ENC 1101-B3 & B4: Writing for Discovery

The smoke trail from the burning oil could be seen for miles. They were lucky that the German planes decided not to follow them any further, because their B-29 was already bullet laden. As the plane glided down, Captain Williams yelled to the crew, “Brace yourselves this one’s gonna be rough!” When the plane hits the ground, the sound of the metal scraping against the ground was deafening, as the crew was flung around the inside of the plane like rag dolls. Covered in a cloud of dust, the crew of the B-29 quickly piles out of their plane that came to a rest in the middle of an Italian pasture, before the leaking fuel ignited.

After all of the crew got out of the plane, they realize that they were lucky to escape with only minor cuts and bruises. Since the crash had disoriented the crew, they were not sure which was the air field was. Wiping some of the dirt off of his flight suit, nose gunner Sergeant Jimmy Henry says, “The field is over yonder, just on the other side of them trees.” As they begin the trek back to the field, Jimmy can not help but think to himself, “I sure hope that I am right. That crash really threw me around.”

Finally after what seemed like hours, the crew finally came through the forest and saw the field. Covered in dust and blood from the cuts of plexiglas compartment, and still a little disoriented from the crash, Jimmy stumbles into his tent. While he tries to get his boots off he collapses on his rack. He finally wakes up three hours later, still in his flight suit with one boot still on.

Walking out of the tent, trying to figure out what happened, he sees Captain Williams.

“Captain, what happened?”

“I think that you hit your head during the crash, you’ve been passed out in your rack for the past three hours.”

“Oh,” says Jimmy, and stumbles back to his tent. When he gets to his bed, he pulls out his journal from underneath his mattress and tries to write everything about the day’s mission that he can remember.

“Hit solid, out board props gone, then #4 engine breaks out (in flames), then the #3 prop, lost left landing gear…lost speed, wing dropped, ground spin, right wing off, landing gear through wing, stopped cloud of dust, inside black, everyone piled out, able to walk, rather run, when you think about 1800 gal of gas, with fire in #4…5 miles from field yet took 2 hours for anyone to get there. 25 tons of metal at 100 mph sho’ does plow up Italian dirt.”

As he finished writing about the day’s events, a picture of his beautiful Charlotte fell out. Reaching down to pick it up, he remembered the day that she had given the picture to him.

It was the day he was shipped off , as he was about to board the ship, Charlotte ran up to him and said, “Wait, I want you to have this, because every time you look at this, I’ll be right with you, no matter where you are.”

As he looked at the picture he realized that Charlotte was right, she had been with him, because with that picture she is right next to him. Placing the picture back in his journal, he thinks, “Only a couple more missions, then I can finally have Charlotte back in my arms.”

Then Herman Ware walked in and told Jimmy that the mission assignments had been post in the Officer’s Club. So he closes his journal and puts it back under his mattress. As he walks down to the O-club, his gut is in a ball. “I hope that I don’t have another mission, this will be my fifth in three days.”

The lights from the O-Club are as bight as the sun on a summer’s day. Walking up to the door, Jimmy can feel the adrenaline pumping through his body. As he walks closer to the board, Jimmy begins to feel like Moses, the crowd parts like the Red Sea as he gets closer. Scanning down the chart, his stomach get tighter, and he breaks out in a cold sweat.

“Scheduled to fly but…scratched in the nite. It’s getting on the nerves. When you hear you are flying start tightening up…don’t sleep well, tension mounts, get off the ground have passes a minor climax, grows as near the target, not conscious of any physical discomforts, even if you were cold, guts in a ball. After target, breath a sigh of relief, tension goes out when finally land, really all washed up…it seems that too many of the guys are trying to quit. The Colonel sorta laid the law down.”

The next morning Jimmy was woken up by the sunlight breaking through the holes in the tent. Jimmy thinks “This sho’ is a beautiful day, maybe I’ll just head over yonder to play some football today. While they are playing, Jimmy realizes how much he needed a day off, and “how playing football can make a guy forget about the war that is going on around him.”

