Roy Benson

“ The tow ship had to fly low over the field and release the target before landing. We never liked to fly the tow ship as it was so monotonous flying back and forth for hours.
We started to fly more formation flights of two or three planes and another plane would try to "attack" us from out of the sun or from the clouds like an enemy would. This taught us to keep our heads turning all the time to keep track of the sky all the way around us. We would take evasive action to try to keep the enemy ship from getting behind us. ”

“ We now started to practice landing on instrument only. The instructor rode in the seat behind you in the AT-6 and when you were in the air there was a black hood that you pulled over the front cockpit. The instructor would then give you compass headings, height and speed and you would follow his directions to approach the field. Following his direction you would line up with the runway and begin coming down. All you could see were the instruments. If you were coming in perfectly, he would let you go ahead and land by yourself. ”

“ The men you least expected to would become a tower of strength. It made me realize that I was a better man than many of the men I would normally have looked up to. There was a dirt road through the center of camp and we used this for walking for exercise. We didn't get enough food to exercise much and there was no room for sports. One of the guard towers was close to our barracks and it had a searchlight which rotated back and forth at night to keep us in our buildings after dark. ”

“ Almost all of our flying here was takeoffs and landings and in the air we practiced spins, slow rolls, snap rolls, and figure eights to get the feel of the airplane and develop our control. It was hard to get the plane out of a tight spin but it was an important thing to learn. The planes that we later flew in California were notorious for not being able to get out of a spin. ”

“ After six hours of flying in England to get used to the planes and practice landings, we were about ready to fly missions. Now we were to get our own planes. I understood that each plane cost about $45,000 which seemed like a lot then, but is nothing compared to the price of a plane today. We had our own crew which consisted of a crew chief armorer and mechanics. They were proud of their plane and kept it in excellent condition. They would wash the plane with gasoline and then wax and polish it so there would be less air resistance and it could go a couple of miles an hour faster. ”

“ On each mission we had one pilot who flew up and down the coast of England at 30,000 feet. This was the "relay plane" used to relay any massages to the planes over Germany. Due to the curvature of the earth and communication equipment at that time, radio messages could not be sent directly. If the wind direction changed while the planes were over Germany it would affect the compass heading we were given to return to England and if it was overcast we could have blown off course, missed England entirely and gone out to sea. If your home field was fogged in you were directed to another field. ”

“ We also did a lot of formation flying close to the ground which trained you to stay close together in formation. In the tomato and vegetable farms in the Sacramento valley the pickers would be out in the fields with crates stacked about six feet tall and we would fly down so low that we blew the empty crates over. I imagine we were cussed a lot! A couple of times someone would come back and land with telephone wire or fencing caught on the underside of the plane. I loved to do acrobatics and when I was up alone, I would do rolls and snaprolls and all the fun stuff. ”

“ We could hear the crash of accidents from our house on Chapin Street and the kids would all run down to see them. One time a truck load of prunes tipped over and there were prunes everywhere. Another time a load of butter in wooden crocks tipped over and the crocks rolled down people's lawns. People were coming out and carrying them into their houses, but we didn't know enough to get any. Once a car hit a tree and the driver was thrown through the roof and landed on the sidewalk. ”

“ They were very strict about talking on the radio from the time you took off until you were over Germany and even then it was used only for necessary messages and warning each other when in combat. Any unnecessary talk might have given away information to the Germans (even though they had probably picked us up on their radar) . The English bombers always bombed the enemy at night and they continued to do this throughout the War. They thought that the Americans were crazy to bomb in broad daylight. The B-17 bombers, however, were heavily armed and could defend themselves fairly well. ”

“ After our time was up and we were warm, Bruce and I took some cans of food out of our packs and gave them to the woman. It was our way of saying thanks to them for allowing us to get warm and we received a smile from her as thanks. Then we returned to the blizzard. Later on during the march we did pick up some things around the farms and it must have been hard for the farm people. Having thousands of Americans crowding into every space must have been traumatic for them. ”

“ Most days in the winter, the only car to come by was the mailman. In the deep winter he might only make it once a week. In the spring when the snow melted the roads were bad and we would simply drive in the ruts that were not too deep. I spent all my Christmas vacations and weekends with Clarence, and sometimes Gordon, at this place.
If the roads were very bad in the winter, my father would take Clarence and I as far as the main road went and we would pull a toboggan, loaded with our food and supplies, about six miles to the cabin. ”

“ We got a West Point grad who wasn't much better, but he was big on discipline. This was completely lost on a bunch of fighter pilots. When you go through long missions and lose a lot of your best friends, you are not about to spend time worrying about West Point rules and regulations. He even tried to give bed and equipment inspection and had us line up for full uniform inspection on the runway. I can't remember what finally happened to him, but on one mission were led by a Colonel who came from another base and was an experienced combat pilot. ”

