Richard Creutz

95TH BOMB GROUP (H)
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
2004 REUNION        WASHINGTON, D.C.

JM:  This is Janie McKnight with the 95th Bomb Group Legacy Committee.  And today we are speaking with Richard Creutz.

RC:  Creutz.

JM:  Creutz.  Richard, for the record, could you state your name, today’s date, and where we are.

RC:  My name is Richard Creutz.  Today is September 10th 2004.  And we are in Washington.

JM:  And what were your dates of service with the Army Air Corps?
RC:  I was inducted on January 3rd, and assigned to the Air Corps and went down to Florida for basic training, and have been in the Air Corps, was in the Air Corps ever since that time.

JM:  And what year was that?

RC:  That was 1943.

JM:  And what your dates of service with the 95th Bomb Group?
RC:  I arrived in England in about the middle of October of ’43 and was assigned as a replacement because they were over there before.  It took about two days to there, and started to work.

JM:  And when did you get out of England?

RC:  We left around the, I would say, around the 20th or 21st or something like that of July of ’45.

JM:  And what was your principal job with the 95th?
RC:  I was sheet metal repairer for a while.  And I suffered some real problems with my feet at one time after that.  About six months after I had very much trouble with my feet.  And so they assigned me to a different job in the same sheet metal hanger – as it were, we were working in a hanger shop.  And I was assigned the duty of doing some paperwork, like taking care of all the tooling, handing out tools to the guys to go out to work.  And one of the most interesting jobs I had was, when a mission came in, each engineering officer of the four squadrons would call me and report how much battle damage they had of planes that they could not take care of themselves.  You know, they had one or two sheet metal men in each squadron, so they could take and patch little holes.  But they couldn’t do any major work, you know, because they’d have to take the planes in, or we’d have to go out.  And then we would come back and determine – we would go out and look at the plane, our engineering officer and myself – and we would look at the planes and try to determine how many hours it would take to repair it, so that the squadron would know how many planes would be ready for the next day.  So that was a very interesting job for me. 

JM:  How did you determine…did you try and fix every single plane, or were so just so badly damaged…?

RC:  Oh yeah.  There were…occasionally there were planes that were completely damaged, and we put them on what we called the salvage pile.  And we would take off  all the good parts, you know.  For instance, maybe one part of the wing was good.  We’d take that off.  Or the tail section was okay, or the rudder would be okay, or the flaps would be okay, one or two of them.  And they would be, you know, repairable and put on a pile.  Because every part was interchangeable.  In other words, if a squadron would call up and said “I need a outer wing panel” we would have some already repaired, ready to go.  And we’d bring it out there and bring back the old one, and repair it.  So then there were those planes that were very badly damaged, but we could repair.  They would have to be brought into the hangar because it would be over days.  And, like I said, the first year we were working day and night.  So that’s why I say it wasn’t very interesting work. It was like war work here in the United States where they were working 12, 14, 15, 16 hours a day. 

JM:  So how many people were in your group?
RC:  Well, we had charge of both hangars.  That would be mostly – one hangar was engine repair.  In other words, every time a plane would come in with a feathered prop, it had to be taken off, taken to the hangar.  And they again, they had all the engines ready.  They would take one off and bring back another one and put it right back on.  And so we got to be very efficient in doing these things.  When I first got over there, the work was enormous.  I mean we had piles of parts to be repaired which we couldn’t even get at.  We just had to work on the planes to make them fly, you know.  But then little by little we started to catch up.  And when they started getting fighter protection further into Europe, that’s when our load really got lightened.  But before that, it was rough.

JM:  How many planes flew on an average, in a single day?
RC:  I’d say 30, 25, 30.  But you see, what happened, what was it, the Wing would tell us how many planes we had to put up.  (Chuckle)  And that’s why we had to break our necks to get them up.  So, yeah.  The other thing, you know, we, like I say, we didn’t have much excitement other than the lot of work we had.  We never got bombed.  We saw the Germans come over every night almost, going down to London.  Later on, when they started sending their buzz bombs over.  You ever heard the buzz bombs, the V-1?  We saw them going over to London.  But we never, basically, we never got bombed or anything like that.  Oh, and then there was the 200 mission party, which was a real something. 
JM:  Oh, tell us about that.

