Bomber Pilot: A Memoir of World War II

6 The Wing

6 The Wing On March 24, 1944, I completed my tour in the prophetically named Liberator Round Trip Ticket. Almost at once I was given orders transferring me to the wing. I felt a strong attachment to myoId group and was glad the wing headquarters were located on the same airdrome where I'd been. Our wing included, of course, myoId group and two others at bases only a few miles away. When I arrived in the new command I reported directly to General Timberlake, who then told me he anticipated using me as his A-3 staff officer. A-3 is military for operations officer. The job had previously been filled by Major Morton Macks, the funniest man I ever knew in the Army. Besides Mort's quality as a clown he was an extremely smart and efficient operations man. I think the only reason General Ted was willing to replace him was that he had been overseas a long time, had completed a combat tour of operations, and wanted to go home. The general was letting him go purely out of compassion. As was customary, the first thing I did after reporting was to ask for a day or two of leave to go to London. The general approved my request and immediately I got on the telephone to LeSueur, who had told me to be sure to come down when I The Wing 187 could. He wanted to help me celebrate my last mission. "Come on down," Larry said. "I have a new Hat and a nice room for you. I may have to leave town before you're ready to go back, but I'll give you the run of the place." This trip to London would be a much nicer one than those past. I wouldn't have to return to sweat out any more missions, and I would return to one of the best jobs in the Air Corps. Still, when I got to London, to my own surprise I guess as much as to Larry's, I didn't feel much in the mood for hilarity. I wanted to talk with the boys about war and politics and see some people I had tried to see and missed on my previous trips. I was tired and I wanted to relax. At the CBS offices I talked to Messrs. Shaw and Collingwood and some of the other fellows while I waited for LeSueur to return from lunch. While we were in the midst of a loud controversy Larry, sleek and dark in his ultraconservative pinstripes, strode in looking the part of a key international operator. He greeted me with, CCHiyah, jerk!" That afternoon we chatted in the office for a while and then started wandering about town. Our first stop was the Hat of Robert Capa, a thick-voiced, swarthy photographer for Life. Capa had asked Larry to come by and give him some advice about Hats for rent. The stocky little photographer made a strong impression on me as another fearless journalist. That evening we had dinner with Davidson Taylor of the Office of War Information, Charles Wertenbaker of Time, and some others. Dave Taylor had previously worked on the Louisville Courier-Journal and had a lot to say about Kentucky that was of particular interest to me. As a result of the days I spent in London, I confirmed my already strong conviction that American reporters were doing a whale of a job. It was a job the American people had come to take for granted. Larry and Capa were both qualified parachutists hoping for a chance to jump somewhere behind enemy lines. All the rest of them spent many waking hours of each day planning how they might establish themselves personally in the war-not to make headlines, but merely to make themselves feel they were being fair to the public. The day after my arrival Larry had to leave-town. He left 188 TheWing me with the keys to his sumptuous Hat. -I had been hoping for some time to be able to see Stanley Reed, Jr., an old law school classmate of mine, and now with Larry gone I decided to try again to find him. Stanley was the son of a Supreme Court justice , and a naval officer in one of the headquarters in London. He was a Kentuckian by birth, but because of his long...