The reason I kept a record of my tour of duty in the European Theater of Operations was not motivated by any desire to later publish my experiences in the form of a book, but rather for my own personal recollections of what I had seen and felt about it at the time.

So that I would achieve this objective, I recorded these raids immediately after landing from each successive mission so that the information would be as concise as possible. Occasionally, additional notes were added when further results and developments were established a few days later but, with that exception, nothing has been added or taken away from the accounts of these missions as originally recorded. Only minor grammatical, spelling and format changes have been made. It is, otherwise, identical to the original.

After receiving my commission as a second lieutenant and Navigator’s Wings at Selman Field, LA, April 8, 1944, I was shipped to Lincoln, Nebraska and, from there, to Rapid City, South Dakota to meet my crew.

Living, eating and flying with my crew for a few weeks at the Overseas Combat Training Area proved to me we didn’t have a weak link in the crew, which is more than often the case. Besides being a good bunch of kids, they all knew their jobs. I say kids, without authority, for I was the youngest officer on our ship.

Linn R. Rogers was our pilot. He was just the man for the job. “Rog” was 24, not married, conscientious and neither smoked or drank. Rog’s home was a farm in Lebanon, Indiana. Both he and our co-pilot, “Brownie,” were commissioned as flight officers, but I could never see why.

Orland D. Brown, 23 years of age, our co-pilot was always seen with a grin on his face as though he had pulled a practical joke on one of us, and he usually had. “Brownie” had wanted to be a fighter pilot, but didn’t show his disappointment in the way he flew our big bird, the B-17. Rog and Brownie worked together in flying the ship in such a coordinated manner you would have thought they were born with silver throttles in their mouths. Brownie got a big kick out of riding our bombardier “Reb,” for he was the most sensitive of us. Brownie married his girl from home while in training and they planned to make Salina, Kansas their home after the war.

“Reb,” Robert N. Rebillot, 23 years of age, our bombardier, was the butt of all of our jokes. As I said before, he was sensitive but could take anything we put to him, and he threw it right back at us. He always put up a front that he was a dumb foundry worker who somehow got through bombardier’s school. But he was much more educated than the impression of himself he put forth. The subject we gave him the hardest time about was his girl back home in Canton, Ohio. She began going out with a sailor when we were shipped overseas, and Reb’s relatives gave him a play-by-play account.

Edward “Cookie” Cook, 19 years of age, our engineer, was a sharp boy. Whenever we needed anything Cookie knew how to get it, or he knew somebody who could get it for him. He didn’t have to walk more than a block in London to run into one of his buddies walking down the street.

Cookie gained the respect of the entire crew for his complete knowledge of our ship. It was a good feeling to have someone in the crew who could be counted on in any emergency to improvise repairs, and Cookie substantiated that feeling for us. Cook married his girl at home in Madison, Wisconsin when he returned to the States.

Our radio operator, Bruno “Buzz” Bongiani, although only 24 years of age, was called the “old man” by many of the enlisted men. Buzz was usually quite serious and very conscientious about his work. He was of Italian descent and spoke that language fluently. Buzz was a confirmed bachelor so he spent his passes in London looking for spaghetti houses serving Italian wines.

Billie Clack was the keeper of the lower greenhouse, the lower ball turret. On the ground Billy was sort of a shy kid, but he seemed to be in his element in the air. He was our best gunner and as good a radio operator as “Buzz.” Billy hailed from Detroit, Texas, was married, but divorced his wife after his return from overseas.

Dave Lawler, our right waist gunner, was a person not easily understood. Dave was a likeable kid and knew his job, but he never talked about himself so we never really knew how he felt. Dave was shot down after the rest of us had completed our tours of duty, and no further word was heard of him. [David F. Lawler, shot down on mission to Neumunster, Germany 4/13/1945 as part of the E.J. Martinek crew, POW at Oflag 10C Lubeck Schleswig, source NARA]

Ray Brokaw, our left gunner, was the man on our crew we expected to crack up under combat conditions. We all had a constant premonition that each mission we flew would be our last, to a certain extent. Ray was extremely affected by this fear. His wife had a baby the day we arrived overseas, so that may have accounted for this feeling to which he was subject.

