The Wild Blue: The Men and Boys Who Flew the B-24s Over Germany 1944-1945 (29 page)

EPILOGUE

IN JANUARY 2000,my son Hugh and I spent two weeks in Rome, with a two-day trip to Cerignola, interviewing George McGovern, who was then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Six hours a day, sometimes seven, occasionally eight, and on the drive to Cerignola and back to Rome, constantly. Hugh and I have worked together on many books. We have done many interviews, alone or together. Earlier in my life I spent hours, days, weeks interviewing Dwight Eisenhower about the war and his presidency. That was different from interviewing McGovern, and obviously hearing Eisenhower’s accounts of his activities was memorable, a highlight of my life. So too my interviews with thousands of veterans of World War II. But for me and Hugh, listening to McGovern’s account of his youth, his training, and his missions in Italy was especially noteworthy.

What follows is my account of our last interview, filled in with other interview information. The subject was: What happened after your last mission and the end of the war?

Promotions were frozen, which McGovern thought cost him a certain captain’s promotion. Everyone was just waiting for orders to return to the States. For those who had completed their required thirty-five missions, like McGovern, that would mean discharge. For those who had thirty missions, like the men of McGovern’s crew, the victory in Europe meant they would be going off to the Pacific to engage in the war against Japan.

Except Tex Ashlock, who was in the hospital. McGovern had promised him that he would pay a visit, and one day he “borrowed” an Army truck and drove into Cerignola to visit him. When McGovern came into the ward, Ashlock began to cry.  Soon he was sobbing. “Here he was, this great big guy, just sobbing like a child,” McGovern recalled. McGovern said, “Well, Tex, you’re going to be okay.  They’ve got good doctors here and we will see you back in the States.”

“If I get back,” Ashlock replied.

“You’re going to get back,” McGovern said. “I wouldn’t leave here if I thought there was any doubt at all about you coming home. You’ll be back there soon.” The other crew members also visited Ashlock, who did get back.  Almost immediately when the war ended, the AAF started to close down the air base in Cerignola and those across southern Italy. What to do with the food supplies was a problem. The mess sergeant in Cerignola had hundreds of boxes of powdered eggs, powdered milk, potatoes that could be reconstituted, thousands of cans of Spam and cheese, orange marmalade, raisins, peanut butter, flour, cornmeal. Tons of food, and that was true of every airfield. The AAF wasn’t going to let the men they had spent so much time, money, and effort training go hungry.

The high command decided, in McGovern’s words, that “there are hungry people all over Europe and we don’t need this stuff back in the States. There’s no market for powdered eggs in Brooklyn. So we’ll give it away, to the Europeans.” McGovern was asked if he would participate. He said yes. “So that’s what we did.  We started flying a few days after the end of the war, taking this food up there.” They flew from Cerignola to a field about forty miles north of Trieste.  McGovern’s crew loaded theDakota Queen with wooden and cardboard boxes of rations and on landing would hand the food out of the bomb bay to GIs, who would put it into trucks and drive it to villages, towns, cities. Soon the AAF began trucking unneeded rations from other bases to Cerignola for the airlift.  “We gave away everything we had,” McGovern said. To the people of Europe, including the surrendered troops: “It didn’t make any difference whether they were German troops.”

“This was the first Berlin airlift,” I said. “In a way the beginning of the Marshall Plan.””On a small scale, yes,” McGovern replied. He was glad to be doing it and took satisfaction in showing that the B-24s “could so something other than bomb people. All those people that we were feeding, we’d hit with bombs. Now we’re giving them food. There was real pride on the part of the crew.” Besides, he added, it gave the men something to do while waiting for orders.1 After the wartime missions, flying was a bit dull. McGovern lightened it up a bit. C. W. Cooper related one incident. “We were over Yugoslavia when we saw a B-17 below. McGovern says, ‘Hey, let’s have some fun.’ He put the plane in a steep dive and, just before we went sailing past the ‘17, he cut the number four engine (the one closest to the ‘17) as if to say, ‘We’re that much faster on three engines than you in that flying glider are on four.’”2 On the second or third flight to Trieste, McGovern had an unexpected encounter.  After completing his landing, he did a U-turn and came back to the unloading area, where he pulled up, parked, and cut his engine. As theDakota Queen was unloading, another B-24 came in. “He went to pull around me. I thought he was doing it kind of fast, a little too much of a hot rod technique. And I’ll be damned if he didn’t hit the leading edge of my wing with his wing. He just turned too sharp.”

