The 16 air crews were off-loaded onto a tender on July 5th about 1330 hours, transported to shore and then by bus to the train station. We traveled through the afternoon and evening, with a brief stop at Carlisle, en route to a place called Stone, arriving there at 0200 hours on the morning of July 6th. We were served breakfast, assigned quarters and most of us slept through until noon. With some decent food, a good nights sleep and better living conditions we had pretty well recovered from the long sea voyage. It wasn't like home, but definitely an improvement.

One of the more surprising aspects of this latitude was the length of days in the summer time; the sun rose well before 5:00 am and didn't set until 11:30 PM. Later we would see quite a change - during the winter months.

While at Stone we had a fair amount of free time, but there were routine duties and training. I was assigned to the censorship detail for a while, reading outgoing mail of enlisted crew members of other crews and deleting anything that might be helpful if it should fall into enemy hands. Not a job I cared for very much.

This was a temporary stop where we went to a variety of orientation lectures covering everything from chemical warfare to indoctrination on living in a "foreign" country. Also physical examinations to check our overall condition after the overseas movement and to update inoculations. On July 12th our orders came through and we began clearing the base. About 0830 on July 13th we left Stone by train and arrived at Warrington, near Manchester, shortly after lunch where we were billeted at Bruche Hall. During our two day stay there we had lots of free time and went into town to attend the movies or theater; in fact on the second night several of us had the opportunity to see a live theater performance of "The Student Prince" which was very enjoyable, even though the setting was pre-war Germany.

At this point, in all honesty, I was not too impressed with England. Everything seemed so old and dirty, however we learned later that this was the heart of the industrial district of Britain with many heavy manufacturing plants which, for years, had been powered by coal fired steam plants. There was not much thought of pollution control in those days and the smoke stacks belched enormous quantities of black smoke 24 hours a day.

Part of our indoctrination included a week or ten day assignment to a camp in Northern Ireland. On July 15th we traveled there by train and boat to a place called Cluntoe. For the life of me I can not remember if the entire crew went or just the officers. I do recall classes for the pilots to learn radio navigational aids & pilotage procedures; the Navigators and Bombardiers received special training in their skills.

On the day of arrival we heard that Joe Lewis would be fighting an exhibition match at Langford Lodge, not too far away, so we conned an airplane and about 20 of us took off to see if we could get tickets. I don't remember who made up the flight crew, but apparently somebody who knew how to get there - and we did. Somehow we found the arena, got tickets or got in free and watched the Brown Bomber do his thing. It was one of those impulsive things you do occasionally and get away with. The fight was enjoyable, the change of pace was good for us and the flight both ways was completed safely.

Mail, which is so vitally important when you are far from home, was unbearably slow in catching up with us. My first mail from the States reached me on July 17th which actually was quite a surprise. No one expected to receive any mail until reaching our permanent base, but surprisingly, first mail from the states began to catch up with us here. It came rather sporadically, which was understandable. Some days I would get five or six letters and then none for several days. It was really great to hear from home and everybody looked forward to mail call each day.

As I write this piece, my primary reference is a diary that was written during my months overseas and it is truly regrettable that such brief entries were made. So much happened during these months, but my sketchy comments do not adequately describe many of the events and only bits and pieces remain in my memory. Bear with me as the story unfolds.

When our training period in Northern Ireland was completed we returned to Stone and within a few days the sixteen air crews that came over together were divided up among several bomber groups of the Eighth Air Force, Second Air Division. My crew and I were assigned to the 467th Bomb Group 790th Squadron located at Rackheath, Station 145, about five miles northeast of Norwich in East Anglia.

It must have been the last week in July when we settled into our new quarters wondering what would happen to us during the coming months. Once again we had to go through the ever present training period - learning the actual local conditions that would dominate our activities as we moved into the combat role. Each crewman was given training in how his particular job was structured in this bomb group. Pilots had to be checked out, practice takeoff & landing procedures, become familiar with instrument flying requirements, radio procedures and formation flying. We flew with a check pilot aboard, then practice missions as a crew to learn assembly techniques and, for the first time, fly for long periods wearing oxygen masks. This training time lasted about two weeks, after which we anxiously watched for our crew to be posted for operational missions.

