Eugene Fletcher
95TH BOMB GROUP (H) ASSOCIATION
95TH BG LEGACY COMMITTEE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
1999 REUNION PITTSBURGH, PA
RC: I will state, for the record, this is Rob Cozens. We are interviewing Eugene Fletcher. It is September 11th. We’re in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Also present are Karen Sayco and David Johnson, who we’re pleased to have from Horham. Eugene, would you please tell us some basic information about where you were when you joined the service, how did you join the service, what brought you intothe Army/Air Corps?
EF: Well, I joined the Army/Air Corps in June of 1942. I was in college, going to Whitman College in ___________, Washington. I received a notice from my draft board that I would be drafted on the first of July. Not wanting to be drafted and be a part of the army, at that particular point I wanted to fly. I was also enrolled in a civilian pilot training program while in college, so I had my private pilot’s license and was studying to be an instructor. And I had progressed along, but that meant nothing to the draft board. I was to be inducted immediately. So I drove to Spokane, Washington to Geiger Field and enlisted in the Air Corps and became an aviation cadet.
RC: What were your dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
EF: I arrived at the 95th, I arrived in England on D-Day. And I flew my first mission, I think it was July the 6th, and we flew our last mission on December the 27th.
RC: Where did you take your training, and can you tell us a little bit about the training that you received?
EF: Well, when we started out through cadet training, first everybody went to Santa Ana for classification. From there I took my primary at ___________, California. Then I was allowed to go to a civilian basic school at Lancaster, California. This was an interesting school, in that it had been an airfield that had been set up to train British pilots. And we were the second group to go through after the British left the school and they converted it into a basic flying school for the American flyers then. So we allowed to go to that for basic, and then for advanced, we went down to Douglas, Arizona. And at that time, Douglas, Arizona was the third largest city in Arizona, which by now, I would think, it’s probably ranked down about 50 or 60 maybe. But we did take our advanced training there. From there, we were told that the small men would fly the fighters, the big men would fly the bombers. And at about 5’6” and 130 pounds, I knew I had a fighter. I didn’t work out that way. I was sent to Roswell, New Mexico for B-17 transition training. Upon completion of that, we were sent to Ardmore, Oklahoma for phase training. In the meantime, we went to Salt Lake City where I picked up a crew then, where crew assignments were made. And then we went down to Ardmore to finish our phase training before we went overseas. From there we were sent to Kearney, Nebraska and we were held there for two weeks, thinking that we would get an airplane to fly over. It didn’t work. So at the end of two weeks, they kicked us out, sent us to New York. And we flew out of New York then on D-Day to Valley, Wales on the Air Transport Command ship. When we got to Valley, Wales they weren’t equipped to take care of American soldiers there. They didn’t know what to do with us. So they sent us down to London. And we wandered around London for a day, trying to figure out what to do. Finally we found a command post there and a place where they put us up overnight. They sent us back to Valley, Wales where we should have been routed to in the first place, but no one knew exactly where we were supposed to be. So once we got to Valley, Wales, it was only a matter of a few days until we received orders to report to the 452ndBomb Group. And we were on the train, going to the 452nd. And we stopped somewhere along, and I’m going to assume now that it was probably Diss, that little town that we stopped at. Then the Sergeant came aboard the train and he said, he called out two names: Feis and Fletcher. And we both answered, and they said disembark your crews here. So they got our crews off the train. They put us in a 6 x 6, and the first thing we knew, we were on the 95th Bomb Group base.
RC: Which squadron did you serve with?
EF: We served with the 412th squadron.
RC: Were there any particularly memorable experiences that you had during training that you might like to relate?
EF: Oh, I don’t know that we had any particularly outstanding missions during training. I think we had probably the usual experiences. We were lost several times. That sort of thing that creates a little uncertainty in you. At one time during training I had an electrical malfunction, and was attempting to fix it. And my co-pilot said, “No, I’ll help you here a little bit.” And he turned the master switch off on me and stopped all four engines at 30,000 feet. But, you know those sort of things happen (chuckle). Luckily, we got the engines going again without doing any particular damage to the airplane. But I suppose our training would be called pretty much routine.
RC: Did I understand you had already had flying experience?
EF: Yes that’s correct.
RC: Did that kind of put you ahead of the rest of the group?
