Chapter 27 A WWII Thanksgiving in Britain

Thanksgiving Story

An upper class British widow scrimped and saved ration coupons all year long to buy a Turkey and all the trimmings. It was to give the American G. I.s, who helped her maintain her proud but decrepit estate, a proper Thanksgiving dinner.

She spent days cleaning and decorating her house. She brought her fine china, crystal and silver out of the bomb shelter, wanting everything to be perfect for the Americans. She did all the cooking and her friends acted as servants for the day.

Everyone was seated in the formal dining room, Mrs. Bridgewater at the head of the table. The tantalizing aroma of roasting turkey filled the air. The soldiers were in their dress uniforms, anxiously anticipating their home cooked traditional American dinner. Toasts had been made. Discussions of the many blessings the group had to be thankful for, even though they were fighting a war far from home and loved ones, were complete.

The time came for the beautiful 20 pound turkey to be served. Cedric, acting as butler, came through the swinging door behind Mrs. Bridgewater’s chair with a flourish - and the turkey slid off the platter and landed on the floor!  Everyone was aghast!  The much anticipated dinner was ruined! There was complete silence.  No one knew what to say or do – except Mrs. Bridgewater! 

She calmly instructed Cedric: “Please pick up the turkey, put it on the platter, take it back into the kitchen and bring out the other turkey!” 

Wishing you as happy a Thanksgiving as those G. I.s had all those many years ago!

Chapter 26 - Escaping the War

Chapter 26 – Escaping the War

To relieve the alternating stress and boredom, we were given furlough passes every two to three weeks, usually for two days. The closest train station was in Braintree about 5 miles away. If you wanted to head for London, which was about 45 miles southwest by train, you needed a bike get to the station. You could usually find one somewhere on the base. There was even a guy on base who repaired bikes and he always had a couple ready to go if you couldn’t borrow one from another GI.

If you rode a bike into the station, the next person who arrived at the station might borrow it to get home. You always had to worry about finding a bike there when you got back. It wasn’t much fun to get back from leave and have to walk back to the base. There wasn’t much hitch hiking in those days, people just didn’t have cars. Occasionally you could bum a ride from one of the businesses that had a “lorry” (truck) but you might have to help him make a delivery or two.

People in the neighboring villages were pretty friendly about sharing their bikes. No one ever locked their bike but they did have their names on them. We’d try to avoid taking the bikes with names on them whenever possible.  Every once in awhile the train station manager would send a truck out to the base to collect the bikes that belonged to the villagers.

It was safe to go into London now that the blitz was over. There was always something to do there during the day – and if you could find a place in the blackout - at night.  The German attacks to demoralize London, “the Blitz” had started in September 1940 and continued until May of 1941 when Hitler needed his Luftwaffe to invade Russia. However, London was still under a “blackout” three years later. There were absolutely no lights allowed on outside at night. All windows had to have blackout curtains blocking any light. So, you liked to know where you were when it got dark. It was best to plan to be inside at one of the GI clubs where there was usually a dance, music, food and lot of people. 

There were more than a dozen Red Cross Clubs in London some of them were for Officers only. Sooner or later we checked them all out and sometimes we even stayed in hotels just to get away from other soldiers for a day. Mostly we headed for the biggest and best club, which welcomed both officers and enlisted men, The Rainbow Corner. It was located in the West End, a few blocks from Piccadilly Circus – where all the theaters and shops were – so there was always something to do.

Sheet Music of a song about the Rainbow Corner

You could get a room at the Rainbow Corner for about 50 cents and they had real sheets. They had just about anything else you needed from a laundry to a barbershop. You could take a hot shower or a bath. The Red Cross was famous for supplying doughnuts and coffee to servicemen (even if they had to deliver them by mobile units) and you could usually get a sandwich and piece of cake or a bottle of Coca Cola at the donut canteen downstairs. They also served hot meals there, usually fish or rabbit and vegetables or something with beans. London had been under rationing so long you took whatever food you could get. There was usually a live band and dancing at least 3 nights a week and there were plenty of records for dancing if there was no live music. There were movies, magazines, newspapers, drinks, cigarettes and you could play cards, ping pong, games or do jigsaw puzzels. There were lots of friendly ladies that volunteered at the club and they were always ready to dance or play table games, write letters for guys that needed help with them, or sew something for you. There were even counselors for guys that were messed up.

Time passed too quickly when you were off base on a pass and it seemed like you’d just left when it was time to go back. 

VETERANS DAY 2010

Today we take time to remember, honor and thank all the brave veterans of all the wars who fought to protect our freedoms.

On this 11th day of the 11th month at 11:11 stop for just a minute and imagine you can hear the 21 gun salute and the playing of TAPS to honor and keep the faith with all our soldiers.

We can never thank them enough.

Chapter 25 - Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder!

