"Red" Dillon, Lincoln Anderson, John D. Scott

95TH BOMB GROUP (H)

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

2002 REUNION         ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

(Interviewed by Sam Tarkenton)

ST:  I’ll tell you what.  Red, why don’t you start off and just tell us your name – and spell your name.

RD:  Do you want me to start talking?

ST:  Just give me your name right now.

RD:  I am Richmond Paul Dillon.

LA:  I am F. Lincoln Anderson.

JS:  John D. Scott.  S-c-o-t-t.

ST:  Gentlemen, can you tell me, each individually, when you were with the 95th Bomb Group?

RD:  Well, it was ’43 and ’45.  1943 and ’45.

LA:  1943 and ’44

JS:  ’43 and 44.  We were on the same crew.

RD:  We were all together. 

ST:  So, why don’t, whoever wants to start, tell me about how that crew got to England; how it got to the 95th, some of the things you guys did as a crew.

JS:  Andy, why don’t you be the spokesman.  You know how to talk.  (Laughter)

LA:  We got to England by flying a plane over by way of Greenland and Iceland.  Landed in southern England.  And we thought the plane we flew over would be the plane we used.  But it didn’t turn out that way.  They sent us north to an area near the wash, halfway between Ipswich and Norwich – a little town called Horham where we became to crew of “Superstitious Alouitious.” 

ST:  Do you know the approximate date that was?

JS:  September of ’43.

LA:  That was in September of ’43.  We started flying almost immediately.  We finished our missions in February of ’44.

JS:  All except Red.

LA:  We did 25 missions, not all of them together, but mostly all together.  And for the record, this is one of the best pilots in the outfit.

ST:  What makes him one of the best pilots in the outfit?

LA:  Well, he knew how to fly formation.  He knew how to lead a group.  And he kept us out of trouble.

ST:  Can you tell me some of the things you may have done as a crew when you weren’t in the air?

LA:  Well, let’s see.  We had two R & R’s, one in which we went to Scotland, and one in which we went to Southampton.  It seems to me like the one to Scotland was after about the 12th or 13th mission.  The one to Southampton was near the end of our tour.  We had several visits down to London, where they said, “Ya can’t miss it.”  And we can’t find it. (Chuckle) 

ST:  Can you tell me some of the more memorable missions you were on, and what happened on those missions?

LA:  I think the most important mission we flew was the mission that went over Norway.  I remember well flying over the Fjords.  We bombed the heavy water works there.  Had those water works not have been destroyed, which they were, the war would have been an entirely different kind of thing, because Germany was in the process of developing the atomic bomb.  That slowed them up that prevented them from getting it.  And I think that was the most important one – most memorable.

ST:  How about you?
LA:  Let Scott tell him that.

JS:  I would like to impress on – it seems silly to us that we went up there, and we’re going twelve, thirteen thousand feet – going over Norway.  No fighters to bother us.  Some chip shot a few out of the air as we went in.  But it seemed ridiculous that we were going up there and bombing a distillery.  And of course we never knew really what it was till pretty near after the war was over.  But they were that close to getting the atomic bomb.  And had the Germans got that done, they would have wiped out a lot of things, because they had overextended themselves, and they didn’t have enough forces to fight all fronts of the war they were on.  So they would have used every atomic bomb they could have made.  And it would have been a complete disaster. 

ST:  I guess I know Mr. Scott was a pilot.  Mr. Anderson?

LA:  I was the top turret gunner and engineer.

RD:  Ball turret.

LA:  Some of the memorable things we went on, Red chickened out on us.  (Laughter)  We had flown a couple of missions, and something happened – I had trouble with my head and I couldn’t stop bleeding.  And they put me in the hospital and they grabbed him, put him on another crew, and they got shot down.  So, he was a prisoner of war.  That’s why he was over there longer than we were. 

ST:  As gunners, did you guys, either one, shoot down any fighters?

LA:  I am not recorded as having shot any down.  I’m sure I put plenty of holes in a lot of them. (Chuckle)  So I can’t claim any fame at that point. 

JS:  I didn’t have a BB gun.

ST:  Red, did you get any fighters when you were a gunner?

