heard a lot about him. I know one fellow that was on that bridge at
St. Lo the same time the Major got killed.
I know personally one fellow, and he said the only thing he saw to do,
I’ve seen him since the war’s been over was to jump into the river. And he said, “I jumped into the river and
that’s what saved me. That’s why I’m
talking to you today.” He lives in When did you realize that D-day was the real landing? The major invasion? After it was over. A little bit after it started. About 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Did you fly on that day? No, I didn’t fly on that day. After that day, but I didn’t fly on that day. I wasn’t scheduled for that day. The, but I was, it was Eisenhower, once I finally realized that the landings had started, was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon when I heard on the radio, when I heard the voice of Dwight Eisenhower, he was saying that we had attempted a landing on the coast France. But they almost pulled that thing out, pulled off, gave it up, then they made, then they decided not to. It was a question. Could you tell a landing was coming up in early June? I knew it was coming. I didn’t know at early June. I just knew that we were going to land on the continent and try take it back from the Germans. I knew that. But you didn’t see any build up in you base? Oh, goodness yes. You could see build up all over Well, thank you for letting me conduct this interview. And I will know you for many years, I’m quite sure. Thank you again. You are certainly welcome. Thank you for interviewing me. I hope I gave you something that you were looking for.
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