Jack was the first one up every morning. As soon as his feet hit the floor he wanted the rest of the crew to wake up and move. “Come on, Chuckie.” Jack yanked the covers off his friend. “Are you dead or alive?”
Chuckie opened one eye. “Dead.”
Jack tightened the sheet on his bunk, making it taut enough to bounce a quarter on, the way he’d been taught in basic. “Your brain rots if you sleep too long, O’Brien.”
“Hey, Eager Beaver!” Johnson reared up from his bunk. “Will you button up!” Jack hated being called Eager Beaver, but he couldn’t help being the first one up, the first one in line, the first to answer their instructors’ questions.
Jack wanted to learn everything the instructors had to teach them. They were spending several hours in the classroom each day. The more he learned, the closer Jack felt to being ready for combat.
They were flying training missions every day over the Gulf, sometimes twice a day. There were navigational flights at night, and they bombed mock targets over the water. On the ground they had simulated air battles with enemy fighters, using a motion-picture screen and camera gun. The German ME 109’s and FW 190’s swept across the screen. Press a button and, instead of bullets flying, the camera whirred.
After these “battles” the films would be shown in one of the classrooms. The officers came to watch how the gunners had done. The first time the battle films were shown was misery for Jack. As the film came on the screen there was a lot of laughing and groaning. Jack nervously chewed his knuckles as he waited for his film to be shown. Chuckie had “hit” one of their own planes, and he wasn’t the only one.
When Jack’s film finally was shown, he sank down against Chuckie, his hand over his face. A lot of sky, total misses, a glimpse of the tail of one of the fighter planes he was supposed to be shooting, and then a long shot of the front end of a B-17. If that film had been bullets, Jack would have killed their own bombardier, their navigator, and both pilots.
“Oh, my God,” he muttered. He glanced at Lieutenant Martin, then sank lower in his chair. “Oh, my God,” he groaned miserably.
Chuckie patted him on the shoulder. “Take it easy, Jack, or you’re not going to survive this.”
Jack didn’t know how to take it easy. He was in the Army to learn to fight. He couldn’t be cool or casual like the other guys. He knew he smiled too much, laughed too loud, groaned as if he were dying. Even the way he felt about their plane was excessive. He just couldn’t help himself.
He loved their B-17. He thought of her as a big, bright, broad-winged bird, crisp and neat with her long sleek body, high upswept tail, and all those guns and turrets. Thirteen .50 caliber machine guns covered every possible enemy approach. Their plane was proud, beautiful, powerful. Jack knew that nothing could ever touch her.
What he liked most about training was when they were in the air as a crew, flying in formation, everybody in his position. Then, peering out the waist window, looking for the “enemy,” Jack could almost believe it was the real thing. Jack’s goal was to go overseas and fight. What was the use of being in the Army if he was going to spend the whole time in the States?
They were doing a lot of formation flying, because that was the way they’d be flying in combat. Six planes to a squadron. Three squadrons stacked at different altitudes to a group.
Formation flying was hard on the pilots. They had to hold the plane steady through all the turbulence caused by the prop wash of the planes ahead. There was a constant jerking up and down. At night, when they only had the dim running lights at the tip of the wings to guide them, the entire crew was on alert to avoid a midair collision. But a collision happened anyway.
Jack was looking out the starboard waist window and saw the whole thing. It was one of those hot days with a lot of thermals and sudden down-drafts. Earlier their own plane had been caught in a downdraft. Everything that wasn’t tied down, including Jack, went floating up to the roof of the plane. It was like going over a huge bump in a road. You went up, and then you went down.
Lieutenant Martin was able to bring their plane under control. The B-17 flying just below their wing position wasn’t so lucky. It dropped and landed right on top of the plane below it. At first jack almost laughed. One plane riding piggyback on another! “Chuckie, get over here,” he yelled, motioning to Chuckie in the radio room.
The plane on top jerked and bounced, then swung way up in the air, almost hitting another plane before righting itself. Chuckie stood at Jack’s shoulder, watching. Then they saw the plane below. Jack caught his breath. It was slashed halfway through the waist, almost exactly where Jack stood in their own plane.
“Jesus!” Chuckie gripped Jack’s shoulder.
The plane was wobbling, dropping down. A man bailed out. “See that!” Jack exclaimed.
“Jesus!” Chuckie crossed himself.
