Battlefields without Foxholes
Irv Pliskin
Ground based soldiers are taught to look for ‘cover’. If they are going to be at a location for any length of time, they dig foxholes so they can get in them for protection. When things start to get rough and when they are subject to mortar fire or fire from big guns, they can hope their position below ground level hole will protect them.
But there is no cover, no foxholes no where to hide in the air when you are flying in formation through the skies. And although the tracking systems in the 1940’s were far from sophisticated, they worked and the enemy on the ground could see us on radar--or similar systems-- even if there was solid cloud cover between us and them. Even at 25,000 feet five or six miles up, we were vulnerable. We were still in range of the German 88 millimeter anti aircraft cannon.
The 88 MM shells could be set to explode at our altitudes and when they did, what we saw was the damaging, deadly, overly accurate flak. It is hard to describe flak: but suddenly in the clear air in front of you, or near you, or alongside of you, or God Forbid on you, there is an explosion of black flowers, wispy black flowers that spray hot metal ‘shrapnel’ for some distance around you. You can hear the pieces hit the fuselage, and often rattle around inside the airplane. You feel them hit, and you grit your teeth and just hope they fly around you.
Even though you are wearing heavy metal protective ‘flak suits’ there are plenty of areas around you where a piece of flak can get to you, puncture you, kill you.
Aviators did all sorts of things to protect themselves from flak during bomb runs. I knew a navigator who built a bed of flak suits in his compartment. He placed a layer of flak suits on the floor of his compartment and then lay down on them once they reached the Initial Point. He then pulled a blanket of Flak suits over him for his complete protection. His reasoning was that once they turned to the bomb run he didn’t have anything to do for a while. He thought he was safe, but when a piece of flak came into the compartment, it came in horizontally, went through a small space between the bottom and the top covering and penetrated his side. He bled profusely, almost died. He spent weeks in a hospital recovering. Had he been standing, it might have missed him.
So there was no safety from flak.
When the flak appears, you cower if you can, you cringe and hope--and perhaps pray--that the damn stuff will miss you, your crew and your airplane. When it doesn’t miss, and the pieces shower you with metal, you can find out how effective the krauts were when you land and start to count. The sides of a B -17 don’t deflect flak, even tiny piece go right through the thin aluminum airplane skin. We counted, after one particularly rough mission, and stopped the counting when we reached two hundred and twenty five holes in the airplane.
I first experienced flak for real on October l5, 1944. Three and half months after I joined the crew we flew our first combat mission over Germany.
Our target was Cologne. We were, I believe, assigned to bomb the marshaling yards: the areas where the Germans assembled the freight trains. Much of German food, armor, supplies troops and civilians traveled by train around the country. If we could disrupt those things, then we had a better chance to shorten and win the war.
Routines were developed on that first mission that were followed during our entire combat career. As soon as the bombs were released, Mullins shouted “Bombs away” into the intercom. You could feel the plane rise perceptibly once the heavy bombs were released. I then clicked my intercom button and said, “Let’s get the hell outta here”, and someone, we never were able to determine which of the crew said this, no one ever admitted to it, shouted, in a strained voice “--------, --------- with ears.” (the words were a strange obscenity--although no obscenity is strange to soldiers fighting a war, I don’t believe. No language is sacrosanct. I do not use them in this venue because of the editor’s attitude about words like that. Anyone who wants to know what they are, may E Mail me and I will happily tell them.)
Our heightened time of danger was during the bomb run. As you flew across the enemy territory, it was possible to avoid known areas of heavy armament or strong defense. Slight course corrections by the lead could take us away from heavily armed pockets. But, once the airplane approached the initial point, the IP, which was the point at which we turned on the bomb run we were committed. Once on the bomb run, we were to fly straight, level and unerringly on a given course and altitude. Generally, the amount of time from the IP to the MPI- main point of impact-- when the bombs were released was three or four minutes.
These were the longest minutes of anyone’s life.
Once we made the turn toward target we were generally sitting ducks. If the antiaircraft gunners were fast enough and accurate enough we could be picked off like low flying geese over a marsh. The flak florets surrounded us as we flew through the black wisps of devastation. Over the target, we would drop our bombs and then take a fast turn out of the area, generally a descending turn to the left--the Port side of the airplane. We would level off several hundred feet below bombing level and start to get the hell out of there.
