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~----------------------Happy Birthday at Happy Valley November 5, 1943, Knettishall, England. "Bramwell's Crew! Grab your socks!" I was startled out ofa deep sleep. My watch said six o'clockbut there'd been no alert the night before, and they usually woke us between one and two-thirty when we were scheduled to fly. Suddenly, I remembered that it was my thirtieth birthdayone day I did not want to fly. The night before, some ofus had been sitting around the stove in our Quonset hut chewing the fat. "Tomorrow is my birthday," I said. "I've always said ifl live to thirty, I'll live to a ripe old age. I have to confess," I added, "five years ago in Spain I was saying, 'If I live to twenty-five, I'll live to a ripe old age.'" "What were you doing in Spain?" Grundlach, a replacement gunner, piped up. "I fought in the Spanish Civil War." "Come on! You're old, but not that old." "The Spanish Civil War, not the Spanish American War." I knew that was coming. I'd heard it before. "What the hell were you doing there? Were you a soldier of fortune or somethin' ?" "You kidding? At 100 pesetas a month? You couldn't buy Mexican chickpeas with that. No, I was a soldier offreedom." It sounded pat, and I was immediately sorry I'd said it. "Actually it was the beginning of this war. We were fighting the same 8 ESCAPE FROM HITLER'S EUROPE enemies, Hitler and Mussolini. They helped Franco overthrow the Spanish Republican government. I thought that if we stopped them there we might prevent this one." "But why you? Why did you have to go?" "I felt strongly about that son of a bitch Hitler and his concentration camps. I hated his master race crap. I felt I had to go. About 3,000 Americans felt the same way." The guys had gone on to kid me about my flexible superstition but-in deference to my advanced age, I suppose-assured me that I had made it. There would be no mission the next day; the fog was too thick. And it certainly looked that way from the weather reports we'd been getting all night. You never saw a bunch more sensitive to weather than these guys in my squadron . As each new airman came in from the movies or Aero club, we got a full report on clouds, stars, and moon. We asked if an alert was on. Did they load bombs? How many? How much gas in the tanks? Their answers constituted our "barracks briefing." Thousand -pounders meant docks or submarine pens. Five-hundredpounders and incendiaries meant factories or rail centers. Full "Tokyo" (auxiliary belly) tanks threatened DPs (deep penetrations ) into western or central Germany. Clear weather meant France or Belgium; 10/lOth overcast (maximum cloud cover) spelled Germany. Now, as I was getting dressed, I still didn't think we'd fly that morning. The fog had closed in thicker than ever, and I was sure the mission would be scrubbed. "Well, fellas," I said cheerfully, "I've reached my thirtieth, all right." "Wait," Oscar Land said. "The day ain't over yet." Reluctantly , I had to admit he was right. "Okay. We'll celebrate at the club tonight." The atmosphere was tense as we got to the briefing room. To tell the truth, it was always tense. But that particular morning, perhaps because it was my birthday, I was more uptight than Project MUSE (2024-04-24 03:58 GMT) Happy Birthday at Happy Valley 9 usual. The enlisted men, wearing flight jackets with brightly painted names-"Joho's Jokers," "Screamin' Red Ass," "Cock o' the Walk," "Princess Pat," "Little Boy Blue"-were already seated and chattering noisily. We noncoms were always briefed before the officers. Hidden behind a large screen, waiting for the "unveiling," was the dreaded map that would show us the flight route to and from the target, with the concentrations of enemy flak marked by red cellophane overlay. Everyone was speculating about where we were going. When we were all seated, the bright young A2 (Air Intelligence) officer raised the screen. We sat there in stunned silence, our eyes following the black ribbon to the solid red mass surrounding the target. There was a soft whistle. Someone said, "Uh, uh!" That broke the spell. Now everyone was talking at once. We were going to "Happy Valley"! We'd been expecting a...

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