EF: Well, in the beginning I thought, because a lot of flying is learning how to think in the air. It’s not an environment that you’re – it’s an environment that you adjust to. When you first start, you don’t think too well. Once you adjust to the environment, you become accustomed to making decisions while you’re in the air. From that standpoint, I felt that I had an edge on them. By the time we reached advanced training, I felt that the others, that handicap for them had been overcome – that we were all on an equal footing from that point on in. It certainly made my primary experience a lot better for me, and my basic experience.
RC: How well do you feel your training prepared you for what you were to face?
EF: Well I would have to say that our training was excellent and we received the best of training. There were many times during combat and during our tour that I related back to things that had been told to me by my instructors, and things that they had shown me were actually put into practice. I have nothing but the highest of praise for the instructors, both ground school instructors and flight instructors. I’m sure that they had our best interests at heart. And I couldn’t thank them enough for the training that they gave us.
RC: What route did you take to England?
EF: We flew to Greenland and refueled in Greenland, and then on in to Valley, Wales.
RC: And how long after you reached England did you fly your first mission?
EF: We reached England on D-Day, which would have been June the 6th, and we flew our first mission in one month, July the 6th was our first mission.
RC: And how many missions in all did you (fly)?
EF: We flew 35 missions, plus a weather mission.
RC: Were those all combat missions, or were you involved with things like the chowhound?
EF: I was not involved in any chowhounds. We were involved in two of the missions supplied supplies to the __________. And there were two of those. We were also involved in the shuttle raid, the second one, the Frantic raid, the Frantic Five, which went from England to Russia to Italy and back to England. And that is probably one of the most outstanding missions we were ever on. Everybody has combat, and all the combat targets in Germany were rough targets, there’s no doubt about that. Some were worse than others. But the Frantic raid was spectacular in my mind in that the length of the mission and what we got to see, and what we did, and the type of opposition that we had. We left England. We went up over the Danish peninsula and bombed the target at Romelgardinia, which was an engine factory plant there. And while we were in the vicinity, the Goering yellow noses attacked. We were protected by the 55th Fighter Group and another Fighter Group, I can’t think of the name right now. But that group escorted us in that far, and then they turned and went back to England. And then the 357th picked us up and took us on in to Poltava. But that was spectacular, in that that was the longest fighter escort mission of the war that left England and returned back to England. And then, like I said, the 357th picked us on up then and took us in to Poltava. The mission was over 10 hours in length. But during the time that we were in the target area, when the yellow noses attacked, the fighters came in with them, our own P-51’s. And in order to, they made a head on pass. It was impossible to shoot at them because our own fighters were on their tails. And rather than trying to break away from them, and I had a co-pilot that was screaming on the radio for the fighters to break off so we could shoot. And they radioed back, “No way, these are ours!” Well the Germans, in order to break off with the P-51’s, came directly through our formation. And that’s the first time I’d ever seen that happen. And if you’ve ever been sitting in an airplane piloting it, seeing a fighter coming at you head on, and not stopping and realizing that we’ve only got about 50 feet of clearance either way between these airplanes, and to have them fly right through with us, it was hair raising, to say the least (chuckle). I think there were seven aircraft shot down, enemy aircraft shot down on that particular phase of the mission. The reason that these frantic raids were held, this particular one was, there was an oil target in Tresbinia, Poland – and oil refinery there that we were not able to bomb from England. So the next day, about 54 of us – this was a very small force that we had – probably about 80 aircraft, bombers, in the beginning. And 54 of us the next day took off and flew to Tresbinia and bombed there. And again we came under fighter attack again. And this time was the first time that I’d actually seen the fighter shot down and seen the pilot bail out. And I was able to witness that. The fighters did not get into us, though. Our own fighter protection kept them away. We watched their dogfight then from a distance. This was another long flight, about nine hours. Then the next day from there we flew on down to Foggia______ in Italy, bombing an airfield ____________ on the way down. This was a