My Grandads old stories

[Happerry]

With all the extra time my grandad has had since he retired he has wrote up some of the stories he heard in his younger days. Here is one of them, please tell him what you think.

On March 1, 1989, Harry Whittaker and I went fishing at Lost Creek
Reservoir. We caught our limits but this expedition came near to being a
tragedy.

 

                We
pulled Harry’s 12 ft. boat on it’s trailer and put in at the ramp on the East
side of the Reservoir. This was late in the morning I think, a chilly,  cloudy day, but calm enough; the boat had a
small canvas top, just enough to keep us out of the bad weather    About an hour later we were trolling under
the Payton bridge headed upstream.  The
boat was powered by a 712 HP (I think) outboard, and also had a battery
operated trolling motor. We kept going upstream until we about ran  out of water, several miles I think, and
fishing was slow.   Finally we shut off
the gas and let the boat drift back downstream until we had several feet of the
bright clear water under us.  It was
misting a little with occasional light rain showers.

 

                The
fishing picked up and we were busy for awhile, 
most of the time being busy just untangling the lines.  Harry was a klutz,  but very calm about it all, and little by
little we added the fish to the fishbox, hardly noticing that one by one the
few other fishermen who were in the area had pulled out.  The weather was lowering and the misting
turned into snow flurries, and when the rain showers turned into snow showers
about four
o’clock we decided to head on downriver.

 

                We
cranked up the outboard but for some reason we could not get it out of
reverse.  Some thing had jammed!   Try as we might we could not get the boat to
go forward, so we gave up and headed downstream in reverse, at about three
miles per hour.  In the meanwhile the
snow got serious, as in just a short time we had two and three inches of snow
in the boat, and the daylight was dimming away.

 

                After
what seemed like two or three eternities 
we ran out of gas,  and
daylight.  We hooked up the battery to
the trolling motor and nosed downstream 
again.  Fortunately the snow was
thick enough on the sloping river banks so they reflected the last dredge of
daylight so we were able to navigate somewhat. 
Also the snow would quit now and then giving us some relief            Pretty soon though the battery
started to lose its energy and little by little we went slower and slower.  From time to time we scraped one bank or
another and poled  ourselves off and did
some one oar paddling to keep us moving. 
We finally admitted it-we were cold, wet and miserable, and lost.

 

                But
we were still moving.

 

                At
about 8
o’clock we could see the skeleton of the bridge ahead
of us,  highlighted every once in awhile
when a passing motorist, or truck would drive across.               We pulled up to the West bank, directly under the
bridge and tried to get out of the boat with a rope to latch on to
something.  All the somethings were
covered with eight inches of snow, but we finally kicked around enough to
expose a rock to tie up to.  About then,
Harry stepped off the boat into a couple feet of cold water.  He got back into the boat which we pushed
sideways to the bank so he could get out easier, which he did do, but as soon
as he got two feet under him he slipped again and fell face down into the snow.     We had been to this same place in the
summertime and knew there was a path up the steep hillside to the road up
above, so we kicked around for awhile and found what looked like the shallow
opening we were looking for.  We would go
for awhile and then wait until another car came by to give us a few seconds of
light so we could try to pick the next section of the climb.  A lot of this climb was on all fours, climb a
little, slip a little, climb some more. 
It probably took us about an hour to climb up to the road, and we were
thankful at last to get onto the flat of the road.  The snowplow 
had already been through  which
made it much easier going.  We had
decided we were going to walk to Prospect, about eight miles I think.

 

                A
little while later a car came down the road . Southbound and we were too tired
even to wave at them.  A little later a
Northbound pickup came by; the driver stopped and asked us if we wanted a ride.
Such a question!

 

                This
Good Samaratin, [[Larry Loftus, PO Box
29, Prospect, OR. 97536 --560-3691] was a Forest
Service Employee who took us to his trailer home in Prospect. We were close to
hypothermia, Harry moreso than I, as one of Harry’s legs was soaked up to his
hip from that stepoff into the water down at the boat.   Harry phoned his son, Bruce, who, after an
hour or so, drove up to Prospect through the snowstorm and using some magical
sense of direction found the trailer house we were in.  He took us to his own home near Eagle Point,
dried us out and  tucked us in for the
night    After he got home with us, Bruce
phoned the Sheriff to call off the hunt posse which already was forming to find
us,  and we phoned Ethel, his mother, and
also Nelle.

 

                The
next day we went down with Bruce in his Ba10:49PM  1/13/95ss boat, found the boat intact, and
pulled it back to the landing and then home. We cleaned the fish, untangled the
lines, and got ready to go fishing again.

 

                Just
another day, almost.    End of Story

[Happerry]

[quote]  This 
is a World War II warstory.                  Nov.
5, 1992

 

  Floyd Brownlee, our ball turret gunner, and
I, hitch-hiked to Rome

  from Foggia a couple days
before Christmas, 1944.  The next day we

  had an audience with Cardinal Pacelli who was
the Pope at that time,

  and after that we explored the Vatican City for awhile,
then hitch-

  hiked back to Foggia.

 

  The next day or so (Dec. 26) our crew except
for Brownlee, took off on

  a bombing mission into Western
Poland where an engine was shot out over

  the target, and before we could get far
enough away another engine

  was shot out. 
We didn't have enough power to get back over the Alps

  so we headed East into Czechoslovakia, over the
German-Russian line. 

  They both shot at us and crippled a third
engine so we crash landed a

  little while later.  A Russian anti-tank outfit picked us up and
were

  puzzled about who we were and what to do with
us.

 

  A few weeks later we fixed up an old Model A
panel truck that had

  been used 
as an ambulance, and drove it up into Poland. through

  Sanok. We spent our cash, then wrote chits
and traded the Model A

  for a flatbed 
truck and later, traded it for train tickets to Moscow. 

 

  On the way there we got shunted into a siding
where we saw a US Army

  jeep driving by. We shouted the sergeant to a
stop and we all piled

  in on him with our duffle bags and told him
to take us home.  He was

  surprised to say the least.

 

  This was in Poltava, Russia where there
was a triangle point air

  base. 
It was about the 10th of
March, 1945.

 

  They sprayed the fleas off us and sent us by
plane to Tehran.  

  Tehran  operations sent us to Athens and Athens didn't want
us either

  so they sent us to Cairo and Cairo sent us to Rome where we got

  another ride back to Foggia

  .

  Foggia didn't want
us either as we were already replaced. 
So we hung

  around neither fish nor fowl, nervous like,
and a couple weeks later in frustration

  we volunteered for another mission, to Regensburg, where I got
shot

  through the chest by some flak, and our plane
got shot up too.

 

  By the time we got back to the Adriatic sea, a couple of
our engines

  gave up and we were lucky to make it to the
East shore where we crash

  landed on a fighter strip runway that was too
short, near the little

  town of Ancona.  I was taken to a nearby field hospital for
repairs.

 

  About six months later I was discharged from
McCaw General hospital

  in Walla Walla, Washington, a civilian
once again.

 

 

 

 

       Our usual crew was made up of:

       Ralph Kagi, Pilot

      Greg Smith, Co-Pilot   Or was his name Bill?  - 
really do not remember for sure.

