KEEPING TIME
FLYBOY LOUIS ANDERSON 1943.
Till the End of Time —BUDDY KAYE & TED MOSSMAN, 1945
Barbara Gilby could scarcely believe her luck when her secret crush walked into her parent’s jewelry store in 1945. Tall, handsome Louis Anderson was home on leave from the Army Air Corps and wanted to get his watch fixed.
Louis and Barbara had attended the same high school, but he was a couple of years older than she. When he graduated and left to join the service, Barbara clipped his photo from the yearbook and carried it in her wallet. From her balcony perch, where she worked as an engraver, she watched her father slowly shake his head—the store had been flooded with soldiers home on leave and her dad had a backlog of repairs waiting.
“I didn’t have the nerve to come down,” Barbara recalled. “After he left, I bawled out my dad for not fixing his watch.” She’d hoped Louis would stay in the store a bit longer. If he had, she said, “I felt like I would have worked up the courage to greet him!”
Louis hadn’t been around much. “After Pearl Harbor all the guys in high school wanted to be pilots,” he said. He was one of them who got his wish, and became a B-17 pilot stationed overseas as part of the 305th Bombardment Group. Their mission was to bomb German railroads, oil refineries and switchyards. A photo shows his flight crew looking impossibly young and irrepressibly confident. Their 22-year-old leader, first pilot Louis Anderson, sits on his haunches in the front row. The photo was snapped as the 10 young men prepared to depart for Chelveston, England. It was May 1944, and the crew of the G-model Flying Fortress eagerly anticipated getting their licks in against the enemy.
Thirty-five missions later, Louis returned home, having lost only one of his original crew. Amazing, because according to Louis, “There was only one mission that we didn’t get shot at.” He recalled one frightening flight. “We got 300 hits on the right wing alone. On that day we probably had over 1,000 hits.” While his crew made it back without a loss, others weren’t as fortunate. “That same mission a friend of mine had only six holes in his plane, but he lost his navigator.”
Flight crews can be notoriously superstitious. Louis laughs when he recalled the time his crew didn’t want to take off until he was the wearing the greasy, stained cap he usually wore. But he, too, realized he could use a little extra protection. He sheepishly admitted, “I carried a New Testament my grandmother gave me on every mission.”
LOUIS ANDERSON, 1943.
One memorable mission left a lasting impression. “Flak went through the floorboard of the cockpit and out the windshield, shattering it,” Louis recalled. “I was hit in the back of the leg and a small piece of flak lodged there. It felt like I’d been hit with a baseball bat.” And 70 years later, he’s pretty sure that souvenir is still stuck somewhere in his leg.
Other memories cause deeper pain. He recounted the first time he and his crew saw a plane shot down. They were flying in a 12-ship squadron, and his friend Clifton Alford, a university music professor, was piloting a nearby aircraft. “They got hit,” Louis said. “We didn’t see any parachutes. We’d all gone through training together,” he paused. “It hit the fellows pretty hard. The romance wore off and they ceased to believe the movies pretty quickly.” The first time they saw a plane shot down disturbed them, but nothing prepared them for the horror they witnessed on a subsequent mission.
“A ship in our left wing got hit,” Louis said. He and his men watched in dismay as the ball turret gunner fell from his turret and hung suspended by his foot. Many B-17 crew members considered the ball turret the worst position on the aircraft, as the gunner was confined in a sphere fastened to the underside of the plane. Louis cleared his throat. “I had to explain to the fellows that he was no longer with us.” After 45 seconds the gunner fell from the aircraft.
“We had quite a bit of difficulty talking the crew into getting back in the plane to fly a mission the next day,” he continued. “We had to have several conferences with the chaplain to explain that the gunner hadn’t been hanging there, suffering.”
LOUIS ANDERSON (KNEELING BOTTOM LEFT) AND HIS CREW, 1944.
On a different excursion, one of his crew members had a piece of flak go under his helmet and essentially scalp him. “He was really bleeding,” Anderson said. They got him safely back to base and after he recovered he was transferred to a different aircraft. Later they found out he’d been killed in action. He was the only member of the original crew who didn’t return home.
