www.aerothentic.com February 2002

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Early Life With the 4th Air Depot In Australia and Elsewhere

Walt Cornell's story is unique. He was not an ace, nor did he shoot down one enemy. Walt instead served primarily as a radio operator with the 4th Air Depot Group, an engineering unit which spent much of its time in Australia. His best friend overseas became Louis DeLaurentis, a draftee from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri who had been assigned to the Repair unit. DeLaurentis formed the 4th ADG's band, and they played from Townsville to the Philippines.

Cornell did most of his flying time in an old stager - a former B-17E which they named Muffins - and an old B-18 named Damfino (short for "Damned if I know" - the answer they gave when people asked them what kind of aircraft it was)

Australians will find this chapter of the Fifth Air Force most interesting - names like Geelong, Melbourne, Essendon, Archerfield - they are all here - and more. His observations on Australia might seem antiquated now, but (take it from your Australian host) that is the way Australia was. Before you read his unique memories, what about seeing some of Walt Cornell's rare photos ?

COLOR B-17 Muffins - before she became Muffins - at Port Moresby

B-17 Muffins at Perth

B-17 Muffins - noseart !

B-17 Muffins - meet the author (and radio operator !)

See the 4th ADG Band in Action at Townsville

What is this B-18 doing parked at Eagle Farm ?

SEA TRIP

Finally manoeuvres were over and we got things packed ready to convoy back to Patterson. It was December 5th or 6th, 1941 that we folded our tents and our cots, loaded into trucks, and headed north. We were bedded down in a high school gym in Chattanooga on our way home after Manoeuvres. We were wakened very early in the morning and told that the Nips had bombed Pearl Harbor and that we were at war. I think every one of us remembered Gen. Hap Arnold's meeting with us not two months before. We loaded up and high-tailed it back to Patterson Field - we even had police escorts through some of the towns. We were there a little over a week, getting shots, equipment, real winter clothes, etc. with the knowledge we were heading overseas somewhere. All Honor Passes were revoked, so I could not come home. Mom and Ben brought Dad with them and I spent one afternoon with them, driving around the area. 1st Sgt Brose gave me a pass that allowed me out the Main Gate for several hours.

In short order, on a frosty morning, we were trucked to a train station in Fairfield and then we started on a train trip west. We switched engines in St. Louis and left there on the Union Pacific railroad. Somewhere along the way we again switched engines but stayed in our cattle cars; this time we rode the Southern Pacific line. We either slept setting up in the coach seats (if we were lucky) or lying on the floor and hoping not to be stepped on. I had KP (kitchen police) for the first time ever and it was in a mail car with the side door open. We went through at least one tunnel and there were soldiers guarding both ends. The trip through the mountains was slow but very scenic. I remember one morning when we went across the Great Salt Lake. There were more mountains and then we were in the Feather River Canyon country; it was beautiful! For a while the train went along the Feather River but high up in the canyon. Then it was downhill to San Francisco.

After we arrived in San Francisco we were boated over to Angel Island in the Bay and put in barracks there. Our vaccination records were lost in our travels so we had to take shots again. I felt sorry for Jack Emch, a W. Virginian in our squadron who was allergic to tetanus shots; he was hospitalized but recovered to join us before we sailed. There was nothing to do on Angel Island except answer morning roll call, eat, and walk around on the mountainous piece of rock. We were allowed to take the ferry over to Oakland and I went there several evenings. I had my first taste of authentic Chinese food there and still like it very much. We spent Christmas on the Island, had a big Christmas dinner in a decorated mess hall. It was evident that we were just killing time until other groups would join us and we would then ship out - but where- Alaska- we had winter clothes - to Europe through the Panama Canal- much conjecture, rumors, etc. but no facts. So we waited.

Sometime around the 8th of January, 1942 we loaded up and were taken to a dock somewhere across the Bay where we boarded the President Coolidge, a luxury liner of the President Line. It had been hastily fitted with bunks stacked five high below decks. There were also crated and some uncrated fighter planes on the upper deck. We sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge just before nightfall and had our first "Lights Out" experience. It was cold and almost everyone slept in the bunks below decks for the first few nights. I didn't like it down there because I was assigned a bottom bunk, there were big swells in the sea, and there were too many seasick. For the record, I have never been seasick or airsick in my life, not even queasy. So as soon as the weather warmed up many of us took our blankets and kapok-filled life jackets up on deck and proceeded to enjoy the 19 day sea voyage. My Discharge shows we left the continental U.S. on 12 January 1942.

The trip wasn't bad, the weather was mostly warm as we went southwest and we encountered very few rains. There was a 4" gun mounted aft and some Navy sailors at times fired it for practice at a towed target. We were fed twice a day and it was excellent food; this was a luxury liner after all, and the larders were stocked with steaks, chicken, ham, fruit, vegetables, etc. As we continued southwesterly we were told we were making for Australia and that we would have no escort until nearly there. So Lights Out MUST be strictly enforced - no cigarette lighting or smoking up on deck, there might be a Nip submarine hunting for us. The Captain said we were reported on the radio as being sunk off the coast of northern California - a ruse to deceive the Nips who had many relatives in California. So on deck we played endless games of pinochle, poker, whist, chess, dominos, and ate, and watched the heavens at night, and the flying fish, and wonderful sunrises and sunsets. And even occasional dolphins.

The ship had a big swimming pool of course, and we had a ritual initiation there, presided over by King Neptune, after we crossed the International Date Line and the Equator. I am a mossback and a shellback, but I don't remember which is which. I saw the constellation "Southern Cross" for the first time as well as a lot of other unfamiliar constellations. The configuration of the Southern Cross was to appear on most military insignia of outfits in the SW Pacific theater, including my 5th Air Force and later Far East Air Force insignias.

One night in the ship's salon I heard a piano; there were only a few men there so I went up to watch the player and listen to the music. That is when I met Louis DeLaurentis, a draftee from Jefferson Barracks, Missouri who had been assigned to the Repair Squadron. He and Bro were to become my closest friends through and after the war. Lou was from the Buffalo, N.Y. area. He was born near Lanciano, Italy and came to the U.S. with his parents and siblings at an early age. He was an orchestrater with a lot of musical training. He played excellent piano and had composed several songs. Lou and I hit it off immediately and we even wrote a song together during the sea trip. The song was called "Lonely Winter Winds" and we had hopes of publishing it after the war but never did.

We had a local talent show on board a couple of nights, not good but we welcomed the diversions. About three days out of Melbourne we ran into very heavy seas and were joined by the British ship Achilles which played a part in the sinking of the German battleship Graf Spee earlier. We watched as waves broke over the prow of the Achilles and the whole front half of the ship would disappear beneath the sea only to rise again and seem to shake like a wet dog shaking off water. Very rough. We were 19 days going across, from the U.S. continental boundary to Melbourne, arriving there on 31 January 1942. As we subsequently found out, we were the second U.S. ship to make it to Australia; the USS Willard Holbrook made it to Brisbane on the 22nd of December, 1941.

While off-loading at Melbourne we got our first exposure to the Aussie language - couldn't understand what they were saying even though it was basically English. There is a real difference in the pronunciation of dipthongs and "tone" quality of the speech. As one G.I. said later, "I asked the girl what her name was and she said it was EYEZEL". He asked her to spell it and she replied "Haitch eye zed ee ell" for HAZEL!

GEELONG, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

We were taken by truck from the Melbourne docks down to an Aussie military camp at the town of Geelong. We stayed overnight at that camp and slept on pallets - thin mattresses filled with straw and placed on the floor of barracks. The Aussies called them palaces. We were fed breakfast the next morning by the Diggers (as the Aussies were known. We were Yanks). The breakfast was alright as I remember it except they poured off the bacon grease and fried the eggs and potatoes in mutton grease. I believe then was when I began developing a strong dislike for mutton and lamb; a dislike that grew to gagging proportions and has remained with me since.

We immediately began setting up camp around an International Harvester factory just outside Geelong. We were in the same 6-man pyramidal tents we had during Stateside manoeuvres, and had our air mattresses and Army cots - no more palaces! An arm of Port Phillips Bay was just back of the IH buildings and just across that narrow arm was a sheep slaughterhouse. I don't know what parts of the sheep were discarded into the bay but it was thick with sharks. Some of the men found hay hooks and steel cable in the IH buildings and tried to catch sharks with baited hay hooks - not successfully, as I remember.

Using the IH buildings, we began assembling the fighters we brought with us on the President Coolidge. Some of these had been ear-marked for England and had different nomenclature. The P-39's were labelled P-400's. We also had some P-38's with .37 mm cannons, and some P-40's. One of our pilots was Lt. Houseal and he was not a very big man. He took up one of the P-400's to flight check and could not charge the wing mounted .30 machine guns - there were steel cables leading from the cockpit to the guns for charging. He was ridden unmercifully about that! One old T/Sgt - Okon, I believe - took off in a P-40, got it back down but ground looped it and was court-martialled, busted down to a Pvt. He was not a pilot, just a crew chief authorized to run up engines and taxi aircraft. He said the throttle stuck and he had to take off!. I also remember one man had bought a cockatoo that had been taught to ride on a broom as he swung it around over his head; the bird would cling to the broom and squawk and cuss like a pirate. The people of Geelong treated us well. They held dances for us and were very friendly even after one was shot by one of our guards; the man was caught at night climbing up on one of the planes.

I was not long at Geelong, perhaps two months. A request came down from an American contingent at Essendon Aerodrome at Melbourne for a radio man to check out aircraft coming into Melbourne from the north. Brovold didn't want the job but I thought it might be O.K. so I volunteered and was soon put on DS (Detached Service) at Essendon.

ESSENDON AIRPORT, NEAR MELBOURNE

Essendon Aerodrome is located in the northwest part of suburban Melbourne in the state of Victoria. A main thoroughfare from Melbourne ran past the aerodrome but I don't remember its name; actually, the highway changed names three times from downtown Melbourne out to Essendon. A tram line ran along the highway. The hangars, maintenance, restaurant, and office buildings were fronting on the highway and an Aussie Air Force base was just across the highway from the buildings.