particularly interesting leg because when we were oh probably 50 miles out from the target, we saw a large force of enemy planes off on our left. And at that particular moment I had some qualms because I thought we were going to have a real air battle because there were oh probably 80 to 90 aircraft in this assembly that we saw. For some reason they chose not to tangle with us, and they took off and went the opposite direction. At that particular moment, the thing that really worried me was I couldn’t see our own fighter escort. I had no idea where they were. I presumed they were probably with us and high above. But at that moment you don’t know. And it turned out later when we got to Kojia that the intelligence was that this was a group that was either up to practice or for an air show for something that was going on for a fly over and they were unarmed. And that was the reason they left the area then and went through. So we did not encounter any enemy opposition then outside of some small bursts of flak during the target area there. After we got into Foggia, again it was a great deal like Russia. The war had passed through these places several different times, and there had been almost a scorched earth policy in both places. Infrastructure was completely gone. And when you saw the devastation, this one of the few times when we got to actually see what war does on the ground. You’re always in the air. This time we now could see what happens on the ground. And it wasn’t a pretty picture by a long ways. You saw people who were homeless, without homes, kids that are orphans wandering the streets and street kids and this sort of thing. All of a sudden we had a little compassion. Because in war, you don’t really think about people being on the ground. You’re looking at a target, and from a pilot’s standpoint, you’re chauffeuring your bombardier there to do the job and your mind is taken up with other things. But all of a sudden, this brought back what war is all about to you. And it wasn’t glamorous by a long ways at that point. We stayed in Foggia for perhaps a week. Then we took off and bombed the airfield in Toulouse, France. And it was in support of the southern invasion end of France. That particular leg was an easy one to fly. We did not have fighter opposition on it. We had only the usual flak opposition around the target. And to the best of my knowledge, I think we only lost one airplane on the whole trip around. And I don’t think we lost any personnel. But I think on airplane was left there and transferred to the 15th Air Force, or the Eastern Command as they called it.
RC: Through the length of your experience, did there come a time when you began to sense that the Allied Forces were going to prevail and we were actually going to win this, or did VE Day come as a surprise?
EF: No, we really got hyped up, and we were sure that the war was going to be over by Christmas. And I think that we all just knew that that was going to happen. And of course it didn’t happen. That became the worst part of the war, when the Battle of the Bulge broke out. And this was particularly bothersome to a lot of us pilots because we knew what people were like at the Battle of the Bulge. They’re trapped in there. They need help. And the weather had us shut down. We were shut down for, I think, at least two weeks. And we did not get an airplane off the base. And then finally when the weather broke, I think our first mission came out on the 24th. And then I think my last three missions were in support of the Battle of the Bulge, which was the 24th, 25th, and 27th of December. At that point, we really felt we were doing something. But the war didn’t end like we thought it would. And all of a sudden, this was kind of a let down, because all of a sudden we realized, well this thing is not over yet. There’s a lot of battles left ahead yet for someone else to take over. But I also had the feeling when I finished, I was not ready to come back home. This was the feeling that I had that all of a sudden each day you’re have something that you’re going to do. You’re not looking forward to it in a way. Let me say that in combat, in flying that you’re either scared to death or bored to death because you haven’t anything to do, or scared to death because you have. And so time kind of drags on that way. But I had the feeling that I wasn’t ready to come back into society. And so I volunteered to stay with the Wing for a while, until I could get my own thoughts together. I wasn’t ready to come back and to face my family and to face all the things at home. They knew a war was going on, and they were making sacrifices. But they hadn’t seen that war. And you wrestle with your own conscience with these things. And so you go through that type of thing. And so I’m glad that I stayed, and when I got ready to come home, I felt my mindset was right - that I could go home and face my family and be a functioning member of society again, instead of a detriment (chuckle).
KS: When you were in Poltava, did you meet any Russian civilians and/or Russian military?
