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Total frustration.
I tried to excerpt MY OWN BOOK - damn!!
I went to my word files - these are pages from ch-2
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to come out of there (the appendix). They put a bed in my room for your Mother. She was the special nurse for me. They assigned you’re Mother --- just to me---its because the Army fucked up so badly.
She got sent home when she was pregnant. Managed to do that.
I was sent to camp Lucky Strike in La Harve to go home. All the camps had cigarette names you know, Lucky Strike, Chesterfield. Your Mother flew home. I came home on a fucking boat. I went through, I can’t remember---Metro something--- near where the plane crashed, then to the Azores to sail. I met her here, in New York on a ninety day leave home. I could have milked it, but really, after awhile you get sick of it. ninety days is a long time. They didn’t just let you go home? No. I took the ninety-day leave because I got paid for it. But they wanted me to take ninety more and ninety more and I didn’t want it. They’re trying to keep me in the Air Force. They sent me to San Antonio, God knows why. Did they discharge me there? ---Oh no-----had to go to Sioux City Iowa to get discharged. The Army fucked a lot of things up.
How were the German Air Force mechanics? Hell, they were just like regular Air Force mechanics except they were Germans. They took care of the planes. They didn’t give a shit about the war; they took care of planes. I remember in the morning trying to take off, and we didn’t have no radio, the tower used a light and I kept getting a red light. You stop. You can’t take off if you get a red light, you stop. And one of them came barreling down the runway in a jeep yelling, “Hey you got a flat tire”--- the right front tire had blown out. They saw it and came right away. They fixed it right there. Yeah, The Germans had good ground crews. I think some of them were better than ours. They kept my plane ready all the time. Topped off my tank, always running. I was always in the air. They were good.
I was back for about ten days or something after the hospital. I flew that son of a bitch from morning 'til night (the Cub). Oh, and I had a dog. A small French dog and he loved to fly. I put him in the back of the Cub. I used to pop the stick and he’d go (popping in the air) and he was my buddy. This was in Deauville, near La Harve. Deauville is on the water, Deauville Bay. That’s where the Piper Cubs were. I needed flying time so I got a Cub. I flew P-40s, P-38s, sometimes. I asked him about all the other planes he flew. I didn’t fly a 51 'til I was in the Guard. I flew a lot of planes in the Guard. The P-47, that was my plane in the war. I had my own plane then. That was my plane, that’s it right there (pointing to the picture). I had just got it. Did every pilot got their own plane? After awhile, you didn’t get one when you first got in. I had a lot of missions. That son of a bitch was shot down at four o’clock in the afternoon right after that picture was taken, a few days later---ground fire.
I thought you were shot down three times. I had two forced landings. One I had to bail out. One I landed in a Messerschmidt field, it was ours then, I mean we took it over. The last one I crashed. It was all from ground fire. They threw everything and the kitchen sink up there. Those German gunners were good. The worst gun of the war, that we feared, was the eighty-eight millimeter. They could use that son of a bitch for everything: aerial, ground and boy they shoot flack. Eighty-eight’s---they’d bracket you. Boom-boom-boom. They got a lot of us.
You have to understand that a mission might have three missions. You take off and you have three missions. They all count. I flew seventy-nine missions. You know the Army doesn’t count a mission if you don’t get the plane back. When I was shot down, the mission didn’t count. The forced landings, they didn’t count either. So three missions I flew, they never counted--- can you believe that shit? I sure as hell counted them. My plane was “Spurtle 52”. Well, the P-47 did look like a turtle, sort of, especially when it was in that olive drab green paint. We used to strip the paint when we got them. Yeah, the paint adds friction in the air when you’re flying---it slows you down a little. You know where the SP came from? Like, sperm whale---without the whale part, you know? Sperm and turtle----Spurtle (haha).
The first one, mission, was a weather recy (reconnaissance), remember,
on my first day there. I got there around ten o’clock and at one o’clock I was flying. Me and this guy from Alabama, and I never liked this son of a bitch, but we were going to check the weather---over fucking Germany---. Radar kept saying ”flight blah—blah—blah, we have two boogies”. We’re talking to each other scared shitless, on our first mission thinking, uh-oh, we got a fight ---but the radar was tracking us. They thought we were boogies, the stupid bastards. In the morning right at it again. We were short of pilots because a lot of our guys, like me, got shot down. We got no (combat) training. They stuck your ass in the plane and you start flying missions. How was it, the first time in combat? You were scared, scared shitless. Those were real bullets. A lot of it I don’t remember anymore, it’s faded. (Sarcastically) The first mission the radar is telling us there's boogies up there and their tracking us, remember. The Army fucked up a lot like that. That year I was 20. I was 21 that November. I was commissioned; I was married; I was shot down all in a year.
They offered me a job training pilots, training Brazilian pilots at Sao Paulo, Brazil. But Diane (my sister, Dad’s first child) was on the way and I didn’t want to go there.
Then when the Korean War broke out I was sure they were going to call me up and I hadn’t been active for like seven years. All you had to do was be warm. I got the letter and so I went down to take the physical and they attached me to the Pennsylvania Air National Guard--- PANG. I said you mean the Air Force. They said same thing. It wasn’t and I didn’t have to go over there, I mean our unit was never called up. But----I was flying fighters again.
In the war---over there I was in the 12th Tactical Air Command, 9th Air Corps. We flew escort and dive-bombing, strafing, mostly low-level stuff. Dirty jobs. Some of the missions I remember, not too many, but some. Which ones do you remember? I’m not going to do that now. I don’t want to even think about it. I killed a lot of people.
Some guys got killed that should have never got killed.
We used to try and out do each other, different squadrons. There were three squadrons and we used to, well, try to out do each other in kills,-- like trains, tanks, whatever. There was this guy, the Dago, he wrote down everything he got on the board-- “babies “. He was a bloodthirsty son of a bitch.
We used to call him the“ Dago from Chicago”, a hood. After that this guys smoking a cigarette on final and everyone knows how much the primer pumps leaked. Drip-drip-drip. He blew up thirty feet off the ground. There was not enough left of him to put in a bag. The fire was so intense it just melted. You really can’t imagine. I hated that son of a bitch.
Another guy, who was an instructor in basic flying school tried to stretch a glide. You cannot stretch a glide. You put your nose down, you can’t stretch it. He stalled out at about 500 feet and came down like a fucking pancake. He hit the ground. He didn’t blow up or burn, but his bones went through his parachute. You know---through his ass. Looked like hell. Smashed like a pancake. He was two feet tall---blood all over the place. I can still smell that.
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Now - you should be able to log onto the bookstore at xlibris and get similar excerpts -
but frankly, after this excercise - I have doubts.
I read some years ago a book called "Hardtack and Coffee" it is a classic now about the life of soldiers in the civil war - one of the best books I ever read on the subject - and the model I strove to hit in the book I wrote.
I don't have warm feelings about the publishers -I just don't - but they let me go, and I tried very hard to hit the same note Billings did in Hardtack and Coffee - with a 20th century flavor.
And I pulled out some very graphic details to do so.
I know you can get it on Amazon and Borders - It is cheaper at xlibris - and they overcharge, in my opinion.
Joe
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