There was a small contingent of us Yanks, maybe 30 or so, and we were quartered in one of the barracks of the base. That made it very convenient to go out the gate, across the highway, and go to work. I was issued a cot, Aussie blankets, a pillow, and a foot locker, as were the other enlisted Yank personnel. I don't know where the officers were billeted. The contingent was under the command of some Captain; I don't remember his name but he was well-liked by all of us. There was no roll call; we were expected to be responsible men, doing the work we were requested for, and we fulfilled that obligation. Maybe once every couple of days the Captain would come to see how we were doing or to give us some specific assignment. We could eat in the Aussie Mess across the street if we chose, or in the little restaurant beside one of the hangars. The food was very cheap there and sometimes good. I particularly liked the pea soup with some sort of small croutons and would often have it for lunch.

In one of the big hangars was the office and workshop for the ANA (Australian National Airways) radio maintenance section. This civilian operation was manned by Bill Gibbings and an assistant named Sam. They serviced the aircraft radio equipment on the ANA civilian aircraft. I was directed to settle in with Bill and Sam and do what I could to make operable the radio equipment on our (and Dutch) planes that staggered in from the Philippines and other islands north of Australia. I remember an old Martin B-10 out in the field, a B-17C, a B-17D, three LB-30's, and several Lockheed Hudsons. The Swoose landed while I was at Essendon also. It was called that as being half swan, half goose, because it was cobbled together from the wrecks of several B-17's of disparate types - I believe one wing was longer than the other. I remember the LB-30's well; they had Bendix TA-12C transmitters and had felt blanket lining on the inside of the fuselage for noise reduction.

Bill Gibbings and I became close friends and I was a frequent visitor to his home near Essendon. He had a twin brother in the Service in Africa and Bill worried about him constantly as maybe only as a twin would. Bill drank a lot and somewhere I have a picture of him beside a pile of beer bottles at the side of his house. His wife was named Jean and they had two young sons of early school age. Bill had a car, and because of his work he received enough petrol rations to enable him to drive to and from work each day. Jean was a good cook and learned early on not to invite me for supper when mutton was being served. I enjoyed getting away from the military on those evenings, staying overnight, and riding in to work with Bill in the morning. Of course I was the butt of jokes about my inefficient use of the fork when eating; the Aussies eat like the English (whom they call Pommies and generally resent), piling the food on the back of the fork with the knife then shovelling the heap into the mouth. Sam was also a frequent visitor there. He was a big man, a bachelor, and very reminiscent of a woolly, shaggy English sheep dog. He always had a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth and dribbled ashes down his chest.

At work I repaired what radios I could, often robbing parts from damaged sets, substituting, - anything to make the equipment operable. The Dutch planes carried mostly Phillips equipment with their odd-based vacuum tubes. But replacements were generally easier to find than tubes for our equipment. One of the LB-30's (these were non-supercharged B-24's made for England) had a radar installation that was being checked out. One day I was asked to fly in a check out flight that afternoon. Meanwhile I was driven into Melbourne to pick up a transformer that had been rewound for a radio compass. We were delayed getting back and the flight left without me. When we got back from town the crashed LB-30 was still burning out on the landing strip. The radar man in the nose burnt to death, trapped in the nose by the nose wheel. I never cared much for B-24's because they were basically a hydraulic operated plane in contrast to B-17's which were primarily electrically operated. One of my close calls. I still have the receipt for the rewound transformer, dated 23 May 1942, to remind me of my angel's intervention.

I was called to take part in the Court-of-Inquiry into the accident and stated what I knew about the installation. Although I did not know it at the time, our C.O. was suitably impressed by my performance then and while I was at Essendon to recommend me for Corporal. I was a Corporal for two months and never knew it. If I write a lot about Australia as I saw it during this period it is because it is when I most learned about the Aussies. As mentioned earlier, their brogue took some getting used to, but we all did get used to it, tended sometimes to unconsciously use some of it, and picked up words like "Digger", "Sheila", Tram, Lorry, Jumbuck, etc.

Melbourne was a combination of the old and the new. It was definitely a world-class city yet it was not uncommon to see a herd of sheep being driven down Little Collins Street, in the middle of the city, to a suburb called Footscray where there were slaughterhouses. Picture the same thing happening down Chicago's Outer Drive and you will have an idea of what it was like. Walt Disney's movie "Fantasia" was shown there in its uncut version and I really enjoyed it. Because gasoline was in extremely short supply the taxi cabs had some sort of a charcoal burner affixed to the rear of the car; it generated some kind of burnable gas and was very smoky in operation. One petrol station, as a joke, advertised 100 Octane charcoal.

The weather around Melbourne is much 1ike Georgia, cold in the winter - though seldom below freezing, pleasant in the summer because of its closeness to the ocean. Snow does occur on the mountains, just to the north, during winter. I never cared much for beer but I was introduced by my cobbers to Victoria Bitter and Bulimba Pilsener there. The Aussie beer was around 14 per cent alcohol and required some "intake control" on my part. The pubs were similar to the English pubs seen in the movies; not quiet but not boisterous either. I never saw any drunks or fights in the pubs; and of course there were the ever-present dart boards. The Aussie coffee was pretty bad; most of them - if they drank it at all - made it about half milk. So I drank a lot of tea, which I like anyhow. I will say the beer was good and I managed to bring home with me, years later, two bottles for my step-father Ben.

The people were very friendly to us Yanks. The Aussie military were OK as a rule but were sometimes outspoken about the difference in pay in comparison with us. I think it occurs in all countries: service men in the same line, such as airmen, are more friendly than with those from other branches such as the infantry. I saw it at the base where we were quartered - we were genuinely liked by the Aussie airmen. To go into town we took the trams. The conductor would sometimes (though more often not) hold out his hand for a ticket or coins, but it was generally the custom that military personnel rode free on the trams and were never pressed to pay. We were paid in Australian currency, and it took some getting used to, but American dollars were also accepted almost everywhere in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane. I don't remember how much an Aussie Pound was worth, somewhere around $4 I believe. There were 20 shillings (bobs) to a pound, 21 to a guinea. Paper money consisted of pound notes of various denominations as well as 10 bob and 5 bob notes. Coins included the shilling (bob) which was 12 pence, sixpence, threepence, penny (a large copper coin), and ha'penny. There was also a two bob coin called a florin; didn't get a lot of them in change - sort of like our silver dollars. Florins generally commemorated some special event - one that I have celebrated the coronation of king George V. The Aussies use the "stone" as a common weight measure; it means 14 lbs. If asked, an Aussie might reply that he weighed 10 stone 12, meaning 152 lbs. They also used "fortnight", meaning two weeks. We used to kid them about having a "furlong, stone, fortnight" system instead of the centimeter, gram, second system.

One of the dances I was invited to was in a big place like a school gymnasium. The people danced in a column, maybe four couples across, circling the whole floor with no one dancing in the middle. I never learned to dance but enjoyed hearing some music. The composition "Boogie Woogie" was sort of murdered by the local band, and the radio played a lot of Bing Crosby songs. I quickly learned the Aussie marching song "Waltzing Matilda" and could sing it with the others.
To Townsville, Australia

My outfit, the 4th Air Depot Group, had set up repair operations at Tocumwal and Wagga Wagga north of Melbourne. The truck picked me up at Essendon and we drove to Wagga Wagga. It was good to meet Bro and Lou and talk over what had happened to us since I left Geelong to go on Detached Service. Within a day or two we boarded a special train for the long haul to Townsville way north in Queensland. Each of the Aussie States had a different railroad track gage. This meant that we had to reload between Victoria and New South Wales, and between NSW and Queensland. The railroads in Queensland are narrow gage, Toonerville Trolley type. The box cars are small, perhaps a little more than half the size of our standard freight cars. Many of our 6-by' s , recons, water and fuel carriers, etc. were loaded onto flat cars (again small) and a lot of us, myself included, were assigned trucks being carried on the flat cars to live in during the trip north. I think we had the best travel, better than those who had to ride in trucks travelling the roads -we got to see a lot more of the countryside on the way and could get out of the trucks and stretch our legs on the flat cars.

Our train would periodically stop for meals at temporary mess tents set up by personnel driving ahead of the train. As we got farther north it became much warmer and in Queensland we saw our first kangaroos in the wild and heard our first kookaburras; the latter a very noisy bird that sounds like a mad woman laughing hysterically. The train would stop at times because sheep were being driven across the railroad, and also so the Aussie train crew could have their morning and afternoon tea. Once we stopped for about a half hour and the word came down that we were waiting until a herd of sheep had cleared the tracks. We moved on for an hour or so then stopped again. The word came down that it was not another herd of sheep - it was the same one! At one of our stops outside a town in Queensland we were able to buy fresh pineapples which gave us sore mouths because of the fibres. But they tasted good.

I wish I could remember the time of year in 1942 when we reached Mt. Louisa near Townsville. I believe it was the beginning of the rainy season, August or September, because I do remember that first day there, putting up our 6-man pyramidal tent in the unending rain at the foot of the mountain. We had no floors, of course, and it rained so hard that lots of things washed down the slope of the mountain and through our tents - including lizards, ants (big black ones), tarantulas, and snakes. Again we were so thankful for our air mattresses which kept us out of the sheet of water running through our tents. That next morning I heard a noise just outside the tent from where I was lying. I cautiously raised the side of the tent enough to peer out - and found myself staring at a rain-soaked bedraggled horse! Later I found that there were a lot of semi-wild horses in Queensland, and Lou caught and tamed a black one he named Diablo. So, on this less than auspicious morning, I began my couple of years at Townsville and points north.