“ The sun would be shining there and the clouds as white as new snow. It gave one the feeling that you were just above the earth and could step out and walk on top of the clouds. The other planes would pop up out of the clouds. It was quite a sight.
One time we had a Lieutenant Colonel leading our squadron and when he got up on the runway the pilot who was taking off with him either misjudged or didn't use his brakes and he ran into the back of the Colonels plane, chewing off the entire tail section. The pilot probably wished he could have died right there, but nobody was hurt. ”

“ Tonapah was at the foot of a mountain range and the airfield was out in the valley toward the next range. It was flat country with nothing but sand and brush. The buildings were just wooden shacks and the wind blew the sand everywhere. It was in the food, in our beds, and over us most of the time. We arrived here on June 23, 1943 and were going to be checked out in the P-39 airplane. This plane was the one used in the early part of the war in the Pacific and had become obsolete. They were shipped back to the U.S. to be used for training pilots as all the new planes were going to the war zones. ”

“ The next morning we left Omaha by train for Ainsworth, Nebraska. It turned out to be a little place about the size of Cheshire out in the middle of nowhere. The only one there to take care of the place was an old man wearing a beard. The four old planes were parked there and we didn't even know if we could get them started. To make a correction, the fourth pilot was not Bruce, but another fellow who was from Hastings, Neb. which was in the southern part of the state. We planned to fly down there and land at the nearest airport. ”

“ When we started marching again we were really in bad shape. We were so weak with aching muscles and blistered feet that we began to worry about whether or not we could keep going. The boys from our barracks were still together and wanted to keep it that way. The only good thing was that the blizzard had stopped and it was beginning to thaw a little. Many of the guys were falling out now and laying along side the road. Bruce and I were having trouble and soon our knees began to buckle and we would fall down. Our legs were so weak that they wouldn't hold us up any longer. ”

“ I don't remember what happened to the stumps, but we had no tools to cut them up for firewood so the Germans must have hauled them out of camp.
Each man then took a bed slat from his bunk, a board about four inches wide and three feet long and we used this to level the soft dirt as there were no rocks. It is amazing that it only took us two days and there was room enough for a football field and two softball diamonds. The football field was seldom used but there was always someone playing softball. The Red Cross furnished the balls, gloves and bats. ”

“ Sometimes along the march the Red Cross trucks would catch up with us with some parcels that we divided among us. We also discovered that the mounds of dirt in fields near the road covered stacks of potatoes or rutabagas to keep them from freezing. We would dig out the rutabagas and eat them raw.
When we stopped in the small villages we took over all the empty churches and buildings for sleeping and guys would immediately start out to trade cigarettes and anything else we had for food. ”

“ Gordon was good with mason work so he put in the cement block foundation and built the big stone fireplace at one end of the cabin. We had a lot of good fireplace fires and used to sit around it by the hour. Sometimes we would find a piece of apple wood to burn, which makes a beautiful fire. We also had a wood burning stove which we used for cooking. The cabin had one large room and two bedrooms partitioned off at one end by six foot high partitions. The walls were just the clapboards on the outside so it was not very warm in the winter. Just about like Horseshoe Camp I imagine. ”

“ Due to the shortage of German food, the cookhouse was only used to dispense hot water for beverages and another pot for washing dishes. Before each meal I would run to the cookhouse before they ran out of hot water, and run back before it got cold. They also gave out potatoes, kohlrabi, bread and blood sausage at times.
The one kitchen for the whole barracks was a room with a stove and a daily ration of coal to be used at mealtime. A time for that use was assigned to each room. We also had a small stove in the corner of our room to use for heat when we could got something to burn in it. ”

“ By this time we had developed our skill to the point where we got the fighter pilot attitude which was years later described as the 'Right Stuff'. We wore the silk scarf, sunglasses and rakish hat with a leather Jacket. In San Francisco I bought a pair of lumberjack boots that I was still wearing when I was in prison camp. We began to fly more aggressively as we knew the airplane better. The gunnery range was along an uninhabited portion of the California coast and we would fly down close to the rocks along the shore to scare the seals off the rocks. ”

“ They let me out in Canandaigua and I walked home. I made it faster than a train ride even though I used a lot of different means of travel to get home that leave.
After my stay at home I took the train from Rochester to San Francisco and it was a trip that I'll never forgot. There was a girl with three kids under the age of 5 and she was traveling from Boston to San Diego to be with her husband, a sergeant stationed in California. We had a Pullman car and their berth was opposite mine. The kids spent most of the time crying or running in the aisle. ”

“ Here I was at 29 with no job, a little money and a car. All the friends who had escaped being drafted, some legally and some not, had really prospered. Most had made a lot of money working in defense jobs, had new cars and homes of their own. After giving up three and a half years of your life for your country, the reasons others didn't go and their prosperity was always on one's mind. ”