Excerpts

  Prologue A Needle in A Haystack On June 18, 1944, a young man lurched across the searing sand of Rockaway Beach, New York. As he picked his way through a maze of blankets, beach chairs, and umbrellas, throngs of beachgoers stared at him. He looked out of place in long pants hiked up to his ankles and a sweat-dampened, white button-down shirt embroidered with his name. Among the crowd in bathing suits and trunks, it was not his attire that caught people's attention. It was the cardboard sign he held aloft. He was looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The young man had received a frantic telephone call an hour ear- lier at the beachfront candy store where he worked. An urgent voice had launched him out into the sweltering heat with a message he had hastily scrawled on the cardboard. He was hoping to find someone, a husband and wife whom he had never met, had never even seen. Scores of men and women were watching the candy clerk as they enjoyed the hot summer day, some casting brief glances, others staring intently. They instinctively understood the sign's message. America had now been at war with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan for some two and a half years, and most people on the beach knew someone in uniform. Many had lost a loved one in action. As more and more beachgoers realized what the young man was doing, they stepped aside to let him pass. A handful of the more curious ones trailed him down the shoreline. Frequently wiping his brow, squinting from the sunlight, he wan- dered up and down the beach for more than an hour, his face flushed from the heat and visibly sunburned. As the minutes dragged on, he could not help but think that he had been dispatched on a well- intentioned but futile errand. He wondered what the chances were that his message would find the two total strangers in the dense crowds. Still, he kept walking, with the sign over his head, through the forest of umbrellas. He stopped to take a few long breaths, his arms aching from hold- ing up the sign. Several yards behind him, a middle-aged couple and a pretty, black-haired young woman stumbled through the thick white sand toward him. Tears streamed down their sun-darkened faces. They had spotted the words hastily scrawled on the cardboard sign. Chapter 1 "Just A Milk RuN" December 31, Early Morning of New Year's Eve, 1943 Seething Airfield, Norfolk, England   An icy gust slapped against Staff Sergeant Arthur Meyerowitz as he stepped outside from the 448th Bomb Group's aluminum-walled mess hall just after 5 a.m. Wincing, he turned up the fleece collar of his leather bomber jacket and tugged his cap and earmuffs tightly. He peered for a few moments at the neat rows of cylindrical barracks arrayed on frost-cloaked farmland along the southern flank of Seeth- ing Airfield, home to his unit, the 715th Squadron, in Norfolk, England. He lingered on the mess hall's stoop as other airmen and pilots brushed past him. A hell of a way to spend the last day of the year, he thought, but he had to do the premission checks for Harmful Lil Armful , a B-24 Liberator in the 448th Bomb Group. He had been up since 2:30 a.m., when he had been rousted from sleep by an officer's flashlight and ordered to go out with Harmful Lil Armful , whose flight engineer and top-turret gunner, Sergeant George Glevanick, had just been rushed to the base hospital. Now, after the premission briefing and breakfast, Arthur steeled himself for his second mission. His maiden mission had come on December 24 aboard a B-24 named Consolidated Mess . The target was a Nazi V-1 missile site at Labroye, a relatively short hop across the English Channel in the Pas-de-Calais, in northern France. With luck, Arthur might be back at Seething in time for the New Year's Eve parties that he had planned to attend on base and in Norwich, some ten miles away on the east coast. Lucky bastard, he mused about Glevanick, shivering. At least Glevanick was guaranteed to make it into 1944. Then Arthur lowered his shoulder against the raw wind and stepped off the stoop onto a muddy path that wound toward three concrete airstrips. A few yards from the mess hall, Arthur spotted a group of young Englishwomen, slowed down, and removed his cap and earmuffs as he passed them. Despite the early hour, they were waiting to pick up their 8th Air Force boyfriends who had two-day passes for New Year's Eve and Day. Usually, the girlfriends had to stand outside the main gate, but they had been allowed on the base for the holidays after a security check. As they waited for their airmen to emerge from the building, the women were chatting amid a swirl of cigarette smoke. Running his hand through his dense, dark hair, Arthur shot them a grin. Several smiled back at the handsome twenty-five-year-old airman. A pretty blonde spotted Arthur's shoulder patch, which was embla- zoned with the image of a grinning, muscular rabbit clad in a super- hero's costume and cape who was perched atop a light blue bomb. "The 715th, is it? Where are the Rabbits off to, then, in such a rush so close to New Year's?" she called out. "We've got a date with some Germans," he replied. "Good luck--and give the bastards our regards," another woman chimed in as Arthur picked up his pace and waved.1 Attention from women was something Arthur was used to. The five-foot ten-inch, 160-pound staff sergeant possessed the street smarts and swagger of his Bronx neighborhood, and he exuded a con- fidence to which women were drawn. Before enlisting in the Army, Arthur had loved dressing stylishly, heading to the Garment District and stretching