TOWNSVILLE

Our first job was to get our tents put up solidly and dig trenches around them to divert water. With our cots and air mattresses we were able to make do. We rigged ropes inside from the central pole and hung our duffle bags, spare shoes, backpacks, etc. from the ropes. Before too long we were assisting in making and receiving wooden floors for our tents, and then got back our footlockers. The black ants do not like the rain and often climbed up the tent ropes into our tents and then into the cots where the canvas wraps around the frame and leaves channels where they could live. It was a constant battle for a while. They also would try to settle in our gas masks. Snakes were a problem at first and we were re-advised that Australia probably has more different kinds of very venomous snakes than any other continent. We were issued T-bars for our mosquito nets right away because malaria was fairly common in northern Australia. Later, when it was evident that the outfit would leave Australia for areas further north, we had to take one or two Atabrine pills each day as a malarial deterrent. Of course pretty soon we were all as yellow as the yellow tablet paper of school days. Dengue was another mosquito-borne disease we were told about. Unfortunately I came down with it - it is rightly sometimes called "breakbone" fever, very painful.

I should mention that in northern Australia and in New Guinea there are really only two seasons - the wet and the dry seasons. In the dry season in Australia it very seldom rains; in New Guinea it only rains every day. However in the wet season in both it rains all day and all night with frequent and violent thunderstorms. For several months we assisted in building and outfitting the big hangars, in addition to our assigned sections and duties. Lt. Norman Gebhard put me in charge of the aircraft radio checkout section, after all I was a Corporal! Brovold "worked" for me even though he had more seniority than I had. I put "worked" in quotes because I was blessed with a group - I think about ten of us - who were self-starters and needed no supervision, just direction. Lou was over in the Repair Squadron and was an instrument repairer. My long time friend from Peru, Bud Brown, somehow got himself transferred to a Finance section at Brisbane and stayed there until he was rotated home. I saw him once while on a flight down to Eagle Farm - he borrowed ten quid from me and never paid it back.

The big wooden trussed-arch hangars were built for the repair and modification of aircraft coming from the fighting further north and also new aircraft coming from the States. These hangars were like huge Quonset huts in shape; big arches about 40 ft. high at the peak and long enough to house ten B-24's end-to-end with working room between. They were very wide and the various workshops and offices were arranged along each side. I don't remember how many hangars there were; my section was in R7, one of the repair hangars, though it later was only one of the hangars involved in the massive B-24 and B-25 modification projects we performed. (I will digress to say that several are still preserved (1997) as a part of the Air Park at Townsville, maintained by the Australian Air Force - something like the our Air Museum at Dayton, Ohio). In the early days there were no black-topped ways between the hangars, or anywhere else for that matter. Planes were either towed or taxied across the ground from Garbutt Field, the Townsville airfield which was maybe three miles away. The road from Garbutt to our base area was one of the first ones paved. Eventually there was a road from our tent city to the hangar complex but it was mostly used for supplies.

We generally walked from our tents to the big mess tent in the morning, then across the open country to our work at the hangars. During the rainy season we were taken to work in trucks and brought back at night the same way. During the dry season, when walking to work, if we looked a few yards ahead of where we were walking, we often saw a white silk-covered round plug of dirt snap shut. These were trap-door spiders of which there were many. And the ground was criss-crossed through the scrub vegetation with ant trails, maybe two inches wide. There are a species of tarantulas in upper Australia that are too big to get into a coffee cup - in hotels in Brisbane they are left in the rooms to keep down mosquitoes and are said not to be venomous when we would fly to Brisbane we were always put up in the Theatre Royal Hotel and the tarantulas were in the rooms. With the mosquito bars they were no more of a problem than other things we learned to do over there - like shake out shoes before putting them on.

There were termite mounds higher than a man back toward Mt. Louisa from our tents. Those of us who rode up on the train had been issued Tommy guns for guarding the train. We kept them in our tents until much later when our squadron supply building was built. We would sometimes target practice with them, shooting at the termite mounds with little effect - even a .45 doesn't penetrate far into the mound. Our normal work day was 12 hours with about an hour at lunch time when we would walk back to camp and to the big mess tent which handled all the squadrons. There were night shifts in some sections but my group was never involved. Meal times were staggered so as to take care of everybody. Later there was a separate Officers Mess. Sunday mornings were free for churchgoing or to sleep in. There were a couple of buses, like school buses, that went into Townsville about 6 in the evening and came back around 11 PM. It was free and run by our motor pool. The bus didn't carry many, there was nothing much to do in town and we were generally tired enough to eat, write letters, listen to the radio, or just shoot the bull. Townsville was different in that it surrounded a small mountain called Castle Hill by some and Castle Peak by others. Tokyo Rose welcomed us to Townsville and played American music and spouted all kinds of propaganda. There was no electricity in our tents, but the big mess tent - and later the mess hall - had lights at night. It was always open and there was always free coffee, as much as we wanted to drink.

As I mentioned before, my good friend Lou was a professional musician. He got a group of former professionals together - like Andy Steifel and Cece Bonsell - and formed the 4th ADG band. It played in a pavilion in Officer's country for dances held once in a while - for Officers only. A couple of bus loads of chaperoned girls would be driven in from town then back about midnight. The officer's area was across a fairly wide creek that ran between our tent city and theirs, but we could hear and enjoy the music. For us enlisted men- - well, later there were occasional beer parties. The beer was free but somehow it just never tasted right coming out of our metal canteen cups.

Slowly many of the service tents, like the squadron headquarters, were replaced with permanent wood buildings. One of the first was the big mess hall replacing the mess tent. A big cut was made in the mountain slope and the mess hall then built on the leveled-off area. Like the tent before, it became the place where we most often gathered at night. I will never forget the large cockroaches there. If my arms were on the table while writing a letter I would sometimes feel something at my elbow or along my arm, it would be a big cockroach two or three inches long.

About the last tents to be replaced were our 6-man pyramidals. Sometime in early 1944 barracks were constructed and our whole squadron (Hq & Hqs) was housed in two of them. There were other barracks for the other squadrons of the Group. In a way I was happier in the tent after we got wooden floors. I often lay on my cot in the evening with the side of the tent rolled up and watched the frilled lizards (not iguanas) that lived under our floors come out and run up and down the street between the tents. If they were startled they would hiss and extend the big frill around the neck. There are some memories of things that happened in the barracks: the barracks were long and wide enough to have cots along each side with about 3 ft. between cots. There were doors at either end. Each cot had a wooden T-bar affixed at the head and foot and the mosquito net stretched between them.

Through the day (unless on night shift) the mosquito netting was rolled up at the sides. I may have mentioned that Aussie pennies were large; imagine the noise if you came back to your cot after Lights Out, unrolled the netting, and a handful of pennies came clattering to the cement floor! Lots of angry voices, and snickers from the perpetrators. "Short sheeting" also was common. The bottom sheet was folded in half and of course there was no way to get your legs into the cot, so you either slept just under the blanket or tried to remake your bed in the dark. One night an old M/Sgt blew his brains out with his .45, about eight beds away from mine. After a while life was not too bad considering that a war was going on. Lou and several others built a set of stables at the edge of camp and bought semi-tamed horses from ranchers in the area. Lou and I (me on a borrowed horse) would sometimes ride "out back", away from camp and out into the bush. We always hung our Tommy guns from our shoulders because anything could happen if we got thrown and left on foot. But we only once had a pack of dingoes (wild dogs) follow us at a distance on our way back to camp. Some of the men hunted wallabies and had jackets made in town from the hides.
Several of us located a private home about a mile from camp where the family would do clothes washings for us at very reasonable costs. They were domesticated Abos (aboriginals), dark skinned, and educated. I believe the father worked somewhere at the base along with other Abos. In the early days the Nips would often send a plane over Townsville after dark. It flew very high and we called it "Midnight Charlie". Once it flew low enough that the air raid siren sounded. Several of us found ourselves in the gully and only half dressed. I had on my helmet, shorts, untied shoes, and my Tommy gun. We felt sort of foolish after the All Clear sounded.
When we first came to Townsville our CO was a Lt. Col. Tomlinson. The outfit was soon taken over by Col. Victor E. Bertrandias. We were assembled in a field near our tents and lined up for inspection. What a picture we must have made! - some of us with Tommy guns, some with .45s, some with no guns, some dressed in fatigues, some in partial uniforms. And then a Major had us pass in review at "Trail Arms"! How do you Trail Arms with a Tommy gun or a .45! We learned later that this Major was a reserve officer who worked for Standard Oil in one of the islands up north and had been evacuated ahead of the Nips. While I think about it, we had another command performance during one of the rainy seasons - Eleanor Roosevelt visited the Depot. We were assembled along the sides of one of the roads between hangars, in slickers or soaking wet, while she was driven by in a Jeep and was waving to us. Wonder if that made the news reels back home-

I will say something about Bertrandias because I liked him and he kept me as part of the crew of his planes. He was an old employee of Douglas Aircraft. Sometime in the late 20's or early 30's Douglas flew several of their commercial planes around the world as an advertising feat. Bertrandias went ahead and set up facilities at the landing sites, including those at major cities in Australia. He was a Command Pilot, which means he didn't have to physically fly the plane to be accredited with flying time, he just had to be in the plane. His home was in Encino, California and he moved in the better movie society out there, being a personal friend of many movie stars. He was of Basque lineage and had a good command of the Spanish language. With officers he was a martinet, but he was very good with enlisted men. I never found out for sure if he was ever an enlisted man but I think he was. He was very efficient as CO of our 4th ADG and of the activities of the Depot. He was a close friend of Gen. Kenney who was head of the 5th Air Force (of which we were a part). He was all military on the ground but soon as he got in the plane he was totally different, laughing, good natured, talkative with the crew on the planes intercom. A very likeable man. I know this, I lost any diffidence I ever had with senior officers, because of knowing him. Our first Engineering Officer was a Mal. Dishuck, a reserve officer and a shoe salesman from New York City. On his first tour of the hangars he was heard to remark " Oh! A big four-motored one!". If you know anything at all about aircraft then you know they have ENGINES, not motors. Major Dishuck left us soon.

