The B-24 was an all-purpose workhorse warplane during World War 2. The Liberator was used
as a heavy bomber, a reconnaissance platform, a utility transport, and a maritime patrol aircraft.
Fred was a patient in the clinic. He was both old and deaf. He carried a dry erase white board to receive, but he transmitted just fine. The key was to ask open-ended questions. “How did you lose your hearing?” seemed a good place to start.
The Waist Gunners
Fred was a waist gunner on a B-24 Liberator during World War 2. The B-24 was the most-produced warplane in the American arsenal. We built 18,188 of them. It was a miserable machine.
The B-17 was graceful. It wanted to fly. By contrast, the B-24 had to be manhandled. For the two waist gunners, theirs was a particularly sordid lot. Their combat positions were open to the slipstream … at 25,000 feet and thirty below zero.
The two waist gunners fought back to back. They danced around each other within the plane’s tight confines swiveling their pintle-mounted fifties to engage Luftwaffe fighters trying desperately to kill them. They wore heavy electrically-heated clothes and oxygen masks to survive. It was an unimaginably hostile world. As a result, these two guys got really close.
We built more than 18,000 Liberators during the war.
Just Keep Fighting
On one mission Fred’s counterpart had a stoppage. In desperation he tore off a glove and clawed at the cold-soaked receiver to get the gun back in action. The resulting frostbite took forever to heal, but he kept the weapon shooting.
When the Luftwaffe fighters pulled away they knew what was coming. On Fred’s last mission a German 88mm round went off alongside the fuselage on the opposite side.
The hot shrapnel detonated the ammunition on his buddy’s gun. It also pulverized his friend, blew off Fred’s helmet, and left him permanently deaf in one ear. Fred had to endure the long trip home manning his gun amidst what was left of his best friend in the world. And we complain about the wi-fi speeds …
The waist gun positions were cramped, cold and terrifying. USAF Museum photo.
Battle of the Bulge
Fred’s bum ear left him grounded, so Uncle Sam made him a Military Policeman. One day during the Battle of the Bulge, Fred was driving a jeep with a pair of officers onboard.
The Germans found that stringing a length of common wire between two trees was a cheap way to decapitate American soldiers driving in jeeps with the windshields down.
As a result, GI’s welded a length of steel stock vertically in front of the grill. Fred’s jeep indeed sported such an appendage, but they were going too fast … and the wire was actually a small cable. The impact tossed the little jeep into a ditch. Fred was thrown out — nobody wore seatbelts — and the vehicle came to rest on top of him. Mashed into the cold mud with a fractured collarbone and a punctured lung, the young man lost consciousness.
When Fred came to he found that only one arm worked. It took him quite a while to dig himself out from underneath the jeep one-handed. Once clear he found the two officers shot through the head. The Germans had apparently assumed he was already dead.
The B-24 was said to be fairly miserable in combat.
Note that the waist gun positions are open to the slipstream.
The American Deep South
When Fred got home he put his military experience to work, subsequently spending his entire professional career in Law Enforcement. By the time he had reached retirement age the cumulative effect of gunfire and chainsaws had taken its inevitable toll. Hence the dry erase white board.
Folks from big cities really cannot appreciate how great the American Deep South really is. Soon after the war Fred found himself in a rural commissary.
These little company stores were typically maintained by large land owners to provide the goods needed to keep those who worked the land supplied with necessities.
There was one of these quaint establishments near where I lived back in the day. It had a giant moose hanging on the wall and just reeked character. My dad and I frequently dropped by for ice cream or a cheap hamburger. In Fred’s case, this old store had a little bit of everything.
The US Eighth Air Force alone suffered more than 26,000 dead over Europe during World War 2.
And we think we have problems …
The Greatest Generation
In one corner of the place was a modest rack of firearms. Amidst the small collection of sporting weapons was an absolutely gorgeous unfired GI M1 Garand. Soldiers of Fred’s day didn’t call it the Garand. It was just the M1. Quietly smitten with the rifle, Fred inquired of the owner.
The weapon was for sale on consignment. It had obviously come back surreptitiously with some GI who now found himself on tough times. Fred offered the shopkeeper $25 on the spot, and he accepted. Meticulously maintained and spotlessly clean, that old service rifle spent the next seven decades hanging on the wall in Fred’s living room.
Fred is gone now, as are most all of the old heroes of his generation. He wasn’t much to look at, just some old deaf guy with a dry erase white board. He couldn’t hear thunder, but he could still speak fine. The key was to ask open-ended questions.