We were stationed at the Algiers airport for a few weeks, at a small
airstrip a few miles east of Algiers for a couple of weeks, then a bigger
field at Blida.
A couple of events stood out during that time. I was watching a
plane on his take-off run, going from SOUTH TO NORTH on a rather narrow
runway. Then I turned and looked out the other window of our crash truck
and saw another plane also on his take-off run from NORTH TO SOUTH! That
runway was far too short to play that sort of game, but by some freaky
chance both planes had flying speed when they met at the center of the
strip, and each pulled up steeply and turned sharply to his left, so they
missed each other. I don't know anything about those pilots' bathroom
habits, but I suspect they both needed a change of underwear when they got
back from that mission!
On another day an English built Beaufighter, a twin engined night
fighter, like the one that had been involved in our first crash, lost power
in one engine on his take-off run, swerved off the runway and plowed into
another plane. We had the fire out, and were standing in the debris when
"WHAM!", a loud explosion right by my feet. At the same time I felt
something hit my Adam's apple! I put my hand on my neck and drew it away
covered with blood! I was more than a bit scared. The medics looked at my
wound and discovered a small piece of brass, not bigger than a match head,
that had been part of the 20 millimeter cartridge that had exploded. The
brass had just barely broken the skin, and was still sticking on my neck.
That didn't merit a Purple Heart because it wasn't an enemy inflicted wound.
Early in December of 1943 we loaded our firetrucks and other
vehicles on an LST (Landing Ship, Tanks) in Ferryville, near Bizerte and
sailed to Taranto, in the instep of the boot that is Italy. The LST was
crewed by Britishers, and we noted that the chain of command seemed to be
reflected in the size of their beards; the Captain had a really big one, the
First Mate a little bit smaller chin-muff and so on down to the
clean-shaven, hardworking lowly seamen. A night-long storm convinced us all
that we did well to opt for Air Corps duty rather than going Navy! That LST
seemed to bobble and bounce like a small cork, and, Oh!! How sea-sick we were!
We drove down the sole of the boot, and up to the top of the toe,
and were ferried from Reggioe Calabra across to Messina, in Sicily. We
finally pulled into Catania in time to get in on a Christmas Eve Special
feed of turkey and all the trimmings. We bunked in the stair-well of a
bombed-out hanger and office building, along with about 60 or 80 other G Is.
About the middle of the night it struck us...the turkey/trimmings feed
wasn't so great after all, and the rest of the night was punctuated by guys
running down the stairs to the 6-holed latrine across the street, and
trudging back up to their sacks. There is just no way to adequately
describe the misery of 25 or 30 men, lined up outside a
six-holer-tent-latrine, hoping against hope that they can hold off until
their turn at a throne!
Sgt. Cavany and I sat in the cab of our truck one night, discussing
how we were far enough behind the lines to be safe from attack. About that
time the Germans pulled an air raid on Syracuse, about 35 miles down the
coast from Catania. The anti-aircraft display was fascinating, until an
ack-ack battery about a hundred yards behind us opened fire. As we looked
out from under our truck we agreed that from then on there would be no more
urinating under a fire truck, because you never knew when you might want to
crawl under it!
In the spring of '44 we moved up to an airstrip not far from the
front lines, which had been stalemated at Casino for several months. We
were assigned to a fighter/bomber base, and we could occasionally see
our planes as they started their bombing/strafing runs. It was a busy time
for all, the first missions took off before daylight, and the last ones of
the day would come in after dark. Planes and pilots were both stretched to
limits, and we had many crashes, caused by enemy groundfire, lack of time
for properly maintaining the planes, and bone-tired pilots.
Our P-47 Thunderbolts carried two, 500 pound bombs. The bombs
weren't supposed to be capable of detonating until the pilot "armed" them by
pushing a button after getting airborne and nearing the drop point. The
"arming" let the bomb's firing pin activate and detonate the bomb when it
hit the ground.
One afternoon we had it proven loud and clear that not being capable
of detonation ain't necessarily enough. A Thunderbolt's engine stalled just
after reaching take-off speed, and the pilot jettisoned his bombs, knowing
he was going to crash. He had not "armed" the bombs, so they were perfectly
harmless unless the plane caught fire and the heat detonated them. The
bombs landed on the runway, about fifty yards from our truck, and bounced
like two great big cigars, end-over-end down the runway...on about the third
or fourth bounce one of them disappeared in a ball of fire! The guys back
in the camp area, about a half-mile from the explosion, heard bomb
fragments whistling through the trees overhanging our tent. I was looking
right at the bomb, probably not more than a hundred yards away from it when
it exploded, but I didn't hear it. There's supposed to be a cone of silence
around an explosion, when the blast and noise is deflected upwards, and I
guess we must have been within that cone.
A year or so later, when we were on a fighter/bomber base near Pisa,
a Royal Air Force Spitfire plane, carrying a 500 pound bomb, blew-out a
landing- gear tire on his take-off run. He swerved off the runway and ran
into a pile of rocks. The rocks flipped him, tail-over-nose, and when he
landed up-side down the bomb exploded. The Spitfire just almost disappeared
into thin air, and we could find only a few fragments of the pilot. I was
about three hundred yards away from that explosion, and I certainly heard it
loud and clear!
V E Day, I think it was May 8, 1945, finally arrived, and was the
cause of some celebration. Then the big question was, "What next?" Our
unit was split up three ways, one third to go into Austria as part of the
Army of Occupation, one third to be assigned to an airbase in Brazil, and
the others to be sent to the Pacific Theater to help in the expected
invasion of Japan. I was one of the Pacific-bound group.
When we boarded ship in Naples' harbor we weren't too happy with the
way Uncle Sam was using us. We felt that we had at least earned a stop-over
in the States and a furlough home, but that was not to be. We were to sail
directly through the Panama Canal and on to the Philippines.
Shortly after we boarded we got the word that an atomic bomb had
been dropper on some city in Japan, and had caused extensive damage, and
might even shorten the war a bit. Well, what in heck is an atomic bomb?
Most of us didn't even know what an atom was, much less an atomic bomb. Any
of the boys who had had a physics course in high school were self-proclaimed
experts, and we were treated to some pretty wild speculations as to what an
atomic bomb was.
Of more timely importance was the fact that we were on a Swedish
merchant ship, designed to haul wool from Australia to Sweden, and
converted to a troopship with minimal facilities. Bunks consisted of steel
pipes from floor to ceiling with cross-bars on which canvas slings were
lashed. The set-up was such that two slings were oriented side-by-side, and
another pair directly above, with about 14 inches from the top of one to the
bottom of the next higher one, not allowing for sag. The height of the
ceiling made room enough to hang four or five sets of slings on each pipe.
The boys told me that I had turned over during the first night and somehow
managed to push both the guy at my side and the guy above me out on the floor.
TO BE CONTINUED
I can be contacted at raybeebe@tir.com
Send comments to Dan Machesky at dan@beesky.com