EF: We met mostly the military. Now we did see the civilians, but the military personnel were the ones that we actually were in contact with. They had a system there that was a little different from ours in that they incorporated women in their armed forces in a combat area. And these women that we met there would serve in the front lines for a week or two weeks. And then they would come back behind the lines, and they would do KP duty and this sort of thing. And so they were the people there that provided our meals for us and this. And we got to visit with them a little bit. And I would say we had a very good relationship with the lower ranking Russian people. We did not get along too well with the brass. There’s probably several reasons for that, but they sort of felt like we were encroaching upon their territory and this sort of thing, I guess. I guess I made them feel that they weren’t capable of taking out these targets that we were particularly interested in taking out because oil was now the primary target. We wanted to destroy the capability of the Germans to wage war by eliminating the petroleum supply. Whether this is what galled them or not, I don’t know. But the brass was not particularly friendly to us. And they did have one more Frantic raid after that. I took off to be a part of it. And we had bad weather and were recalled. And during the recall session the next day, my co-pilot had to have a wisdom tooth pulled, so the next day when they took off, my crew stood down and didn’t go on that. But that was the final one then because by that – well, I guess part of the reason it was recalled was not only the weather but they could not get permission from the Russians to allow them to land in Russia again. And this kept on. The negotiations worked back and forth. And finally they did get permission to go in, but when they did, apparently Warsaw had already fallen. But at that point they figured that, well the relations were so poor, they wouldn’t try it again.
KS: I wonder if you would like to relate the story about Paul ………….?
EF: (Laughing) Oh, we could try that. Paul, of course, was the fella that I’d gone through training with and he had his crew there. We were very close. When we got to Poltava, he was flying an aircraft that was one of the oldest ones in the group. And it had scores of bomb missions painted on it. Berlin Bessie was the name of it and it was on one side, and I knew it was on the other side. And it stood out because all the rest of us were flying the aluminum B-17’s without any camaflouge color on them. When we parked our aircraft, why he was parking right next to me. And a jeep load of Russians pulled up and they wanted to know where the commander was. And of course they’re looking for General Fishner, who’s head of this organization, or Muller, or Sullivan, or Colonel Truesdale for that matter. The gunner that he talked to said, “Well, the commander will be down in just a moment.” Now we’d had a command order come through that the pilots would now be called aircraft commanders, and the co-pilot would be the pilot. Well, he thought that they wanted to aircraft commander, and so he says, “The commander will be down in a moment.” Paul Kleis comes down (chuckle) and they take him as the commander then, and he doesn’t know what’s going on. They put him a jeep and they take him over to headquarters and they roll out the barrels of vodka and this sort of thing. And they have quite a party. I really didn’t think anything about it because, when they took him away that way. But later on that evening, they were putting on a performance for us. And they had a large building which was completely bombed out. But what was left was the concrete floor, and the side wall foundations. And they had chairs placed there, and they built a stage down at the end. So Paul and I went in, and we were seated along with everybody else. And here they had the Generals’ chairs all across the stage. The Russian Generals were there, General Kistner, Colonel Truesdale, Colonel Muller and all of them are lined up on the stage. And this young lady interpreter came by, and she spotted Paul sitting next to me. And she said, “Oh there you are. We’ve been waiting for you.” And he looks kind of funny. Paul is a good-looking guy, tall, but he also embarrasses easily and he was bright red-faced at the moment. He was wearing an overseas cap and I was wearing the service cap with the bill and the eagle on it. And he says, “Give me your cap.” Paul was a First Lieutenant; we were First Lieutenants at the time. And he says, “Give me your cap.” And I says, “What do you want my cap for?” He says, “They think I’m the Commander.” I says, “Paul, forget about it.” I says, “I once thought I was Napoleon, but I was okay. You’ll get over it.” And he said, “Shut up. This is no time for joking.” He said, “There’s been a mix-up here.” At that point he didn’t say give me your hat anymore. He just took his hat and placed it on my head and took mine. And then she led him up to the stage and she seated him in the seat of honor ahead of General Kistner, right next to the Russian General. At that point, the program started. Well, the next morning we went to breakfast. And here I was with Paul again, and we were escorted into the General’s tent and we were having our breakfast there. And the lady came in to do the serving then, and she served the coffee and gave us the coffeepot. And General Kistner said, “I’ve got to tell you, we serve by rank and not by good looks in this man’s army.” And he came over, and he got the coffee (laughing). At this point, I started to laugh and I said, “You know Paul, this is going to make one hell of a story when we get back to England.” General Kistner turned back to me and he said, “Listen, this story stops right here.” He said, “There’s been a mix-up and we don’t intend to embarrass anybody by it.” He said, “The only ones that know about it are you guys here, and the rest of us.” And he said, “If word of this ever gets out,” he said, “I’ll have your hide hanging on the wall. Do you understand me?” “Yes, we get the message, sir.”(Chuckle). Well, we got out of there all right. Paul got back to his airplane and the General got on board. And he indicated to Paul that he’s going to fly in the co-pilot’s seat. And Paul said, no he had to have his co-pilot. This was going to be a long mission. We’re going into Tresbinia now. We’re going to be ten hours out. He’ll have to have his co-pilot. Turns out the Russian General is also a rated pilot too. And so he said he was going to go, even if he couldn’t have the co-pilot’s seat. They have a leather belt that sets between the two seats that hooked up for our engineer – used to sit between and he could work the throttles and this sort of thing. So they hooked up the leather belt and they put the Russian General between (laughing) and he flew the raid to Tresbinia with us.
