Excerpt
Every authors story is as compelling as the next
I was hit. The bomb I was carrying under my plane exploded. Leveling the plane out, smoke and flames started filling the cockpit. Below my feet, the gasoline leaking from the fuel lines had ignited from the phosphorus. As trained, I immediately threw back the canopy. As soon as I did that, the oxygen made the flames rage around me, burning my face, arms and legs severely. Unbuckling myself, I started to make my way out of the cockpit to the right side of the plane, but to my dismay realized my left foot had wedged under the instrument panel.
We went over the side into the warm, but oil-covered Pacific. I swam to a life raft and started paddling toward the destroyers waiting to pick us up, picking up enough passengers on the way to relieve me on the paddling. After about three or four hours we were lifted aboard the USS Benham (DD-397). There were so many of us we had to stand up all night on deck.
We werent allowed to keep diaries or have any knowledge of our whereabouts. At this time we were west of the Rhine River and heading north to the German rocket-launching site of Pennemondie. At night we could see rockets taking off, probably heading toward the destruction of England.
Often I sat in undisguised awe at MacArthurs masterful rhetoric, command of subjects, and the charisma of the man himself. I marveled at his ebullience and unbelievable command of world events, past, present and future. While I had absolutely no input to any of the decisions reached, I was privy to his senior staff meetings and private musings, a fly on the wall during these momentous events.
Our precious cargo was hoisted up into the plane with great effort as access into the rear of a B-29 is a door seven to eight feet off the ground. We tried to quickly, but carefully load the over 200-pound uncooperative pig into a door that seemed seventy feet off the ground! The hogs legs were thrashing about every which way, sometimes hitting men in the face causing lacerations and bruising. Feces managed to sling out of their cargo a time or two onto unfortunate cargo loaders. We gunners were given the esteemed responsibility of ensuring safe passage of the pig.
The next day, Christmas Day, the first mortar hit the top floor of our apartment house. It blew out all the windows in our neighborhood. We tried to use cardboard, pieces of plywood, or whatever else we could find around the house to patch them up. It was sheer futility since from then on mortars and bombs rained upon us. Fortunately we had bomb shelters, so everyone moved to them. In our house, there were about 30 of us: twenty-six adults, three children, a teenager (me), and a dog.
The war went on for years and our efforts never faltered. We searched each days paper, hoping not to see a familiar name or face on the daily casualty list. Then, suddenly and without warning, the newspaper headlines screamed the words in giant black letters, Atomic bomb dropped! and the war was over. For some, the war was over forever; for others it was a time to pick up the pieces and begin life again; a lifetime of nightmares and reliving the horrors of war. For me, I was very young and caught up in all the frenzy of living in a country at war. My life just went on as before.
I also had the experience of getting a ride with an Air America (most Americans know this is the Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA) helicopter while evading Laos. The mission of the helicopter pilot, at this time, was to deliver food, munitions and medical supplies to the Laotian troops and any military personnel that were there under the pretense of being advisors. While heading to our destination, a radio message passed through to all available aircraft to be on the lookout for a downed F-4 fighter aircraft.
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