Another man came out. They counted as the men bailed out, and their chutes opened. Six, Jack counted. Seven … eight … eight men, eight chutes. Where was the ninth? Was that the waist gunner? Was he dead?
“The pilot’s still in there,” Chuckie said. As they watched they saw the plane head out over the water, then the last man, the pilot, bailed out.
It was only after that that they finally received some instruction on bailing out. Fifteen minutes of instruction from an unsmiling instructor.
“You.” The instructor pointed at Jack. “Come up here.” He fastened the chute harness over Jack’s shoulders and around his legs. “This is how it’s done, and this is the most important thing I’m going to tell you. Keep the harness straps tight at all times. When that chute snaps open, and you’re jerked up, it’s gonna feel like this.” He yanked the harness up on Jack. It caught him painfully in the groin.
“Hey!” Tears came to his eyes it hurt so much.
“What are you doing to my buddy?” Chuckie said, only half joking.
“Just letting you guys know you don’t want any slack down there,” the instructor said, “because if there is, you’re going to be singing soprano for the rest of your life.”
Most of the instructors were vets who’d completed their missions in Europe and were back home teaching the new crews. They were tough. No sympathy. They treated the new crews as if they were a hopeless lot, too raw, too green to be worth anything.
In another class a scrawny guy with a bouncy Adam’s apple gave them instructions on ditching over water. “I feel sorry for you men who can’t swim.”
“Another undertaker,” Chuckie whispered.
There were rafts on the planes and inflatable yellow rubber vests, called Mae Wests, that they wore over their chute harnesses. Blown up the vests gave them a big busty Mae West look.
There was a lot of equipment they had to learn about. Heated electric suits that looked like long underwear for the cold at high altitudes. Bulky insulated sheepskin-lined boots, and oxygen tanks, and masks so they could breath when they were flying three, four, or five miles high.
There was more to learn than they had time for, and for most things, no time for practice. But Jack was confident that the Air Force thought of everything. They were taking good care of him. He wished his mother knew. Not a day passed without his thinking about his family. And some nights he lay awake, missing them so much he cried. His mother, his father, Irv, Marcia … what were they thinking? Did they miss him? It made Jack’s throat hurt to think about his mother. But it was better now than when he’d first joined up. Those first weeks of basic in Miami Beach had been hell. Jack had been lonely and afraid every minute that the Army would catch on to him. He and another guy shared a room on the eighth floor of the Ambassador Hotel. Reveille was at five A.M. He’d tumble down the stairs double time (elevators were off limits to enlisted men). Outside he’d lie down in the road and sleep until he was ordered up for roll call. He was tired all the time, he’d never been so tired in his life, tired at night, and still tired in the morning.
After roll call, up the eight flights of stairs again to make his bed. Then down again, on the double—everything on the double—to march to breakfast.
“Fall in! Count off! By the numbers. One! Two! Right face, forward march. On the double, Hup, Hup, Hup!” The corporal stuck Jack in front of the platoon because he was so tall. “Hup, two, three, four, hup, two, three,” the corporal shouted. Jack wasn’t used to taking such short steps. “Raab, get in step. You cow-flop chaser, yeah, you, shitface! Right foot, first foot, can’t you keep in step, you’re throwing the whole fucking line out.”
There were drills, calisthenics in the sand, obstacle courses, the Manual of Arms, classes in physics and navigation. Someone shouting at you every step. The Golden Rule of the Army: Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut.
There was training with the Springfield ’03 rifle and the .30 caliber carbine. He was good with the guns. He got a sharpshooter medal and couldn’t write home about it. He started letters to his family, but he had to stop himself. It was too dangerous. It was better if they thought he was in California, or Oregon, or Alaska, so far away they wouldn’t try to find him. He got a good-conduct ribbon. Nobody to tell. He was so afraid he’d say or do something wrong that he hardly talked to anyone those first few weeks. But he was glad he was in the Air Corps, glad and proud. They sang as they marched. “Off we go into the wild blue yonder, flying high into the sun.…” The Air Force song brought tears to Jack’s eyes. He’d dream about coming home a hero, covered with ribbons and decorations. Maybe limping from a wound in his leg, and with a black eye patch over one eye. Everyone would cry when they saw him, his mother, his brother and sister, his cousins and aunts and uncles, even his father would be crying. And Jack would just smile and say, I had to enlist … I had to go and fight Hitler.…