RC: Tell us just a little bit about your crew.
EF: Well I had – I think everybody probably thought they had the best crew there was. We were very fortunate. When we first started out, I received an engineer who had been a Staff Sergeant for several years. He was a very experienced individual. A lot of the fellas got good engineers who came direct from flight school. But to have a man who already worked, who understood the military system, how to take care of his men and how to take care of your machine, to me, it was a real boost. And I thought the man was worth his weight in gold. The other people that I had were all new to the service, but they were wonderful guys. And they all did their part, and together we thought we made a pretty good crew. I had a co-pilot that I thought was very capable. He was rather impulsive, but that’s okay. I was more laid back, so maybe it paid something to have a little bit on the other side. His desire was to become a first pilot, and by the time we finished our 20th mission, why he was given a crew of his own then and allowed to become a first pilot. And I felt that he had never seen a B-17 until he was put on our crew, so we had to start from scratch with him. But I felt that we had done a good job with him, that he had done a very capable job to be able to take over a crew then, and to finish up as a first pilot.
RC: What was life like on the base when you weren’t flying? What did you do?
EF: Well, there really wasn’t an awful lot to do. But I had a very interesting experience, and this is what happened. When we were going through Ardmore, Oklahoma, I had an instrument instructor there by the name of Jim Franchowski. He was a First Lieutenant. He was a very fine instructor, and I at many times thought I owed my life to that man, because he did teach me how to fly instruments and we flew a lot of it when we got there. Well, when I had about 15 missions in, or 16, this Jim Franchowski shows up in the 95th Bomb Group. And he comes down to the barracks. He’s now a Captain. And he said, “I was going down the pilots list.” And he said, “I saw Fletcher on the pilots list.” He said, “I thought I would come down and see if you were my student.” And he said, “Lo and behold, here it is.” And I said, “Well Jim, what are you going to do?” And he said, “Well, I really don’t know.” He said, “I don’t really have a job yet. I just got on the base here.” And he said, “They haven’t assigned me anything.” Well, about the next raid we went on, and I don’t remember which one it was now, but it was to Merseburg, and I suspect it was probably around our 20th mission, the 44th squadron got shot up pretty good that day. And Major Palmeri, who was our squadron commander, was hit and was incapacitated. And so he was transferred out. About two or three days later, Jim Franchowski came down. He’s now wearing oak leaves. And I said, and Jim said, “Well, I got a job.” And I said “Well good Jim, what’s your job?” He said, “Now I’m your squadron commander. I’m your boss.” “Yes sir” (laughter) And so, we had sort of a relationship there that, as we were on the base, I would go to Major Franchowski, and I would say, “Look, if there’s anything around here that has to be done, please assign it to my crew. There’s too much idle time on the base. And we’re sitting around; they get the jitters and this sort of thing. If you’ve got an engine that needs to be slow timed, or if you want somebody to ride somewhere or do something, keep my crew busy. Because I don’t want them to be laying around here. I want them to be thinking about something all the time rather than dwelling on trying to pass time by playing cards and this sort of thing. And __________ will keep them out of the club.” And so Jim was true to his word. He said, “If I’ve got work for you, I’ll give it to you.” And he did. So we got a lot of jobs around. We would go down and help the ground crew – well actually we probably got in their way more than anything else. We would go down, express and interest in the plane, well what can we do to help, you know. This sort of thing. We also would compensate the compasses on the airplane. This was a very time consuming job. You had to take the airplane down on compass rows and go through all the procedures of correcting the magnets on the thing to make them right. I think we did that on every plane in the 412th, probably three or four different times, just to have something to do – make work.