part of his paychecks into good deals on fashionable clothes. His family was accustomed to seeing beautiful young women on his well-tailored sleeves. At Norfolk, Arthur enjoyed chatting with attractive Englishwomen, but it never went beyond a few pints and dances in town or on base. Tucked in the breast pocket of his flight suit, his wallet held a snapshot of Esther Loew, his dark-haired, dark-eyed girlfriend back in the Bronx. An aunt had introduced him to the pretty twenty-one-year-old Esther before he had shipped out to England, and he was quickly smitten, so much so that he had considered marriage. He had decided, however, that with the casualty rate of bomber crews in the European and Pacific theaters of operation reaching the highest of any service branch--even more than the submarine fleet--he could not justify making her another in the sadly burgeoning ranks of young war widows. Still, she intended to wait for him, and he could not talk her out of it. Arthur carried another memento of home besides Esther's photo. Around his neck was a thin gold chain with a chai , the Hebrew sym- bol for "life." His mother had given it to him before he had left for England. As the rows of B-24s lining the airstrip materialized through the mist and freezing rain, Arthur had no time to think of Esther and of his parents and brother back in New York. Harmful Lil Armful had to be inspected, and his crewmates depended on Arthur, the flight engineer, to make sure that the plane was fit to fly. Everyone knew that the Allied invasion of Fortress Europe loomed. The waves of American and British bombers pounding German targets in France around the clock were "preparing the ground" for Operation Overlord, the largest amphibious assault in history. What no one except the top brass knew yet was where and when the Allies would strike across the British Channel. A few hours earlier at the mission briefing, the 448th's charismatic commander, thirty-seven-year-old Colonel James M. Thompson, had unveiled a huge map of Europe and thrust a pointer at three red- circled spots. Silence enveloped the crowded room as the pilots and crews waited to hear Thompson, whose neatly parted salt-and-pepper hair and trim Clark Gable mustache made him the very picture of a tough pilot and leader, speak in his no-nonsense Texan drawl. From airfields across eastern and central England, 250 B-17s and B-24s, including Harmful Lil Armful , would be escorted by hundreds of P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang fighter planes as they unleashed a daylight strike against the Nazi airfield at La Rochelle/Laleu, south- west of the Brest Peninsula. If the clouds over the site proved too dense, the secondary target was another Nazi airstrip, at Château- bernard. Thompson, a nerveless pilot who had racked up fifty-five missions over Europe and had earned a reputation for never sugarcoating danger for his men, told the assembled airmen that German flak and fighter attacks all the way into and out of the target run would be intense. Arthur knew they would soon be "in the soup" over France. Arthur could never have envisioned that he would see France or England, let alone go to war. Still, the eldest son of David and Rose Meyerowitz had always thirsted for adventure. Arthur was born on August 15, 1918, in the Bronx, in a tough neighborhood largely composed of Jewish, Irish, and Italian families crowded into old, yellow-brick, flat-roofed apartment buildings that clotted Findlay Avenue. At 1205 Findlay Avenue, built in 1915, the Meyerowitz family lived in a third-floor, one-bedroom apartment. David and Rose had a second child, Seymour, on August 11, 1927. When Seymour was old enough, he and Arthur shared a Murphy bed in the living room. Forty-three-year-old David Meyerowitz had emigrated from Roma- nia to New York as a boy and had been compelled to leave school at eighth grade to help the family survive. He went on to work as a driver and salesman in the wholesale bakery business and to marry Rose Blumen- thal, a vivacious, dark-haired woman born and raised in the Bronx. With the onset of the Great Depression in 1929, times turned increasingly tight for the Meyerowitz family and their Findlay Avenue neighbors. David always managed to keep his family fed, housed, and clothed, but money was always short. He and Rose were constantly juggling the bills, unable to think about moving out of their apartment. To survive on Findlay Avenue, Arthur learned how to use both his instincts and his fists. He had to because on the corners of Find- lay and adjoining streets, Russian and Eastern European Jews, Irish, and Italian kids claimed patches of local asphalt as their personal turf. In Arthur's building people watched out for each other, and when a job was lost or an illness struck families, neighbors helped out as best they could. Raised to respect women and imbued with a strong sense of right and wrong, Arthur was never afraid to stand up to bullies. Once, when the din of a man beating his wife echoed down the third-floor hallway of the apartment complex, Arthur rushed toward the noise and started banging on the neighbors' apartment door. The husband opened it, red-faced and sweating. In the small living room, his wife was sobbing, her clothes disheveled, bruises rising on her face. Arthur, clenching his fists at his side, glared at the older man, who backed away a step as Arthur stood in the doorway, saying nothing, his eyes still fixed on the neighbor. Then Arthur leaned forward, jabbed a finger just under the man's chin, and nodded in the direction of the cringing woman. Arthur turned around