       Fred (       ), Navigator

       (     
) Bounds, Bombardier

       Irving Kliebert, Engineer,

       Maury Glassy, Radio/Radar

       Ralph Spicer, Waist Gunner

       Matt Polynak, Waist Gunner

       Floyd Brownlee, Ball Turret

       Bob Richards, Tail Gunner

 

      As I restructure this story, a bit and a
piece at a time, other

  incidences and/or events come to me as
interruptions, and soon as

  convenient I put down a couple of key words
or a phrase or the like,

  quickly, so I don't forget the newly
remembered incident, planning to

  come back later and "flesh-out"
these chain of thought interrupters.  

  The story continues, but I plan in  the end to reshuffle the whole ball

  of wax 
so it makes sequential sense..

      

       A little later now, weeks later even,
the exposition brings other

  questions up, like what was the countryside
like, the weather, and how

  did I feel from time to time about incident
to incident, for surely from

  time to time I must have been apprehensive or
was I just numb all the

  time, remembering only the more or less bare
bones  of things and

  places 
and what about sex life if any or even thoughts about that, and

  was I concerned about how or what my family
or friends thought about or

  worried about where and how I was  or wasn 't because I used to write

  home once or twice a week  and what did we wear and did anybody even

  think about laundry?   did I ever take as bath or a shower?  etc 
etc. 

  What happened when we ran out of
cigaretts?  I remember smoking some

  Russsian tobacco stuff, stronger than
strong-how did we barter for that?

 

 

 

  Hospitals: No.1 NZed Field Hosp., Ancona, Italy

            a US Field Hosp., Ancona, Italy

            A US Gen'l Hosp., Bari,Italy                                  

  a US Gen'l Hosp., Naples, Italy

  a US Gen'l Hosp., Camp Kilmer, New Jersey

  a McCaw Gen'l Hosp., Walla walla, Wash.

 

         

  Other remembrances that come as random
ghosts:

 

    Aluminum strip "Window' camera hatch,
back of ball turret. Brownlee

  stayed home because we were a Mickey ship
(Radar in the ball turret.)

   Sugar Report, Feather beds, Banovca 

   Amoebic dysentery, halazone tablets

 

    When we first "landed " in that
field and got out of the B-17 we

  walked around it and were amazed to see all
the flak holes in it,

  everywhere it seemed like, and as soon as the
plane rolled to a stop the

  liquid rubber or whatever it was that was
inside the gas tanks (which

  were in the wing) quit sealing the leaks in
the tanks and gas was

  dripping and running out in small streams all
along the underside of the

  wings. 
We were milling around agreeing with each other how lucky we

  were that no one even had a small scratch on
him, and while we were

  trying to assess the damage and our situation
some people, oldsters and

  women came up to us in some amazement.  A couple ran back to a nearby

  house and pretty soon there were a whole
bunch of people carrying pans

  and buckets and anything that wouldn't leak,
to catch the leaking gas. 

 

          Along about this time a Russian
armored vehicle pulled up and a

  couple of officers got out.  They didn't speak any language we did and

  it was a confusing time for awhile until
finally one of the middle aged

  men, a civilian, a Czeck we presumed, spoke
in halting English, and Matt

  Polynak, who came from a Polish area in
Pennslyvania, had some Polish

  that the Russian officers understood, that we
finally got our story

  told. 
They were pretty skeptical.  Some
while back a rumor had it that

  the Nazi had repaired a downed B-17 and flew
it on the German-Russian

  front strafing Russian troops and and the
like. 

 

       We were told we were in custody of
Captain Something and he was in

  charge of a Russian contingent which was
chasing a Nazi tank brigade or

  something like that and that a couple of
weeks ago this very ground we

  were standing on was under Nazi rule, and
right now we all had to go

  into town to be interviewed by this Captain
Something.  And we did ,,   

  and I do not remember how we got there, about
three miles away I think.

 

 

       Through interpreters again, we told our
story and we had the

  feeling that Captain Something wanted to
believe us but he said he

  couldn't take any chances as we might be part
of some massive

  counteroffense he hadn't heard about yet and
until he found out further

  we would be put up at a nearby cottage,
Dismissed, I've got a war to

  fight.

 

       We were put up in a nearby cottage which
turned out to be a

  civilian's house and our sleeping quarters
was what probably was the

  living room. 
We were given some skimpy blankets and several forkfuls of

  straw. 
An outhouse was pointed out to us, on the upside of the house

  about ten feet from the barn, which was a
small, maybe 10 by 10 room,

  attached to the end of the house.  Just upside a little further from the

  outhouse, maybe another ten feet, was the
well, and we figured later

  this is probably where Bounds and I got
dysentery.

 

       When we could we boiled the water we
used and or put in halazone

  tablets to undo bacteria, but for some reason
only me and Bounds got

  sick, presumably from the water.  We each and all ate and drank about

  the same and about the same time. 

      

       After we were there awhile, maybe two or
three weeks, the

  authorities decided we were not too dangerous
and that we probably were

  US citizens, maybe even military citizens,
and friendly to USSR, but to

  make sure we didn't get into too much trouble
they assigned a Lt. Feador

  Mishlaoff 
(sp?) to look after us and by and large it worked out OK until we

  split up and went different places which
frustrated him no end.  His

  idea seemed to be that he had to be with each
of us all the time.

      

       We called him Freddy in private, until
some other soldiers came

  near at which time we addressed him as Sir,
or Lieutenant, or whatever

  it was that I forget the Russian of.                 

 

       He finally had a Private assigned to him
to help us as we kept

  going off in all directions.  This Private was a surly type, a farmer he

  said, who had been sent to school to be a
farm mechanic.  He was on

  unfamiliar grounds, watching us, and it
seemed kind of vague to him what

  he was supposed to watch us do, or not do,
but it was clear to him that

  we were not to get hurt and for some reason
he was even more distressed

  when there were any other Russian soldiers
around, but after awhile he

  found out we didn't bite and every once in a
while we would smuggle some

  goodies from the refectory to him.  After awhile I think he started to

  feel more at ease around us, even when we
came back from chow without

  bringing anything to him.

      

      There was a kind of a long one story
building, clapboard siding,

  crossways to a brick building, ell shaped,
the whole thing, with about

  four large picnic like tables with unattached
benches and an occasional

  chair or two. 
The kitchen was in the brick building part and it always

  smelled real good.  This was the Officer Mess.  Before the war we were

  given to understand this place was a
religious place called the

  refrectory. 

  

      Meal times were kind of interesting as I
remember.  The main thing

  that comes to mind is cabbage, and cabbage
soup and borscht (it sounded

  like that!) a kind of a watery stew with
cabbage and every once in

  awhile a piece of shredded meat, and large
pieces of coarse dark brown

  bread. 
Only once a sweet dessert.  Sugar
was hard to come by.  One time

  it was a bunch of dried apples and I don't
remember much else, maybe a

  cupcake kind of a thing.

 

      This was evening mealtime; breakfasts
were always the same, mush of

  some kind mostly always the same kind, except
for once or twice it was

  something like grits and when that happened I
let myself go hungry. 

  Lunch times I don't remember, maybe we never
got lunch!

 

      There were always two or three officers
who ate with us and

  generally we didn't have much to visit about,
probably because of

  language differences.  There were a couple though, our Lt. Freddy,
of

  course, and a Lt. Something else who were
buddies and once in awhile a

  Senior Officer, I think maybe a rank of
Major, who got beat in a three

  day game of Chess by our Navigator,  Fred (and for the life of me I

  can't remember his last name!)

