Frank Martin
95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2007 REUNION SAVANNAH, GA
(Interviewed by Tom and Peggy Cozens)
FM: My name’s Frank Martin. Today’s May the 23rd, 2007. We’re in Savannah, Georgia in a conference room. And my years of service was something like two years, and from ’42 to the end of ’44. I was with the 95th Bomb Group, 412thSquadron, stationed at Horham, England. And I was a tail gunner. Career, that was career what?
PC: I think that was tail gunner.
FM: Yeah, that was my position. I was a tail gunner. You want me to just start at the beginning about what I did and where we were?
TC: Can you tell me what you were doing right before you got in the service?
FM: Well, I was in school before I went into the service. I was at Auburn. Then I dropped out because they were going to draft me. And I volunteered. They sent me, McLellan, Fort McLellan, Alabama, which is no longer in business now. But they shipped us down to Miami Beach. They had taken over some hotels down there, and we walked up and down Collins Avenue, I guess a million times, to the golf course where we took training of trying to march. Finally they got that accomplished, I think half way. And we shipped out of there and went to Denver, Colorado – went to Lowry Field for pursuit armament. Then there was a notice on the bulletin board. We were poor kids and didn’t have anything, so we saw this notice on the bulletin board – they needed gunners. And they would pay us 50% more for flying pay. In other words, from $60 a month, we’d get $90-something a month. And I got a couple of boys to go with me. We joined up to go to gunnery training.
So they shipped us over to Buckley – we went to Buckley first, then to Lowry Field, heavy bombardment. And we had to train for machine guns and 45 pistol. Had to learn how to take those things apart and put them back together – 50 caliber machine gun – blindfolded, with a nail, just a nail. We could dismantle and reassemble. So when we finished that course we were put on trains, and wound up in Las Vegas, Nevada at Las Vegas Army Air Base, which at that time, they didn’t have a strip. I guess you could have bought that land for 50 cents an acre where the strip is now (chuckling). So we started training.
First started out shooting BB air rifles, knocking over – you’ve seen them in county fairs – knocking over little targets as they run by. Then we got the 22 rifle target practice. They just moved us on up. Then we, I guess we shot a train load of skeet, shotguns and skeet. We shoot ground stations first. Then they had a track. They put you in the back of a pick-up truck. All this was teaching you to lead your target. And we’d be traveling around in the pick-up truck, I think at 20 miles an hour, and they’d shoot a clay pigeon out, and we had to try to hit thing. And they had one where we were going, in one direction, the target went back there, the skeet went back that way. You just had to aim out about 20 feet in front, pull the trigger, and hope you hit it. But all that was teaching just to lead the target. And then we graduated from there. Of course we gunnery training, machine guns, and shooting ground to air. And a little piper cub would come by dragging a sock. And the way they could tell who hit the sock, was they dipped the points of each – your bullet had different colors. If I had the purple, well they’d count the purple holes. If you didn’t have any purple holes in it, I missed the whole thing completely (chuckling).
We graduated from that then to add air. And that was my first plane ride. It wasn’t an AT-6. The one just below that, it was a trainer, a tandem job – one in front and back. I’d never been up in a plane I my life. And the pilot me, he said, “Now I’m going to wiggle my wings.” And we had safety belts that were about two feet long each with snaps on the end.. He called it the gunner’s belt, and had a big strap around – fire belt. He said, “The first time I wiggle my wings, I want you to undo your safety belt, stand up and fasten your gunner’s belt. Then we’re going to peel off going on target.” Had a little 30 caliber machine gun mounted on the side. Of course another plane was pulling the windsock. The same thing, we had to shoot at the windsock. He wiggled his wings, and I’d heard of air pockets. He didn’t wiggle it very much. The next time he wiggled his wings, “Okay, undo your safety belt, stand up and fasten gunner’s belt.” Just as I undid my safety belt, whooom, he dropped that thing up at about 90 degrees, and I just grabbed two handful of cables on each side (laughter), and held on until he straightened it out. I’d undo one handful of cables at a time, and fasten this gunner’s belt. But I never did say anything to him about it. Went ahead and done my shooting. And we had one boy, I know that’s exactly what happened to him. He fell out of the plane, went and slid back on the tail, his feet tucked under the horizontal stabilizer, straddled the fuselage on the tail (chuckling). Of course we all had our parachutes on. They took him back over to the field. They told him, said, “Tell him to bring _______________________ the pilot _______________________. He’d do this and he’d shake his head, no way. He did that twice. And the third time, he called the tower, then they said, “Bring it over the field and roll it.” You’ve got to dump him off. You can’t land with him back there, because he was flying tail heavy. They brought him back over the field, and rolled the plane up, and he fell off. And he pulled his rip cord and landed right off the runway. The jeep was running out to pick him up. He was standing up undoing his parachute harness, and just peeled over, just fainted, just like you knocked him in the head with a rock. But anyway, that’s some of the things that took place in gunnery school.