The Depot grew until we could handle everything associated with aircraft. Our people could rebuild shot-up planes that looked as if they would never fly again. We had complete engine overhaul facilities with run-up booths. Engines were running in the booths night and day, and more than once I awoke in the night wondering what had happened to wake me - the last engine running that night had been shut down and the lack of that ever-present noise was startling. Near the mess hall was an oxygen manufacturing set-up with a big balloon. It stored the oxygen as it was made then drawn off by pumps and put in the oxygen tanks carried by the planes. I remember once when mechanics mistakenly hooked an oxygen line to the hydraulic accumulator on a B-26. The B-26 was up on jacks for landing gear checks and the plane caught fire when the system was activated. The plane was saved but took a lot of rebuilding.

While we repaired all kinds of aircraft, we also performed some major modifications on planes arriving from the States. The modification of B-24's included installing turrets in the nose and removal of the ball turret underneath. We converted several A-20's into P-70 night fighters with radar. Some B-24's also got radar. A very big modification was the installation of eight .50 machine guns in the nose of B-25' s and the addition of two . 50s on the outside of each side below the pilot and copilot. With the two .50s in the upper turret this provided fourteen .50s firing forward - some Nip ships were literally sliced in two from successive attacks. Until we developed a blast shield the side guns would pop rivets from the engine nacelles and cowlings, much to the consternation of the pilots. I was at Garbutt Field inspecting some just arrived P-38's and was surprised to find they were equipped with a totally different radio set. The new sets were SCR-522 and operated in the VHF bands; the pilot could select pre-tuned frequencies with pushbuttons. I immediately called Lt. Gebhard and he sent the head of the attached Signal Corps outfit to see what to do. We knew then that we would have another top priority modification to perform on probably most of the aircraft in the SWP theatre. The Control Tower at Garbutt did not have the new equipment and had to use signal lights to land the fighters. But very soon all Control Towers in the theatre were equipped with the VHF sets.

While I think of it, all planes were being equipped with a black box measuring about a foot in all dimensions. It was the IFF, Identification, Friend or Foe. It contained an explosive that totally ruined the inside of the unit when the explosive was detonated. The explosive was set off by any high G shock - like a crash landing - and also by two red buttons the pilot had to push simultaneously. We checked the device for operability by pushing either of the two red buttons but never both at the same time. We replaced a lot of those Top Secret devices because of stupidity by ground crew and pilots alike. As a part of my preflight routine I would call the Tower and ask "Is my cockerel crowing-"; an affirmative meant the IFF was operating properly.
I know that much of what I write here is not arranged timewise, nor even in categories, but it is what I remember of a more general nature during about two years there at Townsville. I got one furlough while there, but my flying took me to parts of Australia that most Aussies had never seen unless they happened to live there. I will try to put down my flying experiences in another section. Lou and I got a furlough together, two weeks. including travel time. We hitched a ride on a C-47 going to Brisbane, but since there were several of us on furlough the pilot stopped at Bundaberg and that's where we relaxed. We were on the second floor of the hotel; like many Aussie hotels in Queensland it was fairly large and had a covered porch that ran completely around the hotel at the second floor level. There was a beach and we spent most of our time there. One day Lou and I wandered down to the docks and made the acquaintance of a boat's captain. He and the boat were from New Zealand and he invited us on board. He asked us about the States and said he hoped to sail there some day. Meanwhile he was refilling glasses with rum. Well, rum takes a little while to hit but when it does - Look Out!. Neither Lou nor I really remember how we got back to the hotel, probably crawled up the steps to our room, and went dead to the world. Eventually the hammers stopped hitting our heads and we survived. But for more than a month afterward everything tasted like rum! We had to take the Toonerville Trolley back to Townsville. After the war, at reunions and at other times when Lou and his wife Betty, and my wife Delores, would get together it was one thing we never forgot.

I was promoted from Corporal to buck Sergeant in February 1943 on the recommendation of Lt. Gebhard. I was promoted from Sgt. to Staff Sergeant in May, 1944 on the direction of newlypromoted Brig. Gen. Bertrandias. I went into his office to thank him and he said he couldn't let Gen, Kenney's crew outrank his. HA!

(Addenda On the Internet I located Arlington Cemetery (www.arlingtoncemetery.com/vebertrandias.htm) and found this biography of Maj. Gen. Victor E. Bertrandias. As so many suspected, he was an enlisted man years earlier and had held every rank from Private through Maj. General. He was very well liked and respected by all of us).

FLYING

I was officially put on Flying Status (more money) in August 1943 but my flight records were updated back to April 1943. However I was flying check-outs from late 1942. Our check-out flights were routine, many over Magnetic Bay near Townsville. There is an island in Magnetic Bay that evidently contains a lot of iron ore because magnetic compasses are strongly affected near it. Many of the flights were also to towns in Queensland not a long way from Townsville - places like Charters Towers, Cairns, Iron Range, Bundaberg, Mackay, Rockhampton, Maryborough, Hughendon, Cloncurry, Cooktown, and inland once to Alice Springs. These flights were in all kinds of aircraft. There were many flights that I will never forget. In an A-20 flying up towards Cairns the pilot buzzed the Toonerville Trolley heading that way. We could see the men in the train engine as we streaked past at 300+ mph and down at their level. There was a beautiful B-25 landing the pilot made when only the nose wheel and right landing gear came down. He circled and tried to get the left gear down but it wouldn't work. He finally eased us in on the right gear and as the nose wheel hit, the left wing dug in and we ground looped. My radio position was just aft of the bomb bay bulkhead and my right shoulder was slammed against the bulkhead. It slightly cracked a shoulder bone and some of the bony fluid ran out into the surrounding muscles where it subsequently hardened. Heavy exertion of my right shoulder caused some pain for several years. In a B-26 over Magnetic Bay the pilot pulled up into a full power honest-to-goodness vertical stall, we just climbed on our tail until the engines couldn't drag us higher. At the top the plane shuddered as if it were breaking up then fell backward, tail first, for quite a ways before the pilot flipped us over and we came back to Garbutt none the worse. Also, in a B-26 I could look back towards the tail and see the Plexiglas window in the bottom of the fuselage where a .50 could be fired downward. On one trip across the Bay the pilot flew on the deck, so low that the props were throwing sea water up through the gun hole.
On a check-out in a B-17 (not Muffins) to Charters Towers we landed on the strip and had no brakes - the hydraulic hoses had sheared at take-off when the landing gear was retracted. The strip at Charters Towers ended in the hard sand and we simply continued past the end and on out into the bush where we finally stopped. We were towed back to the strip and to the apron where we waited until another plane brought new hoses, fittings, and hydraulic fluid. We, the crew, installed the new equipment then flew back to Garbutt.

Sometime in late 1943 or early 1944 we had a lot of B-25H aircraft come through. This plane carried a 75 mm cannon that fired through an opening in the lower left part of the nose. In one flight the pilot said they were going to fire it out over the Bay and if I wanted to see it I could crawl over the bomb bay and watch from there. So I crawled over the bomb bay dragging my chest chute with my feet. (Makes no sense now, if anything had happened I could in no way wriggle back across the bomb bay, let alone snap on my chest parachute). When that cannon fired all I could see through the forward windows was a big sheet of flame! And regardless of what the experts say, I say that B-25 definitely had a momentary stop, as if it had hit something. These B-25H's were used against Nip shipping, the plane would stand off and lob the big 75 mm shells into the Jap ships. I almost flew home in one of them later.

Another incident involving a B-25 was when we flew so low we raked a tree and landed with several branches in the elevators. For a long time I had a piece of one of the limbs. I think the pilot got punishment for that escapade because I saw him as Mess officer for a while thereafter. I am sorry I never got to experience the firing of all 14 forward firing .50's in a B-251 or B-25K; I wonder if a momentary loss of forward speed could be felt like in the B-25H. And this brings me to a legendary figure in the Southwest Pacific: Pappy Gunn. So much has been written about him and I won't attempt to repeat it. He got the idea of adding multiple .50's to the A-20's and B-25's to make the planes more deadly for the kind of war we were fighting there. He was responsible for the huge modifications to the B-25's that we performed at the Depot. My flight records show that on 19 June 1943 1 flew with Lt. Col. Pappy Gunn in our old B-18 "DAMFINO" from Garbutt down to Eagle Farm at Brisbane with Pappy as pilot. I do remember that flight - there are low mountains along the east coast of Australia, like the hills of eastern Tennessee, and Pappy flew AROUND them, not over them! He did not like to fly high. There was a story, not true of course, that he once flew a seaplane from Port Moresby down to Townsville and never got the hull up off the step!

Sometime in late 1942 or early 1943 an old B-18 (not a B18A) was flown to Townsville from up north. With Gen, Kenney's blessing it was assigned to Col. Bertrandias as his taxi for frequent flights from our Depot down to Fifth Air Force Service Command at Brisbane. A solid nose was put on the wreck and it was named "DAMFINO", which was our favorite response to anyone who asked what kind of plane it was. We flew this plane , mostly between Garbutt Field and Eagle Farm until in October 1943. I don't know what happened to that B-18, it may still be in the Air Park at Townsville, but I suspect it was scrapped. Earlier in 1943 a B-17E with the whole nose section missing was flown in to Garbutt; it had a plywood bulkhead affixed just forward of the pilot's area for the flight. Gen. Kenney gave Col. Bertrandias the go-ahead to rebuild it and use it as his taxi. The plane was B-17E serial #41-2660 and was subsequently named "MUFFINS" which was Bertrandias' nickname for his wife. About the only modifications we made after installing a whole replacement nose section were removal of the ball turret, and later removal of the top turret. Tojo tanks were added in the wings to increase our flying range. I was part of its first crew consisting of T/Sgt Pack, Andy Walkowiak, myself, and one or two temporary members if needed for a particular flight. Co-pilots and Navigators were assigned from Flying Officers at the Depot, some of whom were transient or waiting to pick up modified or repaired planes. Except for the two turrets we were fully armed. I had a pair of .50's that could fire from above the radio compartment - they stowed above the bomb bay and could be slid out on a mount when the upper hatch was removed. Our first flight in this bird was on 23 October 1943 down to Brisbane to show it off to Gen. Kenney who also had a B-17E. That flight was sure a lot different from our earlier flight that same month in the old B-18. Sometime soon T/Sgt Pack was rotated home and we got a new Crew Chief, T/Sgt Taubert.