 

       This Chess business almost got us into
deep trouble.  Apparently

  there is a prescribed format of how to begin
a game, caution and

  whatever, to test out your opponent.  The three of us who played Chess

  were given a set while we were in our cottage
and I suppose we were

  reckless at it.  The Captain S. who was our original host, got
skunked

  by Ralph Kagi and later got to a stand-off
situation by me and later was

  trimmed by that Major who came over from I
don't know where who

  according to Freddy was quite an expert.  The Major came over later,

  maybe several days later, and did a number on
Kagi and the next day did

  me in, but the next day or maybe two or three
days later got done in by

  Fred, I seem to remember two or three days in
a row.  Things got kind of

  tense. 
Freddy was quite concerned by all this Chess business and

  suggested (as I remember) we should be more
conventional although when

  he played he was as reckless as any of us! 

 

       Sorting it out later it appeared none of
us were much at Chess;

  Ralph Kagi was learning to be a finish
carpenter with his Dad, in

  Brooklyn, NY, Fred was
into accounting of some kind also in New York

  City someplace, and I was a Union house
painter learning to be an

  electrician with my Dad!

 

         As far as I know there were no
repercussions from this Chess

  business.

 

         We started to get into a routine of
things and kept testing our

  boundaries. 
One day we told Freddy we needed to get back to our plane

  to see if we had any useable clothing or some
such plausible  reason.  We

  just wanted to take a look at it, maybe even
to see if we could either

  fix it up to fly again, or  maybe see if we could contact home base.  In

  any event we were not told no, nor prevented
from going over there.  I

  think we even borrowed a car, complete with
driver and co-pilot, and for

  some reason only three of us went on this
expedition. 

 

         Two Russian soldiers went with us,
Kagi, Bounds and me back to

  the plane where we counted the flak holes and
blew up our IFF. We made a

  leisurly inspection, found Bounds' soft hat
which had a shredded hole

  through the top, his gloves torn in half, one
broken bomb door cylinder,

  two 
flat tires and other interesting things like that, and we made a

  pretty 
good  count of the flak holes:
529!  We salvaged what carry-off

  stuff we could, including a bunch of
parachutes and I don't remember

  what else, except a small stack of Stars and
Stripes. Then we called

  home base on my 40 watt radio, with the help
of the soldiers who

  stretched the slack wire antenna out sideways
so it would not touch the

  ground. 
We ran the radio set off the plane batteries which were

  unharmed. 
This radio business was several weeks after we "landed" but

  the smell of gas was still present and we
were a little nervous about

  using the TNT package on the IFF (A most
Secret Radio!)

 

       I remembered the radio call signals we used
that day after

  Christmas and even though the signals were
changed every day the home

  base in Italy right away
acknowledged my call letters "59T" and came

  back with the base sign
"GODE".  Anyway we told them in
Morse Code in

  plain english (noncoded) who we were, where
we thought we were, how we

  thought we were and then asked them for
instructions if any and where

  was the nearest US Embassy or whatever we
should try to get to. They put

  us on HOLD sort of and asked if we could call
back in about an hour and

  we said yes but it was pretty darned cold out
so hurry.  We called back

  in an hour and they told us nothing, just
Good Luck! And blow up the IFF

  if you can. 
We covered the IFF with flak suits, pushed the red button

  and ran away. 
The 15 or 30 second time delay worked and pretty quick

  there was a small explosion.  Our radio set and the IFF were ruined.  

  (IFF is an acronym for Identification, Friend
or Foe, transmitter, that

  lets us land at our home base without getting
shot at).

       As it turned out this radio contact
business was not such a good

  thing 
after all.  It broke the 45 day
missing in action rule, or

  whatever it was at the time:

 

       When our crew went out on our first
bombing mission the deal was

  that as soon as we completed twenty-five
missions we could or would be

  rotated home, and that if we got shot down in
enemy territory and

  managed to get back to home base in a month
or so we may or may not be

  able to be sent home, but if we were missing
in action for forty five

  days or more and then got back to base we
were automatically entitled to

  go home. 
It seems to me we were gone from our base in Foggia for about

  eighty days, and that it was about forty days
from the day we radioed

  59T to the day we showed up in Poltava, so we didn't
qualify for a ride

  home. 
And as I think about it now, another thing happened.

 

       This particular mission we were on was
No. 22 for the crew, and

  while we were galivanting around Czechoslovakia and Poland and those

  parts, the turn around mission time was
changed to thirty-two (from

  twenty-five). 
As it turned out, this didn't make any difference to me 

  as I was in a hospital somewhere, but for the
other crew members it

  meant more free airplane rides and what all
else that went with it.

 

       Not too much time after the IFF incident
we had a rude awakening

  one night, or maybe it was very very early in
the morning:  Three

  Russian officers we had not seen before woke
us up.  We were all

  sleeping in the largest room in our assigned
cottage, on piles of straw

  and covered with whatever we could scrounge
up.  There was a civilian

  with them who could speak some English; he
addressed his remarks to

  Ralph Kagi, our Senior Officer, he wanted to
know Vass iss SSugarr

  RREport?

 

       On the nose cone of our B-17 a picture
of an air-mail envelope had

  been painted on at an angle, in red, white
and blue, and off to one end

  of it was a likeness of a pretty, scantily
clad young lady, and

  underneath the two paintings in big bold
letters was the legend: SUGAR

  REPORT. 
Everybody knows of course that a Sugar Report is a letter from

  home, from the favored lady.  Except for these four gentlemen, and they

  kept insisting it was a secret message we
were holding out from them, or

  something that we never did quite understand
what it was that bothered

  them.

     

       After what seemed hours, they finally
gave up and left and we gave

  up too and went back to sleep.  We asked Freddy about them later in the

  day and he was scared it seems; he didn't
know anything about them, but

  a day or two later he told us they belonged
to some intelligent unit of

  the Army. 
At first he thought they may have been KGB but was relieved

  to find out they were not, and we would not
be bothered again

 

       Within the week though, about the same
time in the morning, another

  couple of officers with that same civilian
came back, woke us up wanting

  to know what was this Sugar Report?  They directed most of their

  attention to Kagi and Bounds and the rest of
us just laid there more

  than half asleep wishing them out of
there.  They finally left, unsatis-

  fied, I am sure.  This whole thing was quite a puzzlement to us
but we

  found out some part of it:

      

       When we first got there this whole area
we were in was under the

  charge of the Captain Something we first met,
and right after we got

  there he got some kind of a healthy promotion.
His commanding officer

  had been killed and he then became the
commanding officer, over a larger

  area, and moved out a couple of weeks after
we first met him.  But in

  the two weeks he was there he had spent some
time with us and had even

  played Chess with a couple of us, mostly with
our Navigator Fred (     )

  who was pretty darned sharp, and the Captain
liked him and us, and I

  suppose now looking back on it all he was
somewhat refreshed by our

  young crew which had a large amount of cameraderie
and for the most part

  a happy outlook on whatever happened.  The head of that first Army

  intelligence group was a Captain also, and by
the time the second

  intelligence group came through
"our" Captain had become a Colonel or

  some value above the intelligence people and
he had let them know he had

  the situation under control and go away don't
mess around in my back

  yard. (We found this stuff out from Freddy
who had been personally

  assigned to us by Captain Something, and when
Captain Something left to

  bigger headquarters Freddy was left in place,
to "spy" on us and  report

  directly to Captain S.)