So from there, we went to, I guess to… Well, let’s see, we went to Alexandria, Louisiana is where we formed our crews at. And we trained flying night missions and training bombardiers then, flying as a crew. Of course we didn’t fly at altitude then. We were flying at low altitude, maybe 10,000 feet. But the bombardier had figured it out. Since I – the armament on the crew, the camera was fastened to the belly of the plane with wing nuts. So I took all the wing nuts off. If he had a good hit, I’d pick the camera up, turn it 90 degrees, and let it back down (chuckling), and shoot some more, like he’d crossed the target in a different direction. So he scored very well in bomber’s training. From there though, we went to Salt Lake City and formed our crews, then went back to Alexandria, Louisiana in training. And from there issued a brand new airplane to ferry it overseas.
We went up to Salt Lake, I guess, where we got our new plane. And went through Newfoundland. Of course our pilot, Roy Giland, he was from Louisiana. He’d never seen ice/snow. And we were parking the plane, and the wing came up the snow bank – blown out of the runway. And when the wingtip got up to it, he just gunned those two engines on that side. When we slipped back, turned up about four feet of our wing tip. So we were stranded in Newfoundland for a week, waiting on a wing tip. And of course there’s a lot of them got delayed there in the hospital, breaking legs skiing, trying to ski. I was trying to ski. That old gal in the PX, I asked her could she ski. “Oh yeah.” I said, “I’d like to go skiing.” “Well you go ahead and train.” I trained there for about three days. And I could go over little rises and humps and go straight away just fine. I thought I had it knocked. So we went down to the ski hill. When I looked down that ski hill, in the bottom, it had a turn - pretty sharp turn.. And the a jump. But past that turn, there was nothing but bushes. I don’t guess the largest one was over an inch. And there was a river. So she wanted me to head off first. No, ladies first, because I was about to chicken out as it was. And she just gracefully went across and back. She got about half way down, she waved me on. I said, “This ski cat from Alabama’s not going to chicken out now.” So I shoved off. I’d turn on those things and nothing would happen. And I was gaining speed all the time. I passed – whooooh! She was hollering, “Fall! Fall!” That’s no way to get out of this thing (chuckling). But I did, I hit those bushes straight away, and those skis turned back under me. And when I stopped, couldn’t even scratch my nose. The skis never did come off. They just turned backwards under me. She ran there and got the skis off. Wanted to know if I was hurt. And I put those things on my shoulder and I went back, checked them back in.
Of course, those things is like….the engineer was Morgan, and he said, “Let’s go do some ice skating.” He said, “You’d like that.” And of course ice skates in the army is two sizes – large and large. Now ice skates have to fit. The shoes have to fit. So I went up on the lake there. It was frozen over – sat down and put my skates on. So I tried to stand up on that thing. Both feet would turn out. I’d get them back up again, and maybe both of them would turn in. And I got them up one time, and I made one step, and both of them went right out from under me. And the first thing that hit the ice was the back of my head. And I crawled back to the bank, and pulled my skates off. I knew that wasn’t for me.
About that time they got our wing fixed and we flew on into Scotland. We thought that was going to be our plane. Boy, we was going to have a new plane. But we landed in Scotland, and there were just acres of new planes sitting out there. They took our plane away and put us on a train. We went down to what they call the wash. It was down near the Channel, but south, I guess southwest of London. We could see the bombing London at night. Search lights and anti aircraft and all that stuff. And finally we was shipped up to Horham as a replacement crew in the 95th. And that was some time in March of ’44, or February or March of ’44.
And then on the 11th of April, the afternoon of the 11th, some crew came by and said, “You’re flying tomorrow.” And I said, “You’re ribbing me, you’re kidding me.” They said, “No, you’re on the flight list up there.” I said, “How about the rest of the crew?” They said, “No, you’re flying as a tail gunner for some other crew.” And come to find out, he had had a misfortune, and ammunition boxes blew up on him. You’re sitting right between, the tail gunner’s sitting right between five hundred rounds of ammunition on each side. And a piece of flak or something hit the cap and set them off. And it just blew those – there were a few pieces that came through the skin of the plane, but it looked like an alligator just shot up – just banged all over. I didn’t even look at him. I went back to the room, the deal, where we go up and sweat them in, you know. We was up there, and when this one started landing with the flare, the red flares, we ran down to the hard stand to see what was wrong. Of course that was a mistake.
