I can’t remember the names of the towns anymore, but we got into a town and they put us into churches, and they were concrete floors and it was cold. The next morning the burgermeister of this town— we heard had a son who was a PoW in the U.S.— he [appeared to] take over from the military. They had pottery factories there in that town and they opened up the drying rooms and put a bunch of us in there. We were warm! We stayed in there two or three days, and then we marched out of there, not too far, to a railroad station, and they put us in these little boxcars—fifty to a car, you couldn’t even sit down. I still had my blanket, and two or three other guys had their blankets, and there were rings in the tops of the cars and we managed to get five or six hammocks up to get some of us off the floor and make some room for the others We were in there probably a day and a half, something like that, and we pulled into Nuremburg and went into a camp there.
Nuremberg was nasty, filthy, and dirty. We were there for a while. We’d walk into our barracks room and we’d see rats come running down the wall and walk across the guys who were sleeping. We got a cup of soup every day, and if it was bean soup there was a worm in every bean. I had seen my Dad throw that kind of stuff out; he wouldn’t feed his cows what we got. But if you’re hungry you’d eat it anyway. We had to get in a line to get water and all we could get was a tin can, though we were probably in that line for an hour. I got bitten from head to foot by bugs, and swelling all settled in my feet and I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t do anything. They put me in a barracks they called the hospital, and there was an American soldier there, a doctor who was running the hospital. He put a hot water bottle on it overnight and the next morning, they sat me up in the chair and he said, ‘Hang on’, and he had someone hold my shoulders. He cut a hole in my knee and squeezed out a cup of stuff. He had penicillin tablets and he didn’t know what they were because they were new, and he just stuck tablets in there. Would’ve done more good if he had fed them to me, but he put them in there and tore up a sheet and just wrapped it up. He said, ‘Now, we’re going to move out of here in a couple of days, so I’ll fix it up so you can ride in the train.’ And I told him, ‘No way!’ See, we had a radio in the camp—the Germans knew we had the radio, but they could never find it—and you could get the BBC. We had the information now that our boys [fighter planes] were shooting everything up even if it had a Red Cross on it. We had seen it as well; we saw the Germans load tanks on trains and cover them in sheets with a big Red Cross sign on it so they could move them to the front lines. Our boys had gotten wise to that, so I wasn’t going to get on any train at all. I’d rather walk. And afterwards, the doctors told me it was the best thing I could have done for my leg anyway.
[We had been in the camp near Nuremburg] for a month or so, and sure enough, the first day out, we got strafed by our boys. A couple of our guys got knicked, but they then flew right down the side of us, to see what we were and who we were. We just pulled our clothes off and made a big ‘PW’ sign and from then on we had a fighter escort all the way down into Bavaria, and this was a four to five, or maybe six-day trip. By then we were actually bribing the German guards to stay with us, because there were SS troops in the area, and you didn’t want a bunch of Americans just floating around down there, because those SS troops would just mow you down. So we were bribing the guards and even the civilians then; I saw a bunch of civilian women attack our German camp commander and they knocked him down, and were knocking him around pretty good. Before we got down there to Moosburg, we could have just walked off if we wanted. I found some kids in one town and bought some eggs off them with a couple of cigarettes that the Red Cross had gotten to us—one of the home guards came out and followed me to make sure I left the town and didn’t stick around, but by then the Germans were screaming and hollering, ‘When are the Americans going to get here?’, because they wanted the Americans to get there before the Russians did. One night we stayed in a farmer’s hay mound. It was nice and really clean hay. It was a nice place to stay. The war is still going on but the kids are out there playing, and you can see the kids’ ribs. And I asked him, ‘Why don’t you kill one of your chickens and feed your kids?’ His answer was, it’s a death penalty to kill that chicken without a government permit.
