We got up, collected our belongings that we had packed the night before, put the bags on trucks to go to the flight line, and the foot lockers, etc. on trucks that would take them to the depot for shipment to our final destination wherever that was to be. We then had our last breakfast at Wendover. Yes, we were leaving with mixed emotions. Fist, we were glad to be leaving this desolate place with the foreboding grey mountains and the one hundred twenty miles of slat flats, but at the same time we were cutting for a while the physical contact, the loving caring of our wives and families. They were staying behind and we were on our way to an uncertain et of experiences which, to the ones who would survive, would become the greatest high and the lowest low of our lives.

When we loaded up, donned flight gear and assembled at Operations, we were informed that our first stop would be Herington Army Air Base in Kansas. This was now the early part of 1944 and there were strong winds and snow storms across all of this area. I was glad to leave the mountains behind and fly over the heartland of the United States.

Below we could trace the shifting winds and watch the flat, unending landscape appear and disappear as we flew in and out of these snow storms. As the sun would occasionally break through the overcast the trees, fences, houses, windmills and small houses cast dark shadows against the white ground.

Bill was busy with the navigation as we flew singly across the states and would occasionally call us on the intercom to have us make a small compass correction or to update us on our estimated time of arrival.

When we landed at Herington, we could see that it was just another one of the hundreds of bases that had been built in every state in the inion. Some were for training, some for tradition flying and this one was for staging. That meant that here teams of people would check all of our gear and equipment for condition, serviceability, completeness and modernization. Our medical records were checked thoroughly, especially our shot records.

Our plane was checked for all emergency equipment, oxygen equipment, electrical equipment and any necessary inspections were pulled on the engines. All in all it was a very compete going over, much more thorough than the last inspection we has received at Wendover.

A few weeks before we left Wendover, our tail gunner James Rory had failed the physical examination and had been temporarily taken off flying status. The meant that he could not leave with us and we were assigned a new man, S/Sgt Edward Smith from Pennsylvania. We were sorry to lose Rory, but his trick knee just wouldn’t pass.

We found out that Smith was a well trained man, and he soon fit in well with the crew. He was rather soft spoken and seemed to get a kick out of bugging Carchietta about his Brooklyn accent and Wyatt about his southern drawl.

While here at Herington, we found a man down on the flight line who would paint names and nose art on planes. Seeing that our new bird was named Gerocko, it was fitting that we get the name painted on it. We took up a collection from all of the crew members and contacted the guy. He said that for $30.00 he would paint the name on both sides with whatever we decided we wanted in the form of nose art. It ended up as Gerocko in a sort of an Oriental type script and a Chinese man riding on a yellow bomb. The bomb had a face and halter on it, and the Chinese character had a flowing red robe, a black hat, a long braided strand of hair and a very silly look on its face. All in all, we were rather well satisfied with it and it gave us a chance whenever we were asked to explain to people what Gerocko’s really were.

We were put in transient housing when we arrived and found the unusual lack of luxury. It was the standard tar paper barracks, not divided into rooms and furnished with double deck bunks. I immediately laid claim to a top bunk by the pot bellied stove near the center of the barracks. It was cold outside and heat would rise, so I figured it would be much more comfortable there. The guy who assigned us to the barracks said that there had been a rash of thievery of wallets, rings and watches of the last bunch to occupy the place. He suggested that we take extra precautions with our valuables. Some of the guys put them in the pillow cases, but I put mine in my wool socks and put the socks on.

The third night we were there, there was quite a commotion and noise at the end of our barracks. Someone switched on the light, and we found out that some guy had felt someone feeling around his pillow and had cold cocked him with a piece of broom handle. It was the man whose job it was to stoke the stoves at night. When he was revived he denied taking anything, but we never saw him again and the thievery stopped.

As the crews passed their necessary inspections, they left singly and proceeded to our next destination. When our turn came, we found out that our next stop was to be Morrison Army Air Base, West Palm Beach, Florida. This was a welcome change and as soon as we landed there, we changed into our summer suntan uniforms. This was a short stay of two days and there wasn’t much that we had to accomplish, other that trading in our parachutes. Chuck and I traded in our regular back packs for a special one that had an inner compartment next to the back that zippered around the edge. Inside this was a machete, fish line and hooks, high energy candy and other survival gear. It was issued to us in case we were forced down in the jungles of South America.