Our tail gunner, Robert “Hatch” Hatcher was the character of the crew. We had a hard time making him wear shoes. He knew his turret and guns inside out, but he was the laziest man in five counties, and his home folks in Chattahoochie, Florida were noted for the same characteristic. “Hatch” slept from the time we took off, so I made it a part of my routine to call him over the interphone about the time we reached enemy territory in order to wake him up.

I was born June 5, 1922 on the east side of the city of Detroit, Michigan to Frank Joseph Beckley (1893-1983) and Eva Beckley (nee Ambler) (1893-1981). I lived at home with my parents, brother and sister while attending grade school, Stellwagon, high school, Denby and the first two years of college, University of Detroit. Then I was called into service by the Army Air Corps in January, 1943. Upon my return from overseas I completed my college degree and received a Bachelor of Civil Engineering, state of Michigan Registered Civil Engineer.

I married Alice Jean (nee Harper) in October, 1943. We raised three children, Susan (1946), Robert Jr. (1950) and Alison (1964), making us grandparents of Christine, Robert, Melissa and Michelle. Alice died in 1993 and I married a high school friend, Eleanore Guiness in 1994.

That was the crew of the “Cloudbuster” and, with due respect to those crews before and after us, I cannot but feel that our crew was the best damn crew that flew over Germany.

After ten weeks of operational training at Rapid City, South Dakota, we shoved off for a Port of Embarkation. As yet we didn’t know if we were scheduled for England or the Pacific, but we had a pretty good idea. We spent 48 hours at Kearney, Nebraska checking supplies and then entrained for Camp Kilmer, New Jersey. After spending a few days there we received orders to board the S.S. Alexandria docked in New York at the 35th Street dock.

The night of July 1, 1944, when we sailed out of the New York harbor, we were all pretty solemn. I wondered about many things and surmised the rest aboard ship had similar thoughts. The posters all over Camp Kilmer with captions “This is it” were subject for all kinds of cracks when we saw them. When we had the time and thought about it we wondered what was in store for us. Many of us wouldn’t come back but, instead of even contemplating that we would be one of them, each of us felt that it was too bad some of our buddies wouldn’t make it.

I was assigned to a stateroom with five other officers. Our enlisted men were barracked in the assembly rooms and hole of the ship. The meals served brought no gripes from any of us. The officers dined in the ships dining room, and when I say dined, I mean it. For each table seating six of us we had a waiter to bring us five course dinners. Our only other duty aboard ship, besides eating, was to attend the alert drill each day. It was a sort of life all right, but it soon became quite tiresome. When we sighted the coast of Ireland ten days later it wasn’t too soon for any of us.

We docked at Liverpool and immediately entrained for Stone, England for assignment to a combat group. Arriving at Stone we were ripe for rumors and, naturally, they were put to us. We had no basis for distinguishing between the truth and those fantastic yarns told to us so we were as absorbent as sponges to any information. The food and quarters at Stone were almost unbearable so, along with all the weird tales we had heard about combat, we felt much depressed.

Our first impression was dispelled after we shipped out of Stone to our assignment, the 398th Bombardment Group, 600th Squadron (reassigned to 601st Squadron August 31, 1944). Maybe it was a good thing we went through a period of low morale before we arrived at our assigned group. The conditions there would seem so much better. It was like wearing tight shoes for a while so, that when you took them off, your feet would feel so much better.

Our quarters was a Nissen hut and it could be fixed up well enough with writing tables, mirrors, pin-ups, a radio and other necessities to call it home. The food was good, that is, as good as could be expected, under the circumstances.

We were issued a ration card which afforded us a weekly supply of five packages of cigarettes, three candy bars, a package of gum and a small package of cookies. The Post Exchange on our field had not been completed, but it carried such things as soap, tooth paste, tooth brushes, shaving equipment and lather and a few other miscellaneous articles we needed that were un-rationed.

Each night of the week trucks were available to take us into one of the nearby towns, Hereford, Hitcher, Cambridge or Luton on what was called a liberty run. The trucks would leave our base at 1800, take us into one of these towns and pick us up at 2300. About twice a month we were given 48 hour passes, and leave would usually be spent in London.

