Nebraska, 1994.
It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky over the Nebraska farmland. On the back porch of a white painted farmhouse, sat an old man and a teenage youth. On the wooden picnic table was a couple of .22 rifles, and some gun cleaning items. It was the aftermath a plinking session between a grandfather and his grandson, and now they sat and talked while cleaning the rifles that they had so much fun fouling.
The old man took out a well used old stockman pattern pocket knife, and used it to cut up some patches from an old flannel shirt that had gone into the rag bag. His grandson looked at the old knife in his grandads hand and smiled.
"You've had that knife forever grandpa, and yet you've never talked about the wings on it."
The old man looked down on the knife. There on the bone handles, was inlaid a silver likeness of the insignia of the 8th Air Force, a pair of wings on the number 8. It had been well done by a jewler in London, while on a weekend pass, and now almost 50 years later, was still there.
"No pup, I never have. Maybe I thought you were a mite too young to hear of such dark times. Maybe I wasn't ready to talk of them either. Maybe a bit a bit of both, who knows." said the old man.
"I'm not a kid anymore, grandpa. I'd like to hear about your experiances, there's just so much a person can get out of a history book. "
The old man looked carefully into his grandson's eyes, and he saw a serious young man on the cusp of manhood.
"No I guess you're not a kid anymore. You sure outshot me today, thats a fact. But I lost some good friends over there, and I've never spoke of it. Looking at this knife everytime I use it, I think of them." said the old man softly.
"You want to talk about it now, grandpa?"
The old man hesitated for a bit, then took out his pipe and started to fill the bowl.
"I used that knife to help me treat a wounded crewmate on my 10th mission. My fellow waist gunner to be exact. He got a big piece of flak..."
Norwich, England, 1944,
The two men standing on the control tower walkway watched the returning formation through high power binoculars. Some of the returning B-17 bombers turned and made to circle the field, giving the damaged aircraft first priority on landing. One in particular had one engine out, and another trailing thick black smoke, and on final approach a red flare went off from it. Wounded aboard.
It set down on the runway and taxied to it's own hardstand, and silence fell in the aftermath of the roar of the big Curtis-Wright radial engines as the pilot cut the switches. An ambulance was already backing up to the fuselage door, and soon the medics had a young airman being lifted out on a stretcher. His right leg was heavily bandaged where the leg of his sheepskin flying suit had been cut open, and a battle dressing wrapped tightly on the leg.
"We'll come by the base hospital and check on ya!"
"Don't go chasing any nurses with that leg!"
A bunch of encouraging calls from his crewmates rang out in the quiet English late afternoon. The young airman was doped up on morphine, and was not in any pain as he waved back at his friends.
The crewmen started off to debriefing, held after every mission, and one young crewman walked towards the debriefing building, then made a detour and went around the back of the building. He was shaking with the aftermath of the combat, and didn't want his crewmates to see his hands shaking like leaves in a high wind. He picked up a stick and took out his pocket knife to whittle a bit and regain some composure. Then he saw the clotted sticky dried blood on the knife handle, and on his hands from when at 21,000 feet, he had helped his wounded fellow waist gunner. His hands were shaking so much he could hardly open his knife to take a cut at the wood. Suddenly he bent forward and vomited. All the terror of the mission seemed to come on him at that moment, and he retched till he though he'd throw up his stomach. Then he went and sat down on the back steps and tried to whittle on the stick and think of back home in Nebraska.
A shadow fell on the ground in his line of vission, and he looked up and saw Captian William "Buck" McKleary standing there. The "old man" of his crew, Mckleary was 25 years old to the young gunners 19 years, and was the father figure to the younger crew members of the B-17.
The young gunner made to get up.
"I...I'm on the way to debriefing...honest sir, I just didn't feel to good. I'm okay now!" he stuttered.
Captain McKleary motioned him to sit down, and he came over and sat down next to the shaking young man.
"Go ahead and cut on that stick. I'll join you."
Captain McKleary took out a well used looking Barlow knife, and picked up a stick and started to cut small slivers from it. Jimmy looked on in amazement, as his airplane comander sat beside him and whittled on a stick. Slowly, Jimmy took a few cuts, and to his surprise, his hands had almost stopped shaking. Then he stopped and stared at the dried blood on his hands and the knife.