While we were enjoying the warm sunshine and ocean breezes, we were still restricted to the base. We could not call home nor anywhere outside the base. I guess it was for security reasons so no relatively secret troop movements could leak out and fall into enemy hands. I know this sounds rather foolish now, but not all the South American countries could be trusted and, while flying from Africa to England, we had to skirt the shores of France and the Germans could send out fighter planes to find us. It had been decided by the War Department that no information on the number or types of planes would be revealed.

About seven a.m. we were up, had eaten and were flying a southerly heading out of Florida. We had our secret orders and were told to fly a certain compass heading for an hour then open the orders and we would know where we would be going and which route we would take to get us there.

When the orders were opened, we saw that we would be flying the southern route to England, and when we arrived there, would be stationed at Station #145 at Rackheath, England. With the route now designated, it was up to Bill to get us to our fist stop which would be Borinquin Field in Puerto Rico.

We were excited and were looking forward to seeing the different countries and their people. One thing that kept us a little apprehensive was the fact that we were flying over water. I know you think water is water, but here it was just hundreds of miles of nothing but water. No matter where you looked, it was water from horizon to horizon.

We knew that if Bill could get us from place to place here, he would gain a hell of a lot of respect from the whole crew. He would occasionally poke his head up in the astrodome in front of the cockpit and above the navigator’s compartment and take a reading of the sun with hi sextant. This was about a seven hour jaunt and, when our estimated time of arrival had just about expired, Bill called and said, “Puerto Rico straight ahead.” Yup, there it was, low on the horizon, and looking a blueish-green color and turning to a luxurious green as we came closer. We called it, got landing instructions and settled down on the runway.

Well, we were no linger in the United Stated and it didn’t take long to realize it. The “follow me” jeep led us in and it was not a GI but a native that ran out and put the chocks by the wheels. Just knowing that we were someplace different seemed to accentuate one’s awareness of change. The greens seemed different, the place smelled different. It even sounded different with the different bird calls and English spoken at a different speed and with an accent.

We were taken to a low, one story barracks and this, too, was different. It had a metal roof with wide eaves and screened, not glassed windows that had shutters. The bunks were lined up perpendicular to the walls with an aisle down the middle and were neatly made up with a light blanket folded at the foot to ward off any morning chill here in the tropics.

The mess hall was nearby and we found it had four man tables, tablecloths, napkins and waiters who were smartly dressed and very polite. This was a welcome change from the Army mess halls we were used to where you took a tray and stood in line and ate at large tables.

We also found a place that sold Puerto Rican rum and we bought a few cases and stowed them in the front bomb bay. We had been equipped with bomb racks at Morrison Field and the rear racks were full of mail bags that we were taking across, which contained mostly papers and packages. We had been alerted and advised of the low cost of rum before we left Florida, and they told us even if we didn’t drink it, it would probably bring a pretty good price in England.

The next day we had a leisurely breakfast and took off about ten o’clock for a four and three quarter hour flight to Waller Field, Trinidad. As we approached it we found that it looked about the same as Borinquin Field from the air, and when we landed we found it about the same.

We always bought some little thing at each stop so we could acquire some of the local currency as a souvenir.

The accommodations were about the same here as they had been in Puerto Rico. That evening at the Officers Club we were entertained by a local native band playing on cut off oil drums, kind of a bongo type outfit.

The next stop was in Belem, Brail, then on down to Natal, Brazil. In Brazil we had to cross the Amazon River down by the mouth. It must have been a hundred miles across and it was here that we encountered the most violent thunderstorms I have ever seen. These fronts went up to anvil tops thirty thousand and forty thousand feet with updrafts, downdrafts, hail lightning, heavy winds and torrents of rain.

When we headed into the face of one of these storms we didn’t know just what to expect, and we surely received a quick lesson on just how violent and dangerous they could be. While flying on instruments, the clouds would suddenly light up with a terrific flash of yellow and red lightning, the thunder would drown out the roar of the engines. The altimeter would rapidly wind up and unwind as we were tossed vertically in these up and down drafts. The hail pounded the plane and as it was picked up by the turning propellers, it bounced off the aluminum skin and side windows like someone was throwing rocks. Just before we entered one of these I looked back and noticed a DC-6 four engine transport plane about ten miles behind and about five thousand feel below and to the right of us. When we finally flew out of this storm, there was that DC-6 about a mile ahead and about fifteen hundred feet above us and to our left. Sometime in that storm when we had throttled back little to reduce the effects of the wind and hail, this transport plane had gained on us, passed us and was now ahead. We shuddered to think how close we must have come and what could have happened in those dark and swirling clouds!