and waited for the door to close. He lingered in the hall, listening as the man and the woman talked in low, almost hushed tones. There were no more slaps or shouts. Over the following days and weeks, it became apparent that the husband had gotten the message: if he threatened his wife again, his tough young neighbor would give him a dose of the same. The beat- ings stopped. Arthur graduated from Robert Morris High School, built in 1897 as the first public high school in the Bronx, and the education he received in the soaring Gothic brick structure complete with turrets and spires was rated as one of the finest offered by any of the city's public high schools. In the school's sprawling auditorium, Arthur and the rest of the student body gathered for daily assemblies amid the hall's ornate columns and a commemorative World War I mural that would earn the school a place on the National Historic Register. Arthur saw that masterpiece daily for four school years. The mural had been rendered by renowned French artist August Gorguet and entitled After Conflict Comes Peace . At the time, the vivid images of war-scarred France did not matter much to the teenager. After his 1936 graduation from Morris, Arthur immediately began working; any thought of college was out of the question with the Depression still battering the nation and the family needing every dol- lar. He sold electrical fixtures for Jack Meyerowitz, his uncle, and dou- bled as a receiving and shipping clerk and supervisor of ten men for a wholesale lampshade company in Brooklyn for three and a half years. Although fortunate to have any work in the midst of the Depression, in 1939 Arthur was employed only for twenty-eight weeks, earning $400. Fortunately for the family, his father worked all fifty-two weeks and brought home $1,560, but there was never much left over after the bills were paid. Wanting to contribute more and finding his life too sedate despite his busy social calendar, Arthur began to think about other avenues for a steadier and more exciting financial future. He had always been interested in airplanes and yearned for the chance to fly, and in late 1940, he spoke to an Army recruiter in Manhattan about the Army Air Corps. The sergeant told Arthur that a college education was not mandatory for aviation cadets so long as they had graduated from a good high school. The recruiter added that once Arthur completed basic training, he "could transfer to the Air Corps if he passed the physical and mental examinations." Filled with excitement, Arthur, who had never traveled beyond New York and New Jersey, signed a one-year enlistment paper on January 8, 1941. He was formally inducted at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and was soon on his way to basic infantry training at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Once he completed basic, Arthur made two requests to his com- manding officer: a pass to attend Seymour's Bar Mitzvah in New York and the application to transfer to the Army Air Corps. The officer turned down the Bar Mitzvah pass brusquely and then set Private Meyerowitz straight regarding aviation training--Arthur had signed up for one year, and the Army did not allow such enlistees to waste its time and money in flight school. The recruiting sergeant had lied to him, and Arthur, furious but trapped, started counting the days until January 8, 1942, when his assignment would be complete. Meanwhile, he sent Seymour one month's Army wages as a Bar Mitzvah present. He earned stellar reviews from his superiors first as a rifleman and then as a .50-caliber machine gunner. On December 7, 1941, about a month before his enlistment was up, Arthur was stunned by the news of the Imperial Japanese Navy's strike against Pearl Harbor. He immediately signed up for three more years, out of patriotism, out of the certainty that he would be drafted anyway, and out of hope that he could now transfer to the Air Corps. He wrote to Seymour that "my life expectancy as a machine gunner will be about thirteen seconds, so I want to fly and fight that way." Arthur, hard-nosed and keenly intelligent, possessed just the sort of nerve and leadership skills required in the cockpit. On June 8, 1942, his first step toward becoming an aviation cadet came when Lieutenant Colonel E. O. Lee, the commander of the 60th U.S. Regi- ment, 9th Infantry Division at Fort Bragg, rated him as an "excellent soldier" and recommended that his request for transfer to the Air Corps be accepted, with three nonfamily character references from people who had known "the candidate for no less than five years." All three letters, from respected New York businessmen, testified that Arthur was a young man "whose character is of the finest . . . is reli- able and trustworthy . . . an asset to any branch of the service he might choose."4 All he could do now was wait it out and hope that he would not be shipped off to North Africa or the Pacific as an infan- tryman before a transfer could arrive. On July 16, 1942, Arthur was told to report to Lieutenant Colonel Lee. His heart racing as he hurried to his superior's office, he knew the reason. A few minutes later, Arthur stepped outside and headed to his barracks--with the news that his transfer "for an Aviation Cadet Appointment to the Air Corps [had] been officially accepted."5 Elated, he was no longer a "dogface" with Company H. He wanted to give his family the news immediately, but because only one neighbor had a phone, he had to call that number and ask that they tell Rose, David, and Seymour that Private Arthur Meyerowitz was now an aviation cadet, with