RD:  Well, yes sir, I was credited with three on those missions.  And so on this Munster raid we made – that was that long run.

JS:  We weren’t with you.

RD:  That’s right.  I’m sorry, I was with Lieutenant Broman.  I was what you call a spare gunner, I guess.  I think I flew with him one day, and the next day they came in and were going to make another run.  And I was picked – they needed a ball turret gunner – and I was elected.  And the way I got elected, we was all in the barracks there, all the crew men, our duffel bags and everything.  We didn’t even have them unpacked.  And this Forney – remember Forney?  Tne officer come in there, getting men for the crews, for the pilots.  He come in there and needed a ball turret gunner, right now.  And I know there was 15 or 20 ball turret gunners in there.  In fact, all gunners knew how to operate a turret.  And all of a sudden the whole room pointed to me, right in the corner.  (Chuckle)  I didn’t know what was going on.  So I took off and that’s when we split up.  I flew with Lieutenant Broman.

ST:  How many missions did you guys fly to complete?

LA:  Twenty-five.

RD:  I only flew, what, five missions __________________, and three with Lieutenant Broman.  So I was with two pilots. 

ST:  Had you guys trained together as a crew?

LA:  We trained as a crew, and finished our training in Boise, Idaho.  And then we went to Grand Island, Nebraska.  And then we picked up a brand new airplane, and flew it from there to Bangor, Maine, to Rikovik to Preswick, Scotland.  And then they took our airplane away from us, and it went to reserve pool.  We went to Chorley, right outside of London, as a reserve crew.  So the airplane went one way; we went the other way.  And we wind up at the 95th as a replacement. 

RD:  We ended up flying a bucket of bolts over there, remember?  They took us out of a new plane and honest, I couldn’t figure out what happened, as level headed as he’d been flying.  He blew his stack when they took that new plane away from him.  (Chuckle)  He let us know.  And they put us on that bucket of bolts.  We got it over there, all right.  But, Lord. 

JS:  I think the scaredest we got during our whole tour – we’ll leave him out, because he didn’t have anything to _____________ - was we landed in Rikovik, Iceland in the middle of the night – cold, damp, and all that stuff.  And they refueled us, and we slept a couple of hours in a wet, cold sack.  Then they briefed us and said, “Now between here and Scotland, there’s been German fighters come around England and been picking some of them off, coming in, like you guys are going in.   So we get up, fly through some weather for a while, and all of a sudden (gun sound).  So we thought we were already shot, and our Mae Wests were in our bags back there.  But it was ice that we got on the propellers, coming off the propellers and hitting the fuselage.  We thought we were already going to be shot down before we got to England. 

LA:  So we were already combat veterans by the time we got to the base.  (Laughter)

JS:  We get there.  We were replacements, so they stick us in the rear end of the formations.  So you get back there, and you make a couple of turns, and you’re out here and the group’s over there – the fighters have got you.  But we lucked out on that, and moved up. 

ST:  That’s where everybody starts appreciating your piloting skills. 

JS:  That’s right.  So we sneaked on up front.  Then had it easy flying from then on. 

RD:  Did we, at one time Scotty, we were flying out over that lake up there to the north, and you dropped down about ten or twenty feet above water because she was icing up too much?  I was thinking we dropped down, and we flew, golly, about half across the country just about ten or twenty feet above water.  And I remember – I was in the ball turret – I got out when he started dropping.  And then Brady, the co-pilot, he said, “I wonder how it feels down there.  I’ve never been in that ball turret.”  I said, “Well, okay.”  I showed him the operation and he got in it.  And he didn’t have to close the door.  Well, he closed the door, and he sat down there in it, and that prop was hitting him, and the doors didn’t have those rubber seals around it.  It was an air-conditioned door, that ball turret door flaps.  They didn’t have no seal around it.  You can turn the turret around and go brrrrrrrrr, brrrrrrrrrr.   You can feel it on your back.  And I had a safety strap anyway across it.  I said Lord have mercy.  And finally, it did come off.  And there I was up there with just – coming into home – was hitting a little bit of warm weather.  Boy, you talk about cold.  And that fur flight jacket – it wasn’t warm enough.  You know that leather flight jacket with that fur collar on?  I had that on.  And that air came through all that fur.  I had it all the way zipped up.  I mean I was covered up to my throat.  And every time I turn around, my back heading front, that’s when, oh Lord, the wind got cold when it hit.  So I didn’t have no door on that one. 