 

 

                                              
Sanovca, Dubrovca, Banovca

  Bratislavia, Sanok where each of our crew members
were treated to

  manicures, of all things, Kiev, Lwow, Train
Station, American Hotel,

  Palinka (Sp?) which was sugar beet whiskey at
the party at the American

  Hotel, caviar,

  Pamyatko

 

       A small Polish hospital with two
matronly nurses more concerned

  about Bounds and I with our amoebic dysentery
than with a couple of

  seriously wounded soldiers,                                   

  

       On a walk one day we saw a couple of
soldiers butchering a cow;

  they had strung it up on a tree alongside a
fence-on the other side of

  the fence was a couple of ragged persons
watching and waiting, finally

  the soldiers having gutted the cow threw the
entrails over the fence and

  the two persons grabbed the leavings wrapped
them up in more rags and

  took off across the field cornerways toward a
patch of woods.  We found

  out later they were gypsies.

 

       Another scene comes to mind that led
into a little side activity

  none of us objected to: in a neighborhood
church, Eastern Rite,   at

  Sunday Mass: 
Kliebert, Polynak, Smith, the other Catholics besides

  myself somehow got to Mass in this
neighboring town, I seem to remember

  it sounded like Banovca.  In the middle of Mass two young Russian

  soldiers carrying rifles slung over their
shoulders, strolled up the

  left side aisle looking around as though for
someone in particular, and

  back across the back of the church and up the
other side aisle.  It was

  cold outside and they were all wrapped up in
their woolies complete with

  flapped cap which looked so strange inside
the Church where only the

  women wore headcovering, generally a black
shawl.  They stood in the

  back for awhile, just watching, and then
without saying anything to

  anyone, left as quietly as they had come in.

 

       When Mass was over we were milling
around outside and a middle aged

  woman came up to us and asked if any of us
was from Bridgeport,

  Connecticut as she had a
relative there. We said no, but when we get

  back to the States we would be glad to look
up this relative and pass on

  any news she would care to send.  This may have been a mistake, because

  the next day this lady showed up at our
cottage with a letter to be

  taken to Bridgeport, which we
agreed to do as well as we were able.    

  Later that same day two other people showed
up with letters to be taken

  to Bridgeport and pretty
soon two or three more people with more

  letters. 
This started a small stream of letters and people and letters

  and people, so by the time we left there we
had accumulated a large ruck

  sack full of mail, maybe fifty or sixty
pounds of it, and we kept that

  mail with us every step of the way back;
we  got back as far as Cairo,

  Egypt, with it
where  we were relieved of the ruck sack
by a US

  Intelligence Officer who promised to deliver
the mail, with the help of

  the Red Cross.  We never did find out what happened to that
mail.  I

  just hope some good came of it.

 

       Chess games. Cabbage meals,Russian Wrist
watch traded for airforce

  watch junk. 9mm vs. 45 caliber hand guns.
Refectory.

 

       One day a couple of young Russian
soldiers about our ages asked to

  see our hand guns, which were 45 automatics,
and theirs . were either

  7mm or 9mm automatics, (I forget which)
somewhat smaller than the 45's. 

  We showed each other what we had and a little
while later went out in a

  grove of woods and shot some holes in a paper
(or some-such) target to

  our mutual respect.  (Paper was a scarce item in this area,
especially

  toilet paper.)

     

       In our wanderings around the villages
one of us stumbled onto an

  old Model A Ford panel truck which at one
time had been used as an

  ambulance. 
It had faded Red Crosses painted on the sides, one flat

  tire, and some dried weeds hanging out
between the spokes.  A little

  inspection showed it had a battery and
nothing obviously wrong, and for

  the next several days we referred to that
Ford as our Bus to Belgrade as

  we had been of the opinion there was an
American Embassy there.

 

       We asked Ivan, our Private guard, if he
would fix up that Ford so

  we could get around a little bit.  We told him his name was John in

  English and for some reason this pleased him
even though he had a hard

  time pronouncing 'John'.  Anyway, a few days later, Freddy told us to

  quit messing around with that Ford as we were
restricted to our little

  village area at least until his commanding
officers could figure what to

  do with us and don't forget there's a war
on.  We said OK to Freddy, we

  would not mess around with that Ford.  But we kept stuff trickling from

  the refectory to Ivan, and as he was quite
sentimental about his stomach

  he kept fussing with the Ford, without our
knowledge or consent.

 

      A couple of days later he told us he
needed some gas for the Ford to

  test it out. 
He had repaired the flat tire, and cleaned the plugs I

  think. 
Anyway, with the help of a 10 year old girl we" found" some
gas

  behind where the officers kept their field
cars, and put the gas into

  the Ford. 
Maybe a week later or thereabouts we noticed the Ford at the

  other end of town about a block away from the
lean-to shed where we

  first saw it. 
That night we visited with the Private who was all grins

  and proud of his fix-up job. We paid him some
kind of a bonus and I

  really do not remember what it was, maybe
somebody's wristwatch, maybe

  mine even! 
Right about then it didn't matter much to me what time it

  was.  I
was sick, and so was Bounds, our Bombardier. 
We found out later

  that we had amoebic dysentery.

 

       To back this story up a little bit
further:  Just prior to each

  bombing mission, each crew member was given
what was called an "Escape

  Kit" which was a sealed pouch in which
were two or three thin vellum

  type geographical maps that were supposed to
help us find our way out

  and away from the target area and back to
some haven, several containers

  of pills, which included halazone tablets
(water purifiers) and sixty-

  four dollars in good old USofA currency
(which at that time was 

  negotiable anywhere in Europe (and as it
turned out, even in Russian

  held territories).  There were probably some other small
incidentals in

  the pouch that I don't remember, but I do
know the last insert in the

  pouch was a handful of sulfa powder that was
supposed to have several

  uses. 
Just before each mission we were given what was called a

  Briefing, a quick summary of the target area,
something about the target

  and some other odds and ends we were
generally too sleepy to absorb. 

  These Briefings took place before dawn
usually.

 

      We also had some medical supplies and the
like on board the

  aircraft, and for some reason no one could
fathom there was a stack of

  Stars and Stripes maybe four inches thick
under the radio table.  Stars

  and Stripes was the southern European edition
of the GI newspaper we had

  access to, and when we blew up the IFF we
brought that pile of paper

  back to town with us to use for toilet
paper. 

   

       A few days later we packed it up and
left town, about the time this

  dysentery thing happened., in the Model A,
our whole crew, Freddy , and

  Ivan, who did the driving.  It was jam city! And I mean packed!

 

       We got into this big city, Kiev or Lwow,
probably  Lwow, and ended

  up at the American Hotel.  I am 
pretty fuzzy about the time and place

  at this time, as was Bounds; both of us were
bent out of shape with what

  we hoped was the last of amoebic dysentery. I
think we both lost about

  twenty pounds in the past two-three weeks and
were somewhat weak and not

  too well oriented.

 

     A couple of days before getting to the
American Hotel, we spent some

  time in a small clinic or hospital somewhere
in the area.  Somehow

  Freddy had gotten us two into this place
where we were given quarts of

  chalky water to drink by a chunky nurse.  There were two chunky nurses

  there, much older than we were, maybe even
fortyish, neither could speak

  English, but somehow we communicated. From
what I remember there were

  about a dozen patients there then, in a kind
of a dormitory with curtain

  dividers, all on one floor of the one floor
stone block building. I

  don't remember being all that sick there, but
I do remember being warm

  for awhile and in a clean sheeted bed and
close to a flushing toilet! I

  think we 
were there for maybe two nights.