the opportunity to earn his wings. The opportunity came more slowly than Arthur would have liked. Before he could claim a spot as a flight cadet, he was required to complete physical training, classroom training, and hands-on runway instruction; if he came through the regimen successfully, another physical exam awaited. Cadets had to undergo a grueling work-up that washed out any number of candidates for everything from punc- tured eardrums to vertigo. Only then could Arthur make it all the way from the ground to the cockpit. After a processing stint in Columbia, South Carolina, to await his initial assignment in the Army Air Force, Arthur was transferred for a few months to the Army air base in Nashville, Tennessee, and then near Biloxi, Mississippi. He performed well both in the classroom and on the ground at the Air Corps Technical School, where would-be pilots, airmen, and ground crews--"Paddlefeet"--alike were indoc- trinated in aircraft technology and mechanics from nose to tail. The most nerve-racking moment of Arthur's training so far came in August 1942, when he underwent the dreaded physical and class- room examinations for aviation cadets, the last hurdles before flight training. Strapped to a mechanized tiltboard, he was tipped in differ- ent, dizzying angles at varying speeds to measure his capacity to endure sudden dives, climbs, rolls, and loops in a fighter plane or a bomber. With no way to tell in which direction the board would move, many recruits threw up within a minute or passed out as the board's pitching and gyrations increased or decreased. If a cadet could not stand up within a few seconds after the tiltboard was stopped, he was dropped from ("washed out") pilot training. The cadets who managed to wobble from the board and stay on their feet were hustled immediately to an eye chart and ordered to read each line as fast as possible so that the doctors could determine how quickly each man's eyesight could recover from severe vertigo. If the flight candidate failed to complete the lines within one minute, he was out. Once the vertigo and eye tests were done, Arthur was poked and prodded from head to toe as the doctors searched for anything from a slight hearing imperfection to slow reflexes, any of which would disqualify a man. He winced as a doctor inserted a long probe into his nostrils to rule out any hint of a deviated septum or sinus anom- alies. Still feeling the effects of the tiltboard, Arthur and his fellow candidates had to run a mile in the sweltering Mississippi heat and have their heart rates and pulses measured. After Arthur made it through the physical, the results of which were sent for review to an Army Air Force medical board at Wendover Airfield, Utah, he faced the Graduation Field Test. This was the final examination to measure how much flight candidates had absorbed in the classroom. Any grade less than the eightieth percentile meant dis- missal from the program. Arthur scored an 82, just above the 80 he needed to continue. Now he had to wait several days for the final results of his physical. On August 2, at Wendover, an Army medical board deemed the young man from the Bronx qualified to fly. He wrote home that he would always consider it to be "one of the best days of his life." Arthur was assigned to the flight-training base in Laredo, Texas, a dust-choked, rough-and-tumble ranching town that still evoked the Wild West. Intrigued by the sight of genuine cowboys and wranglers on horseback, the city kid and several of his fellow cadets decided to give the saddle and reins a try on a pass into town. It certainly could not be as difficult as learning to handle a plane, Arthur reasoned. He managed to stay atop his horse during his first lesson. Then, as he was tying the reins to a hitching post, the horse snapped its head back toward him just as he was leaning forward to finish the task. With a sickening thud the horse's snout slammed against Arthur's left eye. Arthur staggered for a moment and sank to his knees, his eye clos- ing fast. The impact sent blood pouring from his nose. His friends helped him to his feet, laid him in the back of a jeep, and sped back to the base infirmary. Groggy from the impact, Arthur gazed with his good eye at the white-coated Army doctor who appeared in front of him. The physician was Japanese. With Japanese Americans rounded up in the wake of Pearl Harbor as potential threats to the nation and languishing in heavily guarded camps on the order of President Roos- evelt and Congress, Arthur had reason to balk at treatment from the doctor. Before he could say a word, the doctor said, "I may be Japanese, but I am American. Your eye needs to be operated on, and you won't find anyone better than me for the job." Awash in pain, Arthur simply nodded. He felt sick to his stomach at the realization of what the crack of the horse's massive snout against his face likely meant. If his eyes had not already been watering from the blow, he would have had a hard time holding back tears. The doctor proved as good as his word, performing a retinal pro- cedure and draining the fluid and blood pressing against the eye and the orbital socket. For an aspiring pilot, however, 20/20 vision was nonnegotiable. The lingering damage to Arthur's eye was slight, but even that killed any cadet's chance to take the throttle of a bomber or a fighter. Even if perfect vision eventually returned, a nation at war and in dire need of combat pilots as soon as possible could not wait for such an injury to heal. Arthur did not want to return to the infantry, but he didn't want to sit on the sidelines either. The