But I flew three missions with that crew. And the first mission, we went to Oxburg, Germany. That mission, without a doubt, was the worst shot up mission we ever had. We had over 200 holes in the plane, the crew chief said. And they was asking me, when I came off the target, “How are you going to like this, Martin?” I said, “I don’t think I’m going to like it.” (chuckle) You have to be a kind of half way nut or something or other to go through that. I’d rather have fighters any day, even though they’re more deadly, than have flak. Because you’re fighting back.
After three missions, then my crew left the ground and started flying, so I went back with them. I flew, I guess 32 with them. And the day I finished, they shipped me out the next day. And I never got addresses or anything, of my crew – home addresses, phone number, anything. Of course maybe part of it was “Let me out of here.” I just wanted to get out of here. But I’ve seen two of them in the states. I got back – of course they give you the song and dance, “You through with the war?” And you’d be stationed at the base nearest your home. And we left. I got to fly back, with a little Lieutenant up in Scotland where de-imbark, whatever they call it, where we left to come back to the states. He asked me did I want to fly back. Come to find out, he was from Birmingham, Alabama. He kept looking at me, and I kept looking at him. He came up to the table. We were eating, and said, “Don’t I know you?” “I think you do, or I think I should know you. You’re face looks familiar.” I said, “Where are you from?” He said, “Birmingham.” Of course I was from Clanton at that time – just 65 miles south of Birmingham. I have no idea where I ever saw him, or he ever saw me. But he said, “You want to fly back home?” I said, “Man, you tell it.” (Laughing) I got my stuff together the next day. They loaded us on a plane. We got back, came back, where did we come back into – well, New York. And had to go through briefing. And I had just picked up – of course they issued us 45 pistols right after D-Day, because they were expecting the Germans to drop paratroopers and all that kind of stuff just to kind of mess up the whole works. But they never did. And our crew in our barracks, they got shot down, and I got one of the 45’s. And I had two brand new 45’s. They told us, “We’ll take your vacation away. You won’t get to go home, blah, blah, blah.” We were in line then – came into LaGuardia Field, I believe – coming through Customs. And the co-pilot was out in front of me. He asked the guy that was checking us through, he said, “What about firearms.” He said, “I don’t care if you’ve got a German 88 anti-aircraft gun. All we’re interested in is documents and photographs.” Well I had a big pack of photographs that had already been censored in England and failed. So I was sick, because it hadn’t been ten hours before I’d left two new 45’s sticking between mattresses in Scotland. I chickened out.
But they told, they said, “You’re through with the war. You’ll be based at your base nearest home.” So when I got home, I told my family, I said, “I’ll be based here at Maxwell Field, or Craig Field or Garner Field.” All of them was right there. Two of them was in Montgomery, and one in Selma. We thought we had it made. We went on down, back to Miami. About 30 days of nothing but debriefing mainly – physicals and getting shots and all that stuff. Got ready to ship out, and it was the first time I ever really wanted to kill a man. I went into this table, and he looked at my paperwork. He said, “Oh yeah. Craig Field, Garner Field, Maxwell Field - all in Alabama.” And I said, “That’s right.” He looked over and said, “I can send you Amarillo, Texas or Denver, Colorado. Which one you want?” And if I’d had a gun, I believe I’d have killed him. I’d believe I’d shot him. (Chuckling) And thought no more about it than shooting a rabbit. But all this build up they’d given us, see.
I said “Give me Denver; I’ve been there before.” Which was a nice town. The friendliest people and the nicest people you ever saw. And you’d have to slip out the back gate on Sunday morning if you wanted to go to town or something. The cars just lined up there to take you to dinner, wanted you to go home and have lunch with them. They were just that kind of people. They were great people. So when I got through there, they said, “We’re running an armament school here. We just can’t let you lay around.” They said, “We’ll give you a refresher course.” Well it took me about six months to finish a six weeks course. And I said “I get enough of this. I better see where the next stage is.” And so help me, they sent me to Kingman, Arizona to gunnery school.
I went to gunnery school in Las Vegas, so they sent me out to Kingman, Arizona. Same story. We run a gunnery school. We can’t just let you lie around. Of course we all had class A passes. We could go and come as we please. Half the time we stayed in town. And especially in Denver – have somebody else answer roll call. (chuckle) But anyway, while we was there, the Germans surrendered.