What a relief it was to be again flying in the nice, clear sunny sky with only flecks of clouds above us. We could see the effect of the hail as the paint was about gone on the leading edges of the wings around the deicer boots and the nice black paint job with the yellow tips on the props was chipped and worn off.

Natal, Brazil was just a short ways off the South Atlantic Ocean and there were miles and miles of wide, sandy beached with coconut and date palms and, of course, here as everywhere else the beaches were off limits.

While Chuck was in the Army stateside and in Hawaii before going to flight school, he had made many friends and acquaintances, and it seemed like most everywhere we went someone was always saying , “Hi, Chuck,” and he would stop and talk. Bill would wait patiently with Art and me and, when we started walking along again, he would say, “Hi, Chuck; Hi, Chuck; Hi Chuck. All I ever hear is ‘Hi, Chuck’.” Chuck would always rely, “Shut up, Buchecker.” Well, while in Natal, Brazil we were on the tarmac pulling the twenty-five hour inspection on the engines when a DC-6 of the Air Transport Command taxied up and shut off next to us. Soon we heard someone say, “Hi, Bill”. It was his neighbor from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He and Bill chatted for a while and after the guy left we heard Chuck holler, “Hi, Bill; Hi, Bill; Hi, Bill; all I ever hear is ‘Hi, Bill’ “ to which Bill replied, “Shut up, Grace.”

Our next flight was a very boring one across the South Atlantic Ocean. We took off quite early and headed east over the water at an altitude of about eight thousand feet. The was the ultimate test for Bill and his navigation. He used both dead reckoning and celestial and wind drift and direction from the waves. A ten hour flight in the cramped cockpit of a B-24 with nothing to see but waster, eating our meal of coffee, sandwiches and an apple flying on automatic pilot and trying to keep awake turned out to be a hard and not really a memorable flight.

When Troy, the radio operator, picked up a radio signal from Dakar, North Africa, and it kept increasing in volume, we knew we were approaching the Continent. When Bill said we were about fifty miles out, we began to scan the horizon for the sight of land and because of our altitude, it wasn’t long before we saw a long, low streak of dark appearing on the horizon.

Now that we could see the coast of Africa, we were anxious to see how close to the field we would come before having to make a compass correction. Bill had done his job well and there it was, just a couple of miles to the South. All we had to do was call in for landing instructions, enter into the traffic pattern and set it down. At that point I had become a tourist. I was still doing my job, but not quite as observing as usual and I hadn’t noticed that the runway had a different look to it. All I had seen was that it was long, but a little narrow. We always landed with the bomb bay doors cracked open and, as the main gear touched down, there was a hell of a roar and an awful rumbling sound. I thought at first that our landing gear had collapsed and we were scraping on the cement, then it dawned on me that we were landing on a steel mesh mat. It creaked and rumbled as the dust blew up and back. It seemed to push up in a wave ahead go the plane.

We were used to landing on stable concrete runways and now making a landing on this rather unstable mat sure gave us a scare and a thrill that made for an exciting ending to my only flight across an ocean.

We taxied in and the “follow me” Jeep guided us to our assigned parking spot. There had always been in my thoughts a rather mystic quality when thinking of Africa, and here we were parked on African soil and instead of the steamy green jungle that I had always imagined, it was a wide, dirty, dusty and rocky beach area with a bunch of squatty, drab buildings. The vegetation was stunted and bushy with very little ground cover which did little to enhance the landscape. To say the least, I was disappointed because another of my fantasies had proven to be erroneous.