"You're a hero, Jimmy." said Captain McKleary, "You saved Kendricks life today with that knife. If you hadn't done what you did, as fast as you did it, he'd have bled to death. But he's alive, and he's going to be okay, thanks to you and that stockman. Say, thats a nice one, your dad give it to ya? And I like the insignia on the handle. How'd you do that?"
Before he knew it, young Jimmy was telling Captain McKleary all about the farm back in Nebraska, his dad, and how they used to sit on the back porch and make toothpicks after dinner. He told him about the jeweler in London who did the work on the knife. Then he noticed his hands weren't shaking at all anymore. He looked over at Captain McKleary.
"I'm a coward, sir. I come out here after every mission and puke. I'm so damm scared, I'm ashamed of myself."
"It's okay Jimmy, it was a rough one today. I don't feel too good myself. I felt like doing the same thing, why do you think I'm sneaking around in back of buildings."
"You sir?" asked the young gunner, "I don't believe it." replied Jimmy.
The Captain nodded to him.
"Yeah, I get so scared sometimes, I barf up my breakfast before taking off. What do you think I'm doing back by the tail before we take off? You think I'm that obsessive about the rudder assembly? I'm as scared as everyone else. I only hold down my breakfast about half the time."
"But I can't go back up there, sir. If I do I know I'm gonna die. I feel like I've used up all my luck." said Jimmy.
"I got news for you," said the Captain. "The statistics say that your chances of getting killed on any one particular mission are no better or worse than on your first or your twenty first mission. Really. Stay with me Jimmy, I need you. You're a hot gunner, and that can make all the difference up there. Heck, after today you're an ace, that's better than some of those hot shots in the P-51's. Just give me one more mission, then we'll talk and if you feel the same way, I'll sign your transfer papers myself."
Jimmy hesitated, and cut a thin sliver from the stick. Captain McKleary went on.
"I know you're scared, so is every man up there, don't let them tell you any different. But we're getting better every mission. We know more now, and our tactics are better. As we speak, the Mustangs are being fitted with the new drop tanks that will let them go with us all the way to Berlin if need be. New planes are arriving everyday, the new Y series with the chin turret and extra guns. Just give me one more, and we'll talk again, okay?"
Jimmy swallowed, and then noticed he wasn't shaking anymore.
"Okay, sir. One more, we'll see how it goes."
The two airmen got up and went to the mission debriefing.
Nebraska, 1994
"So you kept flying, grandpa?" asked the grandson.
"Yes, I did one more mission, then captain McKleary and I would go out back of the debriefing hut and whittle a little bit, and he'd talk me into one more mission. He was a heck of a guy. The kind of man who led by example, and you naturally did want to follow. I'd puke and then whittle bit, and the skipper would be right there with me, whittling with his old Barlow knife. We'd make a few toothpicks, then I'd agree to just one more mission."
"So you flew all 25 missions then?" asked the grandson.
The old man looked off in the middle distance, and a sad tone came into his voice.
"No, we didn't make it to the 25th mission." said the grandfather. The 'we' didn't escape notice by the grandson.
"It was on our 19th mission that it happened." the old man went on. " We were on the way back to our base just outside of Norwich, England. Could actually see the Dutch coast just ahead. Some 109's came in from 12 o'clock, because that's the weakest point of firepower in the B-17. More than one from that direction, and your in deep poop. Those 109's had 20mm air cannon, and we figure they got a whole long burst into the front of the plane. The cockpit. The plane rolled over into a starboard dive, and we figured we'd been hit good. We'd felt the rounds hitting up forward, and we could hear Randy Lomack up in the top turret yelling for us to bail out, that there was nothing left of the front of the plane. I'd like to think Captain McKleary and Leutenant Baker, the co-pilot, never knew what them."
The old man stopped for a moment, and then went on after a bit.
