Chapter 32

AN ENEMY AT PEAK STRENGTH

For the first time since beginning his combat tour the previous December, Ben awakened on August 17 with the satisfying knowledge that he had proven his detractors wrong. All the men who had mocked him and made snide comments about the color of his skin or shape of his eyes; the men who had questioned his loyalties, his trustworthiness, his courage; the bigoted 93rd sergeants who had twice tried to force him from the group, first in Louisiana and then Florida. He had proven them all wrong. He had pleaded for the opportunity to fight, and, when that opportunity arrived, he proved his mettle. He hadn’t ducked tough assignments. He had bombed the Fascist capital, braved the murderous defenses of Ploiesti, and delivered blows against a dozen other enemy targets. Now he could walk away and never fly another combat mission, if that’s what he wanted.

But he wasn’t sure that was what he wanted.

For a while now, Ben had been thinking about what he would do when he reached twenty-five missions. All his former crewmates and other comrades in the 93rd never doubted what they would do. Ben’s best friend, Red Kettering, couldn’t wait to return home to see family and friends. They had laughed and joked with each other the previous week as Red prepared to begin that journey. “Don’t forget to look up my folks in Nebraska—I’ve already written them to give you a delicious meal of fish heads and rice,” Ben had joked.1 When his home leave was up, Red would have his choice of cushy assignments, perhaps training new bomber crews or selling War Bonds or recruiting. Ben could expect the same, if that’s what he wanted.

But an idea had begun to form in Ben’s head. He would volunteer for another five missions. It would be his way of going above and beyond to prove his patriotism, to leave no doubt as to his loyalties. He would do it for his kid brother Fred, who had been booted out of the air service to dig trenches. From those first hours following the news of Pearl Harbor, he and Fred had aspired to prove their love of country by fighting for America, but Fred had been denied the chance. Now Ben could strike a symbolic blow on his brother’s behalf. He would fly another five missions in Fred’s honor.²

The final call wasn’t Ben’s to make. He made his way through the desert camp to the squadron headquarters tent to present his plan to K. O. Dessert. The 409th Squadron commander listened carefully to Ben and then gently pushed back. “Go home,” Dessert urged. Ben’s orders for his return to America had already been cut.

Ben respectfully protested. He tried to explain himself—why combat meant so much to him in the first place, and why flying another five missions meant so much to him now. Dessert heard him out and relented. Ben could remain with Homer Moran and his crew for another five missions.³

 

THE 93RD FLEW TWO MORE MISSIONS from their base in the Libyan desert, a pair of tactical raids aimed at the enemy air and rail systems in Italy. Fifteen 93rd Liberators were assigned to an August 19 raid on Foggia’s rail marshaling yards and fourteen of the group’s B-24s were assigned to an August 20 raid on an air storage depot eighteen miles north of Naples. The 93rd didn’t lose any aircraft on either raid. The Moran crew—Ben included—sat out both raids.

Rumors were rife the group would soon be leaving the Libyan desert. Speculation swirled about what was next. Would they return to England? Relocate to Tunis? Italy, maybe? What seemed clear was they finally were poised to leave their godforsaken Sahara camp. Their departure would happen none too soon for the 93rd’s weary men and worn aircraft.⁴

By mid-August, a number of 93rd men were battling psychological problems. Among them was Bill Dawley, the Red Ass gunner who had been wounded in the head on Ben’s first raid the previous December. Dawley had returned to combat in February 1943, and had made the second trek to North Africa as a gunner on Hap Kendall’s crew. He had survived the Ploiesti raid, but afterward found himself struggling with what is now recognized as post-traumatic stress. “I was getting pretty shaky,” Dawley later recalled.⁵

Dawley was thinking of taking himself off combat duty when he went to talk to the 409th Squadron’s operations officer, who happened to be Jake Epting. “I’m quitting,” Dawley told his former pilot. Epting patiently tried to talk Dawley down. “You’re going to end up with guard duty or buck private or KP [kitchen patrol] the rest of your days,” Epting said.

Dawley didn’t like the sound of that. He thought it over and when his crew was next assigned a mission, he showed up for the briefing and reported to his aircraft as if nothing had happened. When Hap Kendall taxied out for takeoff, Jake Epting spotted Dawley standing in the waist window and gave him an approving nod. Dawley continued his quest for twenty-five missions.⁶

Within days, the 93rd’s long-awaited orders finally arrived.

ON THE MORNING OF AUGUST 26, 1943, Ben and his comrades bade farewell to the desert and began the first leg of their welcome journey back to England.

Over the course of the long flight westward across North Africa, places fraught with memories of close calls and comrades lost flashed beneath Ben: There was Tripoli, the target of Ben’s tenth mission with the Epting crew on January 21 and the mission on which Lew Brown had lost four men; Biskra, the Algerian provincial capital which they had overflown on the flight to Benghazi two months earlier, when the mysterious Big One that had brought them back to Africa had yet to claim so many comrades; Oran, the first frenetic city that Ben had experienced in North Africa the previous December; Oudja, the Moroccan border city that the Red Ass crew had overflown in the frantic minutes before Jake Epting executed his miraculous landing in a mountain valley about seventy miles away; and Marrakech, Morocco, Winston Churchill’s beloved “Paris of the Sahara,” their final stop before bidding farewell to Africa. They had covered 1,741 miles during the day and landed around dusk.

The next morning they headed for England’s Cornwall peninsula. They were still airborne when darkness fell. The trip took a dire turn when sand-scoured engines faltered on several aircraft.⁷

Ben was among those experiencing a harrowing end to this latest North Africa adventure. For a time, it seemed to Ben, Homer Moran, and Ples Norwood that they were reliving the near-fatal flight that had marked their previous departure from North Africa in February. In the dark, Moran kept a close watch on a failing supercharger that made one of his engines glow like a blazing fire. “I never sweated so much in my life,” he later recalled.⁸

Safely on the ground at RAF bases in Cornwall, many of the 93rd men celebrated their return to England by getting drunk at the officers’ and enlisted clubs of their British hosts. The cool air, green surroundings, dark beer, English women, paved streets, sturdy barracks—all were welcome sights to men worn out by the rough living of these past weeks.

To a man, the 93rd veterans welcomed their return to England, without much thought for the deadly implications of what that meant. They had left behind a theater defended by a shattered and dispirited enemy, but Western Europe was a different ballgame. Ben would be flying his bonus missions against a German fighter force and air defense system that was approaching peak strength.