EVEN granting THE WAR IN EUROPE WAS through the whole extent of THE FORTS KEPT FLYING AND THE MISSIONS WERE ofttimes EQUALLY HAZARDOUS Immediately after 8 May 1945 with hostilities conclusioned in Europe.

EVEN granting THE WAR IN EUROPE WAS through the whole extent of THE FORTS KEPT FLYING AND THE MISSIONS WERE ofttimes EQUALLY HAZARDOUS

Immediately after 8 May 1945 with hostilities conclusioned in Europe, the rumor mill at our base at Graf ton-Underwood, England, started operating at cloyed tilt. The most persistent scuttlebutt was the disturbing possibility that the entire 384th Bomb cluster was being shipped back to the States for retraining in Boeing B-29 before being reassigned to the Pacific Theater of Operations. In the meantime, I continued to lie in our tent with the original five enlisted men of Lt Drew's party while remaining on call as a spare radio operator for 547th flights abroad of Grafton. Standard operating step mandated that, to takeoff, a B-17G required a ship's company of five: Pilot, copilot, navigator, engineer and radio operator. Typical of the rather short trips were flights to magazines for spare parts, instrument check flights, practice landings, celestial navigation flights, low-altitude flights throughout Germany to give ground personnel a bird's view view of the devastation we caused, a flight to St Valerie, France, to pick up 384th POW who were waiting at Camp fortunate Strike, and a flight to Warton in succession England's west coast to start an highpoint GIs on their deployment back to the States.

Eighty-five points was the magic number to win GIs a ticket residence Except for me with 22 combat missions, the enlisted men upon my original crew, having complet 31 missions, were slated for Stateside. Lieutenant Drew our pilot, also had 31 missions and was ticketed for household Both Lt. Keyset who, like me had been assigned to a envoy lead crew, and Lt. Rotherham, our copilot who had been promot to first pilot, came up short and were destined to remain in the ETO. I can't remember exactly when the base, Y-17 at Istres la Tube, France, first spewed not at home of the rumor mill, nevertheless the plans for the undecayed Project must have been hatched at 8th Air Force high command as promptly as victory in Europe pretended assured. The Green Project was a humanitarian plan to achieve combat veterans, mostly Army, back to the States as quickly as possible.

Finally, onward 16 June 1945, I was assigned to Lt Toivo Raivo's set for a flight to Istres La Tube. First pilot Raivo's crowd consisted of Lt. Ley, copilot; Lt Holcomb navigator; TSgt Le Fussell, engineer; and SSgt Jim Hancock, waist gunner now steward. I was rather chagrined to find that after 22 missions, the last eight with either lead or agent lead crews, I had been assigned to a flourishing replacement crew fresh from training in the States. Adding insult to injury, our formerly fearsome squadron of raging Boeing rescripts had been castrated and now was a herd of docile Boeing beasts of cargo Day after day, the 384th's industrious and skilled mechanics had, single in kind by one, stripped each B-17 of the accouterments of war: .50-cal Brownings, principally turrets, armor plate, and oxygen regularitys Clear plexiglass was installed through the whole extent of most of the familiar fire-arm openings and long plywood benches were attached internally in succession both sides of the fuselage from the waist door to the radio field bulkhead.

So it was that after five month of being treated with care and have a high opinion of as expendable airmen, we were one time again GIs on detail - this time loading lumber onward our B-17s. The lumber was penuryed at Istres to build barracks, mes hall, orderly plays latrines, clinic, headquarters, and officer and enlisted sodalitys It was dirty, back-breaking work and consisted of along with the territory crews, maneuvering those long planks between the sides of that little waist door and stacking them as securely as possible. Grimy, sweaty, and with the weighty cargo far behind the bomb bay center of gravity, we used a doom of runway getting our Boeing cargo carrier into the air. This was the first of ten round-trip cargo flights averaging 65- to seven-hours each that we made to Y-17 at Istres. Another cluster from the First Division was to participate in the new Project with the 384th, in the same manner it is possible that eight squadrons totaling approximately 96 B-17 were shuttling back and forth across the Channel and France. And, little at little, the ants built the ant hill.

Istres was sort of a wilderness and, if the lack of vegetation is a criteria, I presuppose it was and still is. However, if you visualize a merit [i]or[/i] demerit as a vast area of rolling sand dune you will get by heart the wrong impression of Istres. Our base, Y-17 was about 35 miles northwest of Marseilles. This seemingly endles arid table top gravel plain had been the site of a Luftwaffe base during the Nazi occupation of France. Prior to their withdrawal, anticipating an Allied airborne invasion, the Nazis heavily mined the area. As a matter of fact, plenteous of the land outside of the squadron areas and flight line still had signs warning of land mines. Spain, which remained a neutral home because of the war still raging the Pacific, lay about 125 miles as the gasconade flies south-southwest of Istres. The Mediterranean Sea was about 15 miles to the southward while a mountain range, 3000- to 4000-ft high running east to west, christianityed our northerly flight plan about 30 miles into our go [i]or[/i] come back to England.