" Me and the other waist gunner got into our chutes and got out. Some nice Dutch folks found us on the ground before the Germans did, and hid us out in the top room of a windmill. Stayed there for a few weeks living off of cheese and bread they brought us. If the Germans had found us, they'd have shot those Dutch folks right off, they took a hell of a risk hiding us. Much later, we sneaked off in a fishing boat, and got over to Yarmouth, England, right near our base. Got to wthin a mile of shore, when a British MTB on patrol found us and thought we were Nazi comando's tring to sneak into England."
The old man fell silent, and tapped out his pipe that he'd been smoking while telling the story. Then he took the bone handled stockman with the silver 8th Air Force insignia, and handed it to his grandson.
"Here, I want you to have this. I've been carrying it for long enough, and you will look after it real good for me."
"Grandpa, I can't take your knife! I...I just can't, it's yours." protested the grandson.
"Heck, I don't really need it anymore, it's not like I work the farm anymore, I just lease out the land to Chuck Millers boy to farm. I want you to have it because I know you'll appreatiate it, and the other family stuff I have. Besides, as a retired gentleman of leasure, I have another knife I' like to put some miles on." said the grandfather, as he reached into the pocket on his overalls and took out a small serpintine two blade jackknife. It had beautifull red jigged bone handles, and the old man opened it up and felt the keen edge on the pointy little blade.
" A peanut?' asked the puzzeled grandson, "You're going to carry a peanut after all this time? Why grandpa?"
"Well, somebody gave this little knife a long time ago, but I wasn't ready to carry it yet. But I got to thinking that if something happened to me, there's no memories built into this knife. I'm gettin old, so I may not have much time to waste. I got memories to make."
"Okay, grandpa, we'll make lot of memories yet! You'll see." said the grandson, as looked down at the bone handle stockman with the crest of the 8th Air Force on the handle.
"Just do me one favor, pup. Come Memorial Days in the future if I'm no longer around, say a little prayer for Captain McKleary for me, will ya?"
"I'll say one for him, and one for all the Captain McKleary's."
The old man knodded, and the grandson put the stockman in his pocket.
---------------------------------------------------
Authors note- Memorial day is around the corner, it would be nice to say a quick one for all the Captain McKlearys who gave it all.
It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the sky over the Nebraska farmland. On the back porch of a white painted farmhouse, sat an old man and a teenage youth. On the wooden picnic table was a couple of .22 rifles, and some gun cleaning items. It was the aftermath a plinking session between a grandfather and his grandson, and now they sat and talked while cleaning the rifles that they had so much fun fouling.
The old man took out a well used old stockman pattern pocket knife, and used it to cut up some patches from an old flannel shirt that had gone into the rag bag. His grandson looked at the old knife in his grandads hand and smiled.
"You've had that knife forever grandpa, and yet you've never talked about the wings on it."
The old man looked down on the knife. There on the bone handles, was inlaid a silver likeness of the insignia of the 8th Air Force, a pair of wings on the number 8. It had been well done by a jewler in London, while on a weekend pass, and now almost 50 years later, was still there.
"No pup, I never have. Maybe I thought you were a mite too young to hear of such dark times. Maybe I wasn't ready to talk of them either. Maybe a bit a bit of both, who knows." said the old man.
"I'm not a kid anymore, grandpa. I'd like to hear about your experiances, there's just so much a person can get out of a history book. "
The old man looked carefully into his grandson's eyes, and he saw a serious young man on the cusp of manhood.
"No I guess you're not a kid anymore. You sure outshot me today, thats a fact. But I lost some good friends over there, and I've never spoke of it. Looking at this knife everytime I use it, I think of them." said the old man softly.
"You want to talk about it now, grandpa?"
The old man hesitated for a bit, then took out his pipe and started to fill the bowl.
"I used that knife to help me treat a wounded crewmate on my 10th mission. My fellow waist gunner to be exact. He got a big piece of flak..."
Norwich, England, 1944,
The two men standing on the control tower walkway watched the returning formation through high power binoculars. Some of the returning B-17 bombers turned and made to circle the field, giving the damaged aircraft first priority on landing. One in particular had one engine out, and another trailing thick black smoke, and on final approach a red flare went off from it. Wounded aboard.
