Barracks Buddies...

   Our Barracks consisted of eighteen men, or perhaps I should say, seventeen men and one boy. Al Clark I think lied about his age. He appeared to never need a shave and was always up to some playful pranks. On the other hand we had an older guy by the name of Whitehouse, he was a real character. Whitehouse could smell out any liquor within fifty miles of the base. Somehow somewhere he could always find something to drink. If anyone wanted to sell their monthly ration of beer, you could bet Whitehouse would buy it. One time moonshine still was found operating about a mile from the base. It was up broken and guess who was one of the participants? Whitehouse. He was given ten days restriction, big deal, where was he going?

   I became good friends with a fellow by the name of Berney Baumgardner. The following day after every mission, if we weren't flying, we would go to our planes, clean, and oil all the guns. Berney and I would go together and many times would watch the Indians repairing or building run ways. Never once, in all the time we spent in India, did we ever see a man do any physical labor. The men were the bosses and the women did the work.

   Around our bases were mostly jungle and rice paddies. Berney and I would take our .45s and look for any kind of game in the jungle. About the only thing we ever saw was a few jackals and monkeys. We were told never to bother the monkeys as they were considered holy and were looked on as some sort of god. We killed a few snakes but never could hit a jackal on the run. One day a couple of miles from base, we came upon a large pond. I have seen flocks of wild ducks in Florida, but nothing compared to this. The water was absolutely alive with ducks. A 45 pistol is not the ideal weapon for hunting ducks, but we fired into that flock as fast as we could pull the trigger. The whole flocks rose as a black mass, all but three. We had no more than stopped firing when out of the woods came the damnest yelling you ever heard. From a nearby village came a group of Indians. Between our limited Hindu and their Pidgin English we got the message they would like to have the ducks. We agreed they could have them and back to base we went.

   Berney and I would swap stories about our childhood, schooling, and our girlfriends. He was from Kalamazoo, Michigan and had a girlfriend waiting for his return. Like me, he received a letter most every day. We both had an agreement that if either of us didn't make it, the other would write his parents and girlfriend. Each of us had the others home addresses. Even though we were not on the same crew, we very often flew the same missions.

   It was only a few days later that we were notified another mission was scheduled. We reported as usual. This time the target was just off the west coast of Burma, almost directly across the Bay from Calcutta. No fighters were anticipated and none showed. We did pick up a small amount of ack-ack. Fortunately, all planes returned safely. We had a radio in the barracks but most all programs were from BBC, not too interesting. We did have one program which we all listened to intently. It was a Japanese propaganda station coming from Rangoon, being sent especially for us. It was similar to the Tokyo Rose program. They would play American music, to get our attention, and bring on this sexy voiced gal to tell us a bunch of propaganda tales. After every mission she would give us all kinds of nasty details about how we were a bunch of savages, killing women and children. She would attempt to tell us how many planes we lost and the causalities we suffered. Their intelligence was pretty darn good. She would sometimes name the crews that were lost, even give our take off and landing times. Just to prove she knew what she was saying, one time she told us the clock in the officers’ club was two minutes slow. It was checked, she was right. She would give names of all new crews that joined our squadron. We had nick named her program Rangoon Rosie. We kept hearing tales about how rough a mission to Rangoon would be. So far we had been lucky enough not to participated in one. That didn't last too long.

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Men of the 7th Bomb Group