 

       Behind a curtain somewhere close there
were two soldiers who had

  been injured; we could hear them calling for
a nurse from time to time

  and they sounded pretty weak and helpless, a
couple of times one or both

  of the ladies would be tending, talking or
whatever, to or with Bounds

  and me and we would call their attention to
the soldiers calling.  We

  were kind of annoyed the nurses would not
respond to the calls right

  away; neither Bounds or I were in pain and it
sounded pretty obvious to

  us the soldiers were hurting.  Maybe it was because we were the

  foreigners we were, plums to be talked about
later.

 

       A day or two before we got to this
clinic place I remember a snow

  storm we got lost in and we had pulled up to
a square block building

  about as long each way as the truck we were
driving.  We slept on the

  concrete floor, no covers that I remember, no
heat, no nothing, no

  toilet either.  Bounds and I had our flight jacket pockets
stuffed to

  overflowing with little square patches of
Stars and Stripes.  That was

  one of the most miserable days of my life.  Somewhere along the way I

  concluded the only thing worse to sleep on
was a sand floor.

 

       Before that, maybe the same day, we were
in Sanok, Poland.  I have

  a fold-apart group of pictures in my old
warbag, of Sanok.  On this

  grim, grey wintery day it looked like a dingy
town I suppose, but the

  people there were great.  They thought we were the vanguard of the

  rescuing army from America, to release
them from the Occupiers,

  currently Russian, and of recent memory, the
Germans.  We rolled into

  town in the Model A Ford ex-ambulance, and
drove out of town in a

  flatbed Chevy truck, a good trade we made
there , as we were really

  cramped in that little panel truck.  We still had the duffle bags full

  of Czeck mail destined for Bridgeport, and we also
had a measure of

  elegance we didn't have before: Our whole
crew was taken into some kind

  of fancy shop where each of us had our finger
nails  manicured.  This

  was the only thing they could give us that
had any meaning to them to

  thank us, for what I am still not sure! 

 

       For weather shelter we had popped one of
the parachutes we had

  taken with us from Sugar Report, and that was
kind of lucky because

  about this time it started snowing
again.  This time Polynak was

  driving, Freddy was the tour guide, and Ivan
was back in Sanok with

  instructions to go back to Banovca. Our new
destination was Moscow.

 

       Bounds and I were pretty miserable and
Freddy said he was going to

  put us in a hospital. We wrapped up as well
as we could in silk, and hit

  the road. 
Our next stop was that little hospital place, and from there

  to the Big City, which turned
out to be quite a disappointment, all

  bombed out, no lights and few toilets.

 

       We finally got into the big city which
Freddy seemed to know quite

  well. 
We drove straight to the Hotel and all of a sudden I found myself

  in a big clean bedroom with a large bed with
clean sheets and a big

  window overlooking a broad avenue.  But no toilet.  It was out in the

  hall, at the end.  There were two of them, Pan and Pani. 

  

       It seems like we got there in the late
morning.  The other guys

  were interested in rubbernecking in the area
but all I wanted to do was

  to lay down, do nothing.  Which I did.  
I didn't realize it at the

  minute but all I was doing was resting up for
a party which was going to

  happen 
that night.  And it did.

 

       There was a small Ballroom at the
opposite end of the hall where

  Pan and Pani were, and a couple of men were
in there practicing on a    

  violin and some other stringed instrument
that looked like a wierd

  mandolin. 
To the center of the room was a long table loaded with

  goodies, on a very thick real linen
tablecloth.  After a nap of sorts I

  had gotten up to visit Pan and then made a
little sortie into the

  Ballroom, out of curiosity I suppose, before
much was happening.  I also

  noticed a big bunting or something like that
hanging on a side wall: A

  large cloth picture of Stalin with someone I
didn't recognize.  I

  remember it because it looked so out of place
there.

 

       A little while later my companions had
returned from somewhere and

  we all went into this Ballroom.  Lt. Freddy was in his glory.  It

  appeared he and maybe us too, were some kind
of heroes.  The party was

  in our honor we were surprised to find
out.  One reason, I suspect, is

  that the hotel management had been talked
into the notion of accepting

  our Chits and I am almost sure this was
Freddy's idea. We had used this

  Chit idea back in Sanok. It had became part
of the Ford-Chevy trade,

  and also included getting gas for the truck
which I seem to remember was

  black market and stolen from a nearby Russian
outfit.

 

      I have a scramble of memories about this
party, but I do remember

  that our original Captain Something was
there, much decorated and one

  for one doing vodka toasts with our well
members, like Fred and Kagi.  

  I also remember that thick linen tablecloth
for some reason, and some

  little dishes of black caviar which I did not
like in the least, and

  something like flakey muffins that were
supposed to be great which

  probably were but which I remember not
liking. 

 

       Looking back on this American Hotel
episode, in the middle of the

  heavily shelled and bombed out city, we can
wonder where all these

  goodies came from and all else that party
represented.  The Captain S.

  now a small general of sorts, the vodka, and
the palinka.  (Palinka is a

  sugarbeet whiskey as I remember: Picture a
cartoon of someone swallowing

  a shotful, see it coarse down the gullet and
hit bottom and bounce back

  turning everything in its way back up a
beautiful  violent red.) Strong

  stuff.

 

       We were somewhat surprised to see
Captain S there at the party at

  the hotel. 
I think we figured out later we weren't as clever as we

  figured we were getting away in that Model
A.  It smelled like a setup. 

  I doubt we examined that thought too closely,
we were on the move and

  that felt good.

 

       The next day or so we were in a train
station; it was  bombed,

  shelled, almost wall-less, repaired and
repaired and repaired.  Bounds

  and I on the road to recovery, still with
small squares of Stars and

  Stripes in our pockets, had learned to find
first the nearest toilet and

  in this train station we found it.  On raised tile platforms, maybe six

  marble steps up from the main floor, a row of
them, ten or twelve, all

  with small side walls but doorless.  With a row of people lined up

  waiting, each his/her turn.  We were more or less kind of private

  people, not used to this casual approach to
using this sort of facility,

  but for whatever time we were there we
managed to survive this adventure

 

      I think I was dozing off on a stone bench
when our train came in. 

  Freddy was there and some new other
officials, to see us off I supposed,

  but one by little we all got on the train,
with our duffle bags full of

  mail and whatever else we had.  We shuffled sideways along the narrow

  aisles in the pullman car until we got to our
perches.  And perches is

  about what it was- a stack of benches about
two feet apart up and down,

  with the bench seats made up of what looked
like two by six slats, maybe

  four benches high, four on this side of the
compartment and four on the

  other side, and between each two by six slat
a small gap just big enough

  for about two colonies of bugs. Itching bugs,
hungry.  We had two compartments to ourselves

  almost, our crew and baggage and another
Lieutenant  who Freddy introduced us

  to who was taking his place.  Freddy had to go back to Banovca.        

 

     We settled in as well as possible,
sleeping sitting up when we could.  The
track was not too smooth and we were chilly all the time and hungry part of the
time.  The train stopped every now and
then for awhile;  local vendors would
hawk their wares-food mostly, cabbage, carrots, beets, water jugs and hard
brown bread and I don't remember what all else.