A corporal walked up as we were getting off the plane and told us to take anything we thought we would need because he was putting a man to quart the plane for the night and we would not be able to get back on the plane until he had removed the guard the next morning. I had my mind made up at the time that I really didn’t care what he said and, if I wanted to get back aboard my place, I would do it. When the guard came into view I immediately changed my thinking about that. The guy was at least six foot eight inches tall and dressed in a tunic, gold colored short jacket, and a pair of tan shorts, barefooted and wearing a fez. A fez is a brimless, cone shaped, flat crowned Moroccan hat with a tassel made of red felt. He was also carrying an ancient rifle which was about six feet long and had on the end of it a bayonet about two feet in length that kinda glistened in the late afternoon sun. He was black, in fact, os black he looked kinda purple, and his piercing dark eyes and stern look immediately let you know that he had a job to do and no one was going to keep him from doing it! We gathered up our gear and boarded a truck for the barracks area knowing full well that our plane was in good hands.

It was a short ride to the main camp area up a dusty winding road. We were assigned a place in one of the buildings which was a long and narrow one story place with wide eaves and only screened windows with shutters that could be closed in case of a tropical storm. It had a door on one end which was a wooded frame screen door with a strong closing spring and, every time someone entered, it slammed shut behind them with a resounding bang.

Lined up on each side of the venter aisle were bunks with mosquito netting hoods covering each one. It looked like a bunch of small tents pitched in a bivouac area. The showers were a half block away in another building and we immediately staked out a claim on a bunk and went for a cool, refreshing bath which after a ten hour flight across the South Atlantic Ocean and dusty truck ride was a much needed chore. It was hot and humid so we took our time in the relaxing, refreshing torrents of the showers while looking forward to the evening meal. We found the officers mess and sat down at a four man table with white linen and were served a nice meal with a lot of fruit. It was really quite unexpected and we took our time amid lots of conversation with other crews, some of them were our friends and some were Air Transport Command personnel flying supplies or ferrying aircraft to England or the Mediterranean Theater.

We found that there was little to amuse us and we were tired after a long day, so we went back to the barracks and crawled into our cots. We had nearly drifted off to sleep when that damned door banged open and banged shut, and there were two of those very tall natives with hand pump guns. They marched the full length of the building squirting insect spray, turned around, and came back, giving one pump every step and never missed a beat. They went out the door that closed behind them with an ear shattering crash. After a very refreshing night’s sleep we had breakfast, rode back down to the plane and departed for Marrakech, French Morocco.

This flight took us across the desert over the Atlas Mountains. A trip over the seas of sand is not exactly something to remember. It is really rather boring. We had been provided with a box lunch for the eight hour trip which had been packed in a cardboard box and stowed on the flight deck. Toilet facilities are, to say the least, non-existent on a B-24 and Art Krises, the bombardier who was riding in the waist section found that the fresh fruit served at the evening meal the night before had given him an extra urge. The only place to relieve himself was in the empty cardboard box the lunch came in and, just as he had finished, a camel caravan was sighted crossing a dune a little way ahead. Art, being the bombardier, decided he should have a little practice dropping the box as close to them as possible. We flew over the caravan as he sighted out the waist window and, when he decided he had the correct wind drift figured out, he tossed the box out. It didn’t really drop as neat as a bomb but kinda fluttered down to the left. A single camel driver left the caravan and trotted to where it was to land. This made us a little curious so we made a circle above to see what would happen. The camel skidded to a halt, the driver jumped off and ran to the box and, as we flew off, we were treated to the sight of the lone Arab standing beside his camel shaking his fist at a departing Air Force B-24. I’m glad we didn’t have to have a forced landing and be rescued by that caravan of Arabs!

We were saddened when we reached Marrakech to learn that one of our crews had crashed in the Atlas Mountains.

When we landed at Marrakech, we found that the field had been built on the edge of a French Foreign Legion post. The old stucco-faced buildings were sort of odd looking interspaced with the war time wooden building put there by the Army. We expected to just spend the night there and then take off for Valley Wales the next day. We were shown to where we would spend the night and found it would be in tents. Each tent was mounted on a wooded frame and each had four bare wooded frame canvas cots. We went to Supply and were issued two swollen blankets, no sheets, a pillow without a case and that is all. We were told that the nights got cold so we went back to the plane and picked up our fur lined suits so, when we retired, we had on our cloths, flying suits and wrapped up in the two blankets. It was cold by we managed to stay reasonably warm.

When I awakened about eight o’clock in the morning I was in a panic as the sin had been up for three hours and the tent had been closed up all night and inside that tent it must have been one hundred twenty degrees. There I was, wrapped up like a bug in a cocoon. I was wringing wet with sweat and trying to unwrap myself from all those covers and ready to pass out.