A day well spent in London gave a person a good idea of the British people, their trends of thought, their customs and their unerring loyalty to tradition. I spent my first pass on an excursion tour of London, first with a guide, then by myself. There is no denying that Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Buckingham Palace are wonders of architecture, but to me they symbolized the decadent British mind. The British, as compared to Americans, were too willing to rest upon their laurels of past achievements instead of looking to the future and progression.

Since I was exposed to the conditions of England during a time of war I may have adopted a false impression of the county but, nevertheless, I had no longing to become a citizen of the British Empire. London was an interesting city for tourists, but to reside there was a different matter. The theaters and stage plays comprised the entertainment of the city. Their night clubs were not as we knew them, but rather they were equivalent to our basement restaurants with a small orchestra. The public houses or pubs were the neighborhood meeting places. Even though the pubs served beer and liquors they could not be compared to our beer-gardens. The atmosphere was entirely different. The pubs were comprised of a small bar, two or three rooms with carpeted floors, crowded with upholstered armchairs and usually a dart game or two in the corners. The crowd was not boisterous, in fact, the people were very quiet. It was funny to see an American soldier, half-lit, disrupt this solemn atmosphere with loud laughter or a few verses of “Auld Lang Syne.” It was common to see a few old ladies with chairs pulled up close together gossiping about the topics of the day with a mug of milds or bitters in their right hands and cigarettes in the left.

Every English kid seemed to have a dirty face. They ran around the streets begging soldiers for money, gum, cigarettes and candy. Their standard phrases were “Any gum, Chum?” or “Any candy, Andy?” Most of them weren’t bad kids, but some of them would pilfer anything, any chance they got. The fault lay with their parents. At the time, it was hard to imagine ten and twelve year old American kids running around the downtown streets of Detroit, or any other large American city, in dirty clothes begging for cigarettes or candy.

After we had flown half of our missions we were given a weeks rest leave, so we took a train up to Edinburgh, Scotland. Scotland was a very beautiful country. The Scots were very congenial, simple living, very religious and usually appeared to be happy. It was quite an experience to talk with a jolly Scotsman. Half of the time you could understand what they said, but usually you were more interested in their brogues than what they were saying.

After my tour of duty was completed I was given orders to return to the States under the rotation plan. I packed my bags in ten minutes after I received the orders and caught the first train for Stone, England; this time going through Stone in the other direction. I awaited further orders at Stone for two weeks then shipped by train to South End for debarkation. It was quite coincidental that the ship waiting for me was the S.S. Alexandria, the same ship that had brought me to England. Eleven days later we docked at Boston on February 9, 1945.

Naturally, I was glad to be back in the States, but wouldn’t give anything for the experiences I was subject to, both in the air and on the ground, while overseas.

My military record and awards are listed below:

1. Basic Training, January-February, 1943, Miami Beach, Florida
2. College Training, March-April, 1943, Cleveland, Ohio
3. Classification Sta., May, 1943, Nashville, Tennessee
4. Pre-Flight Pilot Training, June-July, 1943, Maxwell Field, Montgomery, Alabama
5. Primary Flight Training, August, 1943, Lakeland, Florida
6. Navigation School, September, 1943, Selman Field, Monroe, Louisiana
7. Gunnery School, October-November, 1943, Fort Myers, Florida
8. Advanced Navigation School, December, 1943-April, 1944, Selman Field, Monroe, Louisiana
9. B-17 Crew Training, May-June, 1944, Rapid City, South Dakota
10. 8th Air Force, 398th Bomb Group, July, 1944-January, 1945, Nuthampstead, England, 35 missions
11. Rest and Rehabilitation, February-March, 1945, Miami Beach, Florida
12. Navigator’s Instructors School, April-June, 1945, Houston, Texas
13. Navigation Instructor, July-October, 1945, Selman Field, Monroe, Louisiana
14. Released to inactive service and returned to complete college degree, 10 October, 1945
    

Ranks:

1. Aviation Cadet, January, 1943-April, 1944
2. 2nd Lieutenant, April-December, 1944
3. 1st Lieutenant, October, 1944-December, 1945
   

Air Medal with five oak leaf clusters, Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart-European Theater of Operations, Good Conduct Medal

Thirty-five Combat Missions in the European Theatre of Operations.