Rollie Wilson

95TH BOMB GROUP (H)

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

2001 REUNION         LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

This is Janie McKnight with the Legacy Committee and we are interviewing Rollie Wilson.  Rollie will you state your name, today’s date and where we are?

RW:  OK, I’m Rollie Wilson, today’s date is October 3, 2001, and we are in Las Vegas.

JMcK:  What were your dates of service in the Army Air Corps.

RW:  Let’s see.  In the Air Corps - I tell you what - When I was in Atlantic City. That’s when I was put in the Air Corps.  We went to Atlantic City for military training - to learn how to march and all those things. Then they sent us down to Fort Myers, Florida to learn gunnery. From there we were sent to Del Rio, Texas and were assigned to crews.  At Del Rio we just flew as a crew and trained as a crew before we went across.  

JMcK:  What was the month and year that you first went to Atlantic City?

RW:  I gotta start way back, oh, boy.  The early part of 42 I think I went to Atlantic City.  Marched on the boardwalks and all that.  Stayed in the beautiful hotels except that all the goodies were taken out.  No carpet on the floor (laugh).  I know because I scrubbed those floors many times.

JMcK:  Where you were living when you went into the Army Air Corps?

RW:  I was living in Ohio.  I was living at Bucyrus, OH and I was working at Plum Brook Ordnance up in

Sandusky, OH. I didn’t realize it but they were building this plant to make ammunition.  The reason I went up   there was because I heard they needed operating engineers.  That’s what I was doing at the time - operating equipment.  When I got up there I went from 55 cents an hour which I was getting from the State of Ohio to $1.12.  I was so tickled to get that job. Later on I was promoted to $1.37.  WOW that was big money for me then - for a kid who was raised on a farm.   

JMcK:  How about the 95th?  When did you start serving with the 95th?  What were your dates?

RW:    Let’s see that would be about August 1943.  We’d come down from Scotland on a train and we were in tents in a field area. That’s when they sent us down to the 95th Bomb Group. That was my first experience with them.

JMcK:  What was your position in the Army Air Corps.  What position did you fly?

RW:  I was assigned as tail gunner.  It happened that I flew some other positions too. We trained as a crew but  when we got to Horham they needed a pilot so bad, the day after we got there they took our pilot and flew him as a co-pilot.  We lost him.  They didn’t have a pilot to give us so we were sent with different crews each time.

I flew with quite a few different crews.

JMcK: What affect did that have - losing your pilot right away when you got over to England?

RW:  Well, you’re kind of built into the fact that you realize something is going to happen sometime or another. I know it hurt us but, listen, we were over there for one purpose  We got our heads together - let’s give her all we’ve got.  We did, you know.  On the 4th mission, Munster, October 10,  I was flying with Lt. Reno and I got hit with flak.  There were oodles of fighters around there.  I was back in the tail and was hurting kind of bad.  I asked if one of the waist gunners would come back and relieve me.  Of course, we had a break there, no fighters coming in, so I scooted up to his position in the waist.  I looked out the window and here comes some more planes so I had to stay there in the waist and keep on.  After we got across the North Sea and got close to England I scooted up to the radio room, got out my knife and cut my suit to dress the wound.  Anyhow, the radio operator saw me, he said something and the navigator came back and helped me finish dressing the wound.  We landed at the first field we saw and, as we called it, the “meat wagon” hauled me off.  That was the last I saw of those guys. When I got back to Horham about four months later they were gone. They told me shortly after that mission they were all killed.  I just wonder if I’d been on that plane or - you never know. Sometimes I think maybe it was a blessing that I did get hit because I’m here today and those guys aren’t.

You’ve got to take things as they are.  Like I say, I flew with quite a few different pilots.  Some were pretty good and some were not so good, but, we made it.  

JMcK:  Did your crew all fly with different crews throughout the whole time you were in England.?

RW:  Yes, the Munster mission - the navigator, the bombardier and I were on that mission.  The navigator was killed, the bombardier was shot down and I was wounded - but I got back.  When I was in the hospital,

I was there quite a while to get patched up, one rainy day what was left of our original crew borrowed a jeep, found out where I was and they came over to see me.  They said, how long are you going to be in here?

I said I have no idea.  We’ll try to get a crew together with people we know.  We can use a tail gunner.  I said as soon as I get out of here.... When I finally did get back to base they were all gone.  I was the only one who came through on that deal.

JMcK:  How long were you in the hospital?