attack on Pearl Harbor and the rumors of Nazi atrocities that had seeped into Jewish communities across America in the past few years filled him with an anger he could barely describe. He wanted to fight for his country, and if he could not do it in the cockpit, he had to find a way to stay in the air, to "do his bit" aboard a bomber. He did not have much time to figure something out. On November 13, 1942, Arthur was ordered to appear in Wen- dover before an Army Air Force Faculty Board, which informed him that he was "physically disqualified for further flying duty because of physical disability." Arthur then requested that he be considered as an Army Air Force Officer School administrative candidate, noting his stellar record in Air Technical School and in all phases of his training up to his acci- dent. It was a long shot because men with at least some college experi- ence were first in line. Impressed with "the record of Aviation Cadet Arthur Sidney Meyerowitz," a board officer asked that if his request was "not favor- ably considered, is there any type of technical training you desire?"9 Arthur was ready with his answer, one he had formulated over the weeks of his recovery. "Sir, in that case, I would like to be consid- ered for training as an airplane flight engineer." The board members conferred and quickly reached a decision, acknowledging that Arthur's removal from flight training was due to physical reasons, not performance. They assigned him to training as a flight engineer. Since he was already a skilled .50-caliber machine gunner and B-24 flight engineers doubled as the bomber's top-turret gunner, he stood out as an ideal candidate. Once Arthur fully recovered from his surgery, his second round of flight training began, but this time as an engineer. The classroom training over the following months proved as intense as the training for an aspiring pilot; Arthur spent long hours in lectures for mainte- nance fundamentals, hydraulic systems, engines, electrical systems, fuel systems, aircraft instruments, propellers, engine operation under all sorts of duress, and aircraft inspection. He soon learned that pilots and flight engineers were required to know more about the planes they flew than bombardiers, navigators, or anyone else aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress or a B-24 Liberator. In October 1943, with his eye healed, Arthur completed two inten- sive weeks of training as a top ball-turret gunner and was promoted to staff sergeant. Assigned to the 715th Squadron, 448th Bomber Group, he entered the third and last phase of his training, at Sioux City, Iowa. All that remained before he was sent overseas were several B-24 practice flights from the airfield at Herrington, Kansas, and final classroom examinations for flight engineers. Unless he performed below required standards in both the air and on the ground, he would soon be heading off to the war. The big question was whether he would be sent to the European or the Pacific theater of operation. Pilots and crewmen were told their destination only after they shipped out. On October 30, 1943, just four days before flying out from Sioux City, Arthur sat down to compose a letter to his parents. As the steam radiators of the third-floor apartment hissed and clanged, Rose Meyerowitz wiped an early November-morning frost off the apartment's front window. Findlay Avenue began to appear below with each rub of her cotton cloth against the glass. The street was packed with commercial panel trucks and a handful of cars beep- ing incessantly. People bundled up against the gusts that occasion- ally rattled the apartment's windows bustled along the street. David had left for work at 7 a.m., and Seymour had scampered out the door for school a half hour later. Spotting the mailman walking down the building's front steps, Rose laid her cloth on the windowsill. She walked downstairs to the row of metal boxes on the lobby wall, inserted her key, and pulled out several letters. Among a few bills was an envelope embossed with the logo of the Hotel West, Sioux City, Iowa; she immediately recognized Arthur's handwriting on the envelope. She rushed upstairs, settled into the worn fabric of her reading chair next to the window, and stared at the letter. Taking a deep breath, she opened it to find three pages of stationery: Dear Dad & Mom, I am writing you just before I get ready to leave the States. This is one thing I would rather not have to write you both. I know how you feel about me. All I can say to that is I feel the same way about you. Ever since I can remember you were always swell parents. You gave me every chance to make something of myself. I have no kick coming. I am about to go overseas. I knew it was coming a long time ago. It's something I have been training a long time for. I think I have a darn good chance to see this thing through & come back to you all safe & sound. My biggest worry is your worrying about me. Please don't. You don't have to. You will see nothing is going to happen to me. If I knew you won't carry on, I would feel so much better. All I ask of you, Dad, is take good care of mom & Seymour. I guess you know what I mean. I don't want to write any more on the subject. Just tell mom not to worry & everything will come out ok. From what I heard today, I am going to a place I want to. It looks like it will be China. I will fly all the way. I am glad it won't be by boat. There will be times you won't get mail from me. Don't worry. It will have to take a longer time to get to you now. So try & understand above everything don't worry about me. That's about