Finally they shipped me down to Greenwood, Mississippi, supposedly pickling airplanes – you know, take the plugs out and pour oil in the cylinders to keep them from rusting and all that kind of stuff. But somehow or another I escaped that detail. I don’t know how. But they would give them a quota. If you did so many, you was off for the rest of the day. Well half of them would be back in the barracks by noon. So they raised the quota (chuckling).
But anyway, finally after that, they sent me over to Maxwell Field in Montgomery to get my discharge. I finally made it to Maxwell Field. So when I got ready to get my discharge, they handed it to me and there was another table, “You want to get in the Reserves?” I said, “No sir, buddy. Don’t you bother me, and I won’t call you.” (Chuckling) I was through and all done. And I went home then. That was the end of my services. That was sometime, the latter part of ’44. I could have gotten out, but they left an air medal off my discharge papers. I had, I think, five air medals. We had two presidential citations for the group. With my Distinguished Flying Cross, I could have gotten out early. But I couldn’t find – they left the off my records, but I had a copy of the Citation. But I had mailed it home to my mother and she couldn’t find it. So I stayed in the damn army (laughing) about two or three months longer than I should. You know they was discharging us on the point system. If you had so many points, so many years of service counted, so many points, a medal of this, whatever. That’s how we got discharged, by the number of points we had. It’s an experience I wouldn’t take a million dollars for, but I wouldn’t go back for ten million. They’re going to have to be wading ashore before I get involved again, but I’ll get involved if that starts.
TC: Would you mind telling us a little bit about the air medals, the citations. I know you guys are pretty modest.
FM: Well I had a TV interview about two weeks before I came over here. A friend of mine, he flew P-47’s, and he got shot down. But he got back into the friendly lines, on our side of the lines. He didn’t get captured, but he got the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, and Distinguished Flying Cross. Of course the Distinguished Flying Cross is mainly because, they asked me “How’d you get that?” I said, “Survival.” And that’s about what it is – you survived 35 missions. It wasn’t any particular mission. They just award you that when you finished a tour of missions. Of course I think it was 25 missions when I started flying over there, and they jumped it. They said the missions were getting easier. And Germany’s running out of pilots. They wanted us to fly a few more missions than what they had started out at. Like the Memphis Belle, those people that lived through 25 missions back then in ’43, early part of ’43, and even the latter part of ’43, it was rough because they didn’t have enough escort. The fighter pilots couldn’t escort you all the way until they came out with the P-51 and put belly tanks on it. And as long as they had their belly tank, they could escort all the way to the target and back. But the Germans smartened up on that. The P-51’s wouldn’t dogfight with a belly tank hanging below. So the Germans would jump the escort when they crossed the Channel. The first thing the escort would do is drop the belly tanks. So therefore, they didn’t have enough gas to get to the target and back. So they’d have to drop us off soon – earlier. Someone asked me, they said, “You had escorts there and back, didn’t you?” I said, “Yeah. Some of them weren’t ours, but we had escorts.” (laughing) It’s quite an experience.
But the air medals they gave for every five missions – I forget what movie star came over there and flew as an observer for five missions. And he got decorated with air medal, so. Of course all of them right now, you can take all of them – with a dollar you can get a cup of coffee. I threatened to send mine back when they was giving that bunch amnesty that went to Canada. I don’t know what President was doing it. I was fixing to tell him to decorate those dudes. Of course my last mission, I didn’t think I’d get credit for. You take a group of planes. We was over the North Sea along about, oh somewhere around Holland. And we flew into a fog bank. And of course we was 21,000 feet. And we iced up. And of course your plane just comes to a stall, quits flying. And I guess the bombardier was watching the airspeed, and could see ice too on the outside forming. The pilot, no more than said jettison bombs, old Turner said “Bombs away.” But we almost didn’t make it out of that one.
I know at one time, being in the tail, that fog was coming back toward me. So we’d have had to have been falling backwards. And of course, I think it was 21 plane that flew in there at that time. They were turning, and the pilot hollered, “Watch out for planes!” And there was one, I saw just the fog rotating from behind the props. I didn’t see the plane. And I bet you he wasn’t 100 feet going in the opposite direction. But we fell it down to, I think, 10,000 feet, and got it straightened out. But we got back on the ground and landed. And our co-pilot told us, “Gentlemen, you owe your life here to Roy” the pilot. He said, “I was trying to roll us.” He’d gotten vertigo and he was trying to roll us on over. He said, “We’d have gone in the North Sea upside down. So Roy just overpowered him, grabbed the wheel, and rolled us back. Got it straightened out about 10,000 feet. I didn’t know for sure whether we were over enemy territory or not, whether I’d get credit for that mission. But sure enough. We must have been over enemy territory. They gave me credit for it, and that wound up my 35 missions.