RW:  Four months. Flak tears a wicked hole so they took me someplace and trimmed the ragged muscle out.  I remember looking down through my leg, I could see right through it.  Then each day they had a nurse who would work the muscles and try to strengthen them - or lengthen them.  In time, when she got them far enough along they sewed them together.  Then they just doubled my other leg up and a guy took a straight razor, peeled some skin off my other leg and sewed it on my right leg and covered the hole with skin. Then after that I had to lie there pretty still for a number of days - I have no idea how many - and then they brought in a pair of crutches and said, here, try walking.  I did and after a while I put weight on that leg and I started moving it and I got so I could finally walk When I got so I could walk they sent me to another place for more therapy, I guess you’d call it.  When I got pretty well along, they sent me to a place where there were infantry men around. Some had gotten hurt and they wanted to get them back in condition.  I had pretty rough training there. I asked, how can I get out of this place?  It was in December/January - the weather was cold and miserable and we only had heat one hour at night in a pot belly stove.  They said, when you make a 12 mile hike with a full pack you can get out of here. Listen - my full pack was an army blanket stuffed in the pack to cut down on the weight.  I made the 12 mile hike but the guy behind me said, I thought you were going down a few times.  But, I made it.

We got back from the hike and of course, they reviewed everybody.  They said, how did you do?  I said, great. They said, you want to go back to the 95th?  Yes!  They called and were told, yes, send him back.  When I walked back into the hut where I stayed, my stuff was still there. There wasn’t much left though because somebody needed this and somebody needed that.  There were a few pieces there and I still remember it - a lot of strange pieces.  I had to learn and make friends all over again.

JMcK:  Did you go back onto a crew?  

RW:  No, I flew as an extra for a while; until I got about 17/18 missions in and they finally needed someone on this crew.  I filled in at this guy’s position and he wasn’t able to make it so I finished my missions with this crew.  That was kind of nice. You learn everybody’s actions under stress and that kind of stuff.  It worked pretty nice.

JMcK:  Tell me about a typical day on the base at Horham.

RW:  All right - we walked about a half a mile to get breakfast.  Everything was scattered out.  After breakfast we’d go back and check to see if there was anything going on.  Then you did your shaving - whatever had to be done - your personal things.  I remember right after we got there, we were all curious.  It was a bad day and nobody was flying and we inquired about a little village - Oxen.  Horham was in one direction and Oxen in the other. Oxen had a pub.  I wanted to see what an English pub was like.  We walked over there and found the pub. I guess what we had was a pint of                  .  They called it arf and arf.  Half dark and half light.  Nothing was refrigerated.  Room temperature.  Here they had a dart board up.  We threw darts for a few minutes.  Then we walked back.  Holy cow, we had a big time.  Let me tell you about that.  I always wanted to go back - 50 years from October 10 and we did.  I wanted to show my wife that pub.  We stopped there, in we went,

Holy Smoke, the cobblestone floor was all covered up real nice.  They don’t wait on you.  I went up and got two beers and we sat at a table drinking beer. Right inside the door was an elderly gentleman who kept leaning forward and leaning forward and I thought, what’s wrong with him?  In a real gruff voice, he said, Where are you from mate?  I said I’m from the States.  I was here at Horham at that air base.  Do you remember that?

He said, Do I remember?  I remember you bloody blokes came into town and tried to drink the bloody place dry.  That’s what he remembered of us.  I left there to go back to our base.  I didn’t realize we walked five miles to that pub.  I was never in the village of Horham until I went back 50 years later.  The nicest people in there.

Of course, I guess they recognized my language and, my, the things they did for us.  I was so tickled.  One lady invited us into her store - come on in.  We went back in her kitchen and she made tea for us.  She got us in a car and drove us around to the 100th Bomb Group and all the others around there and kept telling us things.   She sent me up the road to York College - Tony Anthony.  I had quite a visit with Tony Anthony.

JMcK:  Do you know Tony?

RW:  I didn’t know him before. Tony comes to these reunions.  I haven’t seen him this year but all the others he came to.  It’s nice talking to him again.

JMcK:  Are there any outstanding personalities or people that you’ve met over there, either English people or

people on your crew?

RW:  Let me tell you something that happened to me.  I was a kid raised on a farm.  We always put out a lot of potatoes.  Farm folk raised just about everything we ate.  Very little did we buy.  Until I was big enough to drive the horse and plow the furrows, my job was to cut the potatoes.  To cut the potatoes for seed, you make sure there’s an eye in every piece.  While you’re sitting there cutting potatoes, to pass the time, you make what we thought were jokes about what they could see but they couldn’t see - that was our best time.  We had one farmer who was so fussy that when you planted potatoes for him you didn’t just drop them in rows, you laid them down with the eye up so they could see better to grow.  That was his theory.  

