by Chris Lynch
BUT WE KNEW THE CREW LANDING JUST IN FRONT OF US WAS IN DESPERATE SHAPE. THESE DAVIS WINGS THAT RIDE SO HIGH ON THE FUSELAGE MAKE FOR FAST FLYING AND TRICKY LANDING IF THINGS AIN'T RIGHT. AND GAS TANKS, THEY SNAKE EVERYWHERE TO SAVE SPACE, EVEN INTO THE WINGS.
SO THE BOAT IN FRONT OF US, WE CAN SEE IT WEAVING AND WOBBLING, TRYING TO LAND LEVEL WITH THREE ENGINES RUNNING, TWO OF THEM BILLOWING SMOKE, THE TAIL COMING IN HIGHER THAN NORMAL UNTIL BAM, THEY HIT FOR A BELLY LANDING HARD ENOUGH WE CAN FEEL IT OURSELVES, AND THOSE WINGS JUST FOLD, COLLAPSE ON IMPACT, RIGHT DOWN OVER THE BODY OF THE PLANE AND ONTO THE GROUND LIKE SOME GREAT EAGLE BIRD THAT HAS JUST QUIT ON ITSELF, DROPPED WINGS, AND SKIDDED AWAY TO DIE. WHICH IS WHAT IT DID BASICALLY, HANK. ONLY EAGLES DON'T BURST INTO FLAMES WHEN THEY CRASH, AS FAR AS I KNOW.
WE COULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT WE WERE SEEING, EVEN THOUGH EVERYBODY IN THE WHOLE EIGHTH HAS HEARD ABOUT THIS BEFORE. AND THE FLAME WAS SO BIG, SO QUICK AND HOT, THAT WE HAD TO EVEN ABORT OUR LANDING, PILOT AND COPILOT SHOUTING OVER THE INTERCOM AS WE PULLED RIGHT UP, FEELING THAT BIG FLAME JUST LIKE WE FELT IT UNDER OUR BELLIES ON THE MISSION. ONLY THIS TIME WE ALL STRAINED, LOOKING THROUGH ALL THE GLASS WINDOWS AND BUBBLES AS WE PULLED UP AND FLEW OVALS OVER OUR PARTNER CRAFT AND CREW AS IT SPUN FIERY CIRCLES AND FINALLY CAME TO STOP, AND EVERY LAST GROUND CREWMAN SCRAMBLED TO DO SOMETHING 'CAUSE THOSE GUYS ARE GREAT, THEY REALLY ARE, BUT WE KNEW EVEN FROM ALTITUDE THAT THERE WAS NOTHING. NOTHING.
SO THAT IS ONE FLAW CONFIRMED, ABOUT THIS GREAT AIRCRAFT.
AND IT'S NOT EXACTLY THE VERSION I PASSED ALONG TO MAM, JUST SO YOU KNOW.
AND IT'S ONE MORE REASON I DON'T EXPECT YOUR DIARY TO TOP MY DIARY, MISTER.
AND ONE MORE REASON I SURE HOPE IT DOESN'T.
We’re leaving England for a little while very shortly. We are off missions and on special training to learn a few new tricks before we get loaned out to the Ninth Air Force. Seems like we are getting noticed, because we’re so popular that three bomber groups of Liberators have been requested for temporary duty, flying out of North Africa.
I wonder if I’ll miss the rain? Pretty sure I won’t.
One day in early June, however, I wake up to a morning so sunny and warm I sit up in bed for several minutes, disoriented, trying my hardest to work out if I’m dreaming, or if maybe I have gotten so deep into this life which isn’t a life that I have entirely forgotten that we have already decamped to Libya.
Then, the kid who brings the mail around comes to me with a letter.
“Mornin’, Sergeant,” he says as he hands it to me. “Beautiful day, ain’t it? Better get outside while you can, knowing how lazy the English sun is.”
“Thanks, I will,” I say and tear the letter open.