‘He Saluted Me Back’
We finally got down to Moosburg; I guess all the PoWs in Germany were in there—I think that there was over a 100,000 in that camp. It was a Sunday morning, and we knew General Patton was coming. We got the information on our radio. Matter of fact, they had it set up so that if the Germans were going to move us again, we would put sheets on top of the building and signal to a particular place. Well at exactly 10 o’clock that Sunday morning, the first tank rolled over the top of the hill—the tank drove right through the fence, they didn’t open the gate or anything, and behind the tank General Patton was standing up in the back of [a vehicle], pearl-handled pistols at his sides and all. [Gestures where the pistols would have hung on his waist; chuckles] And I threw him a salute, and he saluted me back, and he pulled off and made a little speech to us, and then he said, ‘See you, gentlemen—I have a war to win’, and he pulled off and was gone.
Coming Home
We ‘pulled spades’ to see who would come out first. And my commanding officer of this area pulled out the ace of spades, and I came out on the seventh airplane. The C-47s or the DC-3s were coming in with supplies for Patton, and then they would load them up with PoWs and haul them out to France. So I came out early. We stopped in Paris to refuel, and while we were there I ate nineteen doughnuts! I was trying to get even more, but they wouldn’t give me any more. They brought us to the place where they were bringing all the PoWs in, and they gave us a chemical bath. We threw all our clothes away, and they gave us enough pants and underwear and clean stuff to get on, and then they ask us if we would give up our quarters on the next ship going home. We figured they would probably put sick and wounded in those decent quarters, and then we would be in other quarters. So we weren’t in the best quarters, and when we pulled out we were very disappointed because they had [given our quarters to] a bunch of British war brides. They got the good quarters, but I didn’t care by then, they could have put a log under me and I would have ridden that home. [Laughs] But we came home, and came into Camp Miles Standish up in Boston.
This would have been May. There was a whole bunch of German PoWs in there, wearing brand new American uniforms with ‘PW’ on the back of them. We ran after them, they had to get all the MPs after us and round us all up. We went in the mess hall that first night, and I’m right behind that big guy Smitty, you know, the one who was banging me around on the march. The Germans were serving the food. We’re in line and they put a steak on each tray as we went through, and you’re supposed to move forward. Smitty tells the guy, ‘I want three more steaks!’—the German shakes his head no, and that German went flying across the room! They got the brass in there, and they informed everyone that these guys get anything that they want. And a couple of days later we got on a train and went down to Atlanta, Georgia. From there they put us on a thirty-day leave, so I got a bus and went up to my home here and spent some time on the farm. After that, I went to Plattsburgh for a while and went to an Army hospital. Then I came back down here to try and get into the swing of things again, went down to General Electric again, where I was working before went in the service. I didn’t stay there but a couple of weeks—I don’t know how we won the war from what I saw going on there, but maybe it wasn’t going on during the war, but some of them in there where putting out the least amount of work—well, that’s another story.
*
The Last Close Call
[When the war ended], the airlines wouldn’t talk to us right away—they said we ‘flew too rough’. But eventually they found out maybe we weren’t so bad. So I flew a couple of years for a non-scheduled airline, which wasn’t bad, but then I was gone all the time—you didn’t know where you were going or when you were coming back.
I was livi
ng in Nashville. On one of the trips out we had a long layover or something in Michigan, so I caught a train into Chicago and talked to American Airlines and they hired me. I couldn’t have had a better job. I loved flying; I never had any big problems with American. I was in the co-pilot seat for eleven years, but that was because it was all based on seniority and right after I got in, they quit hiring for quite some time. But then when I was flying out of Nashville and I wanted to get on the bigger airplanes and especially now with the jets coming out. Then I got to Chicago and I was flying co-pilot, but very soon I was flying captain. I flew the old piston airplanes for a little while and then I started working my way up—at the end, I wound up flying on the DC-10, a 289-passenger jet airplane jet. I loved it.