all I can say for now. Just take good care of mom for me. All my love to you. Artie  Rose tucked the letter into her apron pocket and closed her eyes. Arthur's bravado conjuring a slight smile for an instant, she silently prayed for Arthur's return, as she made Seymour do every morning and evening. She not only worried about Arthur, but also about Sey- mour and Esther. They, too, saw the newspapers filled with grim news of massive battles and losses in Europe and the Pacific. Rose got up from the chair, picked up the cloth, and began to dust again. After logging a scant forty-eight hours and thirty minutes in the air aboard B-24s, Arthur flew aboard a C-47 transport plane to Morri- son Army Air Field, in West Palm Beach, Florida, on November 11, 1943. Every pilot and airman knew what the assignment meant: They were shipping out for combat. With the highest casualty rate of any branch, the Army Air Corps had no choice but to rush pilots and air- men into action. At Morrison, thousands of air personnel were assembled for their overseas dispositions by the U.S. Army Air Forces Ferrying Com- mand. The more fortunate bomber pilots and crews flew out to Europe or the Pacific on new bombers; when B-24s or B-17s fresh from the factories were not available, thousands of pilots and airmen were crammed aboard troop transports or converted passenger ships. Eighth and 15th Air Force crews headed to England or Italy would spend two to three weeks in storm-tossed Atlantic waters where Nazi U-Boats prowled the convoy routes. Some of the vessels leaving Palm Beach never made it more than a few miles from Florida before Ger- man torpedoes sent them to the ocean bottom. The grim gibe was that if a ship lumbered straight out of Palm Beach Harbor and kept going straight, "you were heading into U-Boat Country, so kiss your ass good-bye." To Arthur's relief, he and his crewmates would not make the Atlantic crossing by ship. They had been ordered to fly out to war on a new B-24 named Maid of Tin . They would not know their destina- tion until they were in the air, and they opened a sealed envelope. Arthur and the other men of the 715th were rousted from bed at 3 a.m. on November 19, 1943, and told by an orderly that they were to ship out aboard Maid of Tin , with all their gear. Before climbing into the bomber with fourteen other men of the 715th, including two pilots, Arthur headed to a 5 a.m. briefing. William Blum, a pilot in the squadron, wrote: "It was still dark and very humid when we were told to report . . . the briefing room was crowded and we were all con- scious of the long flight before us. The briefing was short, a roll call of the crews scheduled to take off, the order to take off, photographs of landing fields along the route, a detailed account of all landmarks and aids to navigation, emergency ditching procedure, and finally a thor- ough weather briefing."  After a quick breakfast at the mess, Arthur and the others flying out boarded jeeps to the bombers lined up on the airstrip. Blum recalled that "everyone gathered for a last cigarette in our homeland before the big hop."14 A few days earlier at the Morrison processing center, Arthur had been required to make out a will and was given a quick medical exam- ination. He named his mother, Rose, as the beneficiary of the $10,000 government death insurance accorded to the men of the 8th Army Air Corps. When Maid of Tin , laden with 2,500 gallons of gas, soared above the airstrip and headed southwest through drizzling rain and a low cloud cover toward Puerto Rico, the pilot turned over the controls to the copilot. The skipper then reached into his flight jacket and removed a sealed envelope marked SECRET in bold type, and switched on the intercom. "Men," he intoned, "I'm about to inform you of our destination." As every crewman fell silent, the sound of the pilot tearing open the envelope could be heard faintly above the drone of the engines. The pilot said, "Your destination--the British Isles." Blum's words echoed the thoughts of Arthur: "No one said a word. We all had hoped for a tour of China. The British winters meant bad weather and the Jerries were hot pilots."  The South Atlantic Crossing to Great Britain took nearly two weeks, with Maid of Tin making required fueling stops and layovers at Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Brazil, and Dakar and Marrakesh, both in North Africa. From there, the B-24 landed at Seething Airfield, Sta- tion 146, on December 3, 1943. When Arthur first set foot at Seething on December 3, 1943, he was uncertain about what to expect. As a jeep wove across frozen mud and rutted paths to rows of barracks, several airmen waved. "You'll be sorry!" a few shouted. Another crewman bellowed, "Here comes the fresh meat!"  Not exactly a reassuring welcome, Arthur thought. He later learned that both greetings were an 8th Air Force tradition for arriv- ing crews. Arthur and his comrades were soon dropped off at their new home, the 715th's aluminum Nissen hut, whose uninsulated, tarpaper- covered walls housed rows of thin-mattressed cots with only three feet separating them. The reek of the coal-fired stoves that supplied warmth against the English chill merged with cigarette smoke and the odor of wet woolen blankets and uniforms. As Arthur would soon learn, those smells seemed more fragrant to airmen each time they survived another mission and returned to Seething. Before he could fly out on an actual mission, nearly three weeks in Seething "lecture rooms for precombat orientation and theater indoc- trination" awaited. The collective eyes of Arthur's fellow rookie