Weather was very often a problem and it seems to me that we took off under marginal conditions on a majority of our missions. Visibility was often less than ½ mile with the ceiling sometimes less than 500 feet. More often than not we were on instruments immediately after leaving the ground and would climb up through one or more cloud layers to assembly altitude.

Finally, on August 9th, I was assigned to fly my first operational mission as co-pilot with a seasoned (??) crew. It was the general policy in our group, and others, for the first pilot of new crews to fly his first mission with an experienced crew. As it turned out, my first exposure to combat was rather easy. The mission was to Saarbruken, apparently of small importance since the antiaircraft fire was minimal and we had no fighter interception. I do not remember the length of the mission nor the exact target, but there was some screw-up in either navigation or target identification and the results were probably not very impressive. But at least the ice was broken and next time my own crew could get started with the operational tour of 35 missions.

It came as a bit of a surprise to us when we learned that our flying would not be limited to operational mission only. There were still the inevitable practice missions, test hops of planes with new engines and/or repairs as a result of battle damage. The pilots were assigned to squadron or group watch officer duty on a rotating schedule, spent time in the Link trainer, took check rides just to keep us on our toes and occasionally all crew members attended lectures or some form of classroom instruction. A few times, we even had an opportunity to do some skeet shooting.

In our group, we were constantly monitored during assembly to observe the quality of our formation flying. Our group commander flew a P-47 and herded us like a sheep dog, often buzzing us quite closely in order to get our attention since it was standard procedure to observe radio silence during assembly. No need to tip off the enemy that we were on our way. Those who didn't stay tucked into position were stood down from operations and required to fly practice missions until this improved. Typically, the average crew flew fifteen to twenty practice missions during the combat tour; not all for disciplinary reasons. Often to try out a new assembly procedure, work to improve bombing results or develop more effective offensive fire power. At the time we hated this extra "training" and wanted to get on with our missions. Later, when our groups record of losses was the lowest in the wing, there was some note of genuine appreciation of our group commander for his strict requirements.

On August 13th, one day after my 23rd birthday, our full crew flew it's first operational mission. It was a relatively easy ground support effort - bombing German troops & equipment attempting to cross the Seine River. Anti-aircraft fire was minimal and no enemy fighters appeared. We were in the air less than six hours from takeoff to landing and our bomb load was 6000 lbs of general purpose and anti-personnel bombs.

The question is often raised about how it feels to be responsible for the death and destruction resulting from participation in bombing raids. My answer has always been that of total detachment (not too difficult from 20,000 feet) - a job that had to be done to an enemy who, by it's own actions, had generated the need for this course of events. America did not start the war but joined the Allied Forces to stop Nazi aggression and subjugation of minority groups. This may sound a bit smug in todays society, but times were different in the forties and we truly felt we were trying to help make the world free. From our present vantage point it is obvious that we were not totally successful, but our efforts were diligent and highly motivated. There was then, and still is, a strong conviction that there should be a better way than war to resolve the worlds problems and hopefully someday perhaps it can be found. So much for philosophizing, we were trained for the job and were just a part of a worldwide effort to accomplish the overall goals of the Allied Forces in every combat theater. Our immediate job was to stop Hitler's military machine from conquering and imposing his will on the people of continental Europe.

After our first mission, we felt quite a bit more confident of our abilities and settled in to get the job done. Between August 13th and November 9th we successfully completed 13 operational mission, flew practice missions, enjoyed a couple of two day passes to London and performed two other special assignments as described below.