ST:  Let me ask you, Red, about, at this point you got changed to Lieutenant Broman’s crew.  Tell us about the Munster mission.  What happened to you guys?

RD:  Oh, that Munster?  That was, I believe that was my last run.  (Chuckle)  We went in, and we hit the target.  And we come off of it.  We headed up north to come back home.  We got hit on the way home.  I’m trying to think what little section of town that we, I landed in, bailed out in.  Well we got hit.  We were just flying along there, and all of a sudden I could see ______________ gun shooting from the ground, just like that.  And I counted on a 210 setting out there on the tail of us; lobbing rockets just like that.  Lobbing.  Oh Lord.  And we were out of his range, all right.  But they was coming down, and was fading down under, but he kept closing in on us.  Finally he fired five rockets.  And they started going under the wings.  (whshhhh, whshhhh).  And I was sitting in the ball turret, and I was following it, just like that, with that ball turret.  Oh Lord.  One wide, and wider and wider and wider, and kept coming in toward us.  And one of them, I could have reached out of the turret and scraped it with my hand.  And about that time, another one hit between the ball turret and right through the bomb bay, but on the co-pilot’s seat.  Anyway, it went right on through.  I didn’t even feel it hit.  Then all of a sudden, it hit the – which engine is that one on the right?  Number one?  Yeah, number one.  It hit right in the engine.  And black smoke just come out and engulfed me.  And the controls, I think, somehow it messed the electrical system or something.  Well I had power enough to rotate the turret to get the door on top so I could get out.  And just as I got rotated up, I heard a pecking on top of the door.  And the radio operator, Warren Thomas, unhooked the door.  About that time I felt __________________ because he was opening it.  And I threw it back, and I looked up at him and he says, “Get the hell out of here!”  I said, “I’m coming as fast as I can.”  So I reached up and my chute was hanging out on the strut.  I reached up and grabbed my chest chute, and I snapped it on quick, like that.  And we bailed out.  I looked back at the bomb bay and all.  Me and Frank Dean and Jako Black – waist gunners – we were at the door, the escape hatch.  And all I can remember – Jako Black, we were at the door and we looked out and there was a ME-109 setting out about 50 feet from us.  And this pilot had a yellow scarf.  I guess one of the last of the Abbyville kids.  He looked, just circled, circled like that, and he just saluted us.  And Jako Black, the waist gunner, he went back to the gun.  I said, “Where are you going?  Come on.  Let’s get out of here!”  He said, “I want one more shot.”  And I went back to Jake - __________________________________.  And I don’t fault him for it.  I don’t owe it against him.  But he said he wants one more shot.  He blew that German plane right out of the sky.  But finally we got on the ground and everything.  We got to a place together, kind of a farmhouse like.  Barracks – took us to an airfield barracks.  And I got to talking to him.  I said, “What did you do that for?”  And he said, “I just wanted one more shot.”  I said, “Did you know, did you ever think that guy was going to protect us in that chute, when we got down in that chute?”  That would have been our protection, because the ground people was shooting at the guys in the parachutes.  And that was our protection, and he…  Later on I got to talking to one of them pilots over there that was shooting us down.  He said, got to talking about his young pilots doing all that unsportsmanship like conduct, shooting paratrooper while they’re in their chute.  He said they were from 13 to 15, 16-year-old pilots – experienced pilots.  That’s right.  I seen some faces when we was fighting fighter planes.  I seen the kids faces when they got close to us.  They were young.  Looked like they was junior high school kids. 

ST:  What happened to you when you hit the ground?

RD:  Sir?

ST:  What happened to you when you hit the ground?