  

    The train was pretty crowded, full mostly
with a whole bunch of non-talking people. 
One or two of us took little sorties forward and backward in the cars,
at first looking for the diner car which was missing, and later but with more
urgency, for a restroom, also missing. 
We finally discovered that this facility consisted of a pipe sticking up
out of the floor behind a kind of a broom closet door almost hidden alongside
the center passageway.  The door didn't
lock or even close all the way but having been through the bombed out train
station awhile ago we took this in our stride. 
Bounds and I were the only ones with Stars and Stripes though, so
periodically we were more popular than usual. 
We were pretty grateful, in retrospect, that it was winter and cold:
there was a kind of a conical mound of amber lumpy do-do around the base of the
restroom pipe that wasn't quite odor free.

 

   People on trains in this area didn't talk to
each other that we could notice, much less in the presence of or near  to 
strangers dressed in US of A Army Air Force duds, but every once in
awhile you could catch a glimpse of desire or envy: for some reason a couple
-three of us carried our sheepskin lined overboots  thonged to our  belts. 
Folded into each other they can even be used as a pillow.

 

   Maybe only a day or two out from that train
station we were pushed into a siding to wait for another Westbound supply
train.  We had hardly settled down to a
nap when whoever it was next to the window let out a bellow: LOOK, there is a
GI Jeep! 

 

   About five feet from the track on a little
road parallel to the track was indeed a Jeep. 
A sergeant sitting behind the wheel, stopped his rig, waiting for
something ahead of him to quit, or do something, so he could go ahead.

 

   We busted out of that train in a hurry.  I think our window got broke and somebody
shouted to that GI while another of us went out through the accordian fold
between cars (or whatever that connection was) .  Anyway, all of a sudden, I see us all sitting
in that Jeep, complete with loaded duffle bags, and believe me that was a
pile!  The sergeant didn't think much of
this, and I do remember quite clearly, "Take us home, Sarge!", and he
did take us to the airbase, at first to the MP's and then to upper authority,
who escorted us to the Medics.

 

The
Medics, at arms length, shooed us to a concrete block building where we
disrobed  in a hallway and then into
another room with no windows-just a couple of six or eight inch portholes-
large enough to toss in ( aerosol ?)cans full of fog, and some wooden benches.
The floor was soon dappled with a layer
of bed bugs, fleas, lice and I don't know what else after we were well fogged
After what probably seemed like one or
two eternities the door opened and we
were directed down a small hallway to "Showers", and when we
came out of there we found piles of new
skivvies and tee shirts. We then got
back into our clothes, which had been exposed to a heavy treatment of
the foggy stuff, and then over to the
Command where we were briefly interrogated and dismissed .



We ended up with a group of bunks, and clean
bedding ; it seemed they really didn't know what to do with us. They figured we
were real alright, so they must have gotten into the radio waves or whatever,
and while they were waiting for some further inspiration they gave us a pass to town, to Poltava.



It wasn't much of a town, as I remember,
small and dingy from what we saw of
it. Lots of coal smoke and the smut
that went along with it. The scattered
snow banks were more black and grey than white, no open stores or the open
markets we expected, and no people. My
memory of this is dimmer than usual, probably because I was still pretty washed
out from that fine water from Sanovca.



(I remember that coal smoke smell though:
Scott Field Illinois, and Lincoln, Nebraska [and other places like Spokane, Washington], Rows and rows of barracks, crispy mornings;
not too bad a smell if it wasn't too thick!).



The next few days are kind of blurry for me,
but I remember flying in a C-46 to Teheran, and a few days there. I see myself there in some kind of a carriage
going through groves of orange trees, on a tour, and in a dispensary, maybe a small field hospital, and then in another
C-46 to Athens where there
were acres and acres of white-walled buildings that looked like apartments,
all on the edge of cliffs overlooking a bay. The colors there
were all stark bright, blue and white, lots of hills with no flat ground. a day or so there maybe, I think I was a
little bit sick again, feverish even, and back into a C-46, to Cairo.



Some kind of a barracks maybe, but sleep I
did get, and a day or so later some kind of a pass into town, or just to the
edge of it, to an outside market place.
Somehow I had with me a carton of cigarettes, Philip Morris I think ,
and somehow I traded this off for several pieces of very thin
skinned and small cups and saucers.



(I make a comment about these cups and
saucers because when I got shot up later one of my "buddies" came up
to Ancona to visit me
in a hospital and he told me something like some other pottery I had, got
broken in a move. Several years later,
much later, after the war, in a rare letter from another of our crew members I
was told the buddy that visited me in Ancona had packed
off the pottery I had himself because no one expected to see me alive
anyway.) Oh well.



No. 1 NZFieldHosp in schoolhouse in Ancona, Italy. Surgeon Lt.Col _Bridges_________? The KIWI
Kiwank Cruising the
the school corridor in a wheelchair, pushed by Jack ,injured in a Tank,
Mickey Mouse on theceiling or walls
Jones all bent over backwards and me all bent over forward Jack
Jones Newspaper Gisborne Herald Beryl
Baldock so Island a nurse a correspondent years later, A Cath Chaplain, got to be friends with,
took me to another hosp nearby a yank one
29 transfusions, all Kiwi blood,
porridge and porrige and cream of wheat and tea Card playing in bed threw up one day huge glob of jelly blood Little Tony
and his buddy playing sticks one
was a stick mine, blew a hole through his buddies stomache and blew off one of
h his legs and half the other.. sitting
up in bed legsg folded under,,, tony's
mother family came to visit.. Somehow
got to Bari and later to Naples VE day in Naples, and then into a Hosp ship to Camp Kilmer New Jersey. Quenton Reynolds,, Fargo? No Dakota. a aTitian
haired blond waiting for him shot
up hand and mine was beautiful A pass to NYC
a haircut a rip off,, shampoo
Subways to Staten Island to see Tante Marie, Hampton something?? Long Isladn was it? A long long long train ride to Walla Walla Wash to McCaw gen'l Hosp. VJ day
in Walla Walla. Stood
formation, a DFC medal there, a civilian again, a bus ride to Tacoma , August
1945. Another one to Spokane a few weeks
later, to Gonzaga, with John Smith? I dont remember.. Signed in, enrolled, DeSmetHall, Fr Harrington, Jim McGovern, Mike McHugh, Fr Art Dussault John Leary Fr Wm Weller FR F Corkery Bro Peter
Buskins Don Ryan Joe McGrath many many
many.. Student Body president soo very few students,, two or three women,

The
Bulletin, reporter, later editor n then a columnist Glassy-eyed. The Knights
.lotsa stuff.

[robkelk]

Good, solid "slice of life" stories - I like them.

If your grand-dad's looking to publish them, he should get an editor to give them a once-over. If they're just for the family, leave them as is.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Sweno]

very nice, if a little ramble-y. It's all to often that stories like these are lost.
-Terry
-----
"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

[Happerry]

(Jan. 22, 1995)







In 1938 or so, one late October evening after a roller skating session at King's Roller Rink, my best friend, George van Kleeck, and I, caught the
freight train at the trestle on the lower end of the McKinley Avenue gulch for the ride up the gulch to Bismarck, where it always stopped for some switching,
or something, and we would get off and walk the rest of the way home-either to his house or mine.