After turning the blankets in to Supple, we went immediately to the building with the showers and turned on the cold water and took a long shower while our clothes were drying out. We were glad to leave there but didn’t have any idea at the time that we would come back as soon as we did.

We took off and headed up along the coast of Africa toward Portugal. While we were going north, the number three engine started acting up and finally there was a belch of smoke and then flames. We doused the fire by flipping on the extinguisher in that engine. I thought, “Oh, God, here we go again!”

We decided we had better turn back. We weren’t heavily loaded and it flew well on three engines, so we deduced it would be nice to go to Casablanca. As we approached there and called the tower to ask permission to land, we were asked to explain our emergency. When we informed them that we were on three engines, we were asked if it was a real emergency and if we were in dire trouble. When we replied in the negative, they asked where we had departed from. When we told them Marrakech, they told us that they were busy and full up so for us to go back where we came from, so we flew back to Marrakech.

Wehn we landed we found that the master rod had let loose in the engine and we needed an engine change. This would mean quite a few days delay because Air Transport Command would have to fly a new engine in from the states.

That previous night’s experience in the tent was more than fresh on our minds, so we asked if we could be quartered in something a little more permanent since we were probably going to have to stay there for about ten days. After much arguing and pleading, the billeting officer finally said we could use one of the old one story stucco Foreign Legion houses.

We were to have all ten crew members billeted there, so we all walked down the road a couple of blocks and took a look at it. This was the lap of luxury compared to the tents. It had a small room that had been a kitchen in days long ago, a small bedroom and a living room with a corner fireplace with a slightly raised hearth. There was no running water, no electricity and we were warned not to use the fireplace because of the lack of fuel in the area. Beside it, about thirty feet away, was a one-stall garage in a state of disrepair, but it did have a door on it. We went back to Supply and were issued canvas cots and two blankets each and a pillow. We carried this back to the “Marrakech Hilton” as we named it and staked out a claim in it where each of us were to set up our cots.

This, as we found out, was not to be the arrangement we would end up using. As of now, we became tourists. We were not assigned to any outfit, so no work details could be handed out and we split up into twos and threes and explored our new surroundings. This really didn’t take long because it really wasn’t much of a base and most of the activities took place down on the flight line.

We managed to find the mess halls and the enlisted mens and officers clubs, but there was not much more we wanted to see. After supper in the typical chow line atmosphere, and eating at long wooden tables with benches, we wandered around talking with whoever seemed to be in need of a little conversation and finally drifted back to our abode.

When all of the crew had returned, we lay in the sacks relating our newest experiences and finally went to sleep. It was a fitful sleep to say the least because first it was cold even here on the edge of the desert and then when you awakened and tried something else to get warm, you would hear the Army. This army was mice running around above the ceiling. They must have been wearing G.I. boots because no way could they have made that much racket in their little bare feet!

The next day a decision was made by all of us that, at night after dark with the shutters closed, we would build a fire in the fireplace and we would all move into the living room to stay warm. Everyone was, during the day, to pick up all of the fuel we could lay our hands on. We ended up with quite an accumulation of stuff. We had old pieces of boards, ends of lumber discarded and not picked up while building the base, tree branches and limbs, orange crates from behind the mess hall and anything else we could find. In the old garage was an axe with half a handle and an old rusty saw. Before we finally moved we had removed most of the ceiling joists, part of the studs, rafters, door and window frames from inside the garage and burned them. I believe that if more that two birds had landed on top of that garage at one time, after our customizing job, it probably would have collapsed.

As the days wore on, fuel for our nightly fires became harder to come by. One evening, just at dark, some of us were sitting around on our cots and we heard a strange rumbling sound that got louder and louder and finally stopped at our doorstep. It was George Morgan, our ball turret gunner, who had gone down to the flight line and grabbed the ropes of two large wheel chocks used to block the wheels of the B-24s while running up the engines. He had dragged those things several blocks down the street apparently oblivious to the stares he was getting from passersby! They were covered with oil and hydraulic fluid, but they were his contribution to the wood pile. We all laughed and praised him for his gift and for the guts it took to steal and drag those things.