I had stayed about eleven years on a three-engine jet so I could be pretty senior. I loved the 727, it was a nice airplane. But then someone told me for retirement purposes you better get on a bigger airplane, so then I went to the DC-10 and I really enjoyed it. That 727, you could push the throttles up and roll down the runway to make the turn to line up, and then you’d take off. But with the 10, you couldn’t do that, you had to line that thing up straight off because when you pushed the throttles up, it was going where it was pointed, with no turning at all. It would push you back in your seat, and I really liked that. But it turned out I had a close call on it. I took a flight from Chicago to Phoenix on a 10 and left it there, and brought another back to Chicago and went home and went to bed. I got home at about six in the morning—it was a night flight. About noon my wife woke me up, and she said, ‘You’ve got to get up and see the TV!’ I went in there, and a DC-10 airplane had crashed on takeoff at O’Hare Airport, killing everyone on board.[20] Worst accident they had ever had. And I looked at it, and I said, ‘That’s the airplane I flew last night to Phoenix!’ Now I had brought a different plane back. And shortly after that, the phone rang and it was the chief pilot, and he said, ‘Guess what!’ I said, ‘I know, I flew that airplane last night!’ He said, ‘I just have one question: What kind of landing did you have last night?’ You see, right off the start they have to try to nail it to somebody, right away. I said, ‘You call the co-pilot and ask him.’ The co-pilot was a young fella and he had flown with me a lot on the 727, but never on the 10. We were coming in to Phoenix [on that same plane] and I thought, ‘I better show this young fella something’, and I touched down and we never even felt the tires touch, we never even heard them, and he looked over and said, ‘You can really slick them on with the 10 too, can’t you?’ So that eliminated [any theory that the previous pilot had had anything to do with the problem]. It turned out there were thirty-something airplanes with the same problem. The engine just broke off, but instead of just breaking off and falling to the ground, it broke off under power, and it came up over the leading edge of the wing, and tore off the lift devices, so the left wing quit flying and the right wing was still flying and it [careened over and crashed right after takeoff]. The amazing thing is it could have happened on that airplane at any time, and I don’t know why it didn’t happen when I flew it. But it made me wonder if that had happened to me, what would I have done? I think I probably would have done better than they did. I had a really good chief pilot early on in [my airline career], and he always said, ‘If you get in trouble, you don’t worry about the trouble, fly the airplane.’ I think that’s what happened here, the co-pilot was flying it, because the captain was rated as one of the best. He might have been trying to figure out what was going wrong, when he should have been making sure the airplane was flying properly. There was just no procedure at all for what happened; they also pulled the nose up, and let the airspeed back, following a different emergency procedure, but if they had kept the speed they had already, it might not have gone so quick. He might have pulled it out of there, but that’s what experience does for you.[21]
Earl Morrow in the author’s classroom, May 2011.
Credit: Robert H. Miller
My time in the service was the smartest move I ever made.
To be frank with you, I was flunking out of college. I got to see the wheels turn; this thing opened up and I didn’t figure I would ever make it, but I applied for it, and I made it—out of thirty-something of us who went in, I made it. And I couldn’t have had a better job after I got back home. It was just never boring when I was flying, I had a little motto. ‘If I don’t learn something today, I’m going to quit flying.’ And I never had to quit flying, because I was always learning something.
Chapter Nine
The Extra Gunner
We first met Richard Alagna in Chapter Five. Here, he brings us up to date on his later duties and adventures near the end of the war.
Richard G. Alagna
‘Dropped Into An Insane Asylum’
I think this brings us up to when we’re going to go overseas and to show you the mentality of my flying officer. We were about to go over by ship and we had an opportunity to go home, we were in New Jersey, I don’t know what port it was, and he volunteered his crew for KP duty. Nobody else would have done a thing like that but a first-class rat. We all had a chance to go home, call your mother or your girlfriend, but he volunteered us for KP. We did not become sergeants until we were overseas so therefore we could pull KP.
On the ship going over I wrenched my back very badly and I couldn’t bend over at all. I went to the medics and they taped me up; they put tape from here [points to upper chest] down to my belly button and tied me up. There was no fresh water on the boat to shower, only salt water. When we were in the Irish Sea, we were on the top deck of this luxury liner and we’re all standing there looking at the Irish Sea and everybody screamed, ‘Fighters coming in!’ and they all fell to the deck. I couldn’t move because I was taped. I wasn’t mesmerized—the only way I could fall would be to fall on my ass or flat on my face. Before they skimmed by, I said, ‘Three Spitfires’ and they thought that was wonderful, what tremendous aircraft recognition this kid had.