Interestingly, only a few of the group’s aircraft, which were in standard flying formation, had bombsites. The rest of us dropped our bombs when the lead aircraft did. The bombardier sat and watched the formation leaders. We opened bomb bay doors when they did, and we toggled the bombs by hitting the bomb toggle switch, when their bombs came out of the bomb bays.
Hopefully the bombs all dropped as they were supposed to. Sometimes a bomb would hang up on the shackles, and then the engineer would have the hairy, dangerous and difficult job of putting on a walk around bottle--a portable oxygen bottle that would give him mobility in the oxygen-deprived air- and slip onto the catwalk over the open bomb bays to try to activate the bomb release. He did this with his gloves on, the air temperature could be as low as 70 degrees below zero, so one never exposed his flesh to that killing cold. If air touched a digit, or a part of unexposed flesh, it could freeze and actually turn black and drop off in a number of days. That was called black gangrene.
Once we were bombs away, we started back to base. The routines didn’t change. Every five minutes I ran an oxygen check. Every two minutes I wrote a position check, as well as I could. My log, in pencil, was turned in after the flight, so the intelligence people could track our progress. All things were noted in the log, strange aircraft, strange activity on the ground if we were flying pilotage. I tried to record everything that happened and everything that I saw.
We navigators could not wear the heavy sheepskin lined gloves or mittens the other crewmen wore. WE kept those gloves nearby, but we had to wear special silk gloves so we could write in the log the things that happened.
It was on that Cologne bomb run that I first saw a plane go down. One of the planes in our formation, flying to our right and above us took what appeared to be a direct hit on the left wing. I saw the wing crumple and then fall off. The plane fell into a very tight spiral and spin, streaming fire and black smoke. I watched it, not so much horror stricken as surprised at the enormity of it, as it dove, unrelentingly to the ground.
I looked for parachutes, but saw none. It is likely that all nine men aboard met their final fate on that day. Unfortunately, sights of that nature became almost routine for us, as we flew our missions. But, we came home from mission number one unscathed. Just a few holes in the fuselage from some errant flak, and no other damage.
As soon as we landed we were taken to a debriefing station where we were offered a shot glass full of whiskey and then spent about an hour in an interview with an intelligence officer. I had my log, which they took from me for analysis, and we recorded all that we had seen or could remember. After debriefing, we were permitted to go to our lockers and change into normal uniforms. I along with everyone else carefully hung up my flying clothes: they were now considered ‘lucky’ and to be revered and cherished. The tradition was that nothing is to be changed on all following missions: and that was a tradition we all followed, so far as I know. The clothes we wore through mission number one were the clothes we would wear through all succeeding missions...no matter how many we flew. Superstition demanded the clothes to remain the way they were from mission one. Nothing was to be changed, nothing was to be washed, or altered in any way. We never thought about them getting ‘ripe’. When you were in the air and wearing an oxygen mask nobody could smell you anyway. After the debriefing and changing, we went to dinner. We had eaten nothing since the early morning, and it was now late in the afternoon.
We flew again on the l8, the l9th and the 26th of October. The mission on the l8th was once again to Cologne, the next was to Manheim and our next mission was to Hamm. We went up again on October 30, and penetrated far enough into Germany to get mission credit. But, for some reason we were recalled and never dropped our bombs on the target. We sought out an alternative target and dropped bombs at random.
In just two weeks, we had flown five missions, and for that time, that was a lot of activity. At the end of October, several interesting things happened.
First, I was promoted from Flight Officer to Second Lieutenant. I now had a gold bar, just like my flying partners. In order to be promoted, I had to be discharged from the service, and then reenlist as an officer. I did it most willingly. The day I was promoted, so was Randy, my pilot. He became a first lieutenant, moving from a gold bar to a silver one. I was twenty years and four months old when I was commissioned, Randy was just two months short of being 21 when he was promoted to first lieutenant.
We both had lots of responsibility at very young ages. We were all, the entire crew decorated with the blue and gold striped Air Medal. We were now veterans of the air war, decorated Air Corps flyers with five missions to our credit.