This time though, the train not only didn't stop when it got to the 64th street crossing, but it was picked up speed at this point, too
fast for us to get off, especially as dark as it was. We just hung on, standing on the rear platform of the caboose, trying to puzzle out what to do.



About seven hours later we got off the train between Hoquiam and Aberdeen, a little after daylight. We wandered down the streets until we
came to the house of a relative of George's, and after we pounded on the door for awhile, the lady of the house let us in after determining who we
were.



A little later the relatives phoned George's folks in Tacoma to let them know where we were and that we were alright. I think she was an
aunt or something, not very enthused about us being there. But she fed us and then let us sleep someplace there for awhile, and after another little while,
early afternoon I think, we walked out to the highway and hitch-hiked back to Tacoma.



Neither George's folks nor my family knew that we were out of town for the evening. We both lived at each others' house, sometime two
or three days at a time before checking in at the other house, and for the most part that was a good arrangement. We had the same school hours, same
homework, the same everything, caught the same streetcar, etc etc.

[Happerry]

November 2, 1996



We rented a mid-sized Ford station wagon in Milan and after some grunting and pointing we took off to find an eastbound highway. It turned out to be a
toll road and as we didn't quite know where we were going it was OK for starters.. Earlier, we had tried to make a reservation at a hotel or motel or
bed-and-breakfast in the town of Piacenza, about 30 miles from Milan (55km), in a place where English was spoken (according to a tour book) but when we got
there we found out there was a huge convention going on, so we drove to the next larger town, Parma, where the same convention was happening.



Marguerite did all the driving as she threatened to get car sick if she didn't!



We had heard that driving was different in this country, but we had no idea it was this different -wild! Cars cut in and out with only a catswhisker
between fenders. She did a magnificent job; in the week or so we had that car, only two small scrapes were experienced!



In any event, we ended up at this fancy hotel, $200 per room, but it was OK we were told, because breakfast was included! And breakfast was served.
Through some language difficulty it ended up that the four of us were served six breakfasts.



Next morning, from Parma we headed East, this time on the old road, not the autostrada, to better enjoy the sights along the way, and it was delightful,
through one very small village after another, all quite picturesque. This took us to the outskirts of Reggio Emilia, where we turned South for a long much
turning road up the mountain, through another string of villages, an occasional tunnel, and finally, to Cervarezza, which is over the top and on the
Southwest down slope.



It seemed to me the higher up the mountain we went, the friendlier the people became, and they were not at all unfriendly down the hill.



There are two roads into Cervarezza. The high road on the up side of town where there are some relatively new buildings, and the old road through the
older part of town which we took, and fortunately turned out to be right one for us.. This was the only through-street through town, hemmed in on both sides
by old brick and block buildings, and Margy drove more carefully than usual as there were some pedestrians along the way. We drove past the Bar Italia, a
café kind of a place, which was the name of a connecting point our Internet guide, Dario Zanichelli, had given us a week or so before.



We stopped, of course, and I ran into this café place, carrying only a letter translated into Italian (by Helen Smith). I asked the bartender if I could
speak with Guiancarlo Zanichelli, and he told me he was a relative of Sr. Z., who is not here. I handed him this letter which he glanced at and then
handed it to a man alongside me at the bar, who also glanced at it and who in turn handed it to another man on the other side of me who began to read it
silently. Then he Whooped! And then began reading the letter aloud. By this time there was a cluster of men around us smiling and all talking at once
telling the reader to "go-on, go-on"!



The reader turned out to be Sergio Galassi, a cousin, somewhat remote on the family tree, but still, a cousin.



The conversation got more animated and two or three side conversations developed, and about this time my three fellow passengers - Jeanie, Margy, and
John came into the café, full of wonder and some trepidation, not knowing what to expect. They were quickly introduced, and the little crowd dispersed
somewhat.



Sergio and the four of us worked our way toward the back of the café, to an empty table where we stooped over a bar napkin where Sergio had written the
names of my grandfather, Riccardo, two brothers -Battista and Domenico, and a sister, Elvira. My great grandfather, Stanislaus, was a cousin of Sergio's
grandfather (I believe) and that's where our relationship lies. (There was somewhat of a language problem here: Sergio had some French, as did Jeanie
and Margy, and to a lesser extent myself, and I had some Italian but a lot of Italian sounds a lot like some of the Spanish I got mixed up with in the last
few years. In any event, Sergio's great grandfather may have been his great great grandfather and a twenty-second three times removed cousin from my
grandfather, but we did satisfy ourselves that we were cousins!)



This bar napkin with the four names on it became the base document of our newly structured family tree. After meeting a few more relatives, we quickly
transferred this information onto a regular and more durable paper notebook page. This later data eventually found it's way onto FamilyTreeWorks, a
computer based record keeping program.



In the next several days, we met and had identified for us, other Galassi family members, and as we were introduced to them, we pulled out this base
document with the four names on it, and asked, "Where in this tree, do you fit"? Generally speaking, each person would study it a little, then
plug into it which relative they identified with. From these new connections we would learn of others, and sometimes some more than usual interesting
information. Like, my grandfather's brother, Battista, went to Syria for awhile, but came back home. He died in a hospital just a few miles from
Cervarezza. He it is who wrote most of the letters we have copies of - written from around 1920 to 1931 - that got us started on this family search in the
first place!



In the course of our stay in Cervarezza, we were told that this village was 500-600 years old, and that there were less than ten families there as the
root stock, so to speak, of the village. These family names show up again and again on the headstones of the local cemeteries. According to Alfredo
Correggi, the "Capostipite de Cervarezza" are the Balzoni, the Beccarii, the Correggi, the Galassi, the Mazzoni, and the Zanichelli families!



We were told where different of our relatives were born, died and buried. To verify this sort of information, a person needs to visit the grave sites,
and inspect the church and county records, which we did not have the time to do, or having it, did not take enough time to, which all leads to the
conclusion that a specifically planned research trip is called for!



In any event, after some little while with Sergio at the Bar Italia, we mentioned to him that we would like to go up to the hotel Ilton, which was
recommended by Dario Zanichelli, but Sergio took us out to the street (via Di Resistanza) and walked us up past several buildings to another place, the Bar
Albergo Ventasso, a tourist hotel, but closed for the season. It has a café like set-up on the ground floor, which is kept open most of the year, and we were
introduced to the owner, Valentino Bucci.



To make a long story short, Valentino offered us to stay at his place which he would reopen for a few days for our convenience, and after some small
contemplation and observations of halo's and aura's and such, we agreed, and brought our baggage in. Margy parked the Ford in the upside back of the
hotel where no car could drive to, and we settled in.



We stayed there only three or four days, but it was a most adventuresome time, to say the least!

A couple days later, we met Luciana Benevelli Ferrari and Franco, and the next day, Gianni and Isamilla Notari and Caterina, and a day or so later, Zita
Costi. From Cervarezza we went to La Spezia on the Italian Riviera, where we met Marcello and Miryam Benevelli, and one of their grandsons, but this was a
little later. The point here is that each of the above is the closest relatives we have "over there!"



From Valentino's Ventasso, we sortied out to Talada, in search of the mulino, but had to turn around because the rio Secchia was too deep to ford on
foot at this time.



The WE, were the four travelers, Valentino's wife, Germina, Sergio Galassi, and Guiseppe----------------(I've misplaced his name:
'Bill' something.)