Son,
Your father and I could not be prouder of you. Your citation is something we can scarcely imagine, what bravery and danger must have been involved. Pop in particular is well aware that they do not throw these things around like paper airplanes (his words, of course), and that your group must have done extraordinary things to have earned it. So do not go thinking that anyone here is buying your rather casual account of events in your letter. We do appreciate, however, your kindness in trying not to over worry us. We hope that someday you will feel relaxed enough about it all to give us a fuller accounting. But as I am still waiting for such accountings from your father regarding his experience in the last one of these terrible things, I have much patience prepared for you.
The Navy has been good to their word, writing every three months to keep us current on your brother’s official status. It is a formality, of course, but it is also a courtesy and one we do appreciate. To know that Henry’s service and sacrifice are not disregarded so easily is a comfort to us, albeit a small one.
His name has still not appeared on any of the other lists they revise constantly, so he remains as of today, missing in action. By the time you get this it will have been officially one year.
I would write more if I could, Theodore, but I cannot. But I will do so very soon. Everyone is thinking of you, and proud of you, and anxious to see you again.
Love,
Mam and Pop
I check the calendar. June 6, 1943.
Happy anniversary, brother. Where should I send your card?
We spend several weeks doing something we were never trained to do back in the United States, flying once again in much lower formations than we are supposed to. But it’s not like the time we spent going low over the subs, striking fear into the hearts of Nazis and tuna alike. Instead we spend our days terrorizing small villages all over the British countryside as we practice running raids over land at treetop level.
What we find out is that we are a far more experienced and skilled bomber group than the one that first attempted formation flying at low levels. And that our trusty and tough, scarred but reliable B-24 can do whatever we need it to do, as long as we are up to the job.
Just as I’m getting used to a view of British trees and little else, we receive orders to ship out to our new temporary home: the base at Benghazi, Libya. The Allies have finally finished the task of pushing the Germans and Italians all the way off of North Africa, which raises the question of what our task will be. But it is a question that does not weigh too heavily on us. As we fly over the Mediterranean, everyone is noticeably more upbeat and confident than we have been for some time. Despite all the secrecy, there is a feeling that we know what’s coming. Or, rather that we know what we’re coming for. And we cannot wait to get started.
“It’s the invasion,” Boyd says as I settle down into his tail turret. One of the things we’ve had the time to do, between all the training and the long-haul flight, is get all the gunners more familiar with one another’s stations. Just in case.
“Invasion of what?” I say, a little distracted by how much I am enjoying the turret. Its maneuverability, its practicality. Everything seems handy, natural, well planned, and modern compared to the greenhouse up front.
“Italy, McCallum. The beginning of the end. Haven’t you been paying attention? Churchill called it the ‘soft underbelly’ of Nazi Europe, and I think he’s right.”
“I want one of these,” I say, still remaining on my own personal turret mission, flattening the enemy regardless of where we invade.
“I don’t really see what makes it any softer than the rest of Nazi Europe,” Dodge says from his radioman perch. “I mean, it is still crammed with, you know, Italians and Germans.”
“I can’t wait to invade Italy,” Hargreaves says from the top turret where Couley normally shoots from. “Everybody says the Italians aren’t nearly as hard to handle as the Germans.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Couley says, from Hargreaves’s belly gun position.
“How come you’re agreein’ with him?” Quinn says. He has just emerged into the tail area, calling back in Couley’s direction. “You ain’t never once agreed with me, I don’t think.”
“Sure he has,” Boyd says loud enough for everybody’s entertainment. “Couley thinks you’re nutty, and you know you are.”
It is definitely a lighter-hearted group, a more easygoing journey, than any I can remember.
Quinn actually goes to the trouble of physically waving down the laughter coming from the direction of each crewman, like we’ve all released a stink in his direction at the same time. Then he points hard at me. “You, McCallum, how is it that you ain’t lookin’ like an orange left out in the sun all summer?”
I look at him for a few seconds, hoping to get a better read on him, then turn to Boyd. “You usually understand what he says, right? Translate for me.”
“Quinn,” Boyd barks while simultaneously motioning me out of his seat. “What are you talking about, kid?”
“I’m talking about that glass nursery where this guy spends all his time. I was only there for a half hour and my head felt like an August tomato that was about to burst out of its skin. I guess that explains all the red splatter we usually see all over the front of these thin
gs, huh?”
“Well, all right,” I say, jumping up and scooting happily to my home station. “Boys, it sounds like we are closing in on our sunny new home base.”
