Baa Baa Black Sheep (15 page)

But not this time. My plane was little more than in the air—and I had used up the entire length of the runway—when my engine coughed its last. I didn’t even have the opportunity of getting the wheels retracted before my plane slammed into the ground, wheels and all. The impact was so great that my safety belt had broken and I was flung forward in the cockpit. My instrument panel tore into my knees and I damn nearly gargled the gun sight. Fortunately it didn’t get
my teeth, but the gun sight split my head open near my temple.

As I crawled out of the cockpit, the hood, which I had locked open for take-off, looked like an accordion when it shot forward under the force of impact after shearing its lock. I was completely dazed as I struggled out of the cockpit, but I knew almost by instinct to get away from possible fire and to try to take cover before the Japs came.

While half crawling and staggering in a torn and bloody condition I asked some nearby Chinese farmers to lend me a hand. They apparently didn’t want any part of me, for no attention was paid to my pleas as the farmers continued with their chores. I was so angry with these Chinese that I cursed them soundly with the last of my strength. Probably the reason they would not help was that the Chinese, I had heard, refrain from saving one’s life because they are then obligated to care for this person financially ever afterward. These being real primitive Chinese, they no doubt went by the old traditions, for they never walked so much as a step toward me.

I was eventually picked up by one of our boys and taken to good old Dr. “Rich” Richards, an American doctor we all loved. “Doc Rich” was one of three medicos who had joined the group, and all of them were excellent medical men. Doc Rich sewed up my head and taped up my knees with yards of adhesive tape, much like casts. He had no access to an X-ray, so he wasn’t able to determine whether my kneecaps were fractured.

But to hell with a little thing like my accident; the wedding went on as scheduled that night in the hostel. And I was to attend, even though painfully. My knees had become so enlarged I wasn’t able to get my trousers over them, so I came in my bathrobe.

While waiting for the wedding to get underway, I was seated beside Duke Hedman (America’s first ace) upon the piano bench because I wasn’t able to stand for any length of time. Duke was thumping away on the piano in the hostel lobby like nobody’s business, and he looked like a Gay Nineties dandy, with a cigarette dangling from his lower lip as he played on.

The ceremony finally took place, and the couple had no more than embraced when another air raid sounded. It was
quite dark by then as there was no moon this night. The wedding was momentarily forgotten as everyone started to run from the well-lighted building to get into transportation of any kind to drive away from the area. Some of the people tried to lend me a hand, but I refused, for I was full of whisky for the celebration and my pain combined. Anyhow I said:

“For Christ’s sake, go if you’re going, but not me. The Japs can see those car headlights for miles. I’m going in back of the hostel with the Chinese cooks in a slit trench, my friends.”

After this statement my would-be helpers went on their way, and I slowly hobbled out into the darkness to where I thought I had remembered seeing the cooks go during air raids. I walked with added difficulty in the dark to the place I imagined this trench was located. Then I called out. No one answered my call, but I didn’t think that was so unusual for Chinese. As I sat down with painful effort, I contemplated reaching the bottom of the soundless trench with but little additional pain to my legs. But to my complete surprise, after I had slid but a short distance, I somehow had the sensation that I was in mid-air without a parachute under me. The last things I remembered were blinding lights—which in my case were stars. I had mistaken a cliff for a slit trench.

I have no idea just how long after, but two Chinese sentries helped me up the hill after the raid, then Doc Rich had his work to do all over again. And poor old Doc shook his head after he had done everything he could. Duke was standing beside Doc Rich as he worked away, interrupting him by repeatedly saying: “Hurt ’m, Doc! Hurt ’m, Doc!”

Doc Rich asked: “Greg, will you do me a favor?”

“Yes, why, Doc?” I asked in return.

“I wish you would stop drinking, because if you don’t I’m afraid you’ll end up dead.”

“Don’t worry, Doc, I promise, I’ve had enough.”

But apparently no matter how much I planned on keeping my word, drinking was one department in which I didn’t do too well, although I’m certain I had the best intentions at the time.

After a few days I was flown back to Kunming whether I wanted to go or not, and was placed in the tiny hospital beside Hostel Number One. I had very few visitors, and a
hell of a lot of time to indulge in feeling real sorry for myself. And by May I could stand this hospital routine no longer, so I had my knees retaped like two casts, and went back to flying once again. My job was flying overhauled engines, putting slow-time on them, circling above the Kunming area.

While I was occupied flying slow-time, some of our fast-diving P-40s were being converted into dive bombers. A dive bomber should not pick up too much speed in a dive, therefore the engineers design dive brakes into them to slow them down while diving. But not here. They loaded the bombs on a ship that picked up speed in a dive faster than any other that existed at the time, and started dive-bombing, resulting in more pilots lost. I’d had sufficient dive-bombing experience in the past to know that these converted bombers didn’t even have to be shot down.

This was the final straw, for I’d planned on leaving prior to the July 1 induction in any event. The only reason I had hung around this long was that one of Chennault’s stooges in my squadron claimed that some of our Rangoon combat reports had been lost, but they would straighten it out for pay purposes later. This was another thing, I was to find, that never did fully happen, but I told them I was going—and I went.

With my knees in adhesive casts, my body much thinner than it had ever been, and full of yellow jaundice, I was finally on my way back to have “USMC” on my head marker. There was a terrific load off my mind, and even though I was just making another change I somehow counted on this one being the last one.

I walked into the China National Airways Company ticket office in Kunming with a brief case full of paper money, for the rate of exchange at that time took a few thousand
Chinese national dollars to pay for a ride to Calcutta. The trip over the Hump, over part of the Himalaya mountain range, cannot be exaggerated in my opinion. The mountains, the winds, and the ice are as much a part of it as the turbulent air and lack of airways. From some of the hairy tales told to me by the CNAC pilots, added to the statistics for those who had not completed the trip, I learned of the ruggedness of the trip.