But on the day Louis entered the jewelry store, his thoughts weren’t on the horrors of war—they were on his timepiece and on his mother. He’d returned to the states for B-29 training, but his mother’s ill health prompted an extended leave. Barbara decided not to keep her crush a secret, and a month after seeing him in the jewelry store, a mutual friend arranged a date for the couple. In fact, she said a number of people encouraged Louis to ask her out. Plus, their brothers were already friends.
LOUIS ANDERSON, 1944.
Their first date was a romantic success. “We went on a picnic at Crystal Lake,” Barbara said. Other dates followed. “I was impressed,” said Louis. “She was a beautiful girl.” When his leave was up, he rejoined his unit, but returned for another visit just in time for Christmas. Barbara smiled at the memory. “He brought me a bottle of Joy perfume and a box of candy.”
On New Year’s Eve 1945, the couple headed out to a dance at a local Grange. A winter rainstorm descended with a vengeance. “The rain poured down and the mud flowed,” said Barbara. They couldn’t get to the Grange, so they sat in Louis’s truck and listened to the New Year come in on the radio. And as 1946 arrived, Louis asked Barbara to marry him.
“My dad said he was the first guy I dated that was real man and gentleman,” Barbara recalled. Louis bought her a small diamond engagement ring at her father’s store. He felt bad about the size of the stone, but he was just getting out of the service and planned to attend college, so there simply wasn’t enough cash for a more elaborate ring. Barbara said, “I told him he could get me a bigger diamond for our 25th anniversary.” That became a running joke between them. “Every time he missed a birthday or anniversary, the diamond got bigger,” she said, and chuckled. “I told him I don’t accept apologies—just add it to the cost of the new diamond.”
Louis shook his head. “I’m still not sure about the accounting on all that!”
On July 7, 1946, they married. Following World War II, housing for couples was in short supply, so for the first year of their married life they lived in one room in a boarding house.
In 1950, Louis graduated with a degree in education from Washington State University and Barbara gave birth to their daughter. A son later completed the family. Louis served 21 years in the Air Force Reserves and taught high school for 30 years. “When things got boring in class,” he said, “the students would get me to talk about my World War II experiences.” He laughed. “It was a good strategy.”
He also returned to his rural roots. Barbara said, “He grew up on a farm—he was a country boy but I was a city girl.” In 1967, the family bought 80 acres in Green Bluff, Washington. “It was part woods and part cleared land,” Louis said. “The years up on the farm were the most enjoyable and the least stressful of our lives.” His wife, however, wasn’t eager to explore farm life. She asked him, “Do you want me to look weathered and old?” He didn’t—so she took care of the bookkeeping and sold the plentiful apples and cherries. “But no actual farm work for me!” she said.
They’ve retained their military ties; their granddaughter is married to Lt. Col. David Banholzer, who until recently served as the pilot of Air Force One. Louis smiled, “Now, he’s the only one who’ll really listen to my war stories.”
The Andersons have stayed busy during their retirement years. Louis is a Master Gardener and Barbara an avid quilter. Every Wednesday morning Louis attends a men’s prayer breakfast, but even then, Barbara is on his mind. “He always brings me back a scone,” she said.
Having celebrated 68 wedding anniversaries, the couple reflected on their years together. Both share a positive outlook on life. “Stay happy,” Barbara said. “Don’t waste time being unhappy. Time passes too fast.” She said their love for each other has changed over the years. “It’s a different kind of love, now. It’s truer, deeper and richer.” Then she smiled at her husband. “I feel sorry for those who don’t grow old together.”
And the watch that brought him into the jewelry store more than six decades ago? It was repaired and he still wears it. It’s kept on ticking, just like their marriage.
LOVE LESSON
“You can’t take back bad words. We’ve never said one thing we’ve had to take back.”—Barbara Anderson
LOUIS AND BARBARA ANDERSON, 2010. Photo courtesy Ralph Bartholdt