[Retain Mike]

This essay reminds me of the extraordinary men I met growing up; men who seemed to consider their WW II service as a common rite of passage. My contact with these men started about age ten when my dad began taking me out golfing on the weekends. One day Don had his brother Ken with him at the golf course. That seemed no big thing until someone mentioned he was an ace with the Flying Tigers. Here in real life was the character I saw John Wayne play in the movie. Later I often ended up as a dishwasher at the country club and noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. He saw my puzzled look, and said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc. Here was one of the men portrayed in the Longest Day. I found out a friend of many years served with the 10th Mountain Infantry which landed in Italy in January 1945. He received two silver stars and was the only one of eight officers in his company to land in Italy and soldier through the102 days until the Germans surrendered. Those are just a few of the stories I remember among so many others I could tell or have forgotten.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Garp!

[caver]

That’s a sobering article. I’ve read it before, but it always gets me.

[smokingfrog]

Probably one of the worst places you’d want to be when Messerschmitts are attacking your bomber formation or when flak is exploding all around you.

[Joe Brower]

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
Randall Jarrell

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

[UNGN]

My son and I checked out the B-24 Ball turret at the Pima Air Museum. He weighs about 135lbs, but looked too big for it.

The wind looks like it blew right thru the turret and the Hatch to get in/out is the seat back. It was simultaneously terrifying and miserable.

[Nachoman]

Fortunately, my dad was in the top turret on a B17. I don’t know how they could get anyone to man the ball turret.

[miserare]

There were giants amongst us in those days.

And we barely knew it.

[DUMBGRUNT]

An uncle was a turret gunner he completed training about the time his USMC brother went in third-wave Iwo Jima.
He was en route for Europe when they put him on stand down.
He would not be needed.

My career Navy father survived the sinking of the Yorktown.

My wife’s father was a US Navy ship’s Doctor WWII and Korea, never graduated from college.
He was in the pre-war Navy V-12 program for med school.
Uncle Sam needed him and could not wait.