    Doing laundry on the base was really tough.  You had to find a bucket or something, get some warm water, scrub them up and then where are you going to hang them?  One fellow told me he heard there’s a lady right up the road that said she will do laundry .  I think he told me how to find the place. I went up there and here was a stone wall across the front with a gate in the center. I opened the gate and went in the back of the house. I asked the lady if she was the one who would like to do laundry for us.  Yes, if you can get me some soap.  I said, I have some GI soap, will that do?   Yes.  So I went back, got some laundry and took the GI soap up to her. Then I found out that poor lady didn’t have any water.  No dryer.  She heated the water in an iron kettle in the fireplace and she had to go get water.  Later I discovered that she had to carry the water about a quarter of a mile. She scrubbed our fatigues on a board on the back porch with a brush.  Well, if she wants to do it, she makes some extra money. OK, I was tickled about it.  In the meantime I had acquired a bicycle.  This one time I went up after my laundry.  I leaned the bicycle against the stone fence.  As I looked across, she had a garden out there in the front yard.  She’s hoeing her potatoes.  They’re up about 8 inches high. She was a serious minded, hard working woman.  I thought, I’ll give her a little farm humor. I said, Look out young lady, those potatoes have eyes.  She raised her hoe and whopped at me, You dirty Yank.  She started for the gate with her hoe in the air.  I thought afterward, Thank God, she didn’t jump that stone wall.  There would have been a casualty right there.  I jumped on my bike and started down the road.  She was after me.  I finally got out of the range of that hoe.  When I looked back she was still screaming something with that hoe in the air.  I thought, she has no sense of humor.  Of course, I realized afterwards, all ladies over there wore dresses but I didn’t think of that at the time.  I got back to our hut.  No laundry.  I find a fellow and give him some money to go out and get my laundry.  So he did.  Well, this went on for a while and I thought it was time for some more laundry to be done. I thought, should I or shouldn’t I?  I would give it a try.  By gosh, she was very nice.  But let me tell

you this, my vocabulary, my words of conversation with her were limited to such as, Yes Maam;  No Maam; and Thank you, Maam.  That was it kiddo.  A typical day is varied as to what we did.  If it was raining, we’d get out the deck of cards - or whatever we could find to keep busy.  

JMcK:  When did you find out what mission you’d be flying that day?  Did you find it out that morning - or

RW:  That morning.  Sometimes we’d find out the evening before.  Sometime early that morning about 2 or 3 AM they’d come in tell us.  When I got word, you’re flying with Lt. Reno, the first thing you do is go get some breakfast.  Now the highlight of breakfast was fresh eggs - oh my goodness - they were so good.  You had to eat something so that your stomach...... I found out later if you eat the wrong stuff, that’s awful, boy  Of course, you’re up there with no pressurized cabins. That morning we had breakfast and went to briefing. They told us where we’re going. I had been on the Bremen raid 2 days before that and we had a lot of fighters there.  Lucky we made it back.  They said to expect a lot of fighters and sure enough we did.  I found out which  plane Lt. Reno was in.  They took us out to that plane and put the guns in and got everything ready.  While we’re doing that they give the pilots, navigators and bombardiers more briefing on the target.  When he came, he’d introduce himself.  Can you imagine shaking hands with a Captain - and then off we went.  He was a nice person.

JMcK:  How many missions did you fly all together?

RW:  I flew 30 all together.  When I started out it was 25 but then after we got fighter escort more people were finishing missions, so they said, we’re going to up it to 30.  That way they didn’t have quite so many replacements.

JMcK:  Tell me about when you finished your 30th mission.  What happened next?

RW:  After I finished that they sent me to Ireland to instruct new crews, to a little town by the name of  Quequille.  New crews would come in there.  I didn’t know about that until I got there.  We would give them  gunnery practice. We would shoot out into the water where a plane would fly across pulling a target and instruct these gunners how to do it.  After gunnery practice we would have classes and I would instruct them on aircraft identification. They would ask questions, etc. Gunnery practice in the morning and classes in the afternoon.  I was there a while and they sent me back to England. I don’t know what the purpose of this group was. That’s when the buzz bombs started coming over.  At night as long as you heard the noise you knew they weren’t going to come down. When the engine cut off you knew that in just a few seconds, BOOM, they were going to be bombs.