The last thing before going to sleep that night he topped off the fire with one of them. It blazed brightly for a while, then died down to a bright glow, giving off lots of heat. It must have been a couple of hours later I woke up choking and coughing and hardly able to breathe and found that several others except those near the door were having the same problem in their sleep. The damned wheel choke had rolled out onto the hearth and lay there smoking and filling the place with fumes and carbon dioxide. If I hadn’t awakened when I did, it could have been a disaster. I yelled and Solinsky kicked the door open. Someone went to the kitchen and opened that door so fresh air would revive us. Morgan kicked the wheel chock out into the yard and I’ll bet that other one is laying out there in the edge of the desert yet because we surely didn’t try to burn it.

While we were waiting for a new engine, we asked for a pass to go into town. We were surprised to get permission so easily but there were certain strings attached. No one could walk down the street singly. We had to go at least in pairs as there had been several incidents of a line person walking along and being snatched off the street, dragged down an alley and being robbed and beaten, and in three cases, killed by Arabs. We had to wear our trouser legs tucked into boots and had to wear our leather light jackets under which we were to wear our shoulder holsters with our 45 caliber automatic pistols loaded with the safety on. We were not allowed to eat anything but boiled eggs in the shell and drink nothing but beer, bottled pasteurized beer. Everything was deemed to be contaminated even to the point of oranges and vegetables because the plants had been fertilized with human waste. We were not to enter the old walled city of Medina because of a religious conflict and, other than that, we were free to roam around.

The taxis were buses and cars with the engines removed and pulled by horses or a rickshaw which was a two wheeled cart pulled by a man pedaling a bicycle. The streets were lined with peddlers hawking their wares and, in broken English, shouting to the Americans what wonderful bargains they had on knives, leather goods, rugs made out of goat hair and leather sandals. When you stopped to ask the price, which was always sky high, they would immediately start to haggle. I guess if you didn’t bargain with them, they would have been greatly disappointed.

There were small donkeys loaded with huge loads of sticks and an Arab riding on top and his wife with her head and face covered, wearing loose, flowing, dark clothing, walking along behind. It was really something much different than any of us had been accustomed to and it really brought out the tourist in us.

Our crew sat down at a table at an open air cafe and ordered beer and boiled eggs and soaked up the unusual goings on around us. Bill Buchecker had, I guess you would have to say, small kidneys. Every time he drank one beer he would have to relive himself. He couldn’t bring himself to do it in the gutter like the natives did so he wanted to find the rest room in the Hotel LeMamonia. Most everyone there spoke French except us, so we couldn’t ask anyone where the “John” was and decided the only way to find out where it was was to watch the people and see if we could find a clue. Carchietta said to look at a guy entering a door on the other side of the room because he was buttoning up his pants. This had to be the place so Bill Damned near double timed over there and went in. He was only in there a minute or two and he came hustling out and back over to where we were and said, “There is a woman in there!” We din’t know at the time that everyone used the same restroom, but when she came out a couple of us said that we would guard the door while he was in there just to keep him from exploding. We managed to keep the place clear because we found out that Bill was a good navigator and we figured we owed him that much, but it di provide us with a lot of good laughs!

A week later Gerocko was fixed and we test hopped it for three quarters of an hour, slow timing the engine and the next morning we took off for Valley, Wales. The flight there was one of nine and a half hours and was rather uneventful although we had been issued fifty caliber ammunition for all the guns because the route we flew brought us within range of German patrol aircraft off the coast of France.

When we arrived at Valley the weather was rainy and foggy with practically no ceiling but we finally found the field and got down without incident. We were rather fortunate because the weather got worse and we were there for three days before it cleared enough so we could take off for Rackheath, England, which was the new home of the 467th Bomb Group. It was officially known as Stone #145.

It was only a light of about two hours, but it gave us a chance to see the English countryside. This was indeed very different from flying over the Inited States. There we were used to seeing square fields and roads that ran mostly north and south and east and west, but here there was no rhyme or reason to the layout but were mostly off-shaped little fields interspersed with plots of wood with little house and cottages sprinkled throughout. It was rather pretty, but sure made it difficult to determine where you were because it rather all looked alike while at the same time looking totally different. It was one of the few times that we felt like tourists, because when we arrived at the field we again became a member of the 467th and we damned well knew it.