TRANSITION

I sat back and laughed with enjoyment as the sweat streamed down the pimples of Tanner's red face. He gunned first #4 motor. Then all four engines together, trying to rock the giant left wheel of our B-24 out of a sand hole. His forehead and chin, both slanting back from the tip of his small pointed nose, made him look like a fox at bay. He had always treated his big bomber like a pursuit ship -- a "pea-shooter" -- but now he was feeling its 50,000 pounds. All my hours as a terror-stricken co-pilot were beyond the bump on the lovely homeward slope. But Tanner had gotten stuck. On top of that, he had come within a fraction of twisting the left landing gear off. The final deep-throated gasp and blurp of the engines signaled his admission of defeat. Two master sergeants and a major had just reached the plane from the engineering area.

"Who in hell is the pilot of this thing?"

"The wingtip's nearly on the ground."

"That gear's ready to come off. Keep everybody from under the wing!"

We opened the bomb bay doors, and I was careful to let Tanner crawl out first. All Tanner's hours of sweating out steep turns had resulted in one long wing pointed straight up; the other straight down only 500 feet above ground, was about to make another record. But I was about to forgive those pursuit landings, because I was going to get a new pilot. That was being settled by the conversations outside.

Instead of taxiing on the paved strips that formed a small triangle, Tanner had tried to gun the ship across the triangle through soft sand, and the great left tire had uncovered a hole. (Tanner had accomplished the rest). It took days of jacking and minor repairing before the ship was safe to fly from our Florida field to the repair depot at Tampa. By that time I had a new pilot.

Ed Thompson had been on leave the first two weeks I was in the squadron. Major (then Captain) Sturgis told me Thompson would be my pilot, so the first time I saw him shuffling down on the path by our pup tents, I anxiously tried to know him on first sight. We were to go into combat together within a month. He was fairly thin and his shoulders tended to stoop just a little. He was my height -- about 5'11", dark hair and complexion. His cheeks were a bit sunken, and there were lines in his face that suggested calloused-hand knowledge of hard work. When he looked at me, his dark eyes were honestly noncommittal, but there was pleasantness in the lines of his mouth.

"Thompson?" I said. "I guess I'm your new co-pilot."

"Guess so," he answered unemotionally, and stuck out his hand. He didn't smile. I had no way of knowing then that he was frightened at being a first pilot with only 30 hours in a B-24.

That was just about the extent or our acquaintance until our own ship arrived. The first pilots did most of the flying and training the next three weeks. Ed and I flew together about twice before the bombardier, Gimble, and navigator, Swetland, joined the crew. Gimble had been in another squadron of the same group before being transferred to ours.

I knew him by his animated friendliness and admirable physique before I knew we were assigned together. He was blond with a rosy complexion, and was about 6' 2". Usually happy and carefree as a puppy, he thought ill of almost no one but himself – and that at long-separated intervals.

At practically the last minute, four navigators (they were straight from school) arrived in the operations tent. Someone tossed a coin and Swetland came with us, while his close friend, Bradson, was put on the Squadron C.O.'s crew. Our crew was Capt. Rodger Sturgis, now a full Colonel and holder of the Congressional Medal of Honor. His is almost as legendary name now, but he was just as hardworking, much-loved Captain when I joined his squadron. His men a year later had grown to like him less.

Paul Swetland was a nice guy. In a sweet way, he was a "mother's boy," yet men admired him because he was interested in a great many things, was talented, and showed good taste in whatever he did. He was an only child whose father had died while he was in navigation school. I remember seeing his luxurious Buick standing across the sandy road from our tent area, and his mother was sitting at the wheel waiting. Paul felt he should eat with us at the officers' mess tent that first day, so Mrs. Swetland patiently waited until Paul was sure he had no duties for the afternoon, and was free to go into town where she had a room. I have never before or since known a mother and son who were as close as those two were. There was a mutual feeling of complete responsibility and intimacy.

The four officers of the crew became acquainted first on a trip we made to Albuquerque for some practice bombing. We didn't see much of Swetland, because the work was chiefly with the bombardiers and pilots. I got to know Jerry's – Gimble's – voice over the interphone as he talked us on course, described where the bombs hit, or swore through the explanation of an error. At Ed's suggestion, Jerry showed the two of us how to operate the synthetic bomb trainer so that we would know more about the working of the bombsight and understand some of the bombardier's troubles.

Ed and I stayed at the field, but Jerry had a room in a hotel with Swetland and two Air Corps wolves who were with us. About nine o'clock one night, Paul, stripped to a pair of shorts, was quietly reading a book in the room, when one of the boys strolled in with a nice-looking girl. In an embarrassed frenzy, Paul stumbled into pants and shirt, begging pardon all the way.

When I saw him the next day, he looked tired, and I told him so.

"Shucks," he said, grinning like a school kid, "The guy wasn't in the room more than ten minutes when he practically shoved me out the door and said he was sorry. I wanted to go to a movie. Heck! I didn't want coffee. Then I called the room until the hotel operator sounded sore, but nobody answered. I finally came out here about midnight and got a room."

The three of us, without Swetland, would show up at the Casanova in town for a beer and to check the prospects for a date among the girls gathered there. At the jute box began a ribbing that Jerry continued around the world. His favorite recording was Nelson Eddy's rendition of "Ride, Cossack, Ride." He played it about fifteen times a night for the four days we were there, until Thompson and I just about carried out our threat of mayhem if he ever played it again. We heard that recording in the Near East, the Middle East, and the Far East until we screamed, grew numb to it. Then decided it might have some merit, and finally played it ourselves. War does terrible things to a man's musical sense.

* * *

For weeks, we had been wondering where we would go. I started wondering when I first joined the Air Corps and I knew I would eventually go overseas. As...