    I figured I was going to have to fly another tour and I wanted to fly it as a pilot if I could.  I didn’t want to fly another tour as a gunner.  I asked if I could come back to the States and train and they said, yes.  They sent me back and I went to Texas for pre-flight.  When we finished pre-flight they said we have enough pilots, but we need navigators and bombardiers. I took up navigation because a lot of bombardiers were togglers.  They just dropped with the next person.  A lot of them didn’t have to use the bomb sight and I didn’t want to be a toggler.  I thought navigation would be a little more important. They sent me to Monroe, LA.  I liked that.  I got so I could fly around pretty good and we were starting celestial navigation.  That was real interesting.   I liked that.  About that time, they told me, you’ve earned so many points, your length of time, your missions, etc.,  you can get out.,  I thought, my goodness, I’ve had enough of this.  I think I’ll get out. So that was the end of it.  I wish I had finished the celestial navigation.  That was real interesting.  I don’t know if I’d ever use it but yes, it was interesting.

JMcK:  So, you never went back to England?

RW::  No.  Not in the service, but on my own.  

JMcK:  Once you decided to get out, how was that?  What was it like coming home?

RW:  Well, let’s put it this way.  I thought about working at Plum Brook Ordnance again.  No.  They probably wouldn’t need anyone on the construction part of it there. It was a relief to be able to do the things you did, but when I got out, about the only thing I had was my mustering out pay.  Two days after I was home a fellow came to me and said, they need operating engineers at a local town - about 7 miles from the town of Crestline.  I went over there and this contractor said, Yes, I need help.  That’s where I started out.  After the war there was plenty of building going on and we were busy excavating, grading, etc. After about 5 years, I realized that this kind of work was falling by the wayside.  This contractor that I was with didn’t want to get into any other line of work.  I found another contractor just starting up in the building part of it.  He was a barn builder but he wanted to get into commercial building. We started doing factories, churches, schools, water treatment plants, sewer treatment plants, etc. A lot of that dwindled down and we got into roadwork - building highways along with all the other things.  We had a good thing going in those days.  Like a fool, I bought stock in the company.  That’s when you throw away your watch because there’s daylight and there’s dark.  There are no starting hours and no stopping hours. All the people you meet and the people you work with - I loved every bit of it.

JMcK:  We found that a lot of the veterans once they came home didn’t talk about their experiences overseas. Was that true for you?

RW:  I didn’t like to talk about those experiences.  That was in the past and I didn’t think anyone would be interested.  Once in a while somebody would ask you something and you’d answer them.  But, no, I didn’t really like to talk about it.  You stop to think, look at the boys we lost.  Then too something would be said and then I’d think of all those places we bombed.  I know we didn’t always hit the target and I know we killed a lot of civilians too.  I’m positive we did.  You get to thinking about all those things and you  just didn’t like to talk about it.     

    Since this last tragedy here, I thought about it more and more.  What they put us through in New York and Washington and I thought about Berlin and all those other places we hit.  What those people went through.

I often wondered about - I wanted to go back - before I went back after 50 years - I wanted to go back sometime  to see if they had the damage that we did repaired.  I only know a couple of words of German so I said to my wife, let’s find a tour.  We did.  They took us to different places in Germany and I was so surprised, like in Cologne, we didn’t hit the cathedrals - we missed those.  Other places that we bombed they had fixed up real nice.  This is about 30 years afterwards.  What tickled me, though, was the number of people who spoke English.  I would compliment them, your English is very good,  Where did you learn it?  Some were in Washington, some were in New York, and different places like that.  In Belgium, this lady’s English was very good and I complimented her.  Where did you learn your English?  She said, someplace you probably never heard of.  I said, well, tell me.  Where is that place?  She said, Delaware, Ohio.  That’s just 45 miles from my home.  I said, why Delaware, Ohio?  She said, I have a daughter that stuttered.  They told me if I took her to Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, they could help her.  I asked if it did help her.  She speaks very well now.  I said, but why Delaware, Ohio.  She said, I took her to Children’s Hospital in Columbus and I stayed in

Delaware, Ohio, and I drove back and forth each day.  Isn’t that something?  You find something that close to home.

JMcK:  How long have you been coming to the reunions?

RW:  The first one was in Portland, Ore.  At first I didn’t know there was a 95th Bomb Group. Being in the construction business you’re busy and never meet anybody.  Finally, I did.  He said, do you belong to the 95th?  

I said, No.  He told me how to join.  I don’t remember what year it was, but 5 or 6 years ago, and you know we’ve made every one ever since and I really like it.

JMcK:  We’re getting toward the end of our time here.  Is there anything else that you would like to add to the tape?  Any story that you thought of or anything you’d like to mention before we....

RW:  No, really. I just feel sorry for our crew.  I was hoping we could finish and have a get together afterwards but since we were all split up - I came back and they didn’t.  No - there’s nothing I can say.  But listen, I appreciate your letting me do this.

JMcK:    Thank you so much.  It’s such a wonderful addition to our archives and we really appreciate your taking the time to do it.  Thank you.

RW:  You’re welcome.