The pilot leaned out his window. He looked at McGovern, sitting in the pilot’s seat, and said, “God, I’m awfully sorry about that. I hope I haven’t damaged your wing.”

“No, I don’t think so,” McGovern replied. Then he looked at the pilot again and exclaimed, “Jim Peterson, from Mitchell, South Dakota!” McGovern had gone to high school in Mitchell with him, but did not know that Peterson was in the AAF. They chatted, reminisced, renewed their acquaintanceship. Peterson went on to become an architect and lived in Mitchell.  On every trip back to South Dakota, McGovern would get together with him.3 When he was not flying, McGovern thought about the future. On May 30 he wrote his friend Bob Pennington (who had gotten engaged via the mails to Eleanor’s twin sister, Ila; they later married), who had told McGovern that he was intent on getting his Ph.D. when he returned to the States. McGovern said he too would go after a Ph.D. “As soon as possible if finances will permit it. I’m quite sure I can swing it. For a while I was pretty shaky about my interest in teaching.  The lack of material reward just about had me in the dark for quite a while last winter. That coupled with my seeming intellectual decline had me guessing.” Bill Rounds’s father had offered him “a very attractive job with his company,” and that was tempting. “Now though I’ve discovered that old driving interest to learn rather than make money is still there. I’m afraid I’m ‘doomed’ to the life of a student and teacher. But as you say it has a multitude of advantages to offset its more tangible disadvantages.”4 From May until mid-June, McGovern continued to fly to Trieste to deliver food, or, sometimes, he would fly over Vienna, Munich, and other former targets, with the ground crew members as passengers. The AAF wanted the mechanics to see what the planes they had worked on had done to the Germans. Ken Higgins went along, to operate the radio, but he never liked it. “I just didn’t want to be in that darned old airplane,” he explained, fearing an accident might happen.5 Cooper wanted no more, either. Like everyone else, he wanted to go home. On May 12, he wrote his fiancÈe that “Mac left for Naples yesterday. He’ll be sweating out a boat there for several weeks probably.” He thought he would be stuck in Italy for some time. “There’s nothing but rumors yet but when they decide to move us it will be sudden and homeward bound.” Two weeks later, he wrote again:

“Who should be here to greet me when I got back yesterday but Mac, our pilot! I thought he caught a fast liner in Naples and was in the States but they sent him back so I guess his 35 missions don’t mean any more than my 32.”6 Pilot Ed Soderstrom related what happened. Four pilots of the 741st, Charles Painter, McGovern, Howard Surbeck, and Soderstrom, had finished their tours and headed for Naples to catch a boat home. But when they tried to board the troopship, their names were not on the orders. Instead they had orders to return to the squadron, where they were told they were to fly their airplanes back to the States, and meanwhile they would continue to fly food to Trieste.7 On June 16, Cooper wrote, “As Mac and I were starting home from the club last night, we had a surprise. We met a man in black slacks and a black shirt. He was half Cherokee Indian from Oklahoma and was just wandering around seeing the world. How he ever got here we don’t know.” He was, possibly, one of the “code-talkers,” Indians who served as radiomen with the ground troops - the Army figured, rightly, that there was no need to use coded messages when the Indians could speak to each other in their own language and the Germans would never understand them.

