Tuesday
morning early, about 2 a.m., I was called to the Turkey
Plant for guard duty because the other guard was sick
and had to go home. I got off duty at 6:00 a.m., came
home, ate breakfast, and decided to get some sleep.
About
10:30 a.m. the doorbell rang and Dorothy said some strange
man was at the door and that she was not going to answer.
She thought he was a salesman. (we get our share of these.)
The door bell rang several times, Still thinking it was
a salesman, I decided the only way to get rid of him was
to answer and tell him "No" no matter what he was selling.
I wanted to get back in bed for more rest.
When
I answered the door, the "stranger" wanted to know if
John Essig lived here and I said "yes". He wanted to know
if I was a gunner on a B-29 and again I said 'Yes." He
said his name was Tom Smith. Still thinking he was a salesman,
I just locked at him sort of stunned. Then all of a sudden
it seemed like lightning struck me. I realized who he
was. I yelled at him and demanded that he come in. I said
the whole crew had been trying to get his address for
"50 years." He said, "What is the matter?" I assured him
that nothing was wrong; that we just wanted to correspond.
Before
reminiscing about old times, I immediately took down his
address and asked him to drop his address on a card to
Bell, Jones, Callaghan, Shulman and Baldridge. I asked
that he do this before he did anything else, He said he
would.
I
imagine we talked about half of the morning and half of
the afternoon. We went over to Williams Store and had
a small lunch. He left around 3:00 p.m heading West in
his camper for the Mississippi River and St. Louis.
Smitty
is single, never married, just retired, and said he had
always wanted to do what he is now doing-just traveling
around the USA. He had sold his home in Florida. He said
he used to work for a brokerage firm in Providence, RI.,
a hotel, I think, and then returned to college. For several
years he worked in hospitals in Florida as a medical technician,
working with doctors in the operating room. He was telling
of several different operations in which he would assist
the doctors with different kinds of new instruments and
new techniques. He said the changes were coming fast and
furious and new and younger employees were coming in so
he just decided to retire and. see the country.
Some
of the things we talked about follows. I am just listing
them in a rather Rambling fashion with the thought they
might bring back memories. I am enclosing copies of notes
that Tom Smith had in his notebook. Perhaps they will
bring back memories also. They certainly did for me.
Here
is an episode we discussed. It seems that we had reached
the end of our training here in the states, were about
ready for overseas, and were having fun in Kansas City.
We were several stories up in one of the hotels. Drinking
Southern Comfort "soda pop." Smitty crawled up on the
window ledge and was going to jump out of the window.
I asked one of the other crew members what the devil had
gotten into him, and he said "Too much Southern Comfort-
he is plastered." Smitty said he remembered calling Tom
Bell an old "burr-head", something none of us would ever
think of calling our pilot, an officer, and one who was
a Senior Citizen to all of us start aleck gunners. But
Smitty said Tom Bell just laughed it off. It was a wonder
he did not fire us all. But I guess, back there and then,
good help was hard to find. Besides T. Bell was not that
kind of person.
Smitty
was telling of the time, he was eating the concentrated
chocolate bar in the tail section of the plane. I often
thought he was hungry and ate it too fast. He said he
was O.K. until he laid down the partially eaten bar and
it started to move away from him. He said he picked up
the bar and looked at it closer and it was full of maggots.
This when he called T. Bell on the intercom and said he
was feeling sick, T. Bell said we were over Japan and
he would have to stay in the tail section. A few minutes
later he called back to say he had 'tossed his cookies."
T. Bell told him he would have to stay there and clean
it up after we got back over the ocean.
Smitty
was telling a story, and I remember it, when we were in
training. One time Johnson was drunk and seemed to be
as limp as an old dish-rag, Smitty got him back to the
barracks, got him partially undressed, and tried to get
him in his bunk. Here was Smitty trying with all his might
to get Johnson, who was moving around in all sorts of
positions and contortions, up in his bunk. The amusing
part was that Johnson slept in the upper part of the double
bunk. Finally, after several minutes went by, Smitty was
successful, only to have Johnson roll over and out the
other side, back down to the floor. Luckily, I don't think
he was hurt. Unfortunately, I don't recall if any of us
other crew members helped Smitty get Johnson into his
bunk. |