We flew to Brisbane often because Bertrandias had to keep Gen. Kenney informed of what was going on. We, the crew, enjoyed these trips - they were as good as a furlough or maybe better. We always stayed at the Theatre Royal Hotel in downtown Brisbane and got to see movies and vaudeville acts at the Cremorne Theater, through the smoke because people smoked in the theaters while the shows were going on. Across the street from the hotel was a little restaurant up on the second floor of the building. It was not fancy at all, just bare tables and wooden floor, but it was kept clean. For just a few bob we could have a breakfast of eggs, bacon or ham (maybe. Maybe it was cured kangaroo but it tasted good), biscuits, papayas, and miserable coffee. We ate other meals at the better restaurants in town. Bertrandias would leave word at the hotel the evening before he wanted to go back to Townsville and we would check out early and take the tram out to Doomben; it was only a short walk to Eagle Farm from the tram turn-around. We would pre-flight and be ready to load up and leave.

Sometimes we would fill the storable areas of the plane with things to take to the Depot. And besides military materials we loaded barrels of Coca Cola syrup, cases of cigarettes, beer, etc. Our heavy flight jackets were made from sheepskin with the fleece side on the inside. These were bigger than the mechanics jackets and the collar was high - above my head. There was no heat in the plane, of course, and even flying at only 10k feet it would get pretty cold and the jackets were necessary. They could be plugged into the plane's electric heating boxes for heating at high altitudes. Anyhow, on one flight Bertrandias got a small collie puppy. He gave it to me to take care of on the flight back to the Depot. It did get cold in the plane and the pup was shivering so I got one of our spare flight jackets, put the pup on it, and set it on the floor beside my seat. Bertrandias came back to see how the pup was doing and I showed him - it had crawled into one of the sleeves and only its face was visible, a very warm pup. But the little bugger peed in the sleeve and we had one heck of a time getting rid of the smell!

We made several flights to Bankstown near Sydney. We stayed in a very old hotel downtown. We visited Bondi Beach, St. Kilda, King's Cross, and the amusement park at the foot of the big bridge - even went for a ride on the roller coaster there. But I don't remember the people of Sydney being as friendly as those in Brisbane. Probably the flight I remember most was the one where we circumnavigated Australia, seeing parts of Australia that most Aussies never would see. Ostensibly the trip was to locate potential bases in Australia that would be our line of defense in case the Nips made it over the Owen Stanley mountains in New Guinea and over-ran Port Moresby. Of course the Nips were turned back at Guadalcanal and they never made it across the mountains. I really think this flight around Australia was a boondoggle, cooked up between Bertrandias and Gen. Kenney, for the sole purpose of letting Bertrandias meet some of the people he knew from the Douglas Aircraft round-the-world flights in which he participated before the war.

We left from the Depot at Townsville in our B-17E "Muffins". My flight records do not always spell out where we landed so I have to rely on memory. We headed northwest and stopped at several places before getting to Darwin. I do remember Darwin, it was bombed out by the Nips out of Timor and looked like the German cities after being hit by our day and night bombing over there. We were in at Fenton, south of Darwin - I think this was a Dutch Base using B-25's against Timor (Aerothentic comment - this is correct). We headed west along the coast, landing at Derby and Broome. Somewhere in that northern desert we saw a big sand devil and we dropped down to see how high it was - it was over 1000 ft; I believe the sand would strip flesh if you were on the ground and that thing ran over you.

From Broome we flew along Eighty Mile Beach, beautiful but desolate, just white sand, part of the Great Sandy Desert. Near Port Hedland on the west coast we were in the mica region. The ground sparkles with the mica and it is a principle source of the world's mica. We continued on south along the coast, landing at Carnarvon and Geraldton before landing at Perth. I don't remember where all we stayed overnight on the trip before we got to Perth - I remember overnight at Broome because I drew the short straw and had to stay with the plane while the rest of the crew went into town. We did stay overnight at Carnarvon too. We were at Perth for nearly a week and enjoyed seeing the town. Then it was heading east across the Great Victorian Desert of Western and South Australia. I remember stopping at Kalgoorlie, the little station at Cook, and at Woomera, before landing in Adelaide. And no one who has ever flown along it will forget the longest straightest stretch of railroad tracks in the world - the tracks across the Nullarbor Plain that run from Perth to Adelaide Just two railroad tracks in a straight line disappearing on the horizon!

MISCELLANEOUS

A few odds and ends memories before leaving Australia. There were some black-topped strips at the Depot where planes were parked until they could be put into the repair or modification lines. Those strips were "out back", away from the main areas, and consequently were not patrolled routinely. There were 20 to 30 of our C-47's parked at one of the strips, OUR planes, not belonging to the Aussies. A roving patrol one day saw a crew of Aussies removing an engine from one of the C-47's; and when the situation was looked into it turned out that the Aussies had stolen engines out of about half of the planes. Engines were always in short supply, even with our engine overhaul facility, and the Aussies simply couldn't get engines for their planes. They got to keep the engines, of course, but had to pay for them.

We had Australian butter in the mess hall. It was called "renovated" butter and had the consistency of axle grease, but it withstood the heat without going rancid. It didn't taste much like butter but it was better than nothing at all to swab on bread. I had my first taste of Spam there - canned 2nd lieutenants as we called it. Actually it was alright but after awhile it became something we did not particularly look forward to. And have I mentioned the green powdered eggs- We used to jokingly accuse the mess sergeant of breaking up ping-pong balls and sprinkling the pieces in the powdered eggs so the troops would think the pieces were eggshells and we were eating regular fried eggs. While remembering food, we always kept a healthy supply of K-Rations in our B-17 because we (the crew) were never sure, on a flight, where we would spend the night. Often it was under the plane with the bomb bay doors open, and sleeping on our cots and with the mosquito bars which we also kept in the plane. The K-Rations were sealed green boxes about 3"x 5"x 9" as I recall. There were varieties containing foods such as cheese, pork and beans, sardines, bacon, beef, crackers (often wormy), a package of two cigarettes, a can opener, and sometimes hard candy or chewing gum. The can opener was a real gem, I still have one from those days; it is small enough to fit on a key chain and will open any can.

At the Depot there were civilian representatives of all the major wartime aircraft suppliers such as Boeing, Consolidated, Pratt and Whitney, Curtiss, Allison, Martin, North American, G.E., etc. They were technically trained by their parent companies and were with us to solve problems that developed with the products and to provide liaison service in general. They wore officer's uniforms but without insignia, they ate in the officer's mess and had most of the privileges of commissioned officers. We called them "Feather Merchants" - don't know why, it wasn't a degrading term, most of them were very friendly and helpful.

By wartime all of our planes were equipped with the SCR-274 Command Set radios. These were mainly for pilot's use with other aircraft and control towers. As mentioned earlier that system was replaced by the SCR-522 VHF system in fighters, and added to other aircraft. On our B-17 we had both the VHF and the LF sets. Bombers that carried radio operators as crew members also had a much higher powered radio system. I forget the nomenclature but my transmitter was a BC-375 with a pair of VT-4C tubes in the output. On our B-17 the left wing was loaded as the antenna, and there was a relay to ground the receiver when transmitting so as not to burn out the tubes. The receiver was a very good one and many were used by Hams (Amateur Radio Operators) after the war. Most bombers and cargo planes also had remote-controlled trailing wire antennas. The antenna wire was on a reel and had a heavy lead ball on the end of the wire so that the wire would reel out behind the plane below the tail. I could energize the reel motor to unwind the antenna or reel it back in to the lead ball stop. Well, 333kc was a frequency used by the Aussies at several of their bases and that low frequency requires a lot of wire reeled out even to load up at the quarter wave node. Need I say more - coming in for a landing and forgetting to reel in the antenna meant a loose heavy lead weight falling somewhere in the scenery. I did it twice!

One of the more irritating pests in northern Australia is the sandfly, so small that it is almost invisible. They will land on the skin then eat the skin in a circular pattern and you don't feel that. But eventually they reach meat and then you feel the bite and can see a little spot of blood at the bottom of the crater. The real problem, aside from the sting when they reach red flesh, is that the bites will become infected. We carried a salve of some sort that acted as an antibiotic.

AIRCRAFT

Through the two years I was at Townsville our Depot repaired, rebuilt, and modified every type of aircraft that was in the SWP theatre. Not all were ours, we worked on some Australian, and many Dutch planes from their bases in the Indonesian islands. There were all kinds of stragglers that came in as a result of the Nips overrunning in the north. Many of those planes I had never seen before, like P-43 fighters, Navy SBD's, etc. We did what we could to keep them combat ready but they were not much of a match against the Nip Zero in the early days. Early fighters we worked on included the P-38's, P-39's, and P-40's that were used throughout the war. Later came the P-47's, P51's, some of the large P-61 night fighters, and a few P-63 King Cobras. I saw my first P-47 at Garbutt Field and it looked so different because of the wide spacing of the landing gear. Medium bombers included A-20's, A-26's, B-25's, and B-26's. I remember one old B-25C named "Der Schpy"; and three B-25's came through our Depot having on the sides "Boom Boom", "Dittum Dattum", and "Waddam Choo"; named after the catchy tune of the period called "The Three Little Fishies" (Aerothentic comment - all assigned to the 345th Bombardment Group).