RD:  Well, I hit the ground.  And my chute settled down.  I unbuckled it, and I got it.  Our instructions were to hide the chute.  And I did.  I went over to the log over there.  I had it rolled up in my arm.  And a bunch of leaves was piled against the log.  I dug them leaves out, and I towed my chute and buried it under that log, and put the leaves back.  And a German civilian got ahold of me.  And about that time the Gestapo took me _______________.   I had a feeling – I don’t know what those German civilian was going to do.  But it was several kids, an old man and a young couple.  And one of those kids was around 18 – 19 years old.  He said he went to school over in England.  Could speak just as good a English as I could.  Him and I got along pretty good.  Course I couldn’t speak German – I couldn’t understand it.  And he was helping me, and he was keeping the German people backed off, you know, so they wouldn’t harm me.  And they paraded us.  They got us together and they paraded us down through town.  I remember me and Frank, me and Jako Black – we three stayed together for quite a while.  And the rest of the crew, I don’t know what happened to them.  But we ran into each other at the camp where they took us.  And there we all got in together, and we got ____________ in.  And I remember Lieutenant Pappy Riggs – a pilot.  You remember him, Scotty?

JS:  Who?

RD:  Pappy Riggs.  (Laughing)  Tall guy?  Well he was there.  He was there.  We greeted each other.  And oh man, he was about seven foot tall, and there I was, five foot five.  And I had to carry him into the camp, me and another short guy.  Now he was about seven-foot tall.  And he had upchucked all over him when he bailed out.  He was so sick.  He thought he was dying.  So we, him and I, loaded him on our shoulders, and we carried him in on a little old horse stall where they put us some hay.  And he got all right, pretty good.  He was complaining.  We kept calling him crybaby.  (Chuckling)  I said, we all got that stomach spit, so why don’t you just shut up.  He did finally quiet down, and we all went to sleep and rested.  Then they got us up the next morning and interrogated us.  Oh man, did they interrogate you! 

Red’s son??  Could you tell them about the fighter planes there, before you were shot down?  You know, the fighters.  Do you remember, before you were shot down, all the fighters coming up at you? 

RD:  Oh.  You mean those.  Well, __________________ from the ground, and we was flying along there, and there was three of them come up.  And I called up front, I said, “Fighters, 6 o’clock low.  Three of them.”  Well, they was busy up there, level, which I couldn’t see because the plane was coming in different altitude.  The ball turret, I couldn’t see too far up, unless it was about 500, 1,000 feet high out, where I could see out, you know.  They was coming in, three of them was coming in right off on our tail.  Just coming up, coming up.  And I seen them take off from the ground.  Whether they come from the airport, I do not know.  I didn’t see no runway or anything down there.  They came up.  They lined up and got in behind us.  I said, oh Lord.  So I set my cross hair right on them, just like that.  Kept my turret moving, just like that.  Finally, I said the heck with this.  I put the bead on the one in the center.  They were coming in like that.  I put it on this one.  I put my crosshair on that one in the center.  I got him with my first burst, which was lucky.  And he – wings and everything – just exploded, just went out.  And it hit the two – I’m sure some of the debris hit the other two because they fly, and they went down just like that.  I know they wasn’t hit too bad, unless the debris hit them.  But I blew the one up in the middle.  And as far as I know, that cleared our tail.  We didn’t have no more trouble back there.  So that’s the scaredest – the scaredest I got was when that suicide pilot tried to come in and get us.  And Broman, they were sitting there, he come from above.  On the way in, I seen him circling around.  And as far as I can remember, that plane was black.  What color was that?  Was that black plane?  That was Herman Goring, wasn’t it?  They was black, and they was coming around, making that circle around, and he dove right into the formation.  Coming, I mean he was coming.  And he was going in.  Well, when I saw part of the airplane flying into space like that.  He came in between the left wing of the lead ship, and we was on the left of the wing ship.  Just like that.  He come in right in between us, just like that.  I put my bead on him, my crosshair on him, but I couldn’t get a shot.  My gun level wouldn’t level up.  I was waiting until he come on down, and he came right on down through the formation.  And I tracked him all the way through, all the way through our formation.  I followed him, right on down.  As soon as he got out of the formation, I opened up fire on him and I hit the tail.  And he went around, and I heard there was another tail gunner got him.   But I was in the ball turret.  I clipped him on the wing, on the tail.  His tail, he just went sphrrrrrr, like that.  However he controlled it, I don’t know. 

ST:  Let me ask you two gentlemen if you had any close calls with getting shot down in your twenty-five missions. 