RC: How much time did you spend off the base?
EF: Well, we would of course go to London. That of course was an experience in itself. There really wasn’t an awful lot to do when you got to London, except trying to find a pub, find something to drink. We did, a time or two, find the Allied Officers’ Club. We weren’t in healthy pursuits, I guess we’ll put it this way.
KS: What I had never thought about, but your comments bring to mind. Were the museums closed during the war? Were they secreted the treasures away so they wouldn’t be damaged?
EF: Yes. Everything had been placed in vaults and this sort of thing. In fact, all the statues in the city of London had been encased in a hard type, I guess you’d just call it a hardened compound so that when bombs fell, the statues would not be damaged. So all of the libraries and everything, as far as I know, had taken steps to protect their stuff and nothing was left out as far as I know. Although I will say that we didn’t inquire about museums, I don’t recall that any of them were ever open. We did a time or two, think about going over to Cambridge, and started that way a time or two. But we didn’t make it because we started going through other bases and seeing people that we knew. But that was going to be our one academic interest, was to go to the University. But we never made it there.
KS: Did they have any of the things, like the changing of the guard at that time?
EF: Yes, and it was not as spectacular as today, but they did go through a ritual. And we attended that a time or two. But there are some things that even the war did not stop. And the changing of the guard was one thing that still went on. Like I said, it was not quite as spectacular as it would be today. But it certainly went on, yes.
KS: How about the theatres? Were they open?
EF: Oh my. We had theatres. The only ones that come to my mind were the burlesque ones (laughter). But the Piccadilly, which was the heart of the entertainment district of London, that’s where the theatres were. As I recall, our main entertainment when we got to London was the movies. And of course we had movies on the base, but they weren’t as like being in a movie theatre. You sat on a cracker box when you were back on the base and watched it out in the open somewhere. But London was an experience in that you never knew when it was going to be bombed. Or you never knew when one of the V-1’s or V-2’s would come in. Of course the V-2, you didn’t know it was there until it exploded. The V-1 was rather an interesting bomb because it was propelled and its range was determined by the amount of fuel that was placed on it. And when the fuel ran out, why it would fly at about 2000 feet or something like this, and when the fuel ran out, it would just crash wherever it was. So you always had about, probably, 10 or 15 seconds to worry about when the engine stopped until the thing was going to hit. We did have one of those land on the base too at Horham, which was kind of an interesting one that day. We heard it coming, and everybody should have gone to the air raid shelter, but we didn’t. Well, it’s running, it won’t hit here. We had quite a group in the barracks where we were. And all of a sudden, the engine quits. And it’s right over us. So the only thing I can think of to do was to dive under the bed, which I did. There was a buddy there visiting me, and when I dove under the bed, he immediately flopped down and grabbed the mattress off of the bed and pulled it over him. And I had, for protection, just the springs. I’m looking up through the springs at the top of the Quonset. Well, it lands about 100 yards away. It makes quite a hole in the field, but nobody was hurt. But I let my friend know that I didn’t appreciate his usurping my protection (chuckle).
RC: You indicated spending time visiting friends on other bases. Was there a lot of that going on, or did you happen to know people before you got over there and knew where they were?
EF: We would occasionally meet someone in London. And then they would tell us where another person was. And they would probably meet them in London too. And they would know where another person had been stationed. And that way we were able to find out where they were. But a time or two, by trying to make contact, we’d get there, and they’d be on a mission or something and so you found out it was a futile gesture, usually to try it. So whenever you bumped into someone, it would probably be in London or some place like that, down in the Piccadilly area, because that’s where everybody was. We stayed in a hotel called the Regents Palace. And this is a hotel that apparently accepted Americans. I don’t ever recall too many English people ever being there. But it was hit a time or two on the top floors. And they had closed the top floors then. So it was the challenge of the thing. We’d be there. When you heard the air raid siren there, though, you went for cover. In London, you didn’t stand around like we did on the base. We got a little lackadaisical about it while we were on the base.
KS: You have written a book, mostly compiled with the letters that Sherry saved during the war. Could you tell us something about that?