The following day, Cooper wrote his fiancÈe that while McGovern and Rounds were going to fly a B-24 back to the States the next day, he didn’t expect to be on the plane. “It makes me sad to see my old skipper, Mac, leaving and me not going with him. I hate to trust him with any other navigator and he doesn’t particularly relish a long hop without me along, so it’s mutual.”8 Bill Rounds had flown several of the supply missions to Trieste. In his diary on May 20, he wrote, “I flew cargo in a B-24. I buzzed Venice. It was beautiful.” He did other things, such as collecting a hoard of German Luger pistols. Once he talked a friend, who was a fighter pilot, into taking him to Florence in his P-47. Somehow he squeezed into the cockpit, riding piggy-back. In Florence, the two men got drunk, went to the opera, got seats in a box, and found the music to be dull. So they began to blow up condoms, tie them at the end, and throw them down on the audience. They laughed uproariously at the sight of those “balloons” coming down.9 McGovern, Surbeck, Soderstrom, and Painter were first on the list of pilots to fly home. On June 17, they decided that before doing so they would fly one last “mission.” They took off in their planes, formed up, and buzzed the squadron area. Painter flew the lead ship, McGovern was in the number two spot, Surbeck was number three, and Soderstrom number four. They came in so close to the ground that they just missed a power line running along the road, then buzzed the headquarters of the 456th Bomb Group. They were so low their prop wash ripped the flag off the headquarters building. The 456th commanding officer was furious. He decided that Painter, McGovern, Surbeck, and Soderstrom would be the last, not the first, to leave Italy, but by the time the orders were cut it was too late.10 On June 18, McGovern took off for North Africa. Cooper, it turned out, was the navigator. Indeed all the crew, except Ashlock, were on the plane, along with a half-dozen sergeants, AAF meteorologists going to the States from Europe, then on to the Pacific. These men tossed in their duffel bags, arranging them as well as they could, and sat or lay down. They had some sandwiches and soft drinks aboard. The crew and passengers began laughing. They were leaving Italy. The war in Europe war over.

McGovern took off. They would be flying alone. First stop, Marrakesh, North Africa. “I hadn’t had any flying like that during the war,” McGovern said. “I was always used to having formations around, and scores of airplanes dotting the sky, and somebody shooting at us.” This time no one was shooting, it was quiet, the plane was all alone, all the engines were working without any problems.  Coming into Marrakesh, McGovern said to Rounds that perhaps they could pick up some food as well as gasoline. “George,” Rounds replied,”those people haven’t got any food. They’re eating each other.” It was a brief stop, fortunately, as in late July it was fearfully hot.

Next stop, the Azores. But about a hundred miles from the islands, Cooper called McGovern on the intercom to say that he was lost. “I think it’s just temporary,” he remarked, “and I’ll get a fix.” But when they got to where the islands were presumed to be, there was nothing except blue water.  McGovern was “just furious.” He thought, God, we’ve gone through thirty-five missions and my navigator can’t find the air base? How can we possibly be this unlucky. We’re going into the drink out here in the Atlantic because Cooper can’t find the Azores. He turned on his radio and, thankfully, raised the tower at the field. He asked what heading he should fly on, based on his present position, to get to the base.

The tower told him to turn to such-and-such a heading. He did and brought the islands into view. “Here’s this eleven-thousand-foot runway. We hadn’t seen a runway like that since we left the States.” He brought the plane down, got his tanks refilled, and took off for the next stop, Gander, Newfoundland. McGovern got her aloft, climbed to a few thousand feet, and people began falling asleep.  All the meteorologists. Indeed everyone but McGovern, the navigator, and Higgins. “Bill Rounds conked off, just sound asleep. You could hear this heavy breathing all over the plane.”

It was a beautiful night, the air clear, a huge round moon making it almost as light as daylight. McGovern put the plane on autopilot, something he never did even once during the war, and he too fell sound asleep. Higgins put his head down on his table and fell asleep. So did Cooper.  After some time, McGovern shook himself awake. The moon was beautiful, the stars shining, he was the only one awake. “I was almost overwhelmed with a sense of peace. Sheer joy. We were going home. I finally realized the war was over, and I’m going to see Eleanor, and my mother, and my little girl, then four or five months old. Everything now is going to be all right.” At Gander, as the plane was refueling, McGovern called Eleanor on the telephone.  “It was wonderful, to hear that voice again.” He didn’t want to exceed three minutes on the long-distance call - too expensive - so he merely said he would be back in Mitchell in two or three days.

“Well, I want to meet you,” Eleanor replied. “I want us just to be the two of us when you first come in.”

He said he expected to be discharged at Fort Snelling, near Minneapolis. She said she would meet him there.

Off again, this time to Camp Miles Standish outside Boston. “I regret to say that was the last landing of the war for me and one of the worst landings I ever made. I couldn’t believe it. I leveled off and that B-24 dropped about six feet.  Justbang, we hit the ground. I got on the intercom and I said, ‘Well fellas, we’ve justhit the United States.’” No one minded the bump. There were cheers, laughter, tears.

Within two days, McGovern was at Fort Snelling. Eleanor met him. They spent the first night in a hotel in Minneapolis. Then off by train to Mitchell, where he immediately enrolled for the fall semester.