 JS:  The closest call I think we had was to Frankfurt, Germany.  I was leading the low group, and all of a sudden they came on, about 40 of them, four abreast: four, four, four, four.  And they came head on.  I couldn’t turn the group.  I nosed the airplane over.  They took four wingmen out of the lead squadron, two wingmen out of the high squadron, and one out of the low.  We lost seven of the eighteen at one pass.  They didn’t get us.  We regrouped the group, and I made a 360 _________________ Frankfurt from a return.  We got back to the base and the only damage we had to the airplane – our airplane was full of 50-caliber holes.  And that was from the fellas behind us, shooting at the guys coming in, and they got us.  I guess that was the one where we lost the most and got our airplane shot up the worst.  Other than that, it really wasn’t all that bad. 

RD:  I held my fire when that guy was coming through our formation.

LA:  Yeah, you see there was nothing to stop those _________________ planes in front.  (Laughing).  Okay, on that particular time, the one time I ducked was when those planes came in toward us. 

JS:  That’s the same mission.

LA:  Same mission.  And I can see the tracers walking right up toward us.  And I fired until the, well, until I ran out of ammunition. 

RD:  You didn’t melt the balls, did you?

LA:  Well, they turned blue.  (Laughter)

JS:  And his guns laid down right over my head.

LA:  They were just below that.

RD:  They come in off the top of you.  You hardly can’t see what the top turret and the pilots can see.  And the pilot and the copilot, as far as I know, they didn’t have time to grab their guns.

LA:  Well, anyway, as those planes – Scotty ducked under them, like that.  See, that’s why you’re a good pilot.  And I got a hole in the top turret right beside my head.  And that was coming from the front.  That wasn’t coming from the rear.  (Chuckle)  That’s one.  The first mission we went on – there are two missions other than that really are memorable, as far as I'm concerned.  The one was the longest mission we flew.  And that was over the submarine works in, on the coast of Russia.  And I can’t think of the name of that place.  But anyway, we were in the air for over nine hours. 

JS:  I wasn’t with you on that one.  It was Marienburg, Poland.

LA:  Yeah, that’s right. 

JS:  Brady.

LA:  Brady flew that one. 

JS:  The copilot – he took the crew.

RD:  We hit Emden twice.  Our group hit Emden twice.

JS:  Yeah, those were short missions.  Submarine pens.

RD:  Yeah, we hit them twice, and we come back off of one our waist gunner.  We landed and I got out of the ball turret, and I looked over at the waist gunner, the right waist gunner.  He was laying down on that ___________________ - haaaaa, haaaaa – just like that.  I said, “What’s the matter, Blackie, what’s the matter?”  His name was Blackie Zimmer – good guy.  And I don’t believe he’d kill a fly with a fly swatter.  He was just that timid.  But anyway, he was laying there, and his head was on that old hard floor down there.  I said, “What’s the matter?  What’s the matter?”  He fainted.  And here’s another one just laying there, just laying there.  And almost fainted, and I woke him up.  ___________________ I was trying to snap him out of it.  I set him up.  I said, “Do you feel that air, Blackie?  Do you feel that air?”  “Ah, feels so good.”  I said, “Where was your head laying?”  He says, “Right there.”  I said, “Look where that hole is.  (Laughing)  I don’t know.  I think the hole was made before he fell down.  The hole, I guess it was about that long and about as big around as this hat.  And his head, I don’t know if it was done before he laid down.  I know it didn’t do it after he laid down because it was a, it would have got him.  I said, “Look, look over there.  That hole…”  Then he fainted again (Chuckling).  He was laying by that hole.

ST:  You were going to tell us about Marienburg.

LA:  Well, that’s on the Russian coast.

JS:  You went up the North Sea and around Russia in to bomb Marienburg.

RD:  Was that Marienburg?

JS:  You didn’t go in a straight line – on a circuitous route.  You stayed over the water and stayed out of the range of a lot of the German fighters.  I wasn’t there, but that’s what…

LA:  That was the longest run, and that….

RD:  That was an all day run.

LA:  Standing in that turret for about nine hours…

RD:  I was setting in that ball turret.