Heavy bombers were the B-17's and B-24's. Most of the B-17's were phased out in favor of the longer-ranged B-24's. The A-20's and B-26's were mostly replaced later in the conflict with A-26's and B-25's. I liked the B-25 and had a lot of flying hours in them. The Dutch with a base south of Darwin loved the B-25's and racked them around like fighters. There were a multitude of C-47 cargo planes, both ours and Aussie's. There was one Curtiss-Wright CW-22B that came down from one of the islands. It was a little monoplane with one .30 caliber machine gun firing through the prop like WW1 planes. We installed a radio in it and Col. Bertrandias loved to fly it around the area. T/Sgt Howard Pack was crew chief on it and one day when he was running it up he inadvertently pulled the landing gear lever and dumped the plane flat on the ground. I watched while he got out on the wing and hung his sun hat on top of the vertical antenna mast we had installed, got down, and walked away shaking his head. The plane was scrapped because there were no replacement parts for the ruined engine and prop. T/Sgt Pack was my first crew chief, first on our B-18 then for a while on our B-17. He was an American Indian from some southwest tribe, a college graduate, and an artist. He was rotated home early because of wounds received in the Phillipines.

PAPUA & DUTCH NEW GUINEA

Sometime in July, 1944 or thereabouts the General called us -his B-17 crew - into his office at the Depot and said that his duties would soon be taking him north for several months and then he would be going back to the States to help the war effort. And he said he would be based at Wright or Patterson Field. He had made a couple of trips home in the earlier years, hoping to impress upon factories and the general public what we were up against over here and how we were doing. The biggest push in the States was material and men to whip the Axis and we were sort of second on the totem pole. He was an eloquent speaker and must have done some good in inspiring factory workers - we got one P-38 from the States that was entirely paid for by Lockheed Aircraft workers and all their names were painted all over the plane. It seemed a shame to paint camouflage over the names. Anyhow, the General said we had a choice: stay with the 4th AD Gp. or come with him. There was no hesitation on our part, we opted to go with him. As I mentioned earlier, when not flying on trips in our B-17 I had duties at the Depot as NCOIC of the check-out crews and reported to 1st Lt. Norm Gebhard. He was a little unhappy at my choice but acknowledged it was a better deal for us. My buddy Brovold was put in charge of my group after I left. At the meeting the General told us to shed non-essential things we had picked up over the years in Australia and get ready for the islands north.

I don't know if I mentioned it but I got bit by a mosquito carrying Dengue Fever and spent a little time in the Base hospital with it. It is very unpleasant to have and its name "break bone fever" is well deserved because that is what it feels like is happening. I never got malaria, probably because the Atabrine we took each day made us so yellow-skinned the mosquitoes were afraid to bite. As a part of our preparation for moving we also got cholera shots. Mine put me in the hospital for about a week. My reaction to that shot was severe - out of my head for a while - and I can understand how terrible it is for people who die from cholera during epidemics. But, in preparation for the move, I got everything into a B-4 bag, an E-1 bag, and a duffel bag; including two bottles of Aussie beer to eventually bring home for my stepdad, Ben Wibel, who liked beer.

Before moving into New Guinea we made several flights north from Townsville and all those flights took us over the Great Barrier Reef off the Queensland coast. Those coral reefs are the largest in the world and are really something to see from the air - not only the green of the sea water but all the reds and yellows and colors between of the coral. Our first flight to New Guinea was to one of the strips outside Port Moresby; I don't remember if it was Seven Mile or Seventeen Mile strip, we were frequently at each at different times. As indicated, the strips were located that many miles out of Port Moresby proper. Once we had to have a Jeep take us into town to get a generator for our #3 engine. I remember installing that generator because it was very hot and I had to put Pal nuts over the mounting nuts, only by feel with sweaty fingers, in a nearly inaccessible part of the engine. I remember the road going into town, it ran right along the coast and was bordered by palm trees, very picturesque. The driver took us on a little northwest of town to see Gen MacArthur's base up the side of a mountain. The driver said the road up the mountain cost a million dollars to build; don't know where the figures came from - native labor was non-existent and the Corps of Engineers got regular Army pay even if the road was for MacArthur.

We had our first experience with the overseas American Red Cross there at the strip near Port Moresby. We went to get some coffee and were charged for it. Thereafter we went to the tents of the Australian Comfort Fund where everything was free - even cold mutton sandwiches if you could stand to eat the things. That charging by the Red Cross didn't sit well with us and I am still peeved about it. I do contribute to the Red Cross once a year and still take the opportunity to include a gratuitous remark about their wartime charges overseas. They always send me a thank you letter - maybe they do that though for everybody, not for just a perennial griper. We saw our first Fuzzie Wuzzies there near Port Moresby; they are the native negroid race and get that name from their fuzzy hair. They differ from the Polynesian and Malaysian brown people with straight black hair who live farther north in what was then Dutch New Guinea. The southern part of New Guinea is Papua and belonged to Australia, the northern part belonged to the Netherlands. In Papua we used Aussie money; later, in Dutch New Guinea, we used guilders, a Dutch coin worth about 27 cents at the time. Anyhow, some of the Fuzzies seemed eager to talk with us, using a pidgin English which we only partly understood. They had scaly skin because of the jungle climate, and most that we saw wore nose-bones, ear-bones, were heavily tattooed, and wore paint on their faces and bodies. One Fuzzy Wuzzy we saw was like a tribal police officer; he had a medal hung around his neck that proclaimed him to be an officer of Her Majesty's Government in England.

We made many flights during September to Milne Bay, Popandetta, and other bases in Papua. Near Wau a fighter group had almost gone native, had built the thatched huts to live in instead of tents, and had hired natives as servants. Our co-pilot told us the group was very reluctant to leave and were essentially being forced to move on north. It is probably mostly an untrue story, much like the "Bomb Thursday" over in the Solomons, but also did have some elements of truth - like the well-built huts which we saw. We innovative Yanks seem to have made the best of whatever was available! We were at Lae and saw the sunken Nip troopship in the sea at the end of the airstrip. Many years later, in Mishawaka, I talked with a C-47 pilot whose most vivid memory of the times was of almost crashing into the ship during his landing approach. We were often at Finschafen and Nadzab. "Finsch" was on the coast and Nadzab was inland up the Markham River from Lae. I saw a "Baby Flat-top" carrier for the first time at the port at Finsch. I believe they were used to ferry fully assembled fighters from the States and I was told the deck was long enough to launch fighters as well - but I never saw it happen and the deck didn't seem that long to me. At Finsch, as well as at other bases where we stayed, we stayed in the transient area tents and generally ate in the transient mess. One thing I learned then, and it was still true Stateside even during the Korean conflict, was that the airbase transient messes were better than those for base personnel. There was no rank segregation, the General often ate with us, and no matter what time of day or night we arrived we could always count on a good meal at the transient mess tent.

Finschafen was decidedly tropical, even more so than some of our other stops. The jungle grew right along the airstrips. At the time we were there the closest Nips were on up the coast at Madang and Wewak so we had no problem with snipers there. One time at Finsch, after we had eaten and checked into one of the transient tents we, as usual, unfurled the mosquito bars and tucked the sides under the blankets. We went to the shower stalls (cold water, of course) and while there someone stole my shoes. I had to wear the wooden shower clogs all the way back to the tent then get a Jeep to drive me out to the plane to get my spare pair from my duffel bag. It was dark when Andy and I got back to the tent and we were ready for the sack. So, again as usual, after lifting the mosquito bar on one side, slipping in onto the cot, putting my shoes at the foot, I turned on my flashlight to check for any mosquitoes that might be inside with me. No mosquitoes - just a big black scorpion halfway up the net at my feet. I let out a yell they could hear for a mile and managed to settle down enough to "scratch one" scorpion with my shoes. You can bet we all checked more carefully after that. We never left our shoes on the ground overnight in the islands for two reasons: scorpions, spiders, and snakes crawled into them; and secondly, the shoe soles grew hair. Fungus grows very rapidly in that environment. It even grows on the planes - not on the metal but on the dirt stuck to the skin. And we could never go barefoot there because of the fungus. We all developed ringworms in places on our bodies and had to rub in Whitfield's Ointment to kill the infections. I also got some sort of fungus on my chest that I have never got killed. Even today it sometimes breaks out in spite of the potent anti-fungus creams available; sulfur ointment, a mixture of flowers of sulfur and Vaseline, does best in controlling it. My brother Bud was in the 3rd Marine Division in the islands north of me and had fungus grow into one of his feet; he had a lot of problems getting rid of it and was still being treated medically for it after being discharged, but didn't lose his foot.

The worst lightning and thunderstorm I have ever experienced was at Finschafen. Lightning struck two of the transient tents very near to us and killed several men. We helped the Medics that night, checking the other tents for any more injured. We also learned to keep our feet off the ground during those severe lightning storms if we possibly could. When we slept in or under our plane we felt pretty safe from lightning strikes. We saw a few USO shows in Papua and a few back in Australia. I remember Joe E. Brown, the big-mouthed comic who had a baseball pitcher wind-up routine. One show had Borah Minnevitch and his Harmonica Rascals, another was a performance by Artie Shaw and his band. We liked the music; songs like "Why Don't You Do Right", Sunrise Serenade", "Rum And Coca Cola", and even the German marching song "Lili Marlene".

I see by my log that we were all transferred out of the 5th Air Force into the Far East Air Force in October, 1944. It didn't mean anything except that maybe we would be coming home sooner. We all had enough "points" to be sent home but were considered "Necessary For The Present".
My log shows that our last flight out of Townsville was in September, 1944. We re-located at Hollandia about that time in a tent encampment at the top of a ridge off Mount Sentani. Our B-17 was parked on Cyclops strip; there were many Nip planes piled along the strip where they were caught and destroyed on the ground. I cut a piece out of a wing of one of them and made a bracelet which I brought back with me. The metal was very thin and brittle and accounted in some degree for Nip planes breaking up easily when hit by our .50 guns. I don't know whatever happened to that bracelet -perhaps like my jungle knife I also brought home and used to cut our wedding cake, it simply disappeared over the moves and the years.