It set down on the runway and taxied to it's own hardstand, and silence fell in the aftermath of the roar of the big Curtis-Wright radial engines as the pilot cut the switches. An ambulance was already backing up to the fuselage door, and soon the medics had a young airman being lifted out on a stretcher. His right leg was heavily bandaged where the leg of his sheepskin flying suit had been cut open, and a battle dressing wrapped tightly on the leg.
"We'll come by the base hospital and check on ya!"
"Don't go chasing any nurses with that leg!"
A bunch of encouraging calls from his crewmates rang out in the quiet English late afternoon. The young airman was doped up on morphine, and was not in any pain as he waved back at his friends.
The crewmen started off to debriefing, held after every mission, and one young crewman walked towards the debriefing building, then made a detour and went around the back of the building. He was shaking with the aftermath of the combat, and didn't want his crewmates to see his hands shaking like leaves in a high wind. He picked up a stick and took out his pocket knife to whittle a bit and regain some composure. Then he saw the clotted sticky dried blood on the knife handle, and on his hands from when at 21,000 feet, he had helped his wounded fellow waist gunner. His hands were shaking so much he could hardly open his knife to take a cut at the wood. Suddenly he bent forward and vomited. All the terror of the mission seemed to come on him at that moment, and he retched till he though he'd throw up his stomach. Then he went and sat down on the back steps and tried to whittle on the stick and think of back home in Nebraska.
A shadow fell on the ground in his line of vission, and he looked up and saw Captian William "Buck" McKleary standing there. The "old man" of his crew, Mckleary was 25 years old to the young gunners 19 years, and was the father figure to the younger crew members of the B-17.
The young gunner made to get up.
"I...I'm on the way to debriefing...honest sir, I just didn't feel to good. I'm okay now!" he stuttered.
Captain McKleary motioned him to sit down, and he came over and sat down next to the shaking young man.
"Go ahead and cut on that stick. I'll join you."
Captain McKleary took out a well used looking Barlow knife, and picked up a stick and started to cut small slivers from it. Jimmy looked on in amazement, as his airplane comander sat beside him and whittled on a stick. Slowly, Jimmy took a few cuts, and to his surprise, his hands had almost stopped shaking. Then he stopped and stared at the dried blood on his hands and the knife.
"You're a hero, Jimmy." said Captain McKleary, "You saved Kendricks life today with that knife. If you hadn't done what you did, as fast as you did it, he'd have bled to death. But he's alive, and he's going to be okay, thanks to you and that stockman. Say, thats a nice one, your dad give it to ya? And I like the insignia on the handle. How'd you do that?"
Before he knew it, young Jimmy was telling Captain McKleary all about the farm back in Nebraska, his dad, and how they used to sit on the back porch and make toothpicks after dinner. He told him about the jeweler in London who did the work on the knife. Then he noticed his hands weren't shaking at all anymore. He looked over at Captain McKleary.
"I'm a coward, sir. I come out here after every mission and puke. I'm so damm scared, I'm ashamed of myself."
"It's okay Jimmy, it was a rough one today. I don't feel too good myself. I felt like doing the same thing, why do you think I'm sneaking around in back of buildings."
"You sir?" asked the young gunner, "I don't believe it." replied Jimmy.
The Captain nodded to him.
"Yeah, I get so scared sometimes, I barf up my breakfast before taking off. What do you think I'm doing back by the tail before we take off? You think I'm that obsessive about the rudder assembly? I'm as scared as everyone else. I only hold down my breakfast about half the time."
"But I can't go back up there, sir. If I do I know I'm gonna die. I feel like I've used up all my luck." said Jimmy.
"I got news for you," said the Captain. "The statistics say that your chances of getting killed on any one particular mission are no better or worse than on your first or your twenty first mission. Really. Stay with me Jimmy, I need you. You're a hot gunner, and that can make all the difference up there. Heck, after today you're an ace, that's better than some of those hot shots in the P-51's. Just give me one more mission, then we'll talk and if you feel the same way, I'll sign your transfer papers myself."
Jimmy hesitated, and cut a thin sliver from the stick. Captain McKleary went on.