RC:  Well, the 200 mission party was – a guy mentioned it yesterday.  You know, he said it was one day.  That’s a lot of baloney.  It ran about two or three days.  And it took a week before they got all the girls off the base (laughing).  They were – oh yeah.  We had Glen Miller’s band, but he was already missing. Ray McKinley had it.  And it was a ball.  I mean it was really something.  Then we also had a 300 mission party.  But that was, you know, nothing compared to the 200 mission party.  They really did a job on that.

JM:  When was that 200 mission party?  What year was that?
RC:  Oh, it had to be ’44.  It had to be ’44.  Sometime late, probably. 

JM:  Doing the repair work on those planes was an awesome responsibility, because they had to be airworthy when you sent them back out.  Can you tell us any memorable experiences  where you were concerned about the plane, or were you pretty confident that every plane that you sent out that hangar was …

RC:  Well, every plane that had really – I only remember maybe two items.  One was where a 20 mm gun went into the tail gunner’s – and you know, killed him – tore him all up.  And we removed a whole tail section and took one from the salvage and we put it all back together.  Of course it took a long time.  And we put it all together and they took it up on the test flight and said it was okay, and I don’t know how many more missions it went.  And we had another incident where a something – maybe a 20 mm went through the wheel well.  The wheel well was like a really heavy aluminum u-channel like.  And so we fixed that up by taking a piece of hardwood about so long, and shaping it like the inside of it.  And we put I don’t know how many bolts and nuts through there.  You know, because it had to carry the wheel and the undercarriage.  And that too, well maybe not explaining it perfectly, that too was taken up and…  We did a lot of improvising.  GI ingenuity they call it. 

JM:  Did you ever have trouble getting materials?  Did you always have enough?

RC:  At first, no.  At first we had trouble getting material.  But you know, a lot of it was, you know, taken from the salvage piles.  And the worst part was getting gas tanks out of the wings in winter.  Because, you know, they’re made out of a kind of a rubberized material.  And in winter, you know that stuff was like a rock.  And you know, they had to be compressed in order to get them out.  Because they were slid in, and expanded into the opening of the wing.  So they had, I think it was vacuum cleaners that we pushed hot air in there to heat them up so that we can compress them and pull them out.  And that was one job that nobody wanted.  Nobody wanted that job.  You know, like I say, our life over there was not too exciting, other than used to sweat in the planes every night, hoping that there wasn’t too much work.  Looking forward to our passes to London.  And R & R’s.

JM:  So tell us about what you did on your time off.

RC:  Well, we had options, you know.  We were given a 3-day pass a month.  And we also had, for like every night to go to what they called Liberty on the __________, which wasn’t too far away.  And you’d go pubbing.  That’s what, you know…  That’s about it.  In London, I did a lot of sightseeing:  Buckingham Palace, I watched the changing of the guard; and went to the museums; the churches, St. Paul’s cathedral.  I did a lot of sightseeing.  _____________ Garden which was a enlisted man’s dance.  You know, ________________Gardens is the London Opera House.  Beautiful place.  And they converted it into an enlisted man’s – no officers – dance hall.  And they used to have tons of women there waiting to dance with the GI’s.  Well, it was not only for GI’s. It was enlisted men of everybody.

JM:  Did you find that you socialized mostly with other ground crew members, or did you do things with the crews of the B-17’s?

