[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.
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.