That weekend we got our first three-day pass. We dressed in our regular uniforms and went to London. Since I had not been invited to join my three comrades in whatever they were planning, I decided to experience the city on my own.
I had plenty of money to do whatever I wanted to do. We were very well paid, according to British standards, very well indeed. My monthly salary, which included flight pay, was $242 American Dollars. That was equivalent to what a British family lived on for several months. Many Brits lived on much, much less. As a result, of course, the average British soldier complained about us Americans. We were they said in lament: Over paid, Over sexed and Over here!
Since I was on my own in London, I wandered around a little bit, rode a double-decker bus, and when lunch time came, got off to get some fish and chips, the traditional English dish. I remember it was hot, and wrapped in a cone shaped newspaper, the fish sitting on top of heaps of French-fried potatoes. I think I probably drank warm milk, I didn’t care for beer, especially warm beer.
While I was eating lunch in a little shop, there was a terrible explosion nearby, the building rocked and shook. I was distressed, startled and pretty scared. It was s one of the V-bombs the Jerrys sent over from time to time, to shake up the Londoners and do as much damage as possible. Unlike the buzz bomb, these arrived without warning.
I left the shop and was standing on the sidewalk trying to decide what to do, where to go when a couple of British girls, about my age, I would guess, came up to me. They were angry and aggressive about the upcoming presidential election back home.
One of them asked belligerently: “Hey Yank, who you going to vote for Yank, FDR or that other fellow?”
“I’m not going to vote,” I said.
“What the devil is wrong with you Yank? You want that Wendell fellow to win? It’s your duty to vote.”
“It may be my duty, kid,” I said,” but I’m not old enough. In the USA you have to be 21 to vote, and I’m not that old.”
“Not that old, Aren’tt you some kind of an officer? A leftenant, aren’t you?”
“Yes, but I am not old enough to vote.“
“That’s bloody stupid,” the girl said. “old enough to fight, but not old enough to vote. Well, I want to tell you having an election now is bloody stupid, too.”
I thought perhaps that this might be an opportunity to make some friends, even perhaps enjoy some intimacy, and I tried. But they would not split up, and when they realized that I had no political comments to make, they went off to find another victim.
In light of the V-Bomb, I decided to go back to base. A guy could hide there and be out of the obvious danger of a stray bomb.
As I started towards the railroad station, I passed Selfridge’s a large department store. I thought that I might be able to find a little gift for my mom, and possibly a gift for the girl whose picture was in my pocket: Grace Kahn.
My younger brother Ralph had been dating her sister for a year or so. When I came home on leave after my graduation, I was introduced to Grace, and we hit it off. She was a very pert red head, and she was someone to write to and think about. After all, every soldier had to have a girl back home. Grace was mine, I guessed.
I wandered around the store looking for something, and what I saw that turned me on - really turned me on - was an old, battered portable typewriter. I tried it. It worked well.
I typed on it, and decided that it was for me. Now I could write intelligent letters home and not worry about my terrible handwriting. I have no idea what I paid for it, but I bought it and then took a cab to the station so I could go back to base. I got back early enough to go to my own bunk and still have a couple of days of leave on the base.
With my typewriter I could make notes, record incidents and become a great American novelist, in between flying combat missions.
That Saturday night, November 5, 1944, there was to be a dance at the officer’s club. The way that worked was that a call went out to the local towns inviting the girls who lived there to come to the dance.
They, too, were lonely. Their men were away fighting the war, and although we were fighting the war, we were there nearby in England. There was an inducement, of course. First we sent trucks out for their transportation to the base, and secondly our dances featured lots of booze, and plenty of free food. Free food was a great motivator. These girls were not starved, by any means, but their diets were very limited due to the war. We Americans had lots of goodies they did not have, and we shared it.
There was also companionship, of course. We were their age, and even though we aviators may have been forward and randy and overly aggressive, they could leave on the trucks at Midnight and be none the worse for wear.
I went to the dance, and it is there that I met Amy.
Irv Pliskin is a retired advertising agency owner. He is a combat veteran of World War II and an Ex Prisoner of War of the Germans. Married, with three kids, and four grandchildren he devotes his time to writing flash fiction. He hopes, that someday, he may become the Grandma Moses of flash fiction. He lives with his wife of 57 years in Cherry Hill,NJ.