EF: Well, the book was never designed for publication, as far as I was concerned. It was a book that was put together for my family and for my friends. And I had gone to a private printer, and asked him if he would print it for me. He said, “Well, there’s only one in 5,000 manuscripts that are worthy of publication.” And I said, “I’m not worried about publication. I only want to fix this up for my family and friends.” And so I left him the manuscript. And he called me within two days and he said, “I will be very happy to do the book for you.” And so this was on about a Saturday night, or a Friday night I guess it was. And Monday I was in his office, and he said, “No, I’ve had some – my conscience is bothering me.” And I said, “I realize that it’s not all that great.” He said, “No, what bothers me is that you have a manuscript that will be published for you by other people. There’s no reason for you to pay me to make this book.” And I said, “Oh, you’re kidding me.” He said, “No, I’m not kidding.” And he said, “I really feel seriously enough about it, that my conscience won’t be clear until you send it somewhere first.” I said, “I don’t know any place to send any of these things.” He said, “Well I’ll tell you what. You send the manuscript to the University of Washington, and if they turn you down, then” he says, “I’ll do it for you.” Well we sent it to the University of Washington and within a week they said we want to do the book for you. And that was how the book got printed. They assigned the manuscript to their history department. And the history department studied it to make sure that it’s authentic and this sort of thing. But the interesting thing, the thing that interested them was that we were using the letters and we were using the diaries of the crewmembers. So what we had was the writings that took place on day or the day after that it happened. We weren’t trying to think back 50 years and put this together. So with our own impressions of what we saw on that particular day – and this is what intrigued them. Here, this is first hand information. It isn’t somebody trying to recall something 50 years later. And this is why they were so intrigued about it. They published two books for me. The first one was called Fletcher’s Gang, which was the combat phase, and the second one was called Mister, which was the cadet phase of the training of an aviation cadet. They put those two books out. And before Mister hit the market, Doubleday found out about them, and Doubleday requested from the University the right to put the two books together in an Omnibus Edition, which they called The Lucky Bastard Club. The title derived from the fact, in my correspondence, I had let people know that when you finished your 35 missions, you joined what was called the Lucky Bastard Club. You had a dinner and this sort of thing. You got a certificate. And when I finished, I already had a job at Wing. They shoved me out so fast that I didn’t get my certificate. I didn’t get my dinner. So they said, 50 years later, we want to make it up to Fletcher. We want to call the book The Lucky Bastard Club – have them try to atone 50 years later for him not being able to have his dinner (laughing).
KS: When you left, Sherry was pregnant I guess with your first child?
EF: Right
KS: How long did it take for you to find out that your son had been born and also what was your homecoming like, the first introduction?
EF: Okay. Dexter was born; it turns out that he was almost a month overdue. I’m sweating this out because the letters are slow coming in anyway. And during the time that we were on the shuttle raid, the letter arrived about the day we left for the shuttle raid. And I didn’t get it until we finished the Frantic raid. When we got home from the Frantic raid, we had received the news then that I was now a proud papa. But when we were in Italy before we left, we had picked up all sorts of cantaloupe, watermelons, and some sparkling vino. And part of the sparkling vino exploded in the airplane when we got to altitude. But we did get home with enough that we could have a real party. So we had a squadron party then for the group around me that knew what I was and celebrated my becoming a father, consuming all of the vino and the rest of the watermelon. Now when I got home, I was really looking forward to this. Like I said, I took my time before I went home, because I wanted to be civilized again before I went back. I guess you wouldn’t say that we were uncivilized, but it was just a totally different environment. No one was looking forward to meeting a family more so than I was. At the opposite end, first out of the bat, it turned out that I would have two more sons before I got a daughter, but that’s the way life is (chuckle). But it was a touching reunion, and to be able to see your son for the first time. There were times when we were there, you know, you wondered whether you’d ever see your wife again. Would you ever see your son? And all of a sudden it happens. It’s over with now, and you’re back home. And you’re a family again.
RC: We’re just about out of time, so we’d like to give you the opportunity to say anything that you’d like to, to relay any message that you’d like to have conveyed as part of this.
EF: Oh, the only thing I could say was that I really wish we had accomplished something lasting. What we accomplished was only momentary. At that particular time we thought we were fighting the war to end all wars. We now found out that we were just fighting another war. And it had its time and it solved its own particular problem at that particular moment. But it did not solve any problems of the world, which is unfortunate for us. We fail to learn from history, I guess is what it boils down to. Our world is still topsy-turvy. We still have armed aggression, which we had hoped was the thing that we were going to prevent.