The mess tent at Hollandia was on an adjacent ridge across a gorge, so it was an up and down thing to go eat. We were not in a transient area, one of our tent mates, Jeff, belonged to some outfit stationed there. He was an entrepreneur, he took some of the 1/4 guilder coins, drilled holes in them, tied them together with copper wire into bracelets and sold them to Navy personnel down on the docks at Humbolt Bay. The Navy men paid dollars for the things which cost no more than 50 cents to make. We did occasionally get beer and cigarette rations free. The beer was Naragansett and the cigarettes were Picayunes - really off-brand names. The good stuff was siphoned off by personnel down in Australia and never made it to New Guinea.

Because of our constant flying (and for a General, no less) we were exempted from any kind of squadron duties. In fact, I don't believe we were even assigned to any squadron. We had pay books then and could get paid at any military base. Back at Townsville when we returned from a flight we were almost automatically assured of pulling one or two days of Charge of Quarters duty to catch up in the roster. There were many Nips around Hollandia, starving out in the jungle. There were constant patrols around the base facilities, including our tent complex. The starving Nips occasionally broke into tents and several times were caught in our chow lines. Everyone was armed, we had our .45s and wore them even to the mess tent. It was very hot at Hollandia, so hot through the day that at night when the temperature would drop to 90 we slept under a blanket with .45s handy. We only worked on our plane down on the strip during mornings when it was a little cooler. There was a small stream near us, running down the side of the mountain and we would sometimes go there to cool off. There were a lot of rock pythons along the stream but we ignored them after being told they were not venomous and were too small to bother a human.

We made many flights to Nadzab. It was located on a plain with mountains on either side of the base. Kunai grass, eight feet tall or more, grew all over the area. It was a big base, having fighters, attack planes, and B-24s. There may have been P-61 radare-quipped night fighters there too but the ones I remember were up at Biak Island. There was an A-20 group at Nadzab. We were out at the plane one day when a flight of A-20s returned after a strike at Wewak. A Nip fighter had entered the group like a "tail-end Charlie" and after some of the A-20s had landed he strafed the strip - not far from where we were watching and were positioned like a "sitting duck". On one flight out of Nadzab I saw out of my window that one of the left wing gas tank caps had a leaking gasket and had started siphoning fuel out of that tank. We landed in a hurry, afraid of the stream of 100 octane gas being ignited by the #2 engine exhaust. T/Sgt Taubert, our crew chief, said the General took the incident calmly but our co-pilot was close to hysterics.

On another flight from Nadzab back to Hollandia we flew over Wewak and got a bullet in our #2 engine supercharger flame wheel which promptly shattered into hundreds of pieces, many of which penetrated and stuck in the skin of the plane. The flame wheel rotates at about 4000 rpm at full power. We made it back to Hollandia on three engines and thereafter always flew a few miles out to sea when passing Wewak. On another flight from somewhere to somewhere we had a minor hydraulic fire in the bomb bay which Andy and I put out. We were thankful we were in a B-17 instead of in a B-24. I may have mentioned before that systems in a B-17 are mostly electrical, B-24s are mostly hydraulic with miles of tubing and connections that sometimes leaked. I have seen several B-24s burn, including that LB-30 at Essendon, but I never saw a B-17 burn. Our Crew Chief, Taubert, was a very nervous type. On one flight along the coast he came running back into my radio compartment, removed the overhead hatch, and yelled at me to get the two .50s down and charged because he had just seen a Nip fighter. He ran back to the tail and fired a burst at something. The General said he thought Taubert needed to go home soon, no lone Nip would want to take us on. I manned the .50s and let off a short burst at nothing; but it gave the armorers something to do, taking down and cleaning the guns.

At Nadzab we saw an A-20 returning from a mission and on his pass over the strip the canopy above the pilot came off, he landed OK. We visited Wakde Island a few times, up the coast from Finsch. The terrain there is much lower in the middle of the island and the landing strip was lower in the middle than at the ends. We watched some B-24s taking off for a bomb run on Halmahera far to the north. The planes would disappear from view then re-appear near the other end of the strip as they became airborne. Weird! The B-24s were heavily loaded with fuel and bombs for the long mission and one crashed and burned on take-off. As I think about it, I saw a lot of aircraft wrecks and burnings there in New Guinea. Returning planes were examined by feather merchants and Air Corps personnel for damage, with a view towards putting armor in the right places. Areas with bullet holes were generally considered to be OK because the plane made it back. The areas with no bullet holes or flak damage were looked at closely. I think the most shot-up plane I ever saw come back was a B-24 at Wakde.

A lot of the landing strips in New Guinea were of the interlocking metal sections variety, they made a noise when landing on them. Some strips were packed and smoothed-out earth or coral. Biak Island is all white coral along the coast and the strips were leveled-off coral. In the sunlight it was blinding, glaring white and sun glasses were really necessary. And of course the planes landing and taking off created continuous choking dust. I saw my first C-54 at Biak, it was much larger than the familiar C-47 and had four engines.

No one ever captured Wewak, it was bypassed after we gained air superiority from Finsch all the way up to Hollandia. It was not until 1951, according to an item in the newspapers, that the last surviving Nip soldiers turned themselves in to someone, probably Aussie patrol boats. Planes out of Nadzab would drop oil on the pitiful gardens the Nips attempted to grow, then ignite the oil with incendiaries, further starving them. Some C-47 crews would shoot at the Nips on the ground with Tommy guns poked out of the gun holes in the side windows of the planes. Our experience with the #2 engine supercharger was enough for the General, we never again flew over Wewak.

Another flight I will not forget was from Biak over to Los Negros in the Admiralty Islands. About an hour out of Los Negros the General alerted us to look out our windows. On either side we were being escorted by Navy or Marine F4U fighters. It seems our IFF had conked out and no one was taking any chances that we might be a captured B-17. They escorted us all the way to Los Negros and made sure we landed there. Coming in to Los Negros island we flew over Manus island. Manus was a big Navy base and had a huge drydock which was something to see from the air. Los Negros was my idea of what a South Sea Island should be - coral, with lots of palms, warm but not hot, breezy and, like most small islands (even our Florida Keys) not at all humid like it is along the jungle coast in New Guinea. I have the name Momote scratched on my mess cup and I don't remember where that was. It may have been the strip on Los Negros because my log shows a flight from Biak to Momote. We enjoyed about a week there, just walking around and watching the natives and the ocean. The natives there were definitely Polynesian, with straight black hair and a light mahogany skin color, and were very friendly to us.

Sometime about then we made a flight from Biak up to the Palau Islands, landing on Pelelieu I think. The Nip-held island just across a narrow stretch of ocean was Angor. On Pelelieu they had barbed wire hung with tin cans down along the beach to make noise if the Nips decided to come across. We were not there long, but long enough to get us another bronze star for the Western Pacific campaign. The Operations officer said that at night it was sometimes possible to hear the Nips across the water talking; we never did and were glad to leave there.

At Hollandia several G.I.s were poisoned by the homemade jungle juice. They would put fruit juice, coconut milk, medical alcohol, and other stuff into coconuts and bury them until the stuff fermented. The base medical officer posted a notice in the mess tent to the effect that the homemade concoctions should be brought in for testing and if OK then the stuff would be given back. Our tent mate, Jeff, brought some to the tent one day and we sampled it; Andy figured a horse must have been around when it was being made - it tasted terrible. Of course the water we drank, even down at the Depot at Townsville, was mostly out of Lister bags and heavily spiked with chlorine or some similar halide.
When we were in a Jeep and driving on the camp roads there were often natives walking leisurely along the road. They also laughed and yelled at us because us Yanks were always in a hurry to get somewhere. The story is that this is where the "Hubba, Hubba" originated, meaning "Hurry, Hurry". Could be, but that is not what it seemed to me they were shouting. My duties on the crew as radio operator and gunner was to get the weather codes for the flight from Operations and to be sure I had the latest call signs for the destination control towers and the AACS stations in the flight areas. During pre-flight I had numerous contacts to make to assure that the pilot's command and my liaison radio equipment were operating properly, that the IFF was transponding, and that all intercom boxes were OK. During flight we were mostly under radio silence unless directed by the General or the co-pilot to get weather reports for the destination areas. The weather transmissions were coded and I had to decode them and take the info up to the "office". Morse Code was almost always used but sometimes voice was also used. If there was any question of whether or not it was a friendly voice at the other end, we were asked (or asked) to say the word "LILY". The Nips can't pronounce the letter L very well and it comes out as "RIRY". The ceiling over the destination was given in "ANGELS", meaning thousands of feet. As long as we flew in areas where we had air superiority we generally carried just we six permanent crew: Pilot, co-pilot, navigator, crew chief, assistant crew chief, and radio op. In other flights, like up to the Palau group, we added gunners for the side and tail guns.

If the description of events in these later months seems disconnected it is because we were flying almost constantly and my memory is good for some things but the routine things get lost. The General came down to the plane one morning and said he was flying back to the States and he had it set up for us to follow as soon as transportation was available, by air or boat. A lot of B-25Hs were going back to the States and we might get home as crew. I would have liked that, but the boat came first. Homeward-bound at last!!!

STATESIDE

During our flights out of Cyclops strip at Hollandia during October, 1944 we had noticed the amassing of ships in Humbolt Bay. They were part of a force for the invasion of Leyte in the Phillipines. If I remember the way the General told us, our navigator at the time (don't recall his name) visited an old friend on board one of the ships, didn't get off in time, and went on to Leyte. What an awakening that must have been. My flight log shows my last flight out of Hollandia was on 5 December 1944; and we were told then that we were scheduled to leave in a day or two.