When he leaves the football field, Jimmy heads back to his tent to clean up for lunch. As he enters the tent, he saw a letter on his rack, and opens it. All of a sudden, Jimmy’s stomach tightens up, adrenaline begins to pump, and his eyes begin to water. “Recovered all bodies of Shaener’s Crew. Capt. Tennilles included…flew into the side of a mountain in a snow storm. At first, couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. Shaener and whole crew never knew what happened,” writes Jimmy in his journal.

Jimmy had been in Italy for five months and he still was not used to his friends dieing. “People say you get used to friends dieing, but gettin’ used to people dieing is somethin’ I hope I never get used to. The guys who do, walk around with blank stares, like there is no one there,” thinks Jimmy. As he puts the letter in his journal the air siren begins to go off. So he throws on his flight suit, and heads to the briefing tent.

In the tent, Jimmy learns the squadron has to make an emergency mission to bomb an industrial park in northern Italy, which is about to ship out a new type of tank armor that is impenetrable to anything that the Allies have, as well as the new German armor piercing shell.

After settling into his seat, Jimmy notices that he is not nearly as nervous as he normally is, and prepares for take off. As the engines begin to start, they let out a roar, and the plane is covered with a plum of smoke. Soon after take off, the squadron is in formation, and headed toward their target.

As they fly over the Italian coast Jimmy and the other gunners make their way to their positions, and prepare for the Luftwaffe fighters hiding in the clouds. Right when he finally managed to cram himself into his tiny nose-gunner compartment, fifteen German Focke-Wulf 190s dive out of the clouds and attack the squadron.

“These damn 190s are like the nats back home, they’re always bothering you,” remarks Jimmy over the planes intercom system. Leading a 190 with gun, Jimmy can feel his heart racing, as he pulls the trigger he is pelted the spent shells from his cannon. The intercom system in the plane is alive with the chatter of the gunners telling each other where the German fighters are heading.

“Jimmy, we got one comin’ up from behind, get him as he goes over”

“Daniels, two comin’ in low and fast at 3 o’clock”

By now there are so many 190s around the squadron that, “Man this is just like a pheasant hunt back home,” yelled Jimmy. As the 190s dive throughout the formation, Jimmy just keeps his fingers on the trigger. At one point he realized that he has been shooting so much that his barrel became white hot, almost the color of a pair of angel’s wings.

Next thing he knows, there is a 190 headed straight for him, his heart starts to pound, it begins to beat so hard that it seems like it is about to jump out. Squeezing the trigger as hard as he can, bullets begin to fly out of his twin cannons. They tear into the 190. Jimmy sees chunks of the wings fly off behind the muzzle flashes of the 190 which could illuminate even the darkest night. Finally after shooting what seems like all of his ammunition, the engine bursts into flames and Jimmy watches the plane as it makes a dive toward the ground.

All of a sudden the plane is shook by an explosion. Captian Williams calls over the intercom,

“What was that”

“Turbulence I think,” says Ware

“Jimmy did you see anything?”

He scans the sky, and sees black smoke coming pouring out of a plane in the lower level of the formation, as it falls to the ground.

“Captain Willaims, it’s Major Owen’s plane sir, its left wing is gone, and its covered in smoke.”

By the time that squadrons was over the target area, the sound of the bomb bay doors opening was like sweet music to Jimmy. Then all of a sudden, it is like a downpour on a summer after noon, the sky is full of green chucks of metal, and in a matter of seconds the sky is clear again as if nothing had happened.

The ride home was all a bit of a blur to Jimmy. It was not until he heard the screech of the tires on the runway that he realized that he was home. When he finally got back to his tent after the debriefing, he pulled out his journal, “Able #1 got a direct hit at the base of left wing. Immediately burst into solid flame, wing buckled up. Fuselage went down, other wing up. Then whole mass flaming wreckage. Went down…an inferno with 10 men in its heart…will never forget it. Close my eyes, there it is. Said a little prayer for their souls. That gets you somewhere that the medicine can’t reach. Knew all the boys.”