Tail gunner - part I

Air Classics, Jan 2003 by Mitchell, Henry J

TRAINING AND OPERATIONAL MISSIONS IN THE REAR-MOST POSITION OFA BOEING FLYING FOR TRESS

Some events that proceeded my ac actual induction in the Army are really a part of this story. The fact that I started taking flying lessons Solis one. It came about in an odd way. My friend Bud Brust suggested we look into going skiing in Wisconsin, but upon checking out all the facts concluded it was too expensive a venture. We switched to flying, influenced by the fact that my wife Muriel was working part time for a CPA who had as a client a small airport operation in a southwest Chicago suburb. We were soon taking half-hour lessons in Piper Cubs.

The war had started in Europe. It may have been Bud's idea again, and we wrote to see if we could volunteer in the RCAF (Royal Canadian Air Force). Some Americans were doing it. The odds would have been unfavorable for our coming back alive if that had occurred. Strangely, the thing that saved us from that risk was Pearl Harbor. We got nice letters from the RCAF saying that now they could no longer accept Americans.

It must have been around the end of 1942 that Bud went into the Navy and he made a long "career" out of training in several types of aircraft. He wound up in torpedo bombers on some carrier mn and got to one of those Pacific islands just as the war ended.

I didn't go in the Army for about a year after he went in.

During that time, I tried to volunteer in the Army's Air Cadet program. I was rejected because of a nasal poly. Undaunted, I went to Dr. Stollar and he removed my polyp in his office. I went down again to join up. Not good enough -- polyps grow back, they said. Some time later I asked my draft board to put the on the next available draft call. They obliged a month or so later.

In preparation, we gave up our one bedroom apartment, stored major furniture and moved, short term, into a small furnished no-bedroom apartment. Muriel would later go back to living with her mother and aunt. I left from this apartment early on the morning of 16 September 1943, and took the elevated train down to the Union Station. I was sent by train in a group of recruits to the reception center at Camp Grant near Rockford, Illinois, about 100 miles northwest of Chicago. The Army promptly ensconced me in a nice two-- story wooden barracks were I spent about two weeks undergoing all the paperwork, outfitting, physical examinations and inoculations, etc., required for induction. Also, everyone was thoroughly indoctrinated in the art of KP (kitchen police) which we would see more of in basic training. I got a weekend pass that allowed me to go back home and show off my somewhat ill-fitting new recruit's uniform.

From a recruiting center, one might be sent to any of the branches of the Army. It could have been Armored (ie, Tanks), Artillery, or Infantry. It was my luck that week, apparently, the Air Force had priority and that's where I was sent. Such luck!

I was shipped by train to Jefferson Barracks, which was an AF basic training center located at the south end of St. Louis (it is now a historic park and cemetery) and there assigned to a training squadron, the equivalent of a company in "the other Army." The AF was different. So was its basic training shorter and less rugged. Yet there were still elements of Army field training that we went through. We fired and learned to strip and reassemble (blindfolded) the M-1 rifle, even though we would never have one. The official AF rifle was the smaller, lighter carbine which we also trained with. We had "familiarization" firing of a Thompson submachine gun. These were the guns one sees in old gangster movies, with the big round drum that holds the bullets. This training, however, could come in handy upon returning to Chicago. The Mob could always use an experienced trigger man!

The rest of basic training included close order drill; that is, marching in unison to the commands of the Drill Sergeant, and daily PE to shape everyone up. I went from an unmuscular 130 pounds to an in-shape 152 by the time I completed my next phase of training.

One other physical aspect of basic was a one week bivouac where we did a 14-mile march to and lived in a wooded area at the juncture of the Merrimac and Mississippi Rivers. This was in November. The weather had changed from sweltering in the 90s in October to rain followed by below freezing. We were sleeping on the ground in pup tents. Our Thanksgiving dinner was trucked out from the base. It got so cold along with rain, that our week's stay in the field was cut by two days -- good training for anyone who might later be transferred to the infantry (which did happen to my pup tent buddy, a guy named Miller, who wound up in France a few days after D-day and somewhere along the way got a piece of shrapnel in his butt).

Aside from the horrid weather, the one memory of this five-day episode revolves around a nighttime exercise where we were out in pairs in the nearby woods. I forget the details but recall that we had a password: "Two goons." After an hour's time out in this frigid air, we all heard the Lieutenant, who remained comfortably near the open fire, challenge someone approaching: "Who goes there?" And the reply from the happy go-lucky Irishman named Lawton rings loudly, "Two goons...and frozen stiff!" This put an end to the inane operation and the rest came in from the cold. Next day, trucks came to take us out of our misery.