Anyhow, we had turned in our .45s and our heavy flight suits and had packed only what we could lug up the gangplank of a ship. I sure hated to turn in my fleece-lined flight jacket but with a barracks bag, my B-4 bag, and an E-1 bag I just couldn't carry any more. We boarded a Liberty ship, the John R. Lytes, and sailed out of Humbolt Bay 8 December 1944. We sailed south along New Guinea to swing around New Caledonia just in case there were any Nip subs waiting for ship traffic north of the island. We could see the lights of Noumea as we sailed by, it was far enough south to be safe from any Nip bombing. I digress to say that before enlisting at Patterson Field there were a lot of young people around the Twelve Mile, Indiana area that I came to know very well. They included the Wellings, the Robbins, the Cresses, the Balls, the Zartmans, the Swopes, and the Rusks, among others. So, after bedding down on the ship, who do I see- - Cloyd Rusk! He had been in Australia and the islands about as long as I had. Apparently he was unlucky enough to have to pull KP for a while during the trip home. But we had time to talk about some of our experiences there in the SWP theater.

The ship had none of the amenities like the President Coolidge had that I sailed on years earlier. The beds were again the many tiered bunks and the "mess section" was just another gray-painted steel room. There were the cooking facilities along one side and there were some long, chest high tables anchored to the floor, cross-wise to the length of the ship. The whole ship was painted a gray color. We had a black-out, no cigarette smoking on deck after black-out. We were not escorted, strictly on our own. There were quite a few injured troops aboard that were going home; some had to be led by Corpsmen because they were blinded, not with it mentally, or severely injured physically. Most of us slept on deck because it was too hot below. I only remember a few things about that trip back. I tried once to shower in the sea water showers, using the salt water soap; had to scrape off the soap scum. The food was adequate but not as it was on the President Coolidge, of course. We went down the serving line, twice a day, got our food in our mess kits, then stood at the tables to eat. On Christmas Day we had tomato soup made out of ketchup and canned milk. I do not recall any storms, but about two days out of San Francisco it was too cold to sleep on deck and we hit ocean swells. Eating became a real adventure and was sort of funny. The ship was rolling and we were attempting to keep our balance at the stand-up tables and eat out of our own mess kit, not out of that of the guys next to us as everything slid first one way then the other. When the ship went head-on into the swells, the front of the ship would sometimes come up out of the water then slam back; the ship would shudder and make a loud noise as if there was a loose anchor slamming back to the deck.
And finally, on 30 December 1944, we made port at San Francisco. We were met on the dock by a band that played as we disembarked. We were immediately put on boats and sent over to Angel Island where we left from three years before. We were not long at Angel Island; just long enough to get destination tickets and I believe we also got some pay. I tagged my jungle knife and it was mailed on to Mom and Ben's address near Twelve Mile. We then got on another shuttle boat, went across the Bay to the train station and boarded. I don't remember which train line, but after a few days and nights we arrived at the Indianapolis train station. Cloyd called his parents to meet us at the Logansport train station. They met us there then drove us to Mom's first and dropped me off there. What a sight we must have been - yellow as tablet paper and loaded down with our bags, it was pretty obvious we hadn't been Stateside for a while.

I am a bit fuzzy on the order of events after getting home and before reporting for duty. I think I got to stay home for a couple of weeks before boarding a train again. This trip across the country was on the AT&SF line, across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, then into Los Angeles, and then down to Santa Ana and the Navy's LTA base there. I was there for two weeks "Rest and Relaxation". There was no roll call, no formations; we could eat at a huge mess hall that was open 24 hours a day. We could take the Pacific Electric up to Los Angeles whenever we wished. We did have to attend "re-Americanizing" lectures a couple of times during the two weeks. They were sometimes humorous but were informative too - such as about how the civilian population had really gotten into the war effort, the rationing of many things, the taste of a T-Bone steak, driving on the right side of the road, and to remember that the war was not over - far from it. I have a newspaper clipping that shows me at that mess hall.

After the stay at Santa Ana, again it was a train back to Indianapolis and a bus to Camp Atterbury for orders. Andy and I were ticketed to Wright Field; we got there sometime in early March, uncertain as to our destiny. The General had indicated we would be his crew, but we had not heard from him. We had no duties at Wright so we suspected we wouldn't be there very long. We got our March flying time, on the 15th, in an OA-10, the Air Corps version of the Navy's PBY. Andy and I went through several debriefings concerning our experiences with equipment in jungle conditions, food situations, adequacy of medical treatment, etc. Walking down to the flight line and idling away time was our main activity at Wright. Wright Field was (and still is) the Air Corps experimental base and we saw several interesting aircraft there including the Bell jet fighter, and the Curtiss rear-engine, rear contra-rotating propellers, pusher fighter. It was called the "Ascender" for obvious reasons. Wright was a spit - and - polish base because of so much top brass there. We were used to having an honor pass to get off base, but not at Wright; it was more like we were in detention but with freedom of the base.

Actually, we were not long at Wright Field - it just seemed that way. My log shows my first flight out of Patterson Field in the General's new plane, a B-17F S/N 6057, on 25 March 1945. Patterson Field, of course, was old stomping grounds for us and we felt right at home there. We were housed in barracks in the same area where I was years before. We were issued honor passes again; we could now go home on weekends if not on a flight or pulling Squadron duty. The base was top-heavy with Non-Coms, returned from various theaters and awaiting discharge or re-assignment, and so even T/Sgts had to occasionally pull Charge - Of - Quarters duty, or various duties down on the flight line such as parking incoming aircraft, radio check-outs, etc.
Through the week we had roll call and calisthenics in the Operations Building. At one time it was the main hanger, but during the war the big "steel hanger" was built beside it. The two hangers were far enough apart to park several planes on the tarmac between them. The huge B-19 was housed in the steel hanger and one day we saw it outside and it was backing up! This was our first experience with reversible props.' If I remember correctly it had big liquid-cooled engines installed. We would sometimes see it taking off and, because of its size, it would seem that a person could walk as fast as it was moving. We heard later that it crashed and burned at
Bangor, Maine. I'm not sure if there were two B-19s built or only the one. It was huge. Shortly after my arrival back at Patterson I was told to report to the Squadron C.O. in the Ops Building. He had a glassenclosed office without a door. I barged right in where he was sitting behind his desk and put out my hand to shake hands with him. He was a much-decorated pilot, a Major. Did I get a comeuppance which I truly deserved! He snapped "Attention" and proceeded to read me the riot act on how to report to the C.O. Of course everything was overheard by others in the office areas and I never did quite live down that little episode. Later he walked out to our B-17 and talked with us about our experiences in the SWP theater and told us of his experiences in the ETO. He flew with the General and us to the west coast once and was actually a friendly person. It came out in our talks with him that he hated desk work and was expecting to be sent to the Far East soon.

I don't know what the General's assignment was at this time but whatever it was it called for quite a bit of flying around the country. In April we flew to Mobile, Alabama and to Gulport, Mississippi, then over to Warner Robbins in Georgia, then down to Miami, Florida. The stay at Miami was like a second furlough. We were put up in a fancy hotel on Miami Beach, all expenses paid. I suspect it was an east coast facility like the one we were at in Santa Ana earlier. There were only Air Corps "guests" in the hotel. It was right on the beach and we could go swimming any time. There was a "mess hall" in one of the big salons of the hotel and, like at Santa Ana, we could eat any time of the day or night. We were there five days before flying back to Patterson. The Old Man (the General) really looked out for us, his crew.

Sometime after relocating at Patterson Field and on one of my week end trips home (which generally was by bus, though sometimes "thumbing" a ride) I met Delores Taylor at Mom and Ben's house. Delores' folks, Russell and Mary Taylor, had purchased the farm on the next road south of Mom's; it was the farm that Earl Ball's parents had before the war. Through the coming months Delores and I became quite close and we looked forward to those weekends I could come home. She worked at the Ordnance Plant northwest of Peru and once we went to the plant so she could "show me off" to her fellow workers. Ha!

In May we (crew) spent half a month on a trip that took us to Tinker Field, Oklahoma then out to Van Nuys, California. After we got to Van Nuys we learned of V-E Day, 8th of May, when Germany surrendered. We made a lot of local flights out of Van Nuys to various California air bases. The General's home was in Encino, California and he spent time at home when he could. We mostly stayed at the Brevort Hotel in Hollywood and wandered all over the area. We visited the open air stadium there and once, at a live theater, saw Gene Tierney perform a scene from the movie "Laura". From Van Nuys we flew to Hill Field at Ogden, Utah and also to Salt Lake City. At Hill Field I located my best buddy, Lou Delaurentis, and we had a couple of hours at the PX to talk about what was going on. He was expecting to be discharged very soon. We then flew up to SPAAAF at Spokane, Washington and rounded out the trip by flying in to Lowery Field at Denver, Colorado then back to Patterson through a very severe thunderstorm somewhere over Nebraska. We were down on the deck and could see lightning strikes all around us. We had a transient pilot on board and he was chewing his fingernails to the quick!

June, 1945 was a quiet month for us. We made a few local flights in Muffins II and I see by my flight log that I also got some flight time in a B-25 and also in a B-26. There was some talk about the General (and us) being sent to the Far East but that never materialized. In July it was time for another west coast trip after a couple of trips to Andrews AFB across the runways from Washington National Airport. We flew down to Amarillo, Texas then on out to Van Nuys. We didn't stay very long out there this trip. On our way back we stopped at Lowery Field again and at Olathe Air Base near Kansas City, Kansas.

August was another quiet period; only local flights and then mostly for those who needed flight time for pay purposes. Those were my last flights during WW2. In August both T/Sgt Taubert and S/Sgt Andy Walkowiak were discharged. Though I had way more points than required, there was still some possible need for airborne radio ops and I was told to just sweat it out. In late August we dropped the Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. President Truman declared V-J Day on 2 September when Japan formally surrendered to Gen. MacArthur aboard the battleship Missouri. A bunch of us went into Dayton that night and the streets were crowded with people so glad the war was over. Things moved fast after V-J Day. I was sent to Camp Atterbury and discharged on 6 September 1945. Delores and I were married 30 September 1945 by Rev. Golden (of Denver, Indiana) in Delores' parents' home and we started our civilian life together then. I stayed in the Reserves and was recalled to active duty during the Korean conflict.

But that is another story.

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