For about two weeks between Sept 19th & Sept 30th, in addition to regular combat missions, several crews were assigned to fly trucking missions to France. General Patton's front line armored units were advancing faster than their supplies and were being delayed waiting for fuel. To meet this need, our B-24s had four 500 gallon fuel tanks installed in the bomb bays which would be filled with the gas for the tanks and other vehicles. Our wing tanks were filled with 2000 gallons of 100 octane aviation fuel. To say this undertaking was a bit risky is definitely an understatement! Our flight plan required that we fly during daylight, VFR and usually no higher than 1000', to small airfields in central France. There we would land and the ground troops would pump the gas for the tanks into to drums, load them aboard trucks and off they would go to the front lines. This unloading operation quite often took most of the night and we would wait until daylight, then fly back to England. Whatever food we needed for these flights was taken with us from our home base - usually "C" or "K" rations. A person can survive on this diet, but it isn't all that tasty. On one of our trucking missions a crew member took along a bicycle and during the late afternoon rode off to find something better to eat. He returned shortly with some potatoes, French bread and a bottle of wine. We started a fire, coated the potatoes with mud and roasted them in the hot ashes, guessing when they would be done. Baked potatoes, wine, French bread and C- Rations; "What a feast !"

In all, our crew flew six of these missions and always hoped that it was a help to the armored division and possibly shortened the war in Europe. No big deal, but we did not get mission credit for these flights. Interspersed with our regular operational missions, several crews in the group, including ours, were assigned to train for night missions of some kind. For several weeks in late October the selected crews began flying pinpoint, night navigational flights all across England. Typically, these flights lasted about four hours and involved flying a three or four sided pattern to prescribed points all across England. At these points we would identify ourselves by signal lights on the bottom of the airplane. The ground station would log us overhead and report our accuracy to some headquarters. It was during these night flights that the true skill of our Navigator came to the forefront. No matter the pattern we flew, Ole would always get us safely back to the home base.

From the beginning, there was quite a bit of mystery about this activity and we never did find out what it was all about. The speculation was that we would be assigned to the "Carpetbaggers" and fly personnel and/or supplies into the continent at night in support of the Free French or other resistance groups.

I believe that one of the more terrifying experiences during these night flights was to be captured in a battery of four to twelve searchlights. It is difficult to describe how it felt to be at twelve to fifteen thousand feet and become encased in these brilliant lights; so bright that we could easily have read a newspaper. There is almost no evasive action that can free you from the clutches of these lights. You are like a sitting duck waiting for anti-aircraft fire to zero in on you, which is just what would happen if over enemy territory. Fortunately, for us we were over England and this was just practice. Nothing came of this night training and after a couple of weeks the project was canceled and we were rescheduled for daylight combat missions.

It was the general policy in our bomber division for each combat crew to get a weeks relief from operational missions near the mid-point of the tour. For some unknown reason, the break came a bit early for us and just a few days after completing mission number 13, we left Rackheath for the "Flak Shack" for a week of rest and recuperation. It was a wonderful, relaxing time and those days have remained in my memory quite vividly.

We were quartered in a beautiful old manor house known an Ensham Hall, near Oxford, which looked like a palace to most of us. It was permissible to get out of uniform while we were on the estate, in fact we were loaned civilian clothes to use while there. We were served fruit juice in our room every morning and went downstairs to the dining room for a variety of breakfast menus. During the day we could relax, loaf, read, write letters, go horseback or bicycle riding and on one occasion were taken, by bus, into Oxford for a tour of one of the colleges. It was a totally unexpected experience which we all thoroughly enjoyed. This part of the English countryside was lovely and even caused some to think that someday, after the war, it might be nice to come back on a visit. Once again, the officers went to one rest home and the enlisted crew to another. Amazing that we were allowed to fly and risk our lives together, but socializing was not permitted!

At the end of the week we all returned to Rackheath to finish our missions, which for us was 22 - quite a long way to go. Our mail was not forwarded while we were away so there was a nice accumulation upon our return. Incoming mail was a big morale booster for all of us and it might surprise you to know how many members of air crews wrote letters back to family and loved ones regularly. I certainly did and seem to recall writing a letter to my wife almost every day while I was overseas. We all hoped that our letters were as welcome and meaningful as those we received.