DC-3

A U.S. Army quartermaster colonel was a living example that some people can survive anything. This colonel had gotten aboard a DC-3 one night, and after buckling himself in the single seat by the rear entrance he had fallen fast asleep prior to take-off. Just after take-off the DC-3 had crashed and burned just off the end of the Kunming strip, and we didn’t think there was even the slightest chance of anybody surviving.

But there was a survivor. This quartermaster colonel said that the crash had awakened him and he saw the DC-3 burning to one side of where he was lying on the ground. He tried to get up and run and momentarily believed he was crippled for life because he could barely move. And it was some time before he realized that the crippled sensation came from the seat and a portion of the DC-3 that was still
strapped to his body. Otherwise the only harm that came to him was a sore back, and long before he had an opportunity to get frightened the crash was past history.

The DC-3 I was on was equipped with bucket seats along each side of the fuselage, so that the passengers were seated facing one another. These passengers included three other Flying Tigers en route to the Gold Coast for new P-40s, and the rest were Chinese dignitaries of various capacities.

The four of us pilots buckled ourselves beside each other, facing some of the Chinese. There was no heat, and as the plane steadily climbed my buttocks gradually became numb from contact with the metal of the bucket seat.

Going over the high part of the Hump was the worst part of the trip. We passengers had no oxygen, and the DC-3 crew had little concern for us. In trying to climb above the rugged mountains, which occasionally loomed up from the clouds, breathing became labored at times.

Icing became a problem too, and at one time during the trip I could see very nearly a foot of ice on the spinner of the right-engine propeller outside one of the windows. In the process of the plane’s going to different altitudes in the soup the ice would break loose from the spinners and large hunks would bang against the cabin. At times they sounded as if they would tear the plane apart. This was far worse than combat, as far as I was concerned, because there wasn’t one damn thing I could do about anything.

The trip encountered up-and-down currents and sheer winds that caused the plane to yaw, pitch, and roll most violently, much the same as though some gigantic animal had the plane in its mouth and was shaking it to pieces. My Flying Tiger friends’ faces took on a greenish color, and I knew we were going to be lucky if we held our lunch.

The Chinese dignitaries didn’t seem to be as dignified as our AVG pilots. During the times when the plane rolled almost on its side, the toothy Oriental faces were hanging there above me like death masks. And at intervals they began to heave. It seemed as though they always would choose the top position of the plane’s roll before they let fly with the used rice. God, how I hated rice, as I continuously wiped off my face and clothes.

Believe me, there wasn’t a single soul in the DC-3 who wasn’t thankful when we finally got over the Hump and
started the long letdown on the way to Calcutta. The climate there was the opposite to that of Kunming, for it was hot, humid, and sticky. But the two cities had a great deal in common, such as filth and even more crowded living conditions. We found a normally crowded city bursting at its seams. There were refugees from all over Asia in addition to Allied military who had arrived since the war started.

The four of us Flying Tigers had military preference, or we would not even have slept in a hotel room with eight cots in it. Here in Calcutta I was once again to run into my two old friends Jim Adams and Bill Tweedy from Rangoon.

Jim and Bill insisted upon my coming to their room for a couple of “Pegs” for old times’ sake. I couldn’t help feel sorry for these two sweet Scots, who, after nearly thirty years of comfortable living, were in a ten-by-twelve room with no bath.

These Scots had really touched my heartstrings by the manner in which they had taken me into their homes at Rangoon. As a matter of fact, they had been the only people who had made part of my time in the Flying Tigers enjoyable. And when I mentioned earlier, as Jim and Bill were leaving Rangoon, how relative things are, I didn’t have any idea of comparing twin estates to one crummy room in Calcutta.

How can I ever forget? Jim and Bill were left sitting upon the edge of their beds clad only in shorts, balding and perspiring. They informed me that they couldn’t even get any money out of England, let alone passage, for the bank accounts were frozen.

After a few days in Calcutta I was able to pick up a fare on a British overseas airline to Karachi, and I had planned upon getting a ride out of there from the Air Corps and flying back to the United States via Africa. It was an awkward feeling to be flying hundreds of miles across parched, waterless country in a seaplane. But at about the halfway point this seaplane sat down upon an inland lake and refueled, then on to Karachi.

I was not too intrigued with this desert city and its large camels, which pulled huge wagons. The camels were nasty, smelly beasts, regardless of how useful, and would just as soon bite you as look at you. And I found that my well-laid plans hit a stumbling block at Karachi. Even though plenty of
United States Corps aircraft were moving, I was informed that I had to have orders from Chennault to get aboard one.

It appeared that I only
thought
I had left “Laughing Boy” behind. Anyway, I sent a wire to Chennault’s headquarters for a request, for after all, I had done more than my share of fighting for the group, and in my own mind I was entitled to it. I had to check back several days for my desired answer before I was to receive an answer from Kunming, and the closest I ever came to committing out-and-out murder came through my mind as I read.

This wire was signed “CHENNAULT.” Who was this guy, God? Why, he had let people who had even refused to fly return by Air Corps transportation. He had given cozy jobs on his staff to others who said they couldn’t take combat flying. Why should he pick on me? I had never turned down a fight in the air or, for that matter, ever turned down a fight in a bar-room brawl. And I had volunteered for everything even though I knew some of these missions were plain crazy. Could Chennault be one of the old-school Army who hated Marines? If so, I shouldn’t think he would even want a dead Marine’s body stinking up his precious China.