When we got to Brindisi we saw what looked like hundreds of these planes. They were bigger than a B-25 and the 60th. Troop Carrier group was based here. I was assigned to the 12th. Squadron as I have said before. We were assigned living quarters, a bunk with mosquito netting on it for malaria was prevalent here. A briefing followed and they explained that they were short of pilots for in this group 35 out of 40 some planes had been shot down on the invasion of Sicily. It was explained to us that our life expectancy was 3 missions! Since we all had been instructors we had more experience than some of the co-pilots that were all ready there. They gave us all a transition flight as both pilot and co-pilot for they wanted us to fly as soon as they deemed that we were qualified. I was told after my flight that I would go out that night as a co-pilot to one of the more experienced pilots. I flew with Capt. Martin. We all went to briefing and since I was the co-pilot I drew the first aid kit for the crew which contained morphine so I was accountable for it. The co-pilot was also responsible to be sure that we had the load of supplies that we were to deliver by parachute to Yugoslavia for that was part of what we were doing. We ate the evening meal and then waited for it to get close to getting dark. The planes were equipped with flame dampers on the exhaust stacks so that if it was dark you just could not see the flames coming out of the exhaust pipes on the engines. We were unarmed, no armor plate and flew "sneaker" missions. That meant that we went in alone, without fighter cover, found the location that we were to drop our supplies and now I found out why I had studied morse code in preflight for it was also the duty of the co-pilot to send and recieve the signals that would verify that we were in the right place. These were coded messages so that a series of dots and dashes in a specific order would be answered from the ground the same coded way. I had to learn the "code for the day" also. Shortly before time to take off we went to the plane. I was surprised when I saw another man that was to fly with us. He was not on the manifest so I asked why he was along. I was told that he was a spy that was being dropped in enemy territory and that they (spies) were never listed on the manifest.
I felt like I was in some sort of a daze for here I had all of this stuff thrown at me all in one day! Our crew consisted of pilot, co-pilot, navigator, radio operator, crew chief and a dispatcher which meant that he pushed the cargo out the big door when we were over the target. Captain Martin (Lou) took off and we had hardly gotten air borne before he said, "You got it and climb to 11,000 feet while turning to the heading that Homer (The Navigator) will give you. I will take care of some stuff and be back. Now I was really sweating for this was a far cry from any training that I had in the States. They constantly questioned our ability until they were sure we could do it and here on my first mission in a strange plane, with people that I did not know or they knew me - I was in charge of the whole shebang! I could see the coastline of Yugoslavia looming in the dark and about that time Lou came back up. It was a good thing that he did for they began shooting at us with anti aircraft fire from the ground. Lou had taken over and was flying so I was looking out at the bursts of flak. I thought, "Man, this is better than any Fourth of July celebration that I have ever seen!" It took me three missions to figure out that those idiots were trying to hurt me! We did not get hit, dropped the "Agent - spy) on schedule and also the cargo to the Partisans. ( The Yugoslav people against the Germans) and returned to the base without further incidence. I was surprised that the cook had a hot meal waiting for us and also a double shot of whiskey if we wanted it. I ate and then was informed by the Operations officer that I was scheduled to fly co-pilot on an air evacuation mission up to the front, pick up the wounded and fly them to the hospital in Naples. It was now 3:00 AM and I would be awakened at 7:00 AM for the evac flight. I thought, "Man, if the Germans don't get me, all this flying will!"