We had an interesting thing to go on. We’d give the mess sergeant 10 shillings a month. And when we flew, that’s the only time we’d eat fresh eggs, is when we flew. We would have fresh eggs. And I started writing home and telling my people, my mother, that I had fresh eggs again this morning. Of course they didn’t mark that out when they censored the mail. And then they began to connect the fresh egg deal with the number of missions I was flying. They was keeping up with the number of missions by each day that we had fresh eggs But I was looking at my discharge not long ago, and I was over there six months. And from the day I left the states, of course I flew there and back, both directions, which added another week or so if I had gone by boat. But I was over there six month and thirteen days. Had 259 combat hours in 35 missions.
The shortest mission was something about four hours. You spend a lot of your time circling over England, because we couldn’t gain our altitude on the way because we were too close to the Channel, and could be over the Channel before we got our altitude. So we was circling, gathering together in a group, for about two hours before we ever started out on our mission. It might be a two hour mission, but we spent two hours of it over here circling around. But Dolittle was going to solve that for us. He had all the planes on the 95th equipped with flash protectors from the mufflers, where you couldn’t see it from the ground. We were going to fly two missions in one day. So we had a little fighter base across town that we bombed. Came back, while we was eating lunch, they were gassing up the planes and loading with bombs. Are you ready to go again? So we took off. And we got our group together and went over and bombed our target, and came back. It was after dark. And lo and behold, the Germans followed us back – German fighters (laughing). Every time a plane would come into land, here would come a German fighter, and the tower would turn the runway lights off. You’ve never heard such foul language in all your life that night. We’d been fighting them all day. Another few minutes was not going to make a bit – leave the damn lights on! Our crew chief told us if we’d gone around the field one more time, he said we wouldn’t have made it. We was that much near out of gas. So we just wouldn’t have made it. Turning the lights off while we were trying to get on the ground. We should have _____________ the tower while the lights were on. (laughing) How much time we got left over there? Have we used it up?
TC: We’ve got a few more minutes. Can you tell me, tell us a little more about your crew, what you remember about your ….
FM: Yeah. Of course, Roy, the pilot, Gillan, was from Louisiana – heck of a nice guy. Our co-pilot was Johnson, little short guy. He was from Pennsylvania. I never did like him. And I don’t think he liked me. We’d aggravate him, though. We’d be going to and from the mess hall. We’d reach up and scratch our nose. He’d salute you back (chuckling). Just to aggravate – reach up and wipe your nose. And he knew we was aggravating. But their lives depended on ours, and our lives depended on them. So we kissed and made up. Turner, this big old guy, from somewhere – I think it was from Houston, Texas. Big guy. He was the bombardier. He used to come by every Saturday some time during the day. “Now which one you want me to whip on tonight at the Officer’s Club? Which one you want me to get?” And of course, we never give him anybody to jump on. But he would have. Because he liked to fight. The navigator, he was a real nice guy. He was from Pennsylvania, I believe. But he was a nice guy.