"I know you're scared, so is every man up there, don't let them tell you any different. But we're getting better every mission. We know more now, and our tactics are better. As we speak, the Mustangs are being fitted with the new drop tanks that will let them go with us all the way to Berlin if need be. New planes are arriving everyday, the new Y series with the chin turret and extra guns. Just give me one more, and we'll talk again, okay?"
Jimmy swallowed, and then noticed he wasn't shaking anymore.
"Okay, sir. One more, we'll see how it goes."
The two airmen got up and went to the mission debriefing.
Nebraska, 1994
"So you kept flying, grandpa?" asked the grandson.
"Yes, I did one more mission, then captain McKleary and I would go out back of the debriefing hut and whittle a little bit, and he'd talk me into one more mission. He was a heck of a guy. The kind of man who led by example, and you naturally did want to follow. I'd puke and then whittle bit, and the skipper would be right there with me, whittling with his old Barlow knife. We'd make a few toothpicks, then I'd agree to just one more mission."
"So you flew all 25 missions then?" asked the grandson.
The old man looked off in the middle distance, and a sad tone came into his voice.
"No, we didn't make it to the 25th mission." said the grandfather. The 'we' didn't escape notice by the grandson.
"It was on our 19th mission that it happened." the old man went on. " We were on the way back to our base just outside of Norwich, England. Could actually see the Dutch coast just ahead. Some 109's came in from 12 o'clock, because that's the weakest point of firepower in the B-17. More than one from that direction, and your in deep poop. Those 109's had 20mm air cannon, and we figure they got a whole long burst into the front of the plane. The cockpit. The plane rolled over into a starboard dive, and we figured we'd been hit good. We'd felt the rounds hitting up forward, and we could hear Randy Lomack up in the top turret yelling for us to bail out, that there was nothing left of the front of the plane. I'd like to think Captain McKleary and Leutenant Baker, the co-pilot, never knew what them."
The old man stopped for a moment, and then went on after a bit.
" Me and the other waist gunner got into our chutes and got out. Some nice Dutch folks found us on the ground before the Germans did, and hid us out in the top room of a windmill. Stayed there for a few weeks living off of cheese and bread they brought us. If the Germans had found us, they'd have shot those Dutch folks right off, they took a hell of a risk hiding us. Much later, we sneaked off in a fishing boat, and got over to Yarmouth, England, right near our base. Got to wthin a mile of shore, when a British MTB on patrol found us and thought we were Nazi comando's tring to sneak into England."
The old man fell silent, and tapped out his pipe that he'd been smoking while telling the story. Then he took the bone handled stockman with the silver 8th Air Force insignia, and handed it to his grandson.
"Here, I want you to have this. I've been carrying it for long enough, and you will look after it real good for me."
"Grandpa, I can't take your knife! I...I just can't, it's yours." protested the grandson.
"Heck, I don't really need it anymore, it's not like I work the farm anymore, I just lease out the land to Chuck Millers boy to farm. I want you to have it because I know you'll appreatiate it, and the other family stuff I have. Besides, as a retired gentleman of leasure, I have another knife I' like to put some miles on." said the grandfather, as he reached into the pocket on his overalls and took out a small serpintine two blade jackknife. It had beautifull red jigged bone handles, and the old man opened it up and felt the keen edge on the pointy little blade.
" A peanut?' asked the puzzeled grandson, "You're going to carry a peanut after all this time? Why grandpa?"
"Well, somebody gave this little knife a long time ago, but I wasn't ready to carry it yet. But I got to thinking that if something happened to me, there's no memories built into this knife. I'm gettin old, so I may not have much time to waste. I got memories to make."
"Okay, grandpa, we'll make lot of memories yet! You'll see." said the grandson, as looked down at the bone handle stockman with the crest of the 8th Air Force on the handle.
"Just do me one favor, pup. Come Memorial Days in the future if I'm no longer around, say a little prayer for Captain McKleary for me, will ya?"
"I'll say one for him, and one for all the Captain McKleary's."
The old man knodded, and the grandson put the stockman in his pocket.
---------------------------------------------------
Authors note- Memorial day is around the corner, it would be nice to say a quick one for all the Captain McKlearys who gave it all.
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