This routine was pretty typical. We would fly an air evacuation mission up to the front in Italy on the day after a flight into combat and on the day that we were not scheduled to fly a combat mission we went up to Southern France and flew the wounded back to the hospital in Naples. That was a pretty long mission by itself. I was tired and slept whenever I got the chance. I checked out as first pilot after the third mission and was put with another somewhat inexperienced pilot by the name of Kriechbaum. We all called him "Crash." He had been there longer than I so had already been promoted to 1st. Lt. We flew together on the combat flights but we both drew another co-pilot for the air evac runs. My first evacuation flight as pilot to Southern France was quite interesting. We would take off, fly up to Rome, land, then line up the planes and wait in front of it for the flight nurses to come out. They would drive down the row of planes and pick the crew that they wanted to fly with that day. One of the "older" nurses (she was in her late 20,s) picked our crew out. After we had gotten to altitude she came up into the cockpit and asked me to get my co-pilot to go back as she wanted to talk to me privately. He left and she asked, "How about sleeping with me when we get back?" I was totally shocked and asked, "What,s the catch?" "You can't use any contraceptive for I want to get pregnant and go home, I have been here too long now!" she replied! I surely did not want to be a father at the age of 21 and have a child with someone that I did not know so I declined. After I got back that evening I told the others about it. They laughed and told me that she did that with all the new pilots for that way they would leave her alone. I thought she was a pretty sharp lady! We were doing some unbelievable stuff like using an air field in Yugoslavia at night that the Germans were using in the day time! I had two landing missions during the combat flying that we did. One of these was very interesting. We took a load of land mines into a location and landed. The partisans quickly opened the crates and each man would take off with a land mine under each arm. They would disappear into the darkness. We were told to wait for they had an urgent job to do and would be back. We waited by ourselves and it was pretty eerie sitting in the middle of enemy territory at the early hours of the morning waiting. There was one great big explosion not too far away and then all of a sudden women and children appeared out to no where. The guys then came back and explained that they had a train load of Germans trapped for they had been cutting down the wooden railroad bridge over a gorge with axes at night while the Germans shot at them and now they had blown it up so that they had destroyed it and could handle the Germans at their own speed. They unloaded the rest of the land mines from the plane, built up a fire, got sweet corn, put a lot of it in the plane for us to take back to our outfit, roasted some of it while they danced around the fire. I thought, "Who would believe that this was happening deep in enemy territory?"
I need to digress a little at this point and talk about combat. It is the most intense living that one can ever do! You are more alive, alert and on the very edge of existence that you can be. In the air, it is not personal! A fighter pilot does not see the person flying the plane that he shoots down so it is clean, no mud, and exhilarating. Combat on the ground if far, far different in that you are dirty, muddy and it is definately personal, particularly when "hand to hand!"
Some of the guys had been flying combat for quite a while and were really tired so they pulled our group off of combat and put another group in our place. We moved from Brindisi over to Naples where we were billited on some old Italian apartment buildings. Now we only flew evacuation flights to the front in Italy and also Southern France. We were getting rested up pretty well.
They then called a bunch of us in for briefing and told us that six planes with full crew on one which would include a navigator as we were to fly a loose formation. We would go up to Cherbourg France, pick up riflemen and fly them back to Italy. They said that we would not have fighter cover for we would not be going over enemy territory and this was to be a "milk run" and relatively easy except for distance. "Crash" and I were to fly together due to the distance so one of us would go up as pilot and the other co-pilot. We flipped a coin for it and Crash was to be the pilot going up and I coming back. We got all the stuff together for the trip and the crew chief, Corporal Westoven, got a cake and a gallon can of peaches from the cook. None of us took our Colt .45 automatic pistols or our knives for this was to be a lark. The intelligence officer told us to go any where we wanted but if we got into any trouble to turn south for that would be away from the enemy. When we were all ready we took off and flew a very loose formation only keeping the others in sight for this made the navigation very easy. The trip up was very interesting for we got to see the Alps in the distance, the weather was very good and we were visual all the way. No instrument flying at all. It was October and the trees in the French country were gorgeous with their highly covered leaves. We also flew over some towns that had been entirely obliterated. One in particular did not have one building left standing for the Germans had put up a fight there and the bombers out of England were called in and they along with the artillery blasted the town to bits. We landed at Cherbourg and could see England off in the distance. We were supposed to make several trips up and back in succeeding days so decided that we would go to England and stay overnight there the next trip up. It was cold out and the riflemen had to sleep on the ground under the planes wing that night. I felt sorry for them because we had brought along our sleeping bags and blankets so we slept pretty well in the plane. The next morning I was surprised for ice had frozen and we had not been that cold for some time. We all had breakfast in the mess hall and the food was pretty good. It was overcast and we were in no hurry to take off hoping that the weather would clear some. The meterologist told us that it was going to get worse and that he thought we should go as soon as we were ready. We only had about a 500 foot ceiling (the base of the clouds) so by arrangement between Crash and I, I would go on instruments on take off and he would remain visual as long as he could. We were still going to fly the loose formation after we broke out on top of the clouds. The weather was supposed to get better as we got closer to the southern part of France. We took off and climbed to 11,000 feet and still were not out of the clouds we called the other planes by radio but did not recieve an answer. I then leveled off at the 11,000 foot altitude, turned south as directed in case of an emergency. We agreed that we had a minor emergency for we could not see our wing tips much less another plane so did not want to run into one of them. We again called on the radio but did not get any answer so assumed that our radio was out. I flew on instruments for about an hour and a half. We broke out on top of the clouds and then they dissapated even more so that we could see down through them. We had been navigating on our own without a navigator so decided to drop down and look (pinpoint) at signs on the next town. We thought it was La Rochelle and we were exactly where we thought we were.

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