The top turret gunner who wanted me to ice skate with him, he was from Oregon. Chuck Wetherell – Wether – ell, I guess he called it. And we had one guy on there that was married just before we went overseas. We covered for him while he got off the base and back the next day. He had the right idea. In the mornings, especially when we got 25 – 30 missions in – you might live through this thing. He’d go out and get – he started out on his first or second mission, raid the planes that wasn’t flying and steal their flak jackets. And of course those things weighed 60 pounds each. I didn’t know anything about weight and balance, but he started, he’d get over the target. He’d put three of them down in floor of the plane, lie down on them, and cover up with three (chuckling). I said, that’s pretty good protection. I think I’ll try that. So I had it lined up in that tail back there – looked like a padded tank, a padded cell for a nut. And we took off, and I kept seeing – the trip tab went right by my ear – I kept seeing the trim tab move. I didn’t know anything about weight and balance. And the plane was kind of mushy. We was flying tail heavy. And finally the co-pilot called back there and said, “Martin, how many flak jackets you got back there?” I said, “Just one.” He said, “You’re lying. Get ‘em out of there!” (Laughing) So I had to pass them up past the tail wheel where the waist gunner was dragging ‘em on up to balance the thing up. So I took off and landed in the tail nearly all the time. But that first mission, though, I was landing in the tail. We were taxiing down the taxi way and people kept pointing, and they was pointing at the tail. And we got down there and parked, and I jumped down and looked up at the tail. The rudder part of the tail was missing. It had come that close to taking off the rudder. I guess he brought it in by crabbing it, tilting it. But we got it in alright. You’d be so cold, you don’t know whether you’re hit or not. You’ve seen a rifle shot through a tin can when you was a kid. And you could tell which way the bullet went. We was flying over there one day and I saw the sun shining through a hole over there. We’d come off the target. And that direction was right toward my rear end. And I raised up, and I fell. It was so cold, you couldn’t tell if you were hit or not. I’d see if there was any blood. I picked up the side of this old canvas bag we carried those old fur lined pants and jackets in. I lifted I up, and there was a hole in it. And around on this other side, you have to look around, there’s where it went out the other side. It went right under my seat (chuckling). But that hole in that side over there was about that big, and it went into a bulkhead and lodged on its left side. And I thought that was getting pretty close. It’s like the plane we missed in he fog. I didn’t say anything. No point in “He missed us.” You call and say, “Well one just went by.” Well you start looking for another one. There was no point n saying anything about it We escaped that one. I had a friend in town. His brother was killed like that. It was some where up there over the North Sea. The plane on the right wing, they had some heavy artillery up through there – anti aircraft. And he caught one under the right wing – and he shot up and just came dragging right back across his brother’s plane. And there wasn’t a thing you could do about it.
Over Hamburg, well we had a crazy chief pilot, lead pilot with us that day. I think he was a Brigadier General or something. And we couldn’t see the target. Now they had 105 mm guns at Hamburg. They knew how to use them. He decided he’d take us down where we could see the target. We went out there and we turned around and came back at about 10 or 15 thousand feet. Now you talk about some planes – that dude ought to have been killed. Well, he might have gotten shot down. I don’t know. But you look around and you got a wing man over here, and you look back, he’s gone when you’re checking on this one over here. But our right wing man, if he’d have been up in position, we’d have had the same thing happen to us. He was low. And of course, with so much flak in the air, and hot air, it was tough riding. But he caught one on his right wing. But he slid under us and didn’t get into us. Those things get kind of hairy sometimes. After about 30 – 35 missions we’d been off a week I think. I think we were coming up on our – it was somewhere, 30 missions – mine, and they were three behind me. But we was on one target one day, the flak was tremendous. To keep from going crazy, you’ll count the holes in the side of the stabilizer, and go over here and count these holes, and see how much this side increased since the last time you counted them. That’s why I’d rather have fighters any day. They’re more deadly, but you’re fighting back. That kind of business there, you’re just sitting there. And it’s a little nerve racking.
On this TV interview I had a couple of weeks ago, they said “It’s a little hard to get out of that tail, isn’t it?” I said, “Not if it’s on fire. Don’t have a bit of trouble.” (chuckling) He agreed. But it’s – I guess we just won it by accident. Out materialed them is about what we did.. Had more material that they did, because we kept tearing theirs up, and did a pretty good job of it. But I never thought about any people that might have been killed. Because I’d run it back through my mind – they tried to kill civilians in London, all they could kill. And one, there’s a talk show a couple of years ago I was listening to. You could call in. There was discussion whether Truman should have dropped a second bomb on Japan. And he called and said, “I’m 45 years old, and I don’t think they should have dropped that second bomb on Nagasaki.” Hiroshima or Nagasaki, I don’t know which was first. But anyway, I thought, 45 years old. I don’t guess he knows anything about Pearl Harbor, if he could have seen that carnage. It didn’t bother me in the least for them to drop. And it didn’t bother me in the least to be dropping them on Germany. It was payback time. But I did have a chance to strafe a German pilot one day in his parachute. They had strafed some of our boys earlier. But they started turning the tables on them, and they “Whoa, that’s not fair.” But I let him go. I said, “Nay, see you tomorrow.” But my ball turret gunner, he was an ace. He got credit for five fighters. I never did claim one, because the way they figured it, if you was coming straight at me – they gave it to the guy that had the best chance of hitting him. He could have been coming straight at me, and me claim him and not fire a shot. Somebody over here shot him down. I’d get credit for it. I didn’t. I’m pretty sure I got one. I could tell when I hit him. Let’s cut this stuff out.
TC: Frank, that was great. Really do appreciate it.