Crushing his Pall Mall into the runway, Rob continued: “After your briefing, you went to the equipment room to draw your gear: oxygen mask, throat mike, leather helmet, and other stuff all went into the flight bag. Every guy decided how much clothing to wear under his flight suit. The warmest part of the plane is in the Plexiglas nose, or ‘the greenhouse,’ which is where the bombardier and navigator sit. The gunners have it the worst because they are exposed to freezing temperatures for most of the flight. Your suit has insulated wires that get plugged into the electrical system at your station with a rheostat to control the temperature. You put on rubber boots, fleece flying jacket, your Mae West life preserver, parachute, and flak jacket. A lot of guys grabbed an extra flak jacket to sit on as additional protection for the family jewels.
“A truck came by and picked up the crew and took you to the revetment where your plane was parked. You taxied out onto the runway and waited for the green flare, which told you the mission was on. You waited your turn, and then off you went. Because it took a long time to get hundreds of bombers up in the air at the same time, you had to keep flying around and around while the pilots found their place in the formation.
“Once the plane was over the Channel, the gunners shot off a few rounds to make sure their guns were working. I was always looking for geographical checkpoints to make sure we were on course. I called the flight deck every half hour to let Cosmo and Mick know exactly where we were. When we got up to 10,000 feet, Mick told everyone to go on oxygen and to put on their steel helmets. After that, he’d check on everyone about every fifteen minutes to make sure that no one had conked out because of a lack of oxygen.
“On my first two missions, I flew with an experienced crew, which was standard procedure. I introduced myself to the pilot, but all he said was, ‘Do your job.’ I didn’t understand it at the time, but later on I realized it was because he figured I’d get killed. If he didn’t know me, it was one less guy to feel bad about. Keep in mind, this guy is about twenty-one years old, younger than me, but he had the eyes of an old man.
“After the first mission, I felt as if I had aged ten years. I told Pat I didn’t see how I could do this twenty-four more times, and he said, ‘You won’t have to. I hear that the average number of missions for the 91st, our bomb group, is fourteen, and then you’re either dead or a prisoner.’ Gallows humor. I told him to go…,” and then he looked at Beth and said, “take a hike.” And everyone started to laugh.
“Early on, because of fuel limitations, we had fighter escort only as far as the German border. After that, we were on our own. The Germans knew exactly where we were because of the bomber stream. Contrails from hundreds of bombers are hard to miss. More often than not, the fighters were waiting for you. When they disappeared, you knew you were heading into flak.” Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “There’s not much you can do about flak.” It was flak that had killed Pat Monaghan.
“Once the IP or Initial Point had been identified, the lead plane would send out a colored flare to let everyone know we were over the target. At the start of the bomb run, the pilot turned the ship over to the bombardier, who actually flew the plane through the Norden bombsight until after we had dropped our bombs. If a plane got hit, you looked to see if anyone had made it out and counted parachutes. You also had to report on any planes you saw going down or exploding. If a plane went into a spin, centrifugal force often kept the crew pinned inside the plane, and they couldn’t get out.
“Back in England, the control tower told you in what order you would land. Priority was given to any ship carrying someone who had been seriously wounded. After that, bombers that had been shot up and might have trouble landing were given priority. From there, you went to interrogation. You’re dead tired, but you have to answer all their questions. ‘Did you encounter any fighters?’ ‘Where was flak the heaviest?’ ‘Did you have a visual on the target?’ and so on.
“After flying with Cosmo and Mick, two of the coolest pilots under the worst of circumstances, I didn’t want to fly with anyone else. But two other pilots I flew with landed our ship in a turnip field. The wings were so shot up that there was more daylight than not. It was only because of their skill that we made it to land, and we didn’t have to ditch. Your chances of surviving a water landing in the English Channel are between slim and none. If by some miracle you manage to get out of the plane, you’d probably freeze to death because of the water temperature.
“Believe it or not, that crash had a happy ending. There were all these girls from the British Land Army, who were working in the fields, and they came over to make sure we were all right. This cute little brunette runs up to the tail gunner and plants a kiss on his cheek. Badger tells the girl that he’s going to marry her, and son of a gun if he didn’t look her up when he had finished his missions. That’s a hell of a way to meet your wife.”
With Rob talking about dangerous missions over Nazi Germany, it wasn’t the right time to ask about Badger and his bride. But when it was a good time, I wanted to know how Badger knew in a few minutes that this English girl was the right one for him. In five months, Rob hadn’t figured it out, or maybe he had.
“Once we got clear of the flak and fighters, we’d tell jokes or start singing. I sang Western ballads, which Cosmo hated, calling it shit kicker’s music. His guy was Frank Sinatra. You had to lighten things up, or the pressure could be unbearable.
“That was all there was to it, except you had to do it twenty-five, thirty, or thirty-five times, depending on when you got to England.” Taking off his tie, he said, “Let’s go into the village and get a beer.”
We drove into Royston, which had all of the charm of a small English village, right down to the occasional thatched roof, graystone village church, and memorial to those killed in The Great War. We headed to the “Red Cow,” Rob’s favorite pub during the war. The owner recognized Rob and came over and shook his hand. “The first one’s on me,” he said, putting his hand on Rob’s shoulder. “There’s been a bunch of your old gang in here today.” Turning his back to me, the owner whispered, “You know that Millie got married?” Rob took my hand and introduced me as “the best thing that ever happened to him.”
We ate pub grub — steak and kidney pies — which was a good sign if the pies really had steak in them. After finishing our meal and another round, Jack asked Rob if there was anything else he wanted to do while they were in that part of the country. What Jack was actually asking was, did he want to visit the cemetery at Madingley. Rob thanked him but said he would rather not, and we left it at that.
On the train ride back to London, I thought about something Rob’s roommate had once told me. “There were so many ways to die when you flew for the 8th Air Force. Planes exploded on the runway for no apparent reason or collided in the fog during assembly. They crashed on takeoff or were shot out of the sky, sometimes by their own guys. They went down in the Channel and crashed on landing. Flak, fighters, and fog all killed.”
I had mixed feelings about our Memorial Day outing. I believe the sacrifices made by others on our behalf should be honored. However, acknowledging those deeds can sometimes be too painful for those who survived while their friends did not. On the train ride home, while Rob slept, I looked at his face and the scar on his cheek and wondered what other scars he had that I would never see.
Chapter 21
Following the Memorial Day ceremonies at Bassingbourn, I wanted to think pleasant thoughts about love and romance and not about B-17s being shot out of the sky. A dose of romance, eighteenth-century style, was just what I needed. After opening the package I had received from Beth, I read her note, which indicated the enclosed letters were written when Elizabeth was visiting Charlotte Chatterton in Kent.