I could make overthinking into an Olympic sport.
Within days, they woke us up for our first mission. With hundreds of hours of flight training in the States, we had to believe we were prepared. We had to, because now it was real.
When a crew went down, they disappeared. No more than four months at Thorpe Abbotts until 32 of the 35 original crews were among the missing. We did not talk about such crews. Those of us who continued to fly mission after mission had to tiptoe around their ghosts. Some of the men were coming undone. They’d seen too many planes blow up in front of them and too many friends killed. Some people drank. Some people fought. Some people slept around. If you got a chance to forget, you took it.
We told each other all kinds of stories. Some of them were true. Most were not. It didn’t matter. Tall tales, music, laughter, good Irish whiskey… We all needed something to help us climb back into that plane and do it all again.
Twenty-five was the magic number. If you survived 25 missions, they sent you home and built bond tours around you.
The hardest part of any mission was the anticipation. The waiting. No matter how well I plotted the routes or how thoroughly I briefed the other navigators, after wheels up, there was nothing I could do.
On occasion, the world must confront itself, answer what we are with who we are.
Nothing gave us more hope than the return of men we thought were lost.
Most of us had never traveled far from home, let alone flown in an airplane. We came from every corner of the country, with a common purpose: to bring the war to Hitler’s doorstep.
From the day I joined the 100th, Buck Cleven was our leader. We thought he was invincible. If Gale Cleven couldn’t make it, who could?
All this killing we do, you know, day in, day out, does something to a guy. Makes him different, not in a good way.