LA:  And there was nothing really spectacular about that, other than we got the submarine works pretty good, you know.  And got back.  There are two others that I think about.  Our first mission…

RD:  Excuse me Andy.  Who flew that mission on that Marienburg?  Broman?

LA:  That was Brady.

RD:  Brady?

LA:  Brady.  We were flying over the Channel pretty low – maybe, not tail end Charlie, but I think almost. 

RD:  Ten feet above water.

LA:  No, no.  We were flying high, but I mean we were flying low in the formation.  And I saw Scotty and Brady trying to do something.  I wasn’t sure what it was.  And I got down out of the turret.  And they were trying to feather the number three engine.  I looked down at the tachometer, and that thing was going to the red mark, and around again.  Now that meant that, if we were flying at 2400 RPM, that it was going 4800 RPM, you know.  And I knew that that prop would fly off of there, and would cut the cockpit in half.  And they were juggling with the feathering, and I said, “Here, let me feather that.”  (Chuckle)  And I did get it feathered.  At the same time, we had lost the number four engine on the same wing.  We were flying at, what, 22,000 feet – something like that. 

JS:  19 – 22.

LA:  Anyway, when we lost that engine, which, the strain, you know, from having the other prop windmilling, our plane just went shhhhhhh, like that.  Well, we got down to probably 12,000 feet, and I said, “Scotty, we better drop these bombs in the Channel.”  He said, “Those things cost money.”  (Laughter)  He says, “I’m not going to drop those.  I’m going to take them in.”  So, we headed back.  Well when we got down to altitude, the number four engine, we could start it again. And so when we got down, landed with the bombs safely, and a full load of gas, taxied up to our pad.  The CEO came out in the jeep.  And you know, nobody was supposed to chicken out.  And he figured we’d chickened out, coming in with one feathered prop…

JS:  …and a full load of bombs.

LA:  Anyway, I said let’s check that supercharger.  We checked the supercharger.  He tried it with his finger and he couldn’t turn it.  Now a supercharger’s supposed to turn completely free, because it rotates I think at 50,000 RPM or more, you know.  Well, he looked at me and he said, “Well, it’s frozen.”  I said, “Well.”  And by that time, the ground crew had gotten their scaffolding out on the, and were under the number three engine.  And they took the prop dome off of that propeller.  And when they took it off, the innards of that prop dome just pftttt, down on the scaffolding, which meant that when they feathered, that was the last thing it was going to do.  So he just turned around, and got in his jeep and left (chuckling). 

ST:  Let me ask you guys, you finished your twenty-five missions?

LA:  Yes.

ST:  What did it feel like, as soon as you got back on the ground, from that 25th?

JS:  I don’t know.  I went to work as Assistant Group Operations Officer, and Andy was doing something else. 

LA:  Yeah, I was line inspector. 

ST:  So you stayed?

LA:  I stayed.  I asked Scotty.  I knew that if I came home, in my little pea head, that I was going to get on B-29’s and go to the eastern theater.  And I just really wasn’t happy about that.  And so Scotty pulled a string, and he got me to stay there.  I stayed over in England another six months.  But you asked how it feels.  When I got down from that last mission, and we knew it was our last mission, I kissed the ground.  And I said, “God, there’s got to be a better way than this.” 

JS:  I had to fly one more.  I went with another crew then.  And as the group leader, led the whole 8th Air Force to Regensburg, Germany.  It was the prettiest day I’d ever seen.  You could see the fighters.  We went in at 12,000 feet.  You could see the fighters take off from the snow-covered fields, come up and shoot at you, then turn around and go back and land.  But to summarize my whole thing: I went in the service; I learned to fly; I went to the thing overseas; Back in the states.  And the next thing I know, the airlines offered me a job to fly as pilot, and the military turned me loose.  So then I spent 37 years with an airline.  So it taught me a trade.

LA:  Well, because I did this, I became a minister.  And because of the GI Bill, I was able to get the seven years of education that I needed to do it.  So, as far as I’m concerned, all’s well that ends well. 

JS:  He was just a guest of Hitler. 

RD:  Y’all are talking about when we come home, ain’t you? 

ST:  What was it like for you to be liberated from that prison camp?