RC: I know that with your books, obviously you have made an attempt to relate that to the world in general. How did you try to relate these same experiences to your own family and your own children?
EF: Well, I was probably very negligent in that way. I did not talk about the war with my children. And it wasn’t until I was finally convinced to do the book and put these things together that my children ever heard anything about the war. The two boys were actually old enough to, when I was recalled during the Korean affair, and we had some time in the service then when the children were in school, and they got to see a little bit about military life. But they did not receive anything about World War II. It wasn’t until the books finally came out that the kids learned anything about my experiences there anyway. I don’t know. It was just something that you put in the background and you didn’t want to talk about. I suppose I should say, when I told you about Jim Franchowski, it was his wife who saw some of my notes and this sort of thing and convinced me that I should do a book. My wife had always told me I should. But that was family. But when Mrs. Franchowski sat down with me and said, “Look, you have this. You’ve got to pass it on,” and appealed to me, I did go ahead and do it then. And that’s when my children first became aware that their dad had anything really to do with – other than the fact that over the years as kids they drug my A-2 jacket around and this sort of thing. That was their closest connection with the war.
KS: One thing, and I know I’ve asked this of you before – Sherry saved your letters, but you didn’t save hers. I’d like to know why you didn’t save hers.
EF: I felt that her letters were personal. And of course every mission that you went out, you weren’t sure whether you were coming back. So I didn’t want anybody else to read her letters at that particular point. So her letters were always burned, and any of my personal things that I felt I didn’t want other people to see, were burned before I went on a mission. It was very interesting, because I think it was on my second mission, that we heard an airplane call in that they were in distress and they were going down. And they said, “Could we talk to your navigator?” to this other ship, and they put the navigator on. And he said, “So and so, would you destroy all of the correspondence of our navigator when you reach the base?” And he promised that he would. And I don’t know what his correspondence was that he didn’t want to go on, but in the war I thought about this and I thought no, I don’t want my personal things here. And chances are, I don’t think they’ll be sent home. There are some things that will be sent home, but there are other things that won’t be. So that’s why I never kept hers then. They would have been nice to have had. I agree with you there. But not know if you were going to finish, and there were times when you wondered if you would or not. You hoped you would.
(Break in tape)
EF: When Boeing had their big celebration, which was called the 50th anniversary of the roll out of the B-17, KING-TV decided they wanted to do a documentary. And they wanted crews from the Pacific Northwest. I should say about these crews that people were put on crews from different geographical areas, so if an airplane went down, you wouldn’t have two people from the same area going down. Well the navigator, who was from Ohio, eventually moved back to Washington. So he was living in Washington then, so the co-pilot and myself and the navigator are all Washingtonians. So they contacted us and wanted to know if we’d be a part of their documentary then. So they put the whole crew back together again, and they got Sentimental Journey, which was the Confederate Air Force’s B-17, and they brought that in. And they put the whole crew together and put us back on board so we could fly the last mission of World War II (chuckle) in 1985. And of course, this is where I had supplied all the material for them. And this is where Alice Franchowski saw the material that I was supplying to them for their documentaries then. As a result of that then, is where the impetus to put out the book came from.
KS: What were your feelings when the whole crew….?
EF: Oh, it was overwhelming, to say the least. You hadn’t seen these people for over 40 years. And all of a sudden you’re back together again, and you’re placed on – it’s nostalgia. And of course, to get in the airplane, and each one get in his old position, and to call one another. And here we are. We’re old men now, and a voice came over the intercom. It was the same voice that I heard 50 years ago. The timbre was there, and when you couldn’t see the guy – okay, this was the guy that was there before. There was one thing that we did have. I thought that the crewmembers always had a lot of respect for one another. Each one respected the other fellow’s job and knew that he would do his best to take care of you. And I hope that was a message that I left with them from the very beginning, that we were there together, and we’re not going to be any better than our weakest link, so let’s not have a weak link. Let’s everybody do the very best we can. They were very professional.
RC: We thank you very much for sharing this with us and hopefully with history. And we certainly share your hope that the message will be conveyed and the lessons will be learned.