My most often contact with these men started about age twelve when my dad began taking me out golfing on the weekends. There was a man who used the first golf cart I ever saw, because as a brigade commander of the 41th infantry in New Guinea he was debilitated by sickness. I remember one fairly good golfer who had kind of a weird back swing. I found out he was crippled while serving with the Big Red One in Sicily. My Economics professor in college served with one of the first UDT teams clearing barricades and mines in the surf zone before Pacific landings. I often ended up as a dishwasher at the country club and noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. He saw my puzzled look, and said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc. Those are just a few of the stories I remember among so many others I could tell or have forgotten.
But burning in my heart
The memory smoulders on
Of the gunner’s dying words
On the intercom
I once met a UDT guy who also cleared the beaches the night before the Normandy landings. Brave on top of brave
thank you.
I remember the WWII guys.
My father who served in Europe.
the men he hired, vets, parapaligics to do fine electrial work. All died when I was young.
The men who drank too much on weekends.
The men who had a hitch in their step courtesy of a missing limb and a prothsetic.
The men who didnt say much. But were kind, in their own ways.
Around a year ago, a B-17 navigator’s body was found in Germany and returned to his home town of DeFuniak Springs. The Air Force at Eglin provided a moving funeral with the salutes and a missing man flyover with what looked like F-35s to me.
All his family were gone but some cousins were still around. His family had thought he was buried in a mass grave but a tourist happened to see his tomb stone in Germany and knew who he was. The Germans had actually given him a proper burial which was pretty decent in that they were losing over a thousand a day.
Thank you for this article. They certainly were the Greatest Generation.
I watched a show about the B-17 Flying Fortress. The one position I wouldn’t want to be in was the ball turret gunner. Just being stuck in that little space would be a nightmare. Add to that being upside down and having flak and enemy fighters shooting straight up at you. It must have been crazy and intense during battles. The show I watched showed the B-17 crash landing with the ball turret gunner stuck in his turret. He didn’t survive the landing. It took a special type of person to do that job. You had to be short enough and brave enough to get into the ball turret.
One of my big regrets is that I never talked to him about any of that, since he died when I was in my twenties. By the time I would have been interested in it everyone who might know was dead. Bad son.
My late Father was a bombardier on a B-24 in the Pacific Theater and he told me about the Norden bombsight. He also told me that their plane was one of first to use a new super secret radar. I don’t recall now what he called it. He passed in 1988.
My father in law received the DFC as a B24 waist gunner. Only 20 yrs old. His fellow waist gunner ‘Joe’ said that he had what seemed to be a superhuman aim. ‘Pops’ never wanted to talk about the combat though. He had funnny stories to tell about life on the bases.
Joe told Pop’s kids after he passed that Pops once had to man the ball turret when the gunner went into shock. He and Pops pulled him out, and Pops squeezed into it. He was 6’3” and skinny, but Joe managed to get the door closed. War at 28,000 ft.
Hard to imagine.
My father was USAF Korean era, but we had older family members and friends who served in WWII.
One was a navigator on a bomber that was shot down over Germany. He spent a couple of years in POW camp. Sadly he had problems with alcohol and would often sit in the corner and sob. He never talked about his experiences.
Another friend was a tail gunner. He was “lucky” and came back safe. After the war, he assembled a large collection of Nazi memorabilia. He was open about his service and showed off his collection. I wish I had paid more attention to the stories he told and the items he owned.
Three of my mother’s uncles served. Two in Europe and one in the Pacific. They were pretty closed mouthed about their experiences. My father’s uncle was in the Navy.
My stepfather was also in the Navy, junior officer on a ship in the Pacific.
All of these men are gone now. May they rest in peace.
Fwiw, my HS girlfriend’s dad was a bottom ball turret gunner, B17 & B24 aircraft. = He once told me that when he volunteered for the USAAC, “they took one look at me” & told him that they had “- - - a perfect job for a guy like you.”
(Mr. Burkhart & my dad left for the USAAC on the same bus at 0700, 08DEC1941.= Their houses were 6 miles apart, btw & that morning was the 1st time that they met.)
Mr. Burkhart was 5’3” & 116 pounds at 18YO.
He survived FOUR crashes & flew 26 missions.
(My dad was “in B-17s” & said that, “- - - those guys had more pure guts than the rest of the crew combined, as they knew they were going to be toast in a crash.”)
Yours, TMN78247
Aerial gunner ping. Reminder to me of a member of the church congregation I grew up in, one of whose members, still living, was a B-17 ball turret gunner. Thanks for writing this to you Retain Mike.
By Randall Jarrell
From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Bttt.
5.56mm