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Ludwigshafen Again The Germans' will not only to survive as a political entity but to hold on to their ill-gotten gains was shown many times over in the promptness with which they set their expendable slaves to work after the dust from our strategic attacks had settled. Strike photos from the September 3 assault on the I. G. Farben Chemical Works uniformly indicated that our three squadrons had dropped their 500pounders effectively within a small circular error range; and indeed, all the groups in the 94th Combat Wing had done their jobs well, yet intelligence held that the Enemy had, within a few days, begun to execute his contingency plan to rebuild. But fire is the great cleanser, and an incendiary raid would deprive him of the salvage needed for a running start. But the futility of it all; how many times would it take? War can be painfully redundant. I'm sure, though, the Nazis and a sizable number oftheir arrogant countrymen felt a similar impatience with the stoic English during the battle ofBritain. So, on September 9, the necessary was done. The briefing map again showed the way to Ludwigshafen, and the B-I7s were loaded with incendiaries. My crew did not make the trip. I don't recall whether our 613th was stood-down in normal rotation or whether we as a lead team were not scheduled, an unpredictable rotation system within the 138 Ludwigshafen Again squadron. However, Roger Bernard, a Wisconsin native and friend from my class in navigation school and a member of the 6I2th, did submit to fate that morning and was not seen again at Deenethorpe. lt was reported that his plane took a direct shell strike in the bomb bay, igniting the incendiaries and causing the gas load in the wings to blow the ship into two flaming sections that rolled over and plunged. No bailouts were seen, although the event was closely witnessed from both sides. In virtually every such case we had no news of the individuals who were swallowed in these fiery maelstroms , and as the days and weeks passed we generally assumed that they had joined the great ghost army, though not since Murgatroyd went in at Leipzig had a shoot-down been so jarring to me. You can usually take them in stride; they're part of your ARMA evalution. But this one, even though I'd not witnessed it, was again one of those bright flashes that takes over your consciousness for a while, because through Roger I knew his crew better than many in my own squadron. Pilot Dave Loughlin seemed almost as young as Roger (who was four years my junior); he was as freckled and boyish as Lindbergh, a Norman Rockwell, yet an able and respected B-17 skipper. Chuck Meredith, his copilot, could have been a slightly older brother, and Ed Sedlak, the bombardier, was blond as a Pole with the cheekbones of a Slavic Czech; pleasantly serious, and who played chess with a cunning that merely toyed with me. lt gave me pause to reflect on all this in a way I seldom did except for a few moments out of the long minutes on a bomb run, to look at the outlandish extravagance of our battle tactics: echelons, the equivalent of rank-and-file in parade review formation, like Civil War flesh-and-blood pawns in the iron enfilade of cannon fire. Even the Brits, with all their moral fiber, went single file, taking evasive action , making the German gunners earn their stripes. Soon after the end of the war, probably in early September of 1945, I saw Roger a half-block away and across the very broad UniversityAvenue in Madison. Roger Bernard; I could hardly believe it. We had a most happy reunion over some beers on the lakeside terrace. 139 Return from Berlin He had enrolled in engineering at the University ofWisconsin, and I had returned as an instructor in the art department. As you can imagine , I found his story to be a remarkable answer to the question each of us who flew combat asked. What would it be like-the sudden flash that moment when Mars is making a snap decision? Fortunately for Roger, his story has been much longer than the first few seconds ofit seemed to promise. In fact at the time ofthis writing, he is a healthy and prosperous retired engineer with a fine family. He told me that his plane was...

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