The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1944-05-12
CHAPTER XII

"'Pilot to Radio calls Captain
Skies over the interphones.
Radio answering Pilot. Go
ahead answers Sergeant Boudria.
"'Get the emergency rations OUT
says Skies, 'and the jungle kits,
and set them by the door,
They'd given us up at Belem,
but when they heard US circling up
in the fog they went down the field
in a truck, throwing out lighted flare
pots to mark the runway. Our gas
was so low that before the ship
was parked the No. l engine cut out.
"Next morning we were off for
Natal, and landed there at one
o'clock. We were gassing up and
the crew chief was supervising the
loading-the natives rolling out the
steel drums, and the crew chief I'M
screwing their tops to hurry it up
when he happened to stick his finger
into one that seemed a little heavy
and, by George, it was full Of wa
teri The barrel looked like any other
barrel, the native looked like any
other native. OF course it was sabo-
tage, but what could you do! Brazil
wasn't in the war yet. Somebody
hoped that one drum of water would
have brought us down with sputter-
ing motors out in the Atlantic.
eve took off for Freetown, Africa,
at ten o'clock. It was an eleven
hour fight. We stayed with the
British there and got along with
them fine. It was a fighter sta
ton. They gave us nice feed and
all the warm beer we could drink
it was New Years Eve.
''Then we started across Africa,
and finally sighted the Nile, and I
ate dinner at the British sergeants'
mess at Khartoum.
when we got to Iraq," said the
Gunner, 1--WE began to smell the
var. The British there told us not
long ago the natives, led by Nazis,
had revolted, and two thousand reb-
els had tried to take the field away
from the little garrison. All the
British had on it was one plane,
so old it looked like a box kite
cruised about seventy miles per
hour.
$50 they'd taken an empty gas
drum, loaded it up with brace chains,
rivets, and bolts, and in the middle
put a hell of lot of sticks of dyna-
mite and fuse. It was so big it
would hardly 60 into the door of
the plane.
"Then they flew over the rebel
army, and when they had figured the
best place to drop it, they lit the
fuse. But when they tried to roll it
out, it got stuck in the door of the
plane. The British said they were
quite worried for a bit while that
fuse burned on.
FINALLY they damned it through
the door and on out, but it exploded
about fifty feet off the ground. They
said it killed about fifty rebels.
ga couple of hops later we were
in Bangalore, in India, where there
was Welsh regiment stationed.
"Then we flew on down to Palem-
bang, Sumatra, and crossed the
equator in hell Of a snowstorm at
$4,000 feet, with snow packing in be-
tween our engines.
"There we first saw the Dutch.
Compared with the English, they
seemed more rugged. But we liked
them, even though they give you
loaf of bread, hunk of baloney, and
a cup of tea and call that breakfast,
lunch, or dinner"
"On the seventeenth Of January
we had reached Java" continued
the Gunner, and were looking down
on their rice paddles in a drizzle
which washed everything a vivid
green. Then we flew over Surabaya
and up between those two conical
mountains that guard the pass into
Malang Field.
''Then we went down to barracks
to meet the 10th. Well, there'd been
quite a change. As a bunch they
looked nervous and hollow-eyed,
compared to the way we'd remem-
bered them back in the States.
Looked like few of them had been
drinking quite bit off duty, maybe
trying to forget what they'd been
through. You had to stop and re-
member that those poor guys had
been fighting a defensive war with
those DIS.
''They'd look enviously across the
field at the tail guns of the new Els
we'd arrived in. No doubt it was
lot better combat plane. 'Yeah-a-
uh,' they'd admit, but wait till a
Jap gets on your tail and then see
what happens They all looked so
tired / wondered what I'd look like
after a while.
1--WE found out they were sending
us out on raid the very next morn
ing-which should show how badly
they needed us-so after we came
back went out to check again on
my guns. I" -s. - ~
s'We needed the new boys bad
ly. said Frank. Wed got word
trouble was on the way. You see
the American Navy's PBY's-big