So now we’re overseas and I’m all taped up and I’m itchy. We get off and we’re in England and we go to a place where we’re going to be assigned to a squadron. I’m desperate because I can’t get at this tape. You must also remember that I was issued a .45, a lot of people wondered about that because in the Pacific I understand crew members were issued shotguns or carbines, but I was issued a .45 sidearm. As soon as we got to base and we dumped our bags, I immediately went to sick call. You have to picture it; I had on a flight jacket and I had a .45 under my armpit. I go in and I said to the corporal, ‘I just got here, I didn’t have time to sign the sick book, but I really have to see the doctor. ‘I’ve got to get rid of this tape, it’s driving me crazy.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get you in.’ I heard a voice say, ‘Is there any more, no, that’s it, nobody else on the sick book.’ ‘No, we have one more man out there.’ This is what this officer and gentleman says, ‘I don’t care if he has appendicitis, if he hasn’t signed the sick book, I’m not seeing him.’ He stepped out of the office and I said, ‘You son-of-a-bitch, they told me that when I got overseas, you guys were going to lighten up a little bit. I wouldn’t let you touch me with a ten-foot pole!’ He wasn’t being shot at, he was in England, he was taking care of guys who had colds, athlete’s foot, et cetera; I don’t know what his problem was. Well, my jacket was open and his mouth was agape; I think he saw the .45. I was slightly beyond the edge at that moment. The corporal was dumbfounded and I turned around and walked out. Nobody came after me. I went back to where I was billeted and I said, ‘I think I’m going to be arrested’, because that’s what they do to people—you don’t yell at officers. A nice kid from Brooklyn said, ‘Don’t worry, you stay here in the barracks, I’ll bring you food, you’ll stay hidden.’ I said, ‘But the tape!’ He said, ‘Come with me,’ and we went into the shower. He grabbed the tape, he took off every hair on my chest, on my back, and then I managed to get some sleep.
Now here comes the fun and games and this is an important one. We end u
p in the 445th Bomb Group, 700th Squadron. The very first night we get there, I honestly thought I had been dropped into an insane asylum. I had never belonged to Greek societies or anything like that. The crew that had been there had been wiped out and these fellows were absolutely bonkers, at least that was my impression. One fellow had a bolt from a .50 caliber machine gun and he slipped a .50 caliber bullet in the facing and he had a hammer and he’s going to hit it. When you do something like that, it’s going to explode, the whole thing is going to rupture, and you’re going to be in trouble. It didn’t explode, but the slug went into the door, I didn’t know that he took all the stuff out of the thing; it was a gag. They also had set up a guy that would come in the door and just before he’d come in, some guy would throw a knife and it would hit the door. I turned to one of my fellow gunners and said, ‘I think they’re going to kill me before the Germans do.’ Later they told us that it was sort of like an initiation to their barracks. I vowed that I would get my revenge. After being there some time and flying quite a number of missions and being slightly insane, I took a belt of .50 caliber machine gun rounds, there must have been about twelve of them in metal links. I pulled all of the cordite out of them but I kept the caps, and I put back the slugs. I had it draped over my bed as a souvenir. I have Romanian and Sicilian blood coursing through my veins and we all believe in getting revenge. They were playing poker, it was the afternoon and nobody was flying, it was raining like hell. I went through my act, ‘I’m too young to die’—it was a pretty good act. They’re playing poker and paying no attention to me. I said, ‘I can’t stand it, it’s driving me crazy, sooner or later it’s going to kill me, I’m dying’ of this and that. Somebody said, ‘Shut up’ and I took the ammo, walked over to the potbelly stove, said, ‘To hell with all of you,’ and I dropped it into the stove. One guy went through the window into the mud, into the rain. [Laughs] Guys hit the doors, they went all over and I’m standing there screaming, ‘What did I do, what did I do?!’ All it did was go pop-pop-pop and fortunately none of the slugs went through the stove. They chased me and threw mud pies at me but I didn’t care because I got my revenge. [Laughs]
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