Blue Christmas

OUR ORDERS WERE STRAIGHTFORWARD and unmistakable: Move our planes, pilots and crews to airfield Y-29 near Asch, Belgium, as soon as we could, if not sooner!

Our role in this desperate situation called for the "Blue Nose Bastards of Bodney" to provide constant, up-to-the-minute air coverage over the Battle of the Bulge. Our P-51s were to protect the 9th Air Force P-47 fighter-bombers that were laden with 500-pound bombs and rockets during their ground-attack mission in the Ardennes. We were over the battlefield, where just one minute could mean the difference between life and death.

On December 23, the cold Merlin engines of dozens of shiny, blue-nosed P-51 Mustangs were cranked up. Flying off the frozen ground at Bodney, England, in his red-tailed P-51, Gripes A Mighty, Maj. George Preddy led the first section of the 328th to Asch, Belgium. Little did I realize that Preddy would never again touch British soil.

Capt. Earl Abbott was to guide the second section. We had been briefed that this would be a ferry mission-not a combat one. Because of this, we were all dressed up in "pinks and greens." After startup, we began our taxi to launch but were suddenly given a shutdown order.

Our orders for that day were changed as often as the weather and battle lines in the Ardennes. We were then told that we would fly combat, and there we were, all dressed up for nothing! Our mission was quite simple: take care of the menacing German fighters.

With mission details in hand, Capt. Abbott led our section up and away from Bodney. My P-51, Little One III, flew perfectly. My crew had polished our bird up before allowing me to take off, so I was assured of the aircraft's performance. Airborne, I awaited our orders from Capt. Abbott. They never came.

Capt. Abbott had developed mechanical problems and had aborted. The rest of us flew into the unknown without the slightest idea of what we were supposed to do. Making matters worse in an already tense situation was that we had no call signs.

Ninth Air Force "radar," perhaps thinking our frantic calls a German ruse, refused to acknowledge them or our flight.

Confused and flustered over our situation, we wondered what the hell we were doing there-until we saw the Fw 190s. The one thing we all knew how to do was to fight! I latched on to a 190 near Liege, Belgium, and quickly ruined this fine German aircraft and spoiled its pilot's Christmas plans. The other 190 met the same fate at the hands of a fellow blue-noser as we began our search for Y-29.

I landed on a rough field on which sat 9th Air Force P-47s. As I taxied to the flightline, I wondered whether I had landed in a junkyard. I parked next to a P-47 Jug that by all appearances should have been proclaimed war weary and scrapped for parts! Next to the Jug were two 9th Air Force pilots in roughly the same shape.

I hopped out of my bright Mustang, adjusting my Bancroft Flightier on my head and checked my reflection in my shiny P-51's skin; I strolled up to the pilots, my dress uniform still crisp after three hours of combat flight. I said, "Hi; where am I?" The two looked at me in my pinks and greens and then at my shining Mustang, and then each other and, after a long pause, one of them said, "God-damned 8th Air Force!" and walked away. Boy was I pissed-until I looked around and compared my airplane with the others. That's when it hit me like a sack of coal! This was frontline fighting; Merry Christmas, idiot!

I flew two missions on Christmas Day-the first lasted almost two hours and the second three hours. Later, we were all dog-tired and sitting in the officers' "club" (a tent) and celebrating Christmas in our own way, when we were told the news: Maj. Freddy was dead. Very angry at first, I asked the obvious question: "Why him?" We drank "a few" to him as he would have wanted and then got back to winning the War.

Capt. Donald S. Bryan, 328th FS, 352nd FG December 22, 1944.

Copyright Air Age Publishing Dec 2003
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved