Part 5 (1/2)
McGovern and Rounds hugged each other.
McGovern shook hands with a man named Anton Sever, who had been on the ground giving signals to McGovern telling him to stay in the center of the runway. McGovern embraced him and thanked him for his a.s.sistance. Then he noticed that Sever had on English overalls with RAF insignia on it, plus a cap with a red star. ”What are you doing here?” McGovern asked. ”I'm a partisan squadron aircraft mechanic, Section B,” Sever answered.
”Good boy,” McGovern replied, shaking his hand once again.25 A truck picked them up. As they were driving to headquarters, another stricken B-24 came in to land.
Ashlock watched. It ”went right into the mountain and everyone was killed.”26 McGovern did not know that t.i.to was on the island and never got to meet him, but more than three decades later, President Jimmy Carter had a reception for t.i.to in the White House. McGovern, who was a senator at the time, was there. In his remarks, t.i.to expressed his appreciation for the American people and then added, ”At least one of you, Senator McGovern, came to see me in World War II and now I'm returning the favor.”
At the time McGovern hoped the British could repair his plane and he could fly it out the next day, but the ground crew said no, this runway is not long enough. They added that every four-engine bomber that had come to Vis was still there, and would be forever. The next day Cerignola sent a DC-3 to pick up McGovern and his crew.27 Some months later, the AAF awarded McGovern the Distinguished Flying Cross for his actions that day at Vis. The citation praised him for his ”high degree of courage and piloting skill.”
McGovern got back to Cerignola on December 21. On Christmas afternoon, he saw his name on the a.s.signment board. The target was a refinery in Oswiecim, eastern Poland. Twenty-six B-24s of the 455th Bomb Group dropped fifty tons of bombs. Flak was intense and accurate. One B-24 was seen with a feathered engine heading toward an emergency landing field in Russia, then another was seen jettisoning equipment and heading east. A third bomber landed at Vis.28 On the way out, McGovern asked Rounds to fly the plane for a while. Rounds was so good at it that McGovern began increasing his time in control.
The mission took the bombers very near Auschwitz. Later, McGovern wondered why the concentration camp had not been the target. Neither he nor anyone else at Cerignola knew much about Auschwitz, but by that stage of the war rumors circulated about the ma.s.s killing going on there. President Roosevelt had been urged by Jewish leaders to bomb the place, but he refused. He said the United States had not built those bombers in order to hit concentration camps, that they were built for a strategic function. Besides, bombing Auschwitz would have killed many Jews as well as Germans. His att.i.tude was that the best thing America could do for Europe's Jews was to win the war sooner, that the quicker it was won the fewer Jews would be killed. Over the next four days, weather prevented any missions. Thus did 1944 come to an end. In December, the 455th had flown a total of sixteen missions with 359 aircraft deployed over target. They had dropped a total of 650 tons of bombs. The losses were fifteen aircraft, 111 crewmen reported missing in action, and thirty-two reported killed. It had not been a good month. The men at Cerignola looked forward to the new year, the one that they hoped would end the war.
So were the Germans shooting at them. Manfred Rommel, son of the field marshal, was an antiaircraft gunner at age fourteen. The others in his battery were about the same age. Rommel after the war became 82 the mayor of Stuttgart, a post he held for many years. When I would bring in veterans to meet him in his office, he would always a.s.sure them, ”We always missed.” That rea.s.sured them, but it wasn't true.
After the war, Dr. Schuknecht joined the Harvard faculty and became one of America's leading ear specialists.
CHAPTER EIGHT - The Isle of Capri.
”TONIGHT IS NEW YEAR'S EVE, ”McGovern opened a letter to his co-pilot's parents. Their son had been hospitalized with pneumonia and McGovern wanted to rea.s.sure them. Lieutenant Rounds was recovering, McGovern wrote, then promised to ”get him back to his usual top form in a few days.”
”We are experiencing our first Italian snowfall,” he noted. ”I'm finding it pretty easy to get homesick tonight for those old snow-covered plains of Dakota.” He added, ”We haven't been doing a whole lot of flying lately” because of the weather. It ”promises to be even worse.” Another promise: ”We're expecting to see you next spring, regardless of mud, rain, flak or what have you.”1 Although there had been that mission on the day after Christmas to Oswiecim, Poland, that the Dakota Queen had partic.i.p.ated in, because of the weather on New Year's Day there was no mission to fly. On New Year's Eve and again on the first of January, 1945, there were parties in the officers and enlisted men's clubs, where records were set for sales. The dispensaries had the fewest number of men on sick call for more than three months.
Rounds was one of those out of the hospital and he was in high spirits. Defying the miserable weather - rain, sleet, fog - he told Bill Ashlock to help him spill a fifty-five-gallon drum of white gasoline on the field next to the cooking area. He wanted to spill the fuel and set it afire as a form of fireworks to celebrate the new year.
”Rounds, you don't have any idea what you're about to do,” Ashlock said. ”If that stuff gets in the air while you're pouring it, it will create an explosion and the flames are liable to cover a huge area. You don't want to do it.” Rounds did want to do it. Ashlock recalled that ”he did it anyway by himself.”
Ashlock retired to his tent. A half-hour later he heard a ”big whoomp sound.” Rounds came running to the tent, ”his eyebrows singed off, his face black. And he says, 'You know, you were right. That thing blew me about thirty feet through the air.'”2 It was an inauspicious start to the new year. And the weather through January was even worse than predicted. Only an occasional mission was attempted, and McGovern did not go on them. His tent-mate and close companion, navigator Lt. Sam Adams, did go on two missions. Because McGovern had flown as a co-pilot for five missions, he was five missions ahead of his crew in reaching the magic number, thirty-five. Adams hated to fly with any pilot other than McGovern, but he wanted to get home as soon as possible to take up his studies to become a Presbyterian minister. So he volunteered for missions as a subst.i.tute navigator. On his second subst.i.tute service, in the second week of January, Adams's plane was blown apart by German flak. There were reports, unconfirmed, that two or three parachutes had been seen after the plane exploded. McGovern and Rounds held on to the hope that Sam had made it out of the plane and came down by parachute.
83 They depended on subst.i.tute navigators on their missions, but for a few weeks they lived with Sam's empty bunk, his photographs, and his neatly hung clothing, waiting for word that he had made it. The word never came.3 ”I had seen other men killed before,” McGovern said, ”but never anything like that.
When there are just three of you living together so closely in a tent in an olive grove in Italy, a h.e.l.luva long way from home, you really got to know one another. And then all of a sudden you see the empty bunk and it really gets to you.”4 There were many empty bunks. Lt. Victor McWilliams was a pilot in the 741st Squadron. Once that January he was watching as other pilots and crew from the squadron took off for a mission that was ultimately aborted. One B-24 got into the sky but then turned around to come back to base. Suddenly, for no reason McWilliams could ever find out, the ten bombs in the plane exploded. ”You looked up and all you saw was dust.” Everyone on the plane was killed. Another plane was headed down the runway. The pilot got the nose up and the tail went down and ”you knew he wouldn't make it. At the end of the runway he cut the throttle and the plane nosed over and caught fire.”
McWilliams and four others dashed to the plane, picked up a piece of drill pipe and knocked the windows off around the c.o.c.kpit. The tail gunner meanwhile jumped out, as did a waist gunner, who broke his arm.”But the c.o.c.kpit was on fire and the plane was burning. We hauled out the pilot. He was burned almost beyond recognition. We laid him on the ground. All the time he was saying, 'Just leave me in the plane, leave me here, leave me here,' because he knew he was gone.” McWilliams and the others got him into the ambulance ”and he didn't even last to get to the hospital. That was the first time I ever saw anybody burned up that way. His hands were just burnt down to nothing.” Somehow the co-pilot got out. ”I don't know how. Just one of these unexplained things.”5 Lt. Francis Hosimer was a B-24 pilot in the 741st Squadron. He flew his first five missions as a co-pilot. On one of them, going over Vienna, his squadron was part of a four-squadron group. There was another group ahead of his. The flak came up, heavy. ”Just while we were watching the group in front, three of the planes started burning.
They just kept flying on level, they didn't go down but then just burst into real bright flames almost like a flashgun going off. Very intense fire and there were no chutes coming out so that meant that thirty men died right there. The pilot looked over to me and said that is where we're going to be in a minute. I wondered what in the world I had gotten myself into.” His plane was shot up but got through.6 The men of the 741st Squadron badly needed some rest. In mid-January, McGovern and Rounds learned that they were ent.i.tled to ten days off duty, in Rome, the Isle of Capri, or Naples. General Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces, ordered the U.S. Army and Army Air Forces to provide ten days leave for combat veterans. That was easier to do with AAF personnel than infantry, but still the attempt was made. Eisenhower also got involved in picking the hotels for his boys. On a cruise around the Isle of Capri, he spotted a large villa. ”Whose is that?” he asked. ”Yours, sir,” was the reply. His aides had arranged it. ”And that?” Eisenhower asked, nodding at another large villa. ”That one belongs to General Spaatz.”
”d.a.m.n it, that'snot my villa!” Eisenhower thundered. ”And that's not General Spaatz's villa! None of these will belong to any general as long as I'm boss around here. This is supposed to be a rest center - for combat men - not a playground for the bra.s.s!”
He meant it. When he returned to sh.o.r.e, he wired Spaatz, ”This is directly contrary to my policies and must cease at once.”7 As a consequence of Eisenhower's orders, the Isle of Capri, Naples, and Rome were hosts to thousands of GIs in late 1944 and 1945. It was like a dream, or could be anyway. ”'Twas on the Isle of Capri that I found her,” Lt. Roland Pepin remembered of his trip to the famous island. ”She told me she was a contessa and that her name was Monica.” Pepin didn't care what she chose to call herself. He had a ”torrid ten-day romance.” Monica lived in a villa and Pepin stayed with her. She spoke English, French, and Italian, and took Pepin on sightseeing tours. They rented a boat and explored the caverns of the Blue Grotto. Pepin's conclusion, after ten days of living on a near-paradise, was that Eisenhower and his fellow generals were right to a.s.sign weary men to a rest and recreation interlude. For Pepin, ”The salt, sun, sea, and Monica rejuvenated me into my former self, and I was ready to get on with the war.”8 McGovern and Rounds took off for Capri, along with some of the crew. Radio operator 84 Kenneth Higgins was one of them. Like everyone, Higgins had been bored at Cerignola. ”When we didn't fly a mission there wasn't a lot to do,” he recalled. The weather precluded any softball games or other outdoor exercise. Occasionally the crew would go to the target range and practice with their .45s, but there wasn't much fun in that. So, ”we would sit around and argue with each other and play cards or dice. One time we said no more cussing. Everybody cusses all the time so the first guy that does cuss has to put some money in the pot. Well that lasted about ten minutes.” Being a Texan, Higgins always wore a pair of cowboy boots, whether he was in the plane, on the ground, or on leave. When he got to Capri, he kissed the ground and had a big gla.s.s of fresh milk. Italian kids came up to him to ask if he was a girl with those long boots and big heels and leather jacket. No, Higgins replied. He said he was just a cool cat. He too rested and rejuvenated. He got ready to return to the war. Fifty-five years later, when he was being interviewed, Higgins said that whenever things were going bad at work or home in his postwar career, he would settle down by thinking of the guy at the airfield who woke him up in the morning at four o'clock to say get dressed and go fly a mission. ”There's nothing worse than that.” So they could call him whatever names they wished in Capri, Higgins decided; he was going to enjoy himself.9 Everyone did.
Lt. Ted Withington, a prewar Harvard student who was by late 1944 a B-24 pilot in the 780th Squadron, wrote his parents about his experience. ”Talk about wonderful vacations!” he declared.
”Nothing to do wedon't want to and lots of interesting things to do if we care to.” It was a ”week of luxury with no worries.” He stayed in the AAF villa on ”one of Europe's most beautiful Isles.” He had taken a steamer from Naples, out into the Bay of Naples, past Pompeii and Vesuvius and out to Capri at the mouth of the bay. He had a ”lovely room” overlooking the sea, complete with balcony. Most blessed of all, ”You sleep as late as you want to, in real large beds withpillows & sheets! Maid and waiter service all the time. Thisain't the Army!”10 Radio operator Bob Hammer of the 742nd Squadron got to Capri right after New Year's. He loved it, especially that except for booze everything was free. There was a dance each night, alternating officers and enlisted men. Sergeant Hammer and his pilot went to all of them by wearing each other's uniforms. In the morning, they overslept and missed the ferry going back to the mainland. Again the next day they slept late. After missing the ferry three times, they finally caught it and then lucked out by catching a B-24 back to Cerignola. Fearing a court-martial, they were, on the contrary, not even reprimanded, as the 742nd had flown no missions due to weather while they were gone.11 As Lieutenant Withington put it, this wasn't the Army!
McGovern and Rounds stayed on Capri for three days. They rode the funicular, took a tour of the Blue Grotto, and examined the ruins of Roman emperor Tiberius's castle. The second night one of his enlisted crew got drunk and into a brawl. McAfee, the ball turret gunner who was present, recalled that the culprit ”wound up in the pokey on Capri, and McGovern had to get him out.”12 McGovern and Rounds decided there was not enough action on Capri, so they hopped on a boat that was just crossing to Naples, where they caught a train to Rome. They registered at the Regina Hotel, which had been taken over by the AAF and is still in operation in a grand style in the twenty-first century. In 1945, every night starting at 6:00 P.M. the whole ground floor of the lobby was turned into a dance area. Girls from Rome were there, after pa.s.sing through a screening by the AAF authorities, designed to keep teenagers away.
Most of the women were in their mid-twenties.
They were beautiful but they were caught up in the desperation that comes to many civilians in a war zone. Many were educated, spoke at least some English, had lost husbands, fathers. Beer, vodka, scotch, gin, and more was flowing. There were free bedrooms upstairs. The fee for the women was $30, but they would take payment in cigarettes or mattress covers. The covers were very popular because the women could make clothing for all the family from them. Rounds had a great time, of course, but he also got up with McGovern each morning to go on foot for ten or twelve hours of sightseeing. Looking at every art gallery, every church, every statue, using their guidebook, every day for seven days. Rounds accounted for his interest in the city by explaining to McGovern that his father had told him if he ever got to Rome he must see this or that. So, Rounds said, ”I don't dare go home without seeing this or that, my old man will kill me.” With that much motivation, Rounds started reading up on the great artists.
85 McGovern meanwhile learned of a special audience for American servicemen in the Vatican with the Pope. He persuaded Rounds to go with him. After standing around waiting for an hour, Rounds stage-whispered to McGovern, ”I”m getting the h.e.l.l out of here.”
McGovern replied, ”Look, this man is the head of state and he's the symbol of the Catholic world, and you will feel very silly if you go back to the States and you haven't met the Pope.” He talked Rounds into waiting fifteen minutes. When that time was up, he asked him to stay for just fifteen more minutes.
”I wouldn't wait another fifteen minutes for Jesus Christ,” Rounds shot back. But he said it too loud and ”it stirred up quite a commotion among the devout Catholic troops.” There were 500 or so at the audience. The Pope did soon arrive and shook hands with every one. He spoke English and blessed each of them.
Rounds said, ”For the rest of my life I'll tell people I saw and shook hands with the Pope.”13 To McGovern, Rounds's desire to see all he could in Rome was ”an indication, a tiny one, that ours was the best educated army ever put into the field. And the best paid. We were paid way better than the British and enormously better than the Germans. I don't know if the Italian army ever got paid at all or the Red Army either.”14 In the U.S. Army infantry, there was a certain amount of resentment of the AAF officers and men. How could there not be? No ground trooper ever wore cowboy boots, not even on leave, certainly not when up on the line. No one in the infantry ever reported back from a leave three days late without being severely reprimanded or possibly subjected to a court-martial. And the ages of the lieutenants, even the ages of the captains and majors in the AAF were astonis.h.i.+ng to foot soldiers.
At a bar in Rome, two infantry officers from the U.S. Fifth Army, which was doing the fighting on the ground in Italy under the command of Gen. Mark Clark, approached McGovern. One of them sat down on the stool next to McGovern, reached out, and flicked the wings on McGovern's jacket with his finger.
”You fly boys think you're pretty hot stuff, don't ya.” ”No, not really,” McGovern replied. ”I think the Fifth Army is doing a heck of a job and I hope we can help.”
”Bull,” the infantry officer responded.”You fly boys are just too good for us, aren't you.” McGovern resisted the temptation to hit the man. When the leave was over it was back to Cerignola. For Lieutenant Pepin, a navigator, his first mission after returning was almost a disaster. It was on January 20. The target was the main marshaling yards at Linz, Austria. The flak was heavy. Shrapnel punctured some of his plane's hydraulic lines and the pilot was unable to close the bomb bay doors or lower the landing gear and could barely keep the Liberator in the air. He had managed to get back over Italy and close to Cerignola. He ordered the men to bail out. The plane was at 3,000 feet. ”Petrified,” Pepin related, ”I was sitting with my feet hanging out of the bomb bay afraid to jump when the pilot pushed me into the wild blue yonder. Stark fear gripped me until my chute opened. The ground appeared to rush toward me and fear came again. My landing was the same as taking a wicked body check from a big hockey player.” He rolled over several times, got up, and discovered that he was unhurt. Ambulances from the base came around to pick him up. ”Every member of my crew survived and without injuries.”15 On January 31, McGovern and his crew went up on a mission, to bomb the oil refinery at Moosbierbaum, Austria. There were nineteen B-24s on the mission, each carrying 500-pound bombs. They encountered moderate, but accurate, flak, and dropped on target.
On this mission, as on all the others, the ground crew noted that Lieutenant McGovern brought back theDakota Queen with more gasoline in his tanks than all the other pilots. In the ground crew's opinion, this was the mark of his flying ability. Ken Higgins remarked, ”I don't know how you describe a good 86 pilot. I do know George, though, and as far as I was concerned, he was the best. Because he always got us back on the ground.” Another member of McGovern's crew said, ”If he ever panicked, I never knew about it. Whatever happened, that sort of nasal tw.a.n.g of his came over the intercom as clear and flat as it was on the ground.”16 Valko disliked Seigal. He went to McGovern to ask him to get Seigal transferred out. McGovern put it up to the other enlisted men. ”I decided they had to live with him,” McGovern said, ”so it was up to them to decide.” The vote was four to one to drop Seigal. McGovern had him replaced with a tail gunner from another crew, Sgt. John B. Mills. Mills was tall and he had to hunch up a bit to get into position, but he liked being back there in the tail. In February and March, McGovern would sometimes tell him to get out of the cramped quarters when theDakota Queen was halfway back to base.
”We're not going to see any fighter planes today,” McGovern said, ”so come on up and stretch out a bit.” But Mills would be asleep. One good thing, according to McGovern: ”He didn't get sick.” On one mission, with Sam Adams gone, McGovern had a subst.i.tute navigator-bombardier. Weather forced his squadron to abort. The lead pilot said to jettison the bomb load. The standard procedure was to drop the bombs either over the Adriatic or an unpopulated area. Sgt. Tex Ashlock was watching the ground through the camera hatch when the bombardier let the bombs drop. They fell on a farmhouse. It disappeared in a rolling cloud of smoke. In Ashlock's mind it was murder, pure and simple.
When theDakota Queen got back on the ground, Ashlock grabbed the bombardier. ”Listen, you son of a b.i.t.c.h,” he yelled. ”I saw what you did. I'm not going to have anything to do with you again. As far as I'm concerned, you're a disgrace to humanity.”
When McGovern got out of the plane, Ashlock went to him to report on what had happened.
McGovern asked, ”There isn't any doubt in your mind it was deliberate?”
”How could it not have been?” Ashlock replied.
McGovern thought for a few minutes, then said, ”You know, if we bring charges, it's going to be your word against his - an enlisted man against an officer. It's going to be hard to make it stick without any other evidence of witnesses.”
McGovern let that hang, then added, ”I'll tell you one thing, though. We aren't going to fly with that guy again.” And they didn't.17 For the 455th Group, according to its historical account,Flight of the Vulgar Vultures, ”January was our least productive month to date.” Fewest missions flown - seven in all - putting 168 bombers over targets, dropping a total of 200,035 tons of bombs. That was the lowest total since February 1944. The group could only hope for an improvement in the weather.18
CHAPTER NINE - The Tuskegee Airmen Fly Cover.
87 February 1945 FEBRUARY BEGAN WITH MARGINAL WEATHER. Then it got worse. The first mission for the 741st Squadron, on the first of the month, had as its target the oil refinery at Moosbierbaum, Austria, but the weather was so bad en route and at the target that the group leader decided not to bomb. All planes returned to base.
Oil refineries and the marshaling yards in Austria and Germany were the primary targets that month. On February 5, McGovern flew to bomb the oil storage facilities at Regensburg, Germany. Clouds covered the target but the squadron dropped its bombs, using the pathfinder method of following the actions of the lead plane. The results were un.o.bserved because of the clouds. No one in the squadron was lost.
Two days later, on another mission to Moosbierbaum, the flight leader's bombsight was inoperative so no bombs were dropped. The bombardiers dropped the bombs over water, then the planes returned safely. On February 8, twenty-four B-24s. .h.i.t the Matzleindorf marshaling yards at Vienna. The clouds covered the target, but the Americans dropped fifty-four tons of 500-pound bombs, again using the pathfinder method. The flak was intense but all the bombers made it through. However, one B-24 with the group's markings took a position off the number two man in one of the boxes. It was a plane that had been forced down, then repaired by the Germans. It shadowed the squadron, radioing down to the gunners on the 88s the alt.i.tude, direction, and speed of the squadron, which was a practice, that while not frequent, was used whenever the Germans had the opportunity. The lead pilot realized what was happening and told every gunner in the squadron to train on the German-manned B-24. As the gunners did so, the aircraft's pilot saw what was happening. He made a 180-degree turn and got out of there.1 By February 1945, the defensive capabilities of the Luftwaffe were almost nonexistent. The Germans had little or no fuel left for training pilots, and their ME 109s had just about been blown out of the air. What fighters were left had few runways available. For his part, McGovern never saw a German fighter attack theDakota Queen. Flak, of course, was another matter altogether. Following the Battle of the Bulge, as the Allies moved up to the Rhine and prepared to cross the river, the Red Army was headed toward Berlin and Vienna. The shrinkage of the front lines forced the Germans to pull back. The American, British, and Russian air a.s.saults on Germany were increasing in number of bombers flown and damage done. So the Germans concentrated their 88s around their cities, to defend their few remaining oil refineries and most of all their marshaling yards. That meant that even as the Allies were winning, their bombers were flying through ever heavier flak concentrations. And the Germans had developed a jet-propelled fighter, the ME 262, the fastest fighter in the world. Their problem was a shortage of fuel and trained pilots and airfields. Had the ME 262 been developed earlier it could have been a war-winning weapon, but it was not. When a group of the jets attacked an Eighth Air Force formation, it was havoc for the Americans, as the jets were three times faster than the American bombers. But that didn't happen very often. There were not enough of them.
One reason for the shortage was the sustained Fifteenth Air Force attack against factories making jets and against the airfields where they underwent final a.s.sembly. Altogether the Germans built 1,400 jets, but only a small percentage of them got into the air. The Regensburg airfield was one of their bases. A photo reconnaissance by the Fifteenth Air Force on February 8, 1945, showed 48 ME 262s on the ground. The Fifteenth mounted missions to hit them on the field. The 455th, and its 741st Squadron, partic.i.p.ated in the February attacks. The group destroyed twelve ME 262s and damaged four others.