At the Mulino

In two cars, we threaded our way down to the little village of Talada, then reversed our route because of the high water on the Secchia, then back up
again and a long ways away, up the west side of the valley, finally crossing the river Secchia just below Sologno, where we parked the cars and walked up
river about three miles, to reach, finally, the mulino (the grist mill), where my father was born.



From the car place to the mulino, we walked through field after field, along the river bottom, where the grain that was fed into the huge stone grinders
used to be grown. Here and there we saw fresh sign where the wild boars had been rooting for tubers and the like. It was exciting!

[Happerry]

This is a collection of events, words, picture places, ideas and what all else that led to and fell out of the the stories I used to tell to my children
when they were small and more gullible than they are now. Now is Nov. 7, 1992.











THIS IS A STORY ABOUT THREE FRIENDS AND THINGS ABOUT THEM






BUCKY, a beaver, who eats willow, almost exclusively.




DRAGGY. a dragon, mostly friendly, who eats minerals, almost exclusively.




ALLY, an alligator, who eats fish, almost exclusively.




These are the three friends; most of the time they just play together and hardly ever get into trouble. They each have their own mannerisms but once you
get used to them they are pretty cool.




They live in the country of FARWAY, between Mineral Mountain and the sea.




Almost to the top of Mineral Mountain is a litte opening, like a cave entrance, that leads to and opens out into a broad flat area which is the bottom of
the crater inside the mountain. All around the inside wall of the crater are openings that disappear into the side of the mountain. This flat area is where
the old dragons gather to visit, and rest, and meet, and do all the things old dragons do when they are out in the sunlight. One of the openings that
disappears into the side of the mountain leads into the area where Draggy lives, with his Mom and Dad. There is a whole bunch of openings for quite a few
dragons, including some relatives.




These dragons are quite normal for the most part, as dragons go, but they do have one peculiarity, and that is, when they get wet, they shrink and it
takes quite a while to unshrink.




That is not quite as bad as it may sound because as you may know, in FARWAY, the dragons are in charge of the weather. It's up to them to decide
when it will rain, and where and how much, and stuff like that. Every once in awhile they have a rain meeting and the Old Ones decide about the rain
business. Sometimes some of the younger ones start toying around with the weather when no one is looking and they generally mess it up. That's when
floods happen and trees fall and mud slides.






When Marybell the Ancient One in charge of the Old Ones who are in charge of the weather, catches anybody tinkering around with Rain or Snow or Fog or
Wind or Dry or Cold or Threatening or Barometer or whatever, she sits them down in her pincer chair for a little sprinkle; if they are into big stuff like
Heavy Storm, Typhoon, Hurricane, overmoderate Lightning and Thunder and Torrentials then it is another matter, quite serious, this gets into splashing and
quick soaking and the like. It all depends.












Early in their friendship they formed a new society, which was The Perpetual Recreation Society. But it was quite a awhile before this society was
really formed; because at first they did not know there was anyone else around to play with at all. Draggy was the only one who had any relatives and he had
a bunch of them; both Bucky and Ally were orphans and none of them knew that it was alright for them to play with other animals or beings and if it
wasn't for an accident or two none of them would have even known about the other two.




Bucky lived on the West-South side of Mineral Mountain, on Willows creek which ran down Flatts plain to the foot of the mountain where it turned south
and in a little while ran into a river just below a mudflat that had a pile of old logs and trees that had accumulated there from a number of bygone floods.
His house was a scrambled looking beaver dam on the creek that took him one whole season to build. And as it turned out, Ally's home was under the brush
pile at the edge of the mudflat that was just above the mouth of Willows creek.





Most of the time Bucky roamed around in the woods upstream from the dam because that's where the tastiest willows were, but he spent a lot of time
being lonesome, just like Ally did, and like Draggy did, so it was a good thing for each of them that they became friends.





One day Ally was swimming around under the log jam scouting for a meal when he spied a fish tail wagging back and forth under a small log end. He eased
himself over to it then and quickly grabbed it in his mouth; the fish tried to shake itself loose but the only thing that happened was the small log got
shook loose from its jammed end which in turn caused the bigger logs over it to settle down pinning the alligator between another log and a small pile of
brush sticking out of an underwater sand bank. He was stuck but he was too stubborn to let go of the fish, so he just thrashed around making the water all
muddy, getting madder and madder not yet realizing how badly he was stuck.




Bucky rescued him without even knowing who it was. Bucky had been cruising down his creek where it dumped into the big river when he noticed the roiling
water over by the brush pile.


Some of the brush had gotten loose from the sand bank and it looked like some delicious willow branches. He was a strong swimmer so he dove down to the sand
bank and with his sharp teeh cut the brush pile loose from the sand. He floated back up to the surface pulling the brush with him and was surprised to find
the brush pile was thrashing around. Well, it turned out to be Ally who was still stuck in it; the two of them got over to the shore and Ally got loose from
the brush at the same time Bucky


noticed who and what it was who was doing all that thrashing.


He was kind of scared as he had never seen any beaver like this one before, He took a bite of the willow brush and said:


"You sure are a funny looking beaver, and why are you holding that big salmon in your mouth?"




"I am not a beaver," said Ally, "I am an alligator and I eat fish all the time , like this one, and thank you for saving me from being
stuck under that brush pile, and why are you eating that brush?"




"This is a delicious snack," Bucky replied, "It is willow bush which all beavers like and what is your name?"




. Between mouthfuls of fish Ally told Bucky his name was Ally and then he asked




"Would you like to play, or do you have to go home and where do you live?"




Well, that is how Bucky and Ally met, quite by accident, and the two of them one day met Draggy, also quite by accident, only this time it was a loud
accident!




Ally and Bucky were playing chasies around the foot of Mineral Mountain when all of a sudden some rocks started falling down the mountain and some little
ones bounced over and hit both Bucky and Ally. They ran out onto the plain, farther away, and looked back to watch the rocks falling. This made a lot of
noise and clouds of dust, but quit pretty soon, and a light wind blew the dust away. They went over to look at the rock pile and when they got to the edge
of the pile they heard some funny sounding groanings come out of it.




They climbed up a little way onto the pile right over where the noise was coming from. They picked away at the rocks and uncovered what looked like an
alligator tail which they pulled on but it started to wriggle and more grunts and groans came out from below. They moved more rocks away and all of a sudden
a young dragon jumped up and out of the pile and he growled at them:




"Quit pulling my tail, will you? And thank you for saving me from that lunch pile, and who are you?"




Ally laughed. "That is a rock pile and my name is Ally and his name is Bucky, and we were playing and we saw this bunch of rocks sliding down the
mountain, and you must have been mixed up in those rocks somewhere, and are you hurt and what is your name?







"No I'm not hurt, my name is Draggy and I live toward the top of this mountain with my family and I was up on the side of the mountain looking
for some tasty minerals when the rock I was on got loose so I scrambled away but it was too late the rocks started falling and so did the place I was
standing on and all of a sudden I was rolling down the side of the mountain with piles and piles of dirt and rocks and some mineral rocks and I got rolled
under a little pile and the next thing I knew someone was pulling on my tail and I thought it was my cousin, but it was you two, so thanks again."




Ally told him he looked a little bit like an alligator so he was probably OK, and did he know how to play chasies?




Draggy told them he did not know what chasies was but he did do a lot of chasing






??

I think this story might be a little cut off but I am not sure.