Bombs Away, Part III

My father died in 2002, at the age of 81. I suspect that of all of the 142 Student Officers of Bombardier Class 43-11, few, if any, are still with us. Many may have lost their lives during the war. But of those who like my father survived the war to return home and live a full life, many would have been in their later 20's or older when the war ended in 1945.

Had he lived, dad would have been 91 this year. Others in his class probably were older than he. This Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw aptly calls them, had endured the Great Depression and WWII. A few may even have fought in the Korean War. So, if any in dad's class is still alive, I would be surprised. The one piece of information that is lacking in the booklet is the age of each individual Student Officer, where and when each was born.

As tough as it is to imagine any of these young, smiling faces killed in action, it's even tougher to imagine any of them as old men on their death beds, as I saw my father toward the end.

His doctor had told my sister Ann and me that there was nothing from the top of his head to the tips of his toes that was not failing or had already failed. Nothing could be done to keep him alive. We also discovered that he had signed a living will that requested no extraordinary means be used to keep him alive. So we then had the staff remove the breathing apparatus.

He continued to breathe on his own for a few more days, though never returning to consciousness. I had to return to Colorado after that weekend, but I had done what was needed. I had agreed, along with the family, to accede to his wishes and let him die honorably rather than be artificially kept alive. I also could not return for his funeral or burial. But those rituals are more for the living than the dead.

All these years later, I have this testament not only to my father but to the many other men who trained, and served, along with him so many decades ago, six years before I was born.

Had he not survived the war, I would not have been born.

I would not have served in, nor been discharged from, the Air Force all those years ago for being gay. Nor would I have written the ten Rainbow Arc of Fire novels.

Now that DADT is going away and we can serve openly, I may very well take up President Obama on his offer to return. Perhaps the President didn't imagine a 61-year-old veteran taking him up on his offer to serve again; but if I can, I will return. The repeal is a vindication of how I felt 31 years ago. I will make the most of any second chance if I am able.

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Bombs Away, Part II

I can only imagine how hot it must have been in those cramped trainers at the height of summer in the high desert of California, learning to become bombardiers.

The American bomber offensive against Germany had begun a year earlier, in August of 1942. The British had been bombing German targets since 1940, but had soon shifted their attacks to less-accurate night bombing because their initial daylight attacks had produced appalling losses in aircraft and crews. Without fighter cover deep into Germany, the Americans would suffer the same appalling losses in that first year.

Yet throughout the souvenir booklet, the overall tone is upbeat, even jovial and light-hearted. Two cartoons were featured on the "Eleven Arrives..." page, discussing their first sight of the base: one was of the bus that brought them, with an officer gesturing for them to line up outside, with an overheated jackrabbit in the foreground and a lonesome cactus in the background. The text above emphasized that these trainees "were tired and hot". The adjacent cartoon is of a cadet with a small suitcase in one hand and the cord to his duffel bag in the other, asking, "Where's Da' Bombsight?"

Besides the cartoons, the text itself specifically defined their overall mood as the training continued: "They called us eager from the sidelines, and we were. Day after day, we became more and more determined to get through and earn those wings and bars.... We lost a few by the wayside, but to the end they were there trying."

Nineteen Forty-three was the year that Allied losses in the war were slowly beginning to turn into victories all over the map. But American losses were still heavy, especially during daylight aerial bombing. Hundreds of crewmen and dozens of bombers would be shot down during each mission.

One-hundred and forty-two student officers' smiling faces grace many of the later pages of the booklet. They came from all over the nation to this base in California: Garden City, New York; to Columbiana, Alabama; to Seattle, Washington; to Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and many other states, cities, and small towns in between.

Remarkably, beside each smiling photo was not only the name and hometown of the student officer, but there was also a brief, highly personalized description of each man. For instance, E.Z. Tucker, Jr. of Greensboro, North Carolina: "Z for Zodiac, meaning lady-killer. Doesn't care to be room orderly, but likes C. Q. duties, WACs and furloughs."

My dad's description reads: "Good at spinning endless, pointless yarns. He seems to be healthy but always complains of his aching back." My mom used to tell me that dad was like that. Even at parties, he'd go off on some verbal tangent that would soon bore anyone he was chatting up. And even I remember him saying as a generic complaint in the 50's: "Oh, my aching back."

These young men might soon be lying dead in the wreckage of their B-17, B-24, or B-25 bomber in North Africa or Europe, or be rounded up and hauled off to a P.O.W. camp after they'd parachuted out of their damaged plane, as happened to my father after a Ploesti raid. But here, in stark black and white, each man not only had a face, name and home town but also a distinct personality. Each was somebody, a unique individual.

There were, of course, no Asian-American or African-American faces in the class. (The Japanese internment camps were in full operation and segregation was fully prevalent in the Armed Forces of that time.) But there were many English and Italian and German names sprinkled throughout. (My father's was the only Hispanic name that I found.) A few of the men were obviously married, and many more were described in one way or another as skirt chasers -- straight or trying very hard to appear straight in that oblivious-to-homosexuality era. Two students were described as the first and second papas in the 43-11 class, married guys whose wives had given birth while they were in training.

(more later)

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Bombs Away

For the past couple of months, I have been watching the series VICTORY AT SEA and then THE WORLD AT WAR on Blu-ray disks. Often, I do something for which later a reason or justification becomes clear.

I found out what that was during a visit to my sister Ann's home in Indio, CA, from 30 December 2010 to 2 January 2011. The day I arrived, she handed over a wide, spiral-bound, modestly thick booklet that she'd been given by our sister Lorri.

The cover said BOMBS AWAY, 43-11. Upon further inspection, I realized that this booklet was from my dad's WWII Bombardier training class in 1943, at Victorville Army Air Field in California.

He would eventually become a bombardier on a B-24 that was forced to ditch after a raid on the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti where the Nazis got most of their oil during that horrific war.

At Victorville they trained in much smaller, even antiquated, AT-11 twin-engine light training bombers, and then B-25's, the same planes flown off the aircraft carrier Hornet by Jimmy Doolittle's raiders over Tokyo the previous year.

The booklet was filled with B&W photos of the base, the training and administrative staff, and all of the bombardier trainees of class 43-11, including my father. Born in 1920, he was about to turn 24, while he was learning to drop bombs on an enemy far away.

Tucked inside the booklet was an ID card, as well. This was issued on July 31, 1943, and his birthday was coming up on August 5th. It says he was 5' 8", 150 pounds, with brown eyes and hair. He was a second lieutenant, the same rank I held when I was in training at missile school at Vandenberg AFB, not that many miles from Victorville, CA. That was in 1974, 31 years later. I was 24 years old, and 6' tall and 160 pounds, with brown eyes and hair.

Toward the end of his life, he and I had had a significant falling out over my being gay. In fact, we never spoke in those final years, though I would be there in the emergency room where he lay, unconscious and likely unaware of my presence, though my sister Ann told him I was there.

Neither of us could easily recognized him, so changed was his mortal form. He looked like some concentration camp victim, his skin having become translucent, his weight significantly reduced. He looked very much like a man who was about to die, as he would soon do, only five days later.

(more to come)

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