“Don’t get used to it,” Lieutenant Ormston orders as I pass the pilot’s perch. “Temporary. This is just a detachment for a short period.”
No offense to England, but I might have trouble detaching from real sunshine again, even after only a short period.
We are only a few weeks into our North Africa journey when I am proven wrong about the constantly sunny and pleasant conditions I expected we would be enjoying. But at the same time, and more important and as usual, Sergeant Boyd is proven right, as we fly through rough rainy weather at the forefront of the Allied invasion of the island of Sicily.
We pass over a huge flotilla of American and British ships carrying armored and infantry divisions that look like they would have the strength to take the whole continent, let alone an island.
Still, we’ve been asked to clear the way, and we are an accomodating crew. We pass over the southern coast of Sicily and almost immediately reach the IP, and Gallagher takes his spot at the sights and prepares to take over the controls.
“Milk run!” Bell yells from behind me, working his navigation table as there is no need for him at the gun.
Guys start yelling it out all over the craft. “Milk run” you can hear through the intercom and all around us until the pilot commands everybody to shut up and mind their jobs.
Milk run is the term guys use for a mission so easy you might as well be delivering the morning milk around your hometown for all the danger you are in. Some guys don’t like to use the term ever, feeling like that’s just overconfidence and a kind of asking for it that a war situation really doesn’t need.
It’s one of the rare opinions I share with Lieutenant Ormston.
Dodge is at his radioman duties, Couley doing whatever it is an engineer does when everything on the ship seems to be doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Even the guys who are manning their guns, like me, are rigid with readiness but not any more occupied than that. There is simply no fighter resistance coming up to greet us.
Gallagher announces that he is within a minute or so from being over target, which is only going to make resistance less likely. We are in one of a number of USAAF and RAF formations that are strictly here softening the ground for the real job of taking total and swift control of the island. As Gallagher whoops and releases our singsong explosives down toward the airfield below, we seem to have caught them entirely by surprise.
The weather remains nasty, and we are almost as freezing cold as we were when we flew missions out of Shipdham. We are all taking our oxygen through masks as we bomb from nearly twenty-five thousand feet, where we feel the first ineffectual bursts of antiaircraft rockets only seconds before the explosions start pop-pop-pop-popping their planes and facilities down below into the mud.
It is eerily flat up here as we finish unloading and the whole formation starts banking for home. There is something like silence, the lack of resistance a nice change from the fury we have faced on so many other missions. But it is, of course, a relative silence as the engines all around us roar as big as they ever have.
At one point, three or four minutes after we have locked onto our homeward trajectory and begin to make visual contact with what the air and sea forces are bringing to the enemy, Dodge breaks our internal quiet with a short “Everybody awake?” over the radio. He gets a few comical answers, one snore, one shut up, and at least one total silence from the team members.
From my perch at the tip of the glass I can more clearly see the forces coming in stages from the other direction. We descend some, breaking through lower and lighter clouds in time to see a wave of British fighters, Hurricanes and Hellcats, scorch past beneath us. They are leading a barrage of another element I have only heard about before now. Well over one hundred RAF gliders, engineless troop transports, are being towed by American C-47 Dakotas. The gliders are bigger than I thought they would be and don’t look all that comfortable in the current swirly conditions. They wobble a lot in the trail of the sturdy old Dakotas, and I must say, with their high wings and plump midsection, I’m glad there are no B-17 guys around to point out the visual similarity between the gliders and the Liberator.
The air attack is long behind us and the massive ground attack already hitting the beaches as we reach the relative calm of our runway at Benghazi. It feels as close as we have come to a routine day at the office on this job, and all I can say is I hope our time here is filled with nothing but milk runs like this.
“You can take your mask off now, Sergeant Couley, Life Magazine ain’t here today,” I hear the copilot, Lowrie, say as the engines cut out and guys prepare to hand the plane over to the ground crew for routine maintenance. I don’t usually hear Lowrie say much at all to the lower ranks of our crew, and every time he does I’m reminded why I’m glad I don’t.