RC:  Never got in touch with the crews.  There was one occasion where I met a guy from my neighborhood who flew.  It was very funny the way we met.  It was in a kind of a small dance hall like; we were in Norwich.  And I was sitting at a table with, you know, a couple of my buddies.  And I see a guy come in.  And I’m looking at him, looking at him.  And I said, “Boy, that guy looks like Joe Westercamp.”  So I got up, and I went,.you know, got real close to him.  And sure enough, it was him.  I tapped him on the shoulder from the back and said, “Hello you chicken.”  (chuckling)  And he turned around and he was a little guy, but he was always fighting.  And he says, oh man!  And he was so happy to see me.  We went to London a few times together.  We went bicycle riding, pubbing.  But that was the only one.  We never got to know any of these guys.  And we had, for instance, during the regular week, we had an enlisted man’s beer hall where they had 3.2 beer, which was for, you know, all the enlisted men.  Most of the time you’d sit around and play poker, or something like that.  I mean, that’s about my life.

JC:  Were there any memorable characters that you met over there, or people that you grew close to in that situation.

RC:  Well, maybe I could mention this about the people of England who a lot of people didn’t like.  But I tell, you, I thought they were great.  We found a pub in Norwich somehow or another, a little ways out from the downtown section.  And we went in there.  It was about three of us, I think.  And we went in there, and of course, you know how the pubs over there – there’s a room, and a room, and a room, and a room, and a room and a room.  And so we had a couple of beers, and then they – we could see that the Englishmen were scowling.  But they had a piano in there.  And I used to play by ear a little bit.  I mean, I had lessons, you know.  I could play, if I know the song, I could play for guys singing or something like that.  And so after a few beers, I got on the piano and just started playing.  And these people would, “Hey, can you play this?  Yank, can you play this?  Yank, can you play this?”  And after that we were in like flint.  And then we went back there.  And then we got restricted from London for 6 months when they were putting the buzz bombs over, because too many GI’s were getting killed.  Because, you know, none of the GI’s went down in the shelters.  I mean, you know.  So anyway, we were restricted for, I think it was at least six months.  So we were going to Norwich quite often.  We kept going to this tavern.  And nobody found it.  None of the others – it was just our guys.  And so it was August the 8th, my birthday, in ’44.  Oh yeah, it had to ’44 because I was home the next year.  This little old lady comes with a little chocolate cake, about so big, and gives me this – you know.  And they couldn’t hardly get any of that stuff.  Another one had a cousin or somebody in Scotland, sent her a little bottle of Scotch in the bread.  She gave it to me.  So I opened it up, you know, put it on the bar, and so we had Scotch.  You know, most of them couldn’t buy Scotch because it was rationed.  And most of the pub keepers were rationing it according to how much they used.  And it was so little, they used to keep it for themselves.  So those are a few of the things that – oh!  See, things are coming back (chuckle).  I was in London on VE Day.  (My earphones are buzzing).  I was in London on VE Day, and I mean it was crazy.  It was absolutely crazy.  People were going nuts.  We walked back past the house, and people would say “Come and have a drink!”  The next one, “Come and have a drink!”  I mean, Picadilly Circus was mobbed, absolutely mobbed.  So, that was one big highlight too, yeah.  Of course I was in London a few times the Germans came over and bombed it.  Of course I had sense enough to go into a shelter.  I wasn’t about to get killed by a bomb.  Other than that, that’s about the highlight.  And then, like I say, somewhere in the middle – I got home, I was home on August 8th for my birthday, so I had to be leaving there somewhere around the middle of July.  I mean, in the 20’s, 24th, 23th.  Came back on the Queen Mary in five days or something.  Like 15,000 guys on the ship or something.  But we didn’t care.  You know, we were close to two years, so that was a long time.  And I never had a furlough at home.  I never had a furlough…

JM:  Tell us about your homecoming.  Oh, it was great.  I got into Chicago – I’m from Chicago.  And of course we have what they call “El”, elevator trains.  And I got out of the train station.  Of course I got on the wrong train, going south instead of going north. (chuckle)  So I didn’t even know my way around anymore.  It was great.  I had lost my father two years before, and my sister’s about six years younger than me.  She had just graduated from high school.  It was great, you know.  And then we thought we were going to Japan.  But then while I was on my 30 day furlough, the war ended, so it was a big relief.  That’s about it. 