 We flew our first mission on March 5, 1944. We were told never to talk about our missions, everything was very secret. We never knew where we’d be going until we went to our briefing sessions before each mission and got our assignments. Although, mostly we knew we’d be going over Holland, Belgium, France (all occupied by Germans at that time) or to Germany itself. The B-26s were assigned both primary and secondary targets. Our mission was to get in, drop the bombs and get out.  

The targets included marshalling yards, roads, bridges, ammunition dumps, power stations and shipyards. We flew in formation in what they called boxes. The mission leader flew in the middle of the first row with #2 plane on his right and #3 plane on his left.  Directly behind the leader was #4 with #6 on his right side and #5 on his left side.  

Usually the leader was the only plane with what they called the Nordin Bomb Site. That was a special navigation instrument for locating your exact target. They weren’t very plentiful at the time and every plane in the formation was to watch the leader – when he dropped his bombs you dropped yours. If no one had a Nordin, everything was done by sight navigation.

B-26 In Flight                                

B-26s in Formation, Flak Exploding

We flew seven missions in March and twelve missions in April. On non-mission days we were doing a lot of training now that we understood what combat was. The crew always wore parachutes in case we were hit and had to abandon the ship. Medium level (altitude) bombing meant we were flying in the range of 8,000 to 10,000 ft. At 10,000 feet you had to wear your oxygen mask. It got pretty cold at those altitudes. We were dressed in uniforms with electric wires that we could plug in to get warm. 

The biggest hazard was the anti-aircraft (ack-ack) guns being shot at us from the ground. We were doing daylight bombing and you could see it exploding all around you plus it created wind bumps every time it was close. Eventually there were diversionary tactics that we took at higher altitudes. The whole formation had to follow the same orders. Trying to divert to avoid ack-ack on our own would put the formation at risk of colliding with each other so there was no dodging bursts on your own. It made for raw nerves most of the time. The second hazard was actual attack by the Luftwaffe. That’s when our fighter planes (mostly RAF Spitfires) were supposed to protect us. So far we’d managed to escape both the ack-ack and the attacks with very little damage. We were also doing a fairly good job of hitting our targets.

One of our missions was called a “Grudge Raid.” You remember that the original B-26 low-level flying over Holland targets had been a disaster. They were flying right down on treetop level when they flew those first missions. One of the targets had been a power station, the other a U-boat base – both in the Netherlands. It was just across the border from France. Holland was occupied by Germany but the people of Holland were our friends. On that mission, the Command had decided to warn the people of Holland they were coming, so they broadcast the raid on the radio. Of course the Germans heard it too and were prepared for them. Nazis were even up in the tops of the Church steeples shooting at them. The Germans managed to knock out all but one or two of the B-26s and only a few men got back. I think about 60 were lost or missing. I heard that 24 ended up in German POW camps.

The Grudge Raid was targeting the same installations but this time we would be flying at 12,000 feet. That was our best altitude because by then they had found out it took the Germans seventeen seconds to track us and get a shell up to us at that altitude. Therefore, we never flew in a straight line for more than 15 seconds. Many times we could see big black clouds of exploding shells right where we would have been had we flown straight for another two seconds. I called that cutting it close. There were 300 B-26s on this Grudge Raid on the U-Boat installation.

The first week in May the 322nd threw quite a celebration when one of the B-26 planes, named the “Mild and Bitter” became the first bomber of the Allies to complete100 missions. Not only that, it had never lost an engine or sustained major damage and no crewman had ever been hurt on those missions. We weren’t assigned the same plane every time we flew, so over 166 men on the base had flown a mission on the Mild and Bitter at one time or other. It was the pride of the 9^th Army and it was a big celebration. By the end of July there were a total of 10 B-26s in the 322^nd that made it to 100 missions, a real tribute to their dependability. (After the disastrous start in Holland in ‘43 the B-26s ended the war with under 1% combat losses.)

About that time Command decided that we would do some night time training in formation flying. Our crew Captain, Lt. Davison decided that it was too dangerous to fly formation at night. He went to the Squadron Commander and told him he wouldn’t do it. The Commanding Officer called me in and told me what Davison said. He asked me what I thought about night flying. I said I thought it couldn’t be much more dangerous than flying over enemy territory in broad daylight and having anti-aircraft shells exploding all around us. He demoted Lt. Davison to co-pilot and made me crew commander. He assigned the same crew to me and gave me a new co-pilot by the name of Jimmie Deloach.  Lt. Davison would be flying co-pilot with the C.O. from then on. It turned out we practiced some night flying but we never did actually fly any night time missions while I was there.

We flew another twelve missions in May. Most of them were on railroad yards and fuel dumps near cities along the coast of France that were occupied by the Germans. Our missions were not much over four hours long because even though we carried about the same bomb load as the B-17s (which had 4 engines to our 2) we only had about four and a half or five hours of fuel. Even though flight time averaged about 4 hours, there was about 3 1/2 hours prep time before leaving and some check out time after so there was a lot of tension and adrenaline flowing on mission days and it was always a relief to get back.