“Couley! Couley, man, wake up!” It’s Dodge yelling and the unfamiliar squeal in his voice makes it clear this is no fooling. The guys from the nose start climbing over each other to get through the narrow space leading back to the midsection. We can hear already more urgency than we’ve heard all day as we tumble through and find Dodge and Hargreaves dragging Couley to the floor and tearing his suit open, his mask away.
They are trying to revive him, blowing into him, shoving down on him. Boyd scrambles back toward the rear exit and jumps out. Quinn jumps in when Dodge throws himself back at the radio and starts shouting into it for the medics to get to us.
Two medics are there in seconds, scurrying up the route Boyd just took the other way. They shove their way through and brush our guys back as they try and try to get something like breath coming in and out of our guy, our engineer.
We all stand rigid as the medics stop all that and frantically pull Couley toward the rear opening, where a team of other medical staff are bellowing for them to do that and get him out before it’s too late.
They are good, those boys, and they give it everything, and they look so distressed you have to believe they care, no matter how many times they have run through this same bleak routine.
But everybody who sees the Couley we see, gray-blue and floppy as they drag him away, knows that too late has already come and gone.
I look away, waiting for the rescue team to clear the area before I make any move at all. I see when I do that the officers are going over everything up at the engineer’s position, in the bubble beneath his top gunner turret.
Lieutenant Ormston has the hose in his hand, the one that connects Couley’s mask to the oxygen supply. He’s pulling at it, hard, and looking up to Lowrie as they both nod, seeing the tube pinched tight, caught in the gear of the gunner’s swiveling turret mechanism.
One thing everybody knows around here without needing to be told is that we move on. No matter what, we just move on.
Couley was so determined to be right about everything that he died showing us one of the sneakiest hazards of working on the B-24, with its high-altitude capacity, lack of cabin pressure, and imperfect oxygen supply system. He was a good guy and a good teammate and he was on the ball regarding the things he warned us about. Now he’s gone and we move on with a new engineer/top turret gunner.
He is named Hollings and is available to us as the result of being the only survivor of a Liberator crew that had to ditch in the desert of Tunisia in the very last days of the North Africa Campaign. A tank company found him walking in the direction of his base a couple days later.
Seems like a nice enough guy, Hollings, and smart as Couley was, but he also has eyes that look to have seen enough already and that point in slightly different directions so I don’t see us buddying up all that much.
So, we move on. Batboy moves on without Sergeant Couley just as the invasion of Sicily moves on largely without any more need for the Batboy. In the weeks following our attack on that airfield kicking off Operation Husky, General Pat
ton’s tanks take the beach and grind their way up one side of the island while Field Marshal Montgomery’s British armored divisions push up the other and we are removed from the plan altogether.
I briefly consider that maybe even Boyd could guess wrong as we spend all of our time once again practicing seriously low-level bombing raids against inland targets. All the practice eventually reaches dress-rehearsal stage when five full bomber groups carry out a mock raid on a huge dummy installation that had been built in the desert just for us.
Finally, August arrives, and we know.
The same five groups, nearly two hundred B-24s, leave the ground through heavy weather once again, and from early on, this feels like something different. We are the fourth of the five and receive constant reports of what the lead groups are encountering. An hour into the flight there is a lot of radio commotion, a lot of chatter among radioman, pilot, copilot, and navigator. Eventually we are notified that ten aircraft have had difficulties and had to abort out of the lead group.
Two hours later there is a similar ruckus as Dodge frantically relays the transmission coming from the front of the formation. The lead plane on the lead group is having severe trouble.
“He’s wavering all over!” Dodge calls out. “Now he’s upright, climbing, not climbing … oh, my, he’s down, the lead navigator craft is on its back in the water, going down. Second lead circles back for rescue … holy cow, two lead planes of the entire mission are out! Number three plane now leads.”
It is hard for me to even fathom that kind of importance at the front of such a huge mission. The Batboy is middle of the pack, second from last grouping, and even our nose gunner is right now sweating right through his sheepskin at the pressure here. We are flying so low, we can see the shadow of every aircraft on the water below us. The formation holds as far as I can tell, but as far as I can tell is only as far as I can see our wingmen and that’s not telling much of the big picture. That picture is coming slightly more into focus as the radio exchanges tell of increasing separation of the first two groups. Our officers sound something less than their usual confident selves.