JM:  Well, anything else you want to add before we wind up here?

RC:  Not that I could think of. 

JM:  I know that the crews all appreciated what those ground crews did – the flight crews.

RC:  Well, it’s a shame, because there’s so many – you know, we used to, before ’57, we used to come here with 14, 15 people.  And we’d have a, and there was quite a few guys that were from my barracks, you know, that I spent all that time with, you know.  My bunk partner was there a couple of times, the guy that slept on the bottom; I slept on top.  And just one by one, you know, they…today there’s nobody. Adam, I didn’t know over there.  Adam was in the 457th, but he was in a different section.  I didn’t hardly know Adam over there. 

JM:  And when did you start coming to these reunions?
RC:  The first one was ’90 – Ft. Lauderdale. 

JM:  Did you just find out about them then?
RC:  I found out about it – I joined the VFW.  And I saw it – they used to advertise it in the VFW papers, magazine.  And that’s where I saw it - the 95th.  And I never knew they had an organization before.  And I don’t remember exactly who I contacted, but then I found out about it.  Since then, I often wondered why they don’t advertise it like in the American Legion.  There’s a whole section of reunions every year.  Now they used to do it, and I don’t know why they don’t do it.

JM:  Is it a newspaper for the American Legion?

RC:  It’s a monthly magazine.  The American Legion and the VFW.  I would think that there’s a lot of guys.  I would have joined if I would have known.  I would have joined right away.  And I imagine there’re still guys out there that don’t know about it.  Of course, there can’t be many. 

JM:  How old were you when you were in England with the 95th?
RC:  Well, I was 22.  I got one deferment because my mother, because my dad had died, and I was the sole…   My sister was in high school and my mother, you know, wasn’t, isn’t, wasn’t – she is not living anymore – never tried to learn English too much.  So she was at kind of a disadvantage when I left because – but I did get one deferment.  That’s why I was a little older than some of the guys.

JM:  What was her country of origin?
RC:  Germany.  So when in basic training they asked me if I would fight against the Germans.  I said sure.  You know, because I know how they treated my relatives over there.  I know my mother’s sister had a farm.  They took everything.  She raised everything, and they took it all away from her.  No, I had no qualms.  Well I tried to be a gunner. They rejected me because I’ve got flat feet.  Honest.

JM:  Which later gave you trouble.

RC:  Yes.  Yeah.  So they sent me to a hospital off base.  And the guy looked at me, and he said, “Stand up on you toes.”  And he says, “Okay, go on to the next door.”  And they gave me some, what do you call them, arch supports.  I put them on and I couldn’t even walk.  Oh man.  But anyway, he gave me a letter to try to keep me off the concrete, walking on the concrete, climbing on the planes, stuff like that.  That’s when they made that job for me, and it was great.  It was a nice job.  I enjoyed it.

JM:  Did you do that jobs until the end of your…

RC:  Yeah.  Besides that, I was taking care of the pass book. (Chuckle) Off the record.  You know, I did a lot of record keeping.  You know, they had drills and rivet guns and screwdrivers and all this other stuff that they, that was in the tool crib.  And I kind of took care of that.  Yeah, it was nice.  It was an interesting job. 

JM:  Well thank you so much for taking the time today to do this oral history.  And also for your service to our country.  It meant so much to the men who were flying, and to Europe and to the United States.

RC:  Well, I’m impressed of all you younger people who are taking over and keeping this thing going.  Yeah, I wish I could get my two sons interested.  I’m going to keep after them and see what I can do.  And I think I’m going to get my wife.  She’s got more influence than I have, I think.  Maybe they could…I don’t know how they could help.  At least if they could send in $25 worth of dues to help out.

JM:  Well, I will be sending you a copy of these tapes that you can share with them.

RC:  Okay.  Well, okay.  Thank you very much.

JM:  Thank you.  This is Janie McKnight from the Legacy Group.  I’ve been speaking with Richard Creutz.  And with me today has been David Eggerton.  And we now are concluding this oral history.