RD:  Oh, man, it was wonderful.  Well, I was a POW over there in Krems, Austria.  And toward the end of the war, the war was getting to a close, and the Russians were advancing into Germany territory.  And these German guards, ages was changing on them.  We was all setting around and talking and we was watching the guards.  Mostly it used to be some pretty good young guards there.  But the guards were getting older and older – about our age by now.  That was how old they had to drop to to guard us.  We had plenty of opportunity to escape – go anywhere we want to.  But Lord, where can you go?  Russians was coming in on that side, and the Germans was taking us out.  They come in and emptied the whole camp.  And the guards, the soldiers from the Russian front, came up to do that.  Took us out.  One of the boys that was in that march with us – I think his name was Herbie Lee, and I have George Yonkie – Yonkie speaks a little bit of German.  And he got sided up by one of the German boys and that guard was explaining why they were going back toward Germany.  The Russians was moving in.  And the old group that started guarding us was freely talkers.  (Break in tape)  They took us out, and we was on the march toward the inside of Germany.  Of course the German people wanted to get back inside of Germany.  And, well, about a day, day and a half out, we got word that the Russians took over Krems, Austria, and they killed quite a few people there.  It was a sad story.  It was a sad situation.  So we went on up, and the further along we got, we seen some – we was on that march – we seen some Italian soldiers, different nationality, country – laying on the side of the road, dead.  Oh man, we went about two or three miles, and there – every so many feet – there’d be a German soldier.  He had on his soldier’s uniform and everything.  They had an overcoat and that outside topcoat to keep them warm.  And that’s – they died of thirst, exhaustion, or something.  We stopped, we checked a few of them, but we didn’t find no bullet holes in their uniform, or nothing.  And my first one I encountered was a younger guard.  We went down to get some water from the creek to get some water for the camp.  We were going to camp out.  And the German guard, when I came back off of one trail, I looked over there, and the German guard, he was just laying there.  And I said, “Oh heck, I’ve got to get him up and help him.”  I went over there, and I grabbed him by the collar – that old big collar.  I grabbed him.  I thought he was just asleep.  I jerked on him.  Hell, he was stiff as a board.  He was dead.  There’s where, I guess, little tears come into my eyes, right there.  I said, “What the hell are we doing here, just killing people?”  And that part hit me hard.  It still gets to me.  I can’t figure out why all that killing, just to get power.  All they want is power.  And all those countries wanted, to my way of thinking, was they wanted power.  Each country, they’re fighting each other for the power to rule that part of the country.  They want one leader, the way I figured it.  They’re not like the United States for the choice of people of who you want.  It was just – the parties over there are – they take over.  And that was the whole political system they got.  They got – it’s a one party country.  It was a one party country.  They ruled.  And a different type party gets in and just beats them guys out, like an election or what at wartime.  They rule it their way.  It’s a party system over there. 

ST:  Where did you actually get back to, you know, American control?

RD:  Oh, let’s see. When we were camped out in the woods, and the infantry outfit came through where we were – Braunau.  The Lind River, on the Lind River.  And there was American – there was nine American soldiers – infantry.  Nine.  And I mean they was walking down.  They took that – they come a little ways up, and they come down and they liberated us.  They didn’t shoot the guards.  They run them off.  A lot of them ran off when they seen them coming.  So when nine soldiers walked down that street, and as far as I know, you didn’t see a German soldier anywhere.  They walked on through that town.  They took that little old town, two towns, without firing a shot.  Nine of them.  They kept walking, and I guess they had a _________________.  They was infantry.  I believe it was – oh, what was that big infantry general’s name?

LA:  Not Patton?

RD:  Yeah, Patton.  It was one of his groups – tank groups.  Tanks coming in.  And I think they was foot soldiers following the tanks.  They usually have – you got a tank crew, and you got foot soldiers following the tanks.  And I think it was General Patton – tanks. 

ST:  We’re going to have to wrap this up. 

RD:  Now?  I’m warmed up.  (Laughter)  No, I’m okay.  I’m enjoying it, and I like to still reminisce about what happened.  I was in the ball turret, and these two guys were upstairs.  I couldn’t see what was going on, so.  I’m learning more from them upstairs guys than I did when I was flying with them.  They knew what was going on, and I didn’t.  All I could see was out this way, and down.