crew- men and pilots often glazed over from their instructors' long-winded sermons and their exhortations that no mission was ever a "milk run," a bombing run in which there was little or no flak or enemy fighter planes. Arthur and other city boys stifled laughter as young men from rural spots stared wide-eyed when lecturers sternly pontificated about venereal disease and "loose women" around the British airfields where the rookies would be based. There was one lecture that proved different for Arthur, as well as the other rookie airman. He heard the harsh warning about the odds against pilots and airmen surviving the required twenty-five mis- sions over Hitler's Europe: "On an average, the 8th Air Force loses four out of every hundred planes on every mission . . . Of course, some missions will be a disaster due to very aggressive enemy action." This being the case, the instructor reasoned, "A crew that flies twenty-five missions has almost a hundred percent chance of being shot down by its last mission." Arthur and the others sat utterly silent. It hit them full force that, in all likelihood, many of them would never see home again. Unlike some airmen, Arthur had already prepared himself for that grim possibility. Before leaving for war, he had told his younger brother, Seymour, "If I'm going to die, I'd rather fly. I don't want to die on the ground." As he had told his brother, neither the eye injury nor anything else was going to stop him from fighting the Nazis. He was willing to die for his country, and as part of a B-24 crew, he knew and accepted that he was likely to do just that. Still, saying it and having air-combat veterans tell it were two different things. The reality first riveted and then haunted B-24 and B-17 bomber crews, and Arthur proved no exception. Now, less than a month since he had made the long, harrowing flight from Florida to England aboard Maid of Tin , that harsh reality hit him. It had begun moments after he had been pulled out of bed at 3 a.m. and had swelled by the time the preflight briefing ended. To fill out crews slated to fly a mission but shorthanded by casualties, squad- ron leaders routinely drafted pilots and airmen who were supposed to have a "day off." Arthur fully understood the necessity. What he could not quite shake was Colonel Thompson's grim visage at the briefing. Thompson had laid it out bluntly and candidly: the mission ahead would be the last for many of the crews flying out in a few hours. From the moment that the colonel had concluded the briefing with the words "kick their asses," Arthur's stomach had been churning.  It had gotten even worse after he stepped into the mess hall for 5:30 a.m. breakfast, right after the briefing. He only picked at the scrambled eggs, ham, sausage, and toast that cooks piled onto the air- men's tin trenchers. Everyone in the mess hall could tell who was fly- ing out that day and who was off duty. Men who downed endless mugs of coffee and ate little or nothing had just come out of the briefing room. They also toted thermoses of coffee to help ward off the fifty- below-zero temperature of a B-24's cabin at twenty-eight thousand feet above the ground. As Arthur reached the bomber he saluted the pilot, Second Lieu- tenant Philip Chase, and the copilot, Second Lieutenant William H. Thomas. A couple of cocky college boys, he thought, but decent enough guys. Still, he had no doubt that he would have been better in the pilot's seat than either of them. He stopped near the front of the bomber, slowly running his fin- gers across the fuselage's cold steel skin and the colorfully painted image of a buxom pinup girl clad in a white bikini top and grass skirt cradling a bomb--her Harmful Lil Armful . For the second time before flying into combat, he inspected a B-24's 67-foot 8-inch length, its 110-foot wingspan, and its four powerful Pratt & Whitney R-1830 turbo-supercharged radial engines, 1,200 horsepower each. German flak and fighter planes had rocked both his plane and his "rookie" nerves aboard Consolidated Mess on December 24, but at least now he knew what to expect over France. As he began his inspection, he grew concerned by the pounding Harmful Lil Armful had taken from antiaircraft fire on her third mis- sion, the previous day, December 30. He was wary of the chance that any damage to the aircraft less than a day earlier might not be fully repaired. He did not have to remind himself to pay special attention to the bomber's engines. From talking with other engineers, he had learned that the B-24 Liberator could not match the B-17 Flying Fortress's capacity to endure heavy damage and that crews had dubbed the B-24 the "Fly- ing Coffin" because it possessed only two exits. The escape hatch was located near the tail of the aircraft, and a fire anywhere in front of the exit could trap the crew. The only other escape was the bomb bay, whose doors often jammed from flak's concussive waves. The aircraft was highly susceptible to fires as well. Luftwaffe fighter pilots had learned to rake several fuel tanks mounted in the B-24's upper fuselage with machine-gun and nose-cannon rounds and set the bomber ablaze. Once the flames spread, the B-24's gravest flaw appeared, as the wings would often buckle and crumple. On his first mission, Arthur had witnessed several doomed B-24s plunging past his bomber, their flaming wings folded upward like fiery butterflies. As Arthur and his fellow engineers and mechanics continued their preflight inspections, some crewmen tossed footballs in the semidark- ness between the planes and on the fields' edges; other airmen hurled baseballs, the staccato slaps of horsehide into leather gloves toted from all corners of America a poignant reminder of home, of better days. Cigarettes glowed everywhere. Dozens of trucks packed with massive five-hundred-pound bombs lumbered up to the planes surrounding the runways. The bombardier of each crew would arm the bombs with detonation pins once the B-24s neared their French targets. Other trucks laden with steel con- tainers that held gleaming .50-caliber machine-gun belts surrounded eighteen bombers arrayed along Seething's three runways. Arthur worked his way around the plane, meticulously going over each of his checkpoints twice while the rest of Harmful Lil Armful 's crew arrived in the back of an open truck. They clambered out and huddled around the bomber. When he finished his inspection of engines one and two and emerged from beneath the left wing, he spied Staff Sergeant Thomas M. McNamara, a veteran of four mis- sions already and an older-brother figure to several of the younger crewmen. McNamara's hand rested on the shoulder of nineteen-year- old Staff Sergeant William D. Dunham, an Ohio farm boy whose gaunt face was creased with worry. Arthur stopped and nodded at them. Although Harmful Lil Arm- ful 's crew was not his own, Arthur had spent a lot of time at Seething with McNamara. A square-jawed, wide-shouldered, Irish New Yorker with a raucous, infectious laugh, he regaled his crewmates with a bot- tomless font of hilarious stories from his tough upbringing in Hell's Kitchen to his family's move to Grand Rapids, Michigan. McNamara knew every inch of the B-24 and B-17 alike. Before enlisting in the Army Air Force, he had worked in Henry Ford's B-24 plant in Willow Run, Michigan. Whether he was in the freezing barracks where the six crews of the 715th Bomber Squad slept, the mess hall, or the briefing room, McNamara's confidence and experience always reassured his own crew and other airmen in the unit. Even the pilots sought his counsel when it came to the literal nuts-and-bolts workings of the bombers. At the sudden backfire of a truck's tailpipe or perhaps even a fire- cracker, since it was, after all, the final day of 1943, Dunham stiffened and cursed softly, his eyes wide. "He's just nervous," McNamara assured Arthur. "He'll be fine," he added with a smile. Arthur smiled at the two men, walked over to the other wing, and crouched beneath the number three engine. All around the plane, other crew members were making their own preflight checks. Naviga- tor and second lieutenant Harry K. Farrell and bombardier and flight officer Edward E. George, a pair of Ivy Leaguers with the innate con- fidence of their upper-class pedigrees, quietly conversed and looked up to say hello to Arthur. Despite the difference in their background from the rest of the crewmen, they were, as McNamara said, "good eggs." Radio operator Staff Sergeant Joseph Defranze, a wavy-haired, gregarious nineteen-year-old kid from Hyde Park, Massachusetts, grinned at Arthur. "Make sure we've got all four propellers," he joked. Arthur retorted, "Colonel Thompson told me we only need one." Tail gunner and staff sergeant Howard R. Peck, who said little but had proven a deadly marksman with his .50-caliber Browning on his first two missions, chuckled. Arthur barely heard the laughter. He had already spied several large dents from German flak that had bent parts of the engine's cas- ing close to the propeller--too close for his liking. There were at least a dozen holes in the casing and the underside of the wing from where Messerschmitt 109 fighters' machine guns and nose cannons had found their mark. Knowing how vulnerable the B-24's wings were, Arthur rushed over to the two pilots. Saluting, he explained the damage he had found. "Sir," he said to Lieutenant Chase, "the ship is unfit to fly--the engine needs to be fixed." For a moment, Chase and Thomas stared at him. Then Chase's angular features tightened, and he glowered at Arthur. "This is a milk run--quick and simple, Meyerowitz. She'll get repaired when we get back." The pilot started to turn his back to Arthur. Arthur understood Chase's thinking: Every flight brought them closer to the magic number of twenty-five. They wanted to fly. Any mission was dangerous even without a damaged engine. Still, it was the flight engineer's duty to raise the alarm if a bomber was too damaged. Chase and Thomas, like all B-24 and B-17 pilots, had been taught, as B-24 pilot William E. Carigan Jr., recalled, that "the flight engineer, with his wide knowledge of the plane, must always get your ear, and any warning he gives must be seriously considered." "Lieutenant Chase," Arthur said. Chase wheeled around, scowling again. Thomas's stocky shoul- ders tensed, and he shook his head, his thin lips clenching. "The repairs shouldn't take more than a day." "That's enough, Sergeant," Chase snapped. Arthur knew he should shut up now before risking a charge of insub- ordination to a superior. He could not do so. He knew what he had seen. If he were the pilot, he would never endanger his men like that. "Fix the ship!" he shouted before he even realized the words came out of his mouth. Chase's blue eyes narrowed. "You're not the pilot, and you're not in charge. Harmful Lil Armful will fly today with the engine as is." Arthur slammed his clipboard to the ground, turned his back to the two pilots, and joined his staring crewmates. From behind him, neither Chase nor Thomas said a word. Excerpted from The Lost Airman: A True Story of Escape from